Lol this rhetoric is a great way to change the culture. So many folks have a hard time villianizing rich folks because they want to be a rich folk. I get a lot of "don't judge" type comments when I start saying stuff like that but excuse me, I WILL JUDGE. Nepotism: judge. Trust fund: judge. You should judge too. You're one layoff away from selling your house. Be mad at the banks, at the real estate ventures keeping property values inflated. You know the rich people. 🤣
It's called "Divide and Conquer", and it's as old as colonialism. I think LBJ expressed it best:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Two things I like to point out:
1) Somebody calculated that the top 1% has taken $50 trillion from the rest of us since 1980. We could use the government to simply appropriate that back and disburse it among the population. It comes out to about $150k per citizen. $600k for a family of four. This might make a good plank on a platform to run for office, but you'd probably need bulletproof skin to pull it off.
2) Why isn't there a maximum wage tethered to the minimum wage? Cap earnings and tax earned and unearned income the same. Eliminate inheritance. That leaves everyone to balance between two life choices. Either work hard when young and acquire assets, then slow down and live off unearned income when you're old or work hard and play hard all your life.
Humans have known how to create a sustainable and socially just society for over a hundred years. We're just too easily manipulated by our emotions to ever bother doing so.
Democrats absolutely refuse to identify an enemy because they're on the payroll of said enemy. They're playing both sides and it makes it impossible to have a coherent and compelling political message. Running on "orange man had" with a candidate of their own who feels she doesn't need to stake out a real position on any issues that might potentially be off putting to the rich is a dream come true for them.
The Dems fail the age old Union question: "which side are you on?"
Really annoyed at my lib friends (most of whom didn't participate in any protests during Trump) yelling at me not voting for the guy doing a racial genocide in the middle east, and breaking international law to keep browns out of White America, and who completely checked out on caring about Covid pretty much day one, fracking the hell out of whatever places still have clean water, ya know all the stuff that *made* Orange Man Bad last time.
Anyway, Dick Cheney is now a lib hero, Bush is a goofy grandpa, just wait twelve years and we'll all be treated to a scolding about how its too important to grouse about whichever right center psycho the dems nominated seeking trump's endorsement.
So good. And as usual, you cut to the heart of the matter. I think this point is especially important:
"Whereas the solutions to the fascist set of villains demand horrifying mass deportations and military-style oppression and the imprisonment of an ever-expanding set of undesirables, the solution to “Rich people are the villains” is much more humane. We simply make rich people less rich." Nobody gets hurt or punished. Just require rich people to share some of the wealth they extract from everyone else, starting with paying taxes similar to what they paid in the 1960s, when America was "Great." Why is that so hard?
As someone who came up in the wake of the hippies and punk (I'm 60) I find it ASTONISHING how people somehow fell for "to get rich is glorious" -- I also find it astonishing that people forgot that marketing is LIES.
However, here in Montana, those of us who've been here for a while have been invaded by the fucking rich, and we're pretty in tune with their wretched natures. Here's a recent article summing up what we're facing -- teachers in MT make 34-45K. The LOWEST salaries in America, and yet these rich fuckers are buying up our mountain ranges and cutting people off from the public lands that are our birthrights. From NY Magazine this week: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/yellowstone-club-real-estate-public-land-montana-crazy-mountains.html
I saw this same thing in California. Laguna Mountain is supposedly mostly public land. Except the only road up there is an unbroken line of rich people's ranches with fences and No Trespassing signs. Meaning, in essence, all that public land is just an extra big backyard for the exclusive use of the rich in case they get bored with their 30 acres of private.
Yeah, realtors have been selling grazing leases on public land as a part of the property for decades now. Many of these giant ranches are aggressively posted, and patrolled by employees/remote webcams. Public lands activists have been fighting the Wilkes brothers for years over access to 5000 acres of prime elk habitat in the Durfee hills that can currently only be accessed by helicopter: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/public_access_to_the_durfee_hills
Whoops, Palomar, not Laguna. Though Laguna too, theres a bunch of private ranches and million dollar homes on this suppsoedly public land (which ARE so valuable mostly from being nestled in square miles of land maintained at public expense, and has a supply constraint by also prevents any further development)
For a few months now I'd arrived at this conclusion. My exact thought was "rich people are the root of all problems". At first I thought I was being flippant, emotional, probably over stating it a little. The more I thought about it though, I was like, no, it's basically true. ...they are the ones with the wealth and the ability, therefore the responsibility... Yep.
Then I read this and I'm like- "OK, I'm not alone"
I'll never forget a conversation I had with a friend of mine who happens to make much more money than I do/did. It came up in conversation that, yes, I do believe the wealthiest among us should be taxed more than people who make average salaries. He stopped texting me and called me (!!) to ask me if I realize just how hard he "worked his ass off" to get to the job he has now.
You should have heard his tone. Like I-- a regular person with a regular job with regular dad responsibilities-- wasn't capable of understanding how hard he--a guy who sits at a desk all day and flies someplace a couple times a month for free--works. I asked him if he works any harder than someone who lays blacktop on roofs or someone who goes and cleans office buildings or schools after they work their other job. He dismissed my comment with a tone that suggested that was *their* problem.
I doubt anyone sees this or cares, but damn, that conversation with him really opened my eyes that day. They really do think that by getting a certain type of job, they've accomplished something that makes them above all of us and that their accomplishments are somehow more valuable. Incredible. And also deeply disheartening.
Posting this over at Mastodon. You know, that place where people who understand the rich are the problem reside because they refuse to support rich people's social media platforms.
re: "the solution is humane", I think it's also important to point out the sheer magnitude of the wealth that the richest have--you could take away 90% of Jeff Bezo's wealth, and he'd still have more money than any one person could reasonably spend in a lifetime. Higher taxes won't materially harm him--he'll truly be fine. And the rest of us will be vastly better off!
"This message is a poisonous stew of lies. But that is not a political liability. It is a message that offers plain answers to hard questions."
Puts me in mind of the time in 2017 I attended a Resistance Workshop put on by the local Green Party for anxious people who wanted to learn how to oppose the fascists and maybe also not get hospitalized killed or jailed doing it.
We were constantly interrupted by an elderly lady who seemed to want to turn this event, directed towards a real concern (Proud Boys had just violently broken up a peaceful protest while their friends in the cops did nothing) into an internet flamewar about how Jill Stein cost Hillary the election. This was in California, to be clear, which went for Hillary, and not one voter in the room could have had any effect on her fortunes (Except for me, I'd moved from PA, and I held my nose and voted for Hillary).
Anyway, haven't thought of this in a while, and when I did it was more of a "Can you believe how TV-fucked, miserable, and insulated from actual reality and crap consequences Boomers of every political stripe are?".
But yea. Anyway. One side has Hatians and the other side has Greens. Anything to keep us from noticing the billionaires on top.
1. Politics currently runs on money. Rich people have money. If you start demonizing them, they'll give their money to the other guys, who will then have all the money and thus have an easier path to power. Note that this is also the reason that getting money out of politics will be very difficult.
2. Many people who are not rich WANT to be rich, and in some cases envision that they ARE rich because they don't grasp the extent to which they are not, in fact, rich. These people (I wanted to say "goobers" but stopped myself) aren't going to go for a system that cuts off their ambition before they even get close to achieving it. Explaining how this is a benefit to not-rich people is difficult and presents a plethora of opportunities for conservatives to yell Communism, Socialism, Libruls, and the like. It's hard to get past wishful thinking.
These are descriptions of the current situation but also reasons why it would be healthy to shift the perception of being very rich to something that is looked at as a distasteful thing.
No disagreement here on the theory, but considering how rich-as-aspirational-goal is ingrained in American society, that's gonna take a LOOOOONG time to unravel.
Lol this rhetoric is a great way to change the culture. So many folks have a hard time villianizing rich folks because they want to be a rich folk. I get a lot of "don't judge" type comments when I start saying stuff like that but excuse me, I WILL JUDGE. Nepotism: judge. Trust fund: judge. You should judge too. You're one layoff away from selling your house. Be mad at the banks, at the real estate ventures keeping property values inflated. You know the rich people. 🤣
It's called "Divide and Conquer", and it's as old as colonialism. I think LBJ expressed it best:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
Two things I like to point out:
1) Somebody calculated that the top 1% has taken $50 trillion from the rest of us since 1980. We could use the government to simply appropriate that back and disburse it among the population. It comes out to about $150k per citizen. $600k for a family of four. This might make a good plank on a platform to run for office, but you'd probably need bulletproof skin to pull it off.
2) Why isn't there a maximum wage tethered to the minimum wage? Cap earnings and tax earned and unearned income the same. Eliminate inheritance. That leaves everyone to balance between two life choices. Either work hard when young and acquire assets, then slow down and live off unearned income when you're old or work hard and play hard all your life.
Humans have known how to create a sustainable and socially just society for over a hundred years. We're just too easily manipulated by our emotions to ever bother doing so.
You can't give a pack animal a mind :)
Democrats absolutely refuse to identify an enemy because they're on the payroll of said enemy. They're playing both sides and it makes it impossible to have a coherent and compelling political message. Running on "orange man had" with a candidate of their own who feels she doesn't need to stake out a real position on any issues that might potentially be off putting to the rich is a dream come true for them.
The Dems fail the age old Union question: "which side are you on?"
Mark Cuban's, Jeff Bezos', Exxon's CEO, etc.
Really annoyed at my lib friends (most of whom didn't participate in any protests during Trump) yelling at me not voting for the guy doing a racial genocide in the middle east, and breaking international law to keep browns out of White America, and who completely checked out on caring about Covid pretty much day one, fracking the hell out of whatever places still have clean water, ya know all the stuff that *made* Orange Man Bad last time.
Anyway, Dick Cheney is now a lib hero, Bush is a goofy grandpa, just wait twelve years and we'll all be treated to a scolding about how its too important to grouse about whichever right center psycho the dems nominated seeking trump's endorsement.
So good. And as usual, you cut to the heart of the matter. I think this point is especially important:
"Whereas the solutions to the fascist set of villains demand horrifying mass deportations and military-style oppression and the imprisonment of an ever-expanding set of undesirables, the solution to “Rich people are the villains” is much more humane. We simply make rich people less rich." Nobody gets hurt or punished. Just require rich people to share some of the wealth they extract from everyone else, starting with paying taxes similar to what they paid in the 1960s, when America was "Great." Why is that so hard?
I've never understood why we don't call them *expensive* people.
As someone who came up in the wake of the hippies and punk (I'm 60) I find it ASTONISHING how people somehow fell for "to get rich is glorious" -- I also find it astonishing that people forgot that marketing is LIES.
However, here in Montana, those of us who've been here for a while have been invaded by the fucking rich, and we're pretty in tune with their wretched natures. Here's a recent article summing up what we're facing -- teachers in MT make 34-45K. The LOWEST salaries in America, and yet these rich fuckers are buying up our mountain ranges and cutting people off from the public lands that are our birthrights. From NY Magazine this week: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/yellowstone-club-real-estate-public-land-montana-crazy-mountains.html
I saw this same thing in California. Laguna Mountain is supposedly mostly public land. Except the only road up there is an unbroken line of rich people's ranches with fences and No Trespassing signs. Meaning, in essence, all that public land is just an extra big backyard for the exclusive use of the rich in case they get bored with their 30 acres of private.
Yeah, realtors have been selling grazing leases on public land as a part of the property for decades now. Many of these giant ranches are aggressively posted, and patrolled by employees/remote webcams. Public lands activists have been fighting the Wilkes brothers for years over access to 5000 acres of prime elk habitat in the Durfee hills that can currently only be accessed by helicopter: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/public_access_to_the_durfee_hills
The law in its majestic equality allows the rich and poor helicopter access to public lands alike.
Whoops, Palomar, not Laguna. Though Laguna too, theres a bunch of private ranches and million dollar homes on this suppsoedly public land (which ARE so valuable mostly from being nestled in square miles of land maintained at public expense, and has a supply constraint by also prevents any further development)
For a few months now I'd arrived at this conclusion. My exact thought was "rich people are the root of all problems". At first I thought I was being flippant, emotional, probably over stating it a little. The more I thought about it though, I was like, no, it's basically true. ...they are the ones with the wealth and the ability, therefore the responsibility... Yep.
Then I read this and I'm like- "OK, I'm not alone"
I'll never forget a conversation I had with a friend of mine who happens to make much more money than I do/did. It came up in conversation that, yes, I do believe the wealthiest among us should be taxed more than people who make average salaries. He stopped texting me and called me (!!) to ask me if I realize just how hard he "worked his ass off" to get to the job he has now.
You should have heard his tone. Like I-- a regular person with a regular job with regular dad responsibilities-- wasn't capable of understanding how hard he--a guy who sits at a desk all day and flies someplace a couple times a month for free--works. I asked him if he works any harder than someone who lays blacktop on roofs or someone who goes and cleans office buildings or schools after they work their other job. He dismissed my comment with a tone that suggested that was *their* problem.
I doubt anyone sees this or cares, but damn, that conversation with him really opened my eyes that day. They really do think that by getting a certain type of job, they've accomplished something that makes them above all of us and that their accomplishments are somehow more valuable. Incredible. And also deeply disheartening.
Posting this over at Mastodon. You know, that place where people who understand the rich are the problem reside because they refuse to support rich people's social media platforms.
That place.
You should think about giving it a whirl HamNo.
I fw the title of this article so hard
"Rich people are the enemy." There are sociologist who can confirm that. Prof. G. William Domhoff is one of the best...
https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/
Theory of The Leisure Class should be required high school curriculum nationwide.
I love this article!
I think there are A LOT of great ideas in here for bumper stickers and tshirts.
Fuck the rich
re: "the solution is humane", I think it's also important to point out the sheer magnitude of the wealth that the richest have--you could take away 90% of Jeff Bezo's wealth, and he'd still have more money than any one person could reasonably spend in a lifetime. Higher taxes won't materially harm him--he'll truly be fine. And the rest of us will be vastly better off!
"This message is a poisonous stew of lies. But that is not a political liability. It is a message that offers plain answers to hard questions."
Puts me in mind of the time in 2017 I attended a Resistance Workshop put on by the local Green Party for anxious people who wanted to learn how to oppose the fascists and maybe also not get hospitalized killed or jailed doing it.
We were constantly interrupted by an elderly lady who seemed to want to turn this event, directed towards a real concern (Proud Boys had just violently broken up a peaceful protest while their friends in the cops did nothing) into an internet flamewar about how Jill Stein cost Hillary the election. This was in California, to be clear, which went for Hillary, and not one voter in the room could have had any effect on her fortunes (Except for me, I'd moved from PA, and I held my nose and voted for Hillary).
Anyway, haven't thought of this in a while, and when I did it was more of a "Can you believe how TV-fucked, miserable, and insulated from actual reality and crap consequences Boomers of every political stripe are?".
But yea. Anyway. One side has Hatians and the other side has Greens. Anything to keep us from noticing the billionaires on top.
So, two issues here:
1. Politics currently runs on money. Rich people have money. If you start demonizing them, they'll give their money to the other guys, who will then have all the money and thus have an easier path to power. Note that this is also the reason that getting money out of politics will be very difficult.
2. Many people who are not rich WANT to be rich, and in some cases envision that they ARE rich because they don't grasp the extent to which they are not, in fact, rich. These people (I wanted to say "goobers" but stopped myself) aren't going to go for a system that cuts off their ambition before they even get close to achieving it. Explaining how this is a benefit to not-rich people is difficult and presents a plethora of opportunities for conservatives to yell Communism, Socialism, Libruls, and the like. It's hard to get past wishful thinking.
These are descriptions of the current situation but also reasons why it would be healthy to shift the perception of being very rich to something that is looked at as a distasteful thing.
No disagreement here on the theory, but considering how rich-as-aspirational-goal is ingrained in American society, that's gonna take a LOOOOONG time to unravel.
Even some of the "good" ones know the score:
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
― Warren Buffett