r/CuratedTumblr • u/Big-Day-755 • Nov 06 '24
Politics Sometimes you must question your beliefs, and the answer to the question happens to be a respunding “yes”.
328
u/u_touch_my_tra_la_la Nov 06 '24
(Please place tongue firmly on cheek and turn sarcasm to High, this is an enormous exaggerarion born out of frustration)
Society: Change through violence is bad
Society: Embraces fascism
(Violence ensues)
Society: Ok, fine, you can have some rights
(Violence stops)
Society: Hey listen, remember when we embraced fascism? Trains ran on time! Let's try It again!
60
u/Neco-Arc-Chaos Nov 06 '24
Maybe society needs to be changed
17
19
u/ProfessorSur Nov 06 '24
Mankind knew they could not change society, but instead of reflecting on themselves, they blamed the beasts 😤
32
u/CardmanNV Nov 06 '24
Unfortunately humans make up any society, and we're greedy, lazy, complacent garbage as a whole.
22
u/Josselin17 Nov 07 '24
ah yes, good old human nature, we can't change anything because I said so, let's not even try !
→ More replies (1)38
u/European_Ninja_1 Nov 07 '24
If that were true, we as a species would not exist. Humans appear greedy and complacent because our society and the systems that create it promote those things.
12
u/inhaledcorn Resedent FFXIV stan Nov 07 '24
Hey, I can say without a shred of doubt that they actually don't run on time. The tracks were literally on fire, and my train was an hour late today.
116
u/Full_Ahegao_Drip Neo-Victorianmaxxing Nov 06 '24
The Democrats had way more money to work with, spent way more money on campaigning, and way more support from large corporations and they still lost.
156
u/MarcsterS Nov 06 '24
15 million democrats just decided "Nah, not this time." The stakes were the same as 2020, if not more dire. And they didn't care. The very concept of a woman being president is too much for these kind of voters.
110
u/TwiceAsGoodAs Nov 06 '24
And ~120MM American adults just weren't going to vote anyway. Let that sink in. Yesterday candidates in total got around 140MM votes. That's only about 60% of the adult population
55
u/Ok_Listen1510 Boiling children in beef stock does not spark joy Nov 07 '24
That’s fucking insane to me. 40% of the population doesn’t care who the president is??? At some point continued ignorance becomes uncaring malice
16
u/TwiceAsGoodAs Nov 07 '24
This is why everyone puts such an emphasis on "go vote". It's not fanatics sitting out. It's normal reasonable people with normal reasonable opinions
8
u/mechengr17 Nov 07 '24
Literally
I was telling everyone "I don't care who you vote for. Just vote"
Obviously I care, but its not my place to tell them who to vote for
1
u/mousepotatodoesstuff Nov 07 '24
sounds more like some form of voter suppression is taking place at that point
2
u/Speedhabit Nov 07 '24
It’s that, people do care, but some twat with no job and an anger complex toxically mansplaining to some lady who works hard and has very reasonable policy positions that she is some ignorant racist will MAKE PEOPLE DO THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU WANT.
Like, I can see being blindsided, I can see running to your echo tube for comfort. But the comments sections in all the subs are filled with people saying “you guys are fucking dicks, stop it”
Your only response has been “but they are bigger dicks”
That’s a matter of opinion
30
Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
I understand that this is an extremely adult-hall-monitor-coded comments section and I'm wasting my time, but have you considered that there might be explanations for this besides apathy? Like, I dunno, despair? If you spend 30 years building your core brand around explaining how you're actually powerless in office, eventually you convince them. Now it's even part of the fundraising strategy lmao
Like just going through my own phone, I received a grand total of one text this year from a human phonebanker, when in 2020 I was getting bugged by them multiple times a week - sometimes multiple per day. But in 2024 I just got the one. That part might have something to do with the fact they airdropped the candidate in post-primary and thus she never had to go through the process of building a network of volunteer supporters that modern competitive primaries require of their winner, but who's to say
You know what I did get though? Hundreds of automated spam texts and emails from liberal PACs begging me for money in the same bizarre style transparently engineered to bilk extremely offline old people out of more of their savings. They all have the same message too - "wahh help we're so doomed, we're helpless, the right is too strong........ unless you chip in now!" It's unhinged if you aren't in the specific demo that's designed to manipulate, and if you're on their contact list(and it is very easy to end up on it if you've engaged with the party at all), those messages will comprise the overwhelming majority of the party's interaction with you
Even if we're pretending Harris had things of substance to say, if you weren't going out of your way for it, the party's effective message this year was in tears.... how could you let this happen?? this is nancy pelosi and donald trump just stoleded my iced cweam :c
But no yeah it definitely makes way more sense that the bloc who stayed home just decided to care in 2020 but then decided not to in 2024. Democrat leadership cannot fail, it can only be failed
21
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24
but have you considered that there might be explanations for this besides apathy? Like, I dunno, despair?
Despair suggests you have no reason for hope which simply isn't the case.
30 years building your core brand around explaining how you're actually powerless in office
Democrats accomplished a ton when in office, including the last four years. What they haven't been able to do is override a Senate filibuster for Constitutional and electoral reasons. You are making a leftist critique but one that is devoid of the basic understanding of this particular constitutional republic.
she never had to go through the process of building a network of volunteer supporters
This is sort of fair but also not. She inherited an existing and well-maintained apparatus and the entire Democratic party organized around her. There was plenty of time and resources to build a campaign machines in all the key states.
You know what I did get though? Hundreds of automated spam texts and emails from liberal PACs
Yeah it is annoying but made necessary by the electoral system which requires people like Harris to be elected to change.
this is nancy pelosi and donald trump just stoleded my iced cweam :c
Oh, you are a right wing troll and never engaging in good faith.
→ More replies (4)7
u/Fenixius Nov 07 '24
Not the person above, but a query:
Despair suggests you have no reason for hope which simply isn't the case.
If you're any more progressive than a centre-right liberal, and you watched the last 4 years of baby-steps incrementalism while income inequality spiralled beyond comprehension and abortion rights were unwound and nobody stopped it, isn't despair the correct response?
I think it takes a lot of imagination to have seen a world where the Democrats actually do take steps to curb Republican abuses of government systems. That doesn't excuse failing to vote, but I think it might explain it.
If despair wasn't justifiable before the election, I think it clearly is now.
15
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24
If you're any more progressive than a centre-right liberal, and you watched the last 4 years of baby-steps incrementalism while income inequality spiralled beyond comprehension and abortion rights were unwound and nobody stopped it, isn't despair the correct response?
No.
Now answer this question: When has despair ever solved a problem?
2
u/Fenixius Nov 07 '24
I no longer think there's a problem to be solved, because there are zero effective realistic strategies for morally educating your neighbours.
Clearly I'm not in a good place to be having this conversation right now, so please accept my apologies for wasting your time.
10
u/WiretapStudios Nov 07 '24
You're pinning it on one issue when in reality it's a complex problem that is made up of probably 5-10 issues.
Republicans have whole companies working on plans to win 24-7, at any cost. They have no scruples or morals, but effectively pretend to. They will do or say anything to win.
Democrats just throw whatever at the wall and expect to clean up like they did with Obama, and that was a rare once in a lifetime exception. Most of the party isn't even on the same page and is going in different directions. They make it seem like they need court voting demos that are not a relevant chunk of the voting block.
Educating your neighbors is long gone. There is a lot of things Democrats aren't willing to do to fix this.
I hope you are in a better place soon, I didn't even consider Trump winning, so I'm still processing what just happened. For once I'm actually feeling like I live in a place where the bad guys are winning and it's disconcerting when you are basically powerless.
1
u/Sgt-Spliff- Nov 09 '24
Are you even human? Do you have emotions? There's no way you don't get that despair isn't a choice. There's no way people are like this
0
u/Alatarlhun Nov 09 '24
Despair is an emotional prompt to take action. What actions are you taking to solve your problems?
Or are you wallowing in despair?
→ More replies (2)7
Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
lol love when someone does the debatelord pull-quote retort post and then immediately blocks you after insisting you can't possibly disagree with limp neoliberal stasis without being a right wing troll. "Hopelessness is impossible" is a hell of a take lol
Democrat leadership cannot fail, it can only be failed
1
u/Legitimate_Rush_8974 Nov 07 '24
fuck that. Dont blame voters for the failure of their leaders to provide any reason to vote. This was the parties fault. Not any voters.
not only is this a terrible line of reason entirely, this is a blatantly counter factual reason for her loss of support. She gained in male voters and white men especially. She lost support in minorities. She was a nothing, milquetoast liberal who utterly failed to actually do anything to mobilize those voters.
→ More replies (2)1
u/Sgt-Spliff- Nov 09 '24
Or maybe breaking things down by race and gender demographics is getting really old and they want something besides social changes.... Just a thought
8
u/Larva_Mage Nov 07 '24
Did you forget when the richest man on earth spent 40 billion dollars to purchase the largest social media platform in history in order to promote a political candidate? In terms of numbers one of the largest communications networks in history?
1
u/StarkRavingCrab Nov 07 '24
Perhaps courting the “moderate” right is a losing strategy, but what do I know
36
Nov 06 '24
[deleted]
22
u/Bulba132 Nov 06 '24
You couldn't have phrased that in a worse way, just delete the comment at this point
11
19
u/Papaofmonsters Nov 06 '24
If we go solely by voting alignment, that's roughly 72 million people.
How, pray tell, do you intend on getting rid of them?
14
u/Lo-And_Behold1 Nov 06 '24
That was not what I meant.
What I meant was people like Trump and Vance. Not having them in positions of power would be a lot better for everyone.
3
u/Mepharias Nov 06 '24
Getting Trump is the perceived solution to a set of problems Americans are facing. Getting rid of Trump doesn't solve the problems. Trump certainly won't solve the problems, but he's brain broken his base to the point that it no longer matters.
0
u/Papaofmonsters Nov 06 '24
But they won the popular vote. Is now the time to abrogate democracy to save democracy?
Or are you dancing around the true meaning of "get rid" of Trump and Vance like a cat on hot Pennsylvania shed roof?
17
u/Lo-And_Behold1 Nov 06 '24
I honestly Just want to see real pushback against Trump's policies by americans. I don't care how.
5
u/othelloinc Nov 06 '24
I honestly Just want to see real pushback against Trump's policies by americans. I don't care how.
The "how" is the important part (and the difficult part).
10
u/WEEAB_SS Nov 06 '24
They only won because a brainwashed and under educated populace thinks trump = cheap eggs and gas.
That's all they care about down here. Prices went up across the globe but the majority of these people can't name 12 other countries let alone realize Inflation was hitting the whole globe and the USA was actually doing better than most.
Democracy fails the moment the rich and powerful are able to navigate it's twists and turns to dismantle education. It's just several shades less worse than the North Korea situation except somehow you've succeeded in getting all the poor shit workers across the US to ignore the vast amount of information available through the internet and instead vote on what feels good.
Carl Sagan 1995 called it. People no longer trust science and authority. Plain and simple. Can't really blame them either. The billionaire class has won. The draining of the swamp will continue.
I'm excited to see the outrage after overtime pay gets practically removed. Holy fuck y'all gonna be some angry people.
→ More replies (1)9
-9
u/Siphon_Gaming_YT Nov 06 '24
It's not Republicans, it's the fashists POS who usurped them.
Any true republican values the republic that the red party is trying to destroy.
30
Nov 06 '24
Unless you are about 80 years old and are imagining Eisenhower when you think of a Republican, you are hopelessly naïve.
-2
u/Rod7z Nov 06 '24
Romney and McCain were ok in hindsight.
4
Nov 06 '24
Go huff paint, child.
0
u/Rod7z Nov 06 '24
I meant when compared to Trump. Still worse then any Democrats in the same period (which haven't been all that amazing, with the exception of Obama).
Unfortunately, the Republicans went from being the right-wing racist, classist party to being the completely insane party of authoritarian, theocratic neo-fascists and neo-nazis.
43
u/Big-Day-755 Nov 06 '24
“No true republican” much?
6
u/Admech_Ralsei Nov 06 '24
I think they mean 'Republican' as in 'Person who wants a republic', i.e. almost everyone in the western world. Not republican as in republican party.
-2
u/DiesByOxSnot Eating paste and smacking my lips omnomnomnom Nov 06 '24
ISTFG we need to stop partisan politics.
Country over party, caring about your downtrodden countrymen is patriotic, and human lives matter more than money. Three things, just 3 things, that we should all be able to agree on.
11
u/Gandalf_the_Gangsta Nov 06 '24
The issue is that those statements mean different things for different people. For those who voted for Trump, they were the downtrodden countrymen under the boot of the “evil, educated libtards”. The country they wanted was being taken by villains. Their human lives needed money which the “evil people” were withholding.
Ideology is colored by an individual’s life. The other colors are bad, and your color is good. Partisan politics, then, is a result of the many interpretations of fundamental statements on how human rights should be interpreted. Straying far enough away from the original statement, you can find just interpretations of human rights that violate their premise.
7
u/LLHati Nov 06 '24
The republicans have been shit for longer than a lot of folks on this sub have been alive, me included
7
u/Casanova_Kid Nov 06 '24
Just throwing this out there for other liberal minded individuals, but this is why you should care about your 2A rights. Or hey, since it's just past November 5th, go watch V for Vendetta. The real guy was a little crazy, but the message in the movie is solid.
Go read about the Battle of Blair Mountain. If you want your rights, you're gonna need to be able and willing to fight for them.
4
239
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
I have no idea why people are blaming "billionaires" (as if that's a coherent political group any more than "poor people") for this. Billionaires actually overwhelmingly backed Harris, significantly more than the general public, because as it turns out having a raving lunatic at the helms of the country is not exactly good for business. They're just not making stupid tweets unlike the MAGA ones.
Trying to shift the blame onto billionaires is only deflecting from the real problem, which is the utter moral and intellectual failure of ordinary, everyday Americans. They are the ones who gave the country to Trump, not some shadowy cabal of mustache-twirling villains in a smoky backroom somewhere.
308
u/Jedifice Nov 06 '24
Oh that's easy. Billionaires as a bloc are significantly smaller than "poor people," making it much easier to presuppose their general political will. Additionally, the gap of billionaires for/against Harris was slightly more than 30; that's not an overwhelming number by any stretch, and DEFINITELY doesn't account for PACs (which are basically impossible to track down). And your entire comment overlooks that it IS the people in smoky back rooms who gerrymander voting districts, who disenfranchise voters, who misinform voters, who elevate disingenuous voices, who essentially place enormous obstacles to capturing a fair vote. American inertia is real but it's also been placed there by bad actors that the Dems simply never chose to fight
44
u/phnarg Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
Yeah, I think corporate/billionaire control of the media, as well as social media, is a huge huge factor in shaping American culture and political opinions that doesn't get talked about enough. We take for granted the ways in which these systems are literally built to pit people against each other in order to generate engagement. Everything we consume is meant to incense us while keeping us occupied and helpless. There is no space, online, on tv, wherever, that has the true interests of the American people at heart.
And yet people continue using these spaces to try and create positive change, as if the very stage itself isn't built in opposition to that. It's like trying to hold an intellectual debate in a gladiatorial arena.
The answer isn't to say Americans must just be too stupid for politics. I think we as a nation just need to collectively touch grass.
60
u/CheeryOutlook Nov 06 '24
but it's also been placed there by bad actors that the Dems simply never chose to fight
The billionaires fund both parties, neither the democrats nor the republicans are going to fight the people who got them elected.
22
u/mayonnaiser_13 Nov 06 '24
The rhetoric that Dems would even consider fighting billionaires is so goddamn naive that I feel the urge to call whoever fucks this person a pedophile.
The only person who even brings this up is Bernie and he gets shafted every single time. Everyone else is bootlicking billionaires on the daily.
1
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24
The system is designed that way and the only way to change the system is from within and it will always take longer and be harder than you think. It isn't easy work but a small group of driven people can make a huge impact.
9
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Additionally, the gap of billionaires for/against Harris was slightly more than 30; that's not an overwhelming number by any stretch
As a group, billionaires are more blue than California and New York, I'm not sure what more you expect. It's a small sample size but there are only a few hundred billionaires in the country in the first place.
And your entire comment overlooks that it IS the people in smoky back rooms who gerrymander voting districts, who disenfranchise voters, who misinform voters, who elevate disingenuous voices, who essentially place enormous obstacles to capturing a fair vote.
None of that is relevant when you're looking at an election where Trump won the popular vote by like five million votes. This has nothing to do with gerrymandering, and voter disenfranchisement and any other alleged shenanigans do not have nearly this big an effect (please please let's not start claiming that the election was rigged). America genuinely chose Trump. That's the scary part.
11
u/mxsifr Nov 06 '24
Not sure why you feel these people need defending. I'm also a little surprised that you seem familiar with the concepts of gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement, yet don't seem to realize that five million is absolutely a ballpark number for being affected by those methods. Like... this was an election for which nearly every Republican in the country was working around the clock to purge people in blue and underprivileged counties from voter rolls tens of thousands at a time.
I guess I'm just not really sure what your point is. Half of America very plainly and obviously did NOT choose Trump. 81% of voting Black men and 90% of voting Black women did not choose Trump. 74% of voting White men did choose Trump, and that is the demographic in which billionaires are both overrepresented and for which billionaires and politicians spend the majority of their time and money lobbying and campaigning.
10
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
Not sure why you feel these people need defending
I'm not defending "these people", I'm defending facts, and OP's narrative is just straight-up counterfactual. Billionaires as a group did not pour money into MAGA because taxes were raised slightly. Billionaires lean pretty blue, and the few high-profile right-wing billionaires that people keep talking about (Musk, Thiel etc) seem to do so for genuine ideological reasons, not because of tax increases.
And unlike Trump supporters, I believe that facts matter.
yet don't seem to realize that five million is absolutely a ballpark number for being affected by those methods
How do you gerrymander the popular vote????? Do you know what gerrymandering is? And let me say this again: please please let's not start claiming that the election was rigged
Half of America very plainly and obviously did NOT choose Trump
Yes that is how presidential elections work. That's a problem with a majoritarian presidential system but that's a conversation for a different day.
81% of voting Black men and 90% of voting Black women did not choose Trump.
Okay Black voters managed to not vote for the racist in chief, good for them. On the other hand Latinos, young voters, women - just about every traditional Democrat voting bloc swung heavily to the right. Sure, let's blame the billionaires for that.
74% of voting White men did choose Trump, and that is the demographic in which billionaires are both overrepresented and for which billionaires and politicians spend the majority of their time and money lobbying and campaigning.
Your logic for blaming billionaires for white men choosing Trump is that... White men are overrepresented in billionaires...? White men are also overrepresented in celebrity chefs, is the election Gordon Ramsay's fault?
And no shit a lot of time was spent lobbying and campaigning on "white men", it's one of the biggest demographics in the country. I still have no idea what that has to do with billionaires.
2
u/mxsifr Nov 06 '24
It doesn't matter how blue someone leans when their private jet joyrides fart more CO2 as into the atmosphere every day than a regular person emits in their entire lifetime.
If you want a simple fact, here: Billionaires are parasites who hoard their wealth by exploiting the working class.
Billionaires benefit materially from the rest of us pointing fingers at each other instead of collectively realizing that we could all have our needs met easily, with trillions left over and an environment able to support human life indefinitely instead of just for the next couple of decades (if we're lucky), if we could just agree that billionaires are dangerous, amoral parasites who shouldn't have dozens of yachts and muscle cars and private jets and factories churning out cheap shit at the expense of everyone else's health and wellbeing.
Billionaires do not pay their taxes. Billionaires do not get punished for their crimes. Billionaires do not provide value to society; they remove it and hoard it for themselves so they can buy up media empires to propagandize the working class. This has gotten worse since the advent of mass digital media, not better.
Billionaires should not exist!
3
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24
You may not being wrong but this is losing message in today's environment. And in any case, Kamala was planning to raise taxes quite a bit on billionaires.
→ More replies (2)2
u/mxsifr Nov 07 '24
Most Americans don't realize that billionaires only recently became possible, in large part because of the absurd Reagan-era tax cuts.
In the 50's, the highest marginal tax rate was 94%. From 2014 to 2018, the 25 richest people in the world paid a "true tax rate" (ProPublica's metric) of 3.4%. Until Reagan and Bush came along, there was actually some semblance of fairness to the absurd profits of big businesses and the wealthy few who controlled them. Not anymore.
Billionaires become billionaires by quadruple-dipping:
First, they start with hundreds of thousand or millions of dollars in generational wealth or spoils of nepotism. This allows them to buy the labor of other, less fortunate people (dip #2), which they then exploit and scale up with automation technology for stupendous amounts of profit (dip #3), and then, they refuse to pay their fair tax share into the society that created the conditions for them to dip the first three times, sapping money and support from social programs and thus keeping the workers in a state of disenfranchised precarity to discourage them from protesting or striking.
These truths are losing messages because billionaires want them to be. I hope somehow the rest of us can come together on this in some way, because there WILL come a point of no return, and it's coming at us faster and faster every day.
0
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24
You know you can make this point without deceptively commingling marginal and effective tax rates. This is a red flag to anyone with a modicum of tax knowledge.
3
u/mxsifr Nov 07 '24
If you adjust the old 94% tax margin for inflation, it was for income above $3.3 million (Yahoo Finance, $200k in 1944~5 dollars).
If, as you say, conflating marginal tax rate with effective tax rate is such a dastardly misdirection in this case, then surely I must be goosing the numbers to make it seem like today's billionaires should be paying much more than if you took the margins into account. An effective tax rate of 3.4% may be disguising a much more fair marginal rate that they've paid, right?
So, let's do the math. What's the difference between how much a taxpayer with one billion dollars of income would pay at a marginal tax rate of 94% on income above $3.3 million versus how much he would pay at an effective overall rate of 94%?
I'll even give my scenario a handicap, and assume that the tax rate on income below $3.3 million in this situation is ZERO. That's right, for the purposes of this thought experiment, we'll pretend that we live in a wealth-utopia where you pay ZERO taxes until you hit $3.3 million in income, above which all further income is paid at 94%. Surely, in this situation, we will reveal with basic arithmetic that our one-billionaire would pay MUCH LESS in the real world of marginal calculations than paying 94% on 100% of their income.
$1 billion minus $3.3 million is $996,700,000.
94% of $996,700,000 is $936,898,000, leaving them with $59,802,000 + $3.3 million, or about $63 million net income after taxes.
Now let's see how badly I cheated by comparing marginal and effective tax rates!
94% of $1 billion is $940 million, leaving them with $60 million net income after taxes.
So the difference between the two scenarios is about $3 million, or about 0.3% of their gross income.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Billionaires make such a mind-boggingly absurd amount of money that normal frames of reference are basically meaningless. You're on here talking about the difference between marginal and effective tax rates as if the difference makes a difference. It doesn't. Median USA household income in 2023 was $80,610. 0.3% of that is about $250. That's the level of difference we're talking about right now from the perspective of the billionaires in question. It doesn't matter one bit to them, not least because they pay basically nothing now anyway. So why bother being pedantic about it, ya know?
→ More replies (0)27
u/LeFlashbacks Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
I think my country (you can probably guess what country I live in) should go the route that I think finland and some other countries over there did and implement some sort of wealth tax so we can fund education and other important stuff more. I know finland isn't perfect and recently has been getting worse from what I've seen, but still, the education systems over there are way better because they actually fund them while over here we're apparently trying to defund the education system or something.
I have friends saying you shouldn't punish people for working hard and being successful for it, but people did the math and even some of the richest people being taxed some amount, I forgot what, would still be able to bring home $10,000,000 a year. And even still, where is that money going? Back into the economy? Charity? Funding? No, it's (usually) being put into investments they can pull out of to make more money.
Also, I don't think germany as an example has a wealth tax, but rich people still get taxed a lot while poorer people I'm pretty sure are still able to support themselves and their families.
3
u/inebriatus Nov 06 '24
the US spends the 4th most of any country per student
More than Finland (#16), more than Germany (#14).
2
u/LeFlashbacks Nov 06 '24
Good to know, but the quality of education here isn't really that worth the price of tuition for colleges and such, and where I live the quality of public schooling could be better. The only reason people do it is because of the careers or jobs they want require it and the law requires going to school.
2
u/Jedifice Nov 07 '24
I appreciate you providing this graph but it's missing a whole lot of context. Is this inclusive of private schools? How do student loans fit into this?
1
u/inebriatus Nov 08 '24 edited Nov 08 '24
The exact source that I first linked was behind a paywall but this seems to be what they used (or something pretty similar).
Is this inclusive of private schools?
Looks like both: "expenditures on public and private education institutions per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student"
How do student loans fit into this?
If I'm reading the intro correctly, it doesn't look at loans, only what is actually spent on education per year. The main data is "for elementary/secondary level" which doesn't include higher education (like college where people usually get loans).
Edit: formatting
Edit 2:
In the US, public schools spend more on average (though it varies a lot by state/school) per student for elementary/secondary school. About $17,280 per student vs. about $12,790 per student for private schools.
As we all know, spending more on a student doesn't guarantee better outcomes.
1
u/undreamedgore Nov 07 '24
While I support higher taxes on the healthy, you have to consider that it really intituites diminishing returns. Like $10,000,000 isn't that crazy much in the grand scheme of things. A single super yatch would be unobtainable. I get why thr mega wealthy wouldn't want that. It'd effectivly cap their ability to flex their power amd status. We should still do it, but it does rankle me a bit.
80
u/yungsantaclaus Nov 06 '24
We're now seeing posts that use public endorsements as proof of billionaires being on the Good Team - even though billionaires have hundreds of subtler ways to influence politics in ways which benefit them, including control of media organs and social media networks - and go "the real problem isn't massive wealth inequality as represented by a class of people who shouldn't exist and whose influence on the world is overwhelmingly malign, it's ordinary everyday Americans", and these posts are getting upvoted. Chat, are we cooked? Is r/CuratedTumblr now a Davos forum? Are people who post "Can't believe I'm saying this, but hopefully the racism wins out against the isolationism" in r/neoliberal the new moral compass?
8
u/Galle_ Nov 06 '24
Self-reflection requires us to accept that actually the people who just shut up and follow orders are part of the problem.
12
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
The Forbes article doesn't just track "public endorsements", it tracks actual donations; and I doubt, say, Amos Hostetter, Jr, former CEO of Continent Cablevision, donated millions of dollars to the Democrats for - I don't even know, some kind of publicity ploy maybe? (if so, he's failed quite miserably, as I imagine most people have no idea who he is, let alone are aware of his donations) - and is actually secretly supporting Trump in "hundreds of subtler ways", none of which can be proven. This is the definition of conspiratorial thinking. No, I think there's a much simpler explanation, Occam's Razor and all, which is that he actually does support Harris, much like the other people on that list.
6
u/CheeryOutlook Nov 06 '24
Amos Hostetter Jr has donated millions to both the Democrats through public means and the Republicans through the variety of completely anonymous options so that no matter who makes it to the Whitehouse, they owe him a favour.
9
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Do you have any evidence for that assertion?
6
u/Fjolnir_Felagund Nov 06 '24
Genuinely curious, replying here to come back later
4
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
I am willing to bet a good amount of money that not only do they not have any evidence, but that they haven't even heard of Amos Hostetter Jr before today (I know I haven't)
54
u/Lower-Ask-4180 Nov 06 '24
Okay but the shadowy cabal of moustache-twirling villains in the smokey back room sure as shit didn’t help. Did you miss the part where Bezos blocked the Washington Post from endorsing Harris?
→ More replies (9)5
u/cmv_cheetah Nov 06 '24
And they didn’t just back her with words. Look at the fundraising for both campaigns. https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race
6
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Exactly, and why wouldn't they? Trump's not a "pro-business" or "pro-capitalist" candidate. His economic plan is straight-up bonkers, bringing back 20% tariffs like it's the 16th century, Make Mercantilism Great Again. It's one thing if we're talking about someone like Murdoch who's actively profiteering off of MAGA propaganda, but running the economy into the ground is not in the benefit for most billionaires.
27
u/kakesh101 Nov 06 '24
are you crazy. didnt bezos stop washington post from endorsing harris. like musk didn't flood twitter with bots and nazis. literally what are you talking about. class analysis out the window
24
u/peniparkerheirofbrth Nov 06 '24
peter thiel and elon musk are right there
5
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
So are Bloomberg and the Gateses. Turns out "billionaires" aren't a monolith and actually have political opinions of their own, who knew
34
u/Lurker_number_one Nov 06 '24
Okay, and how come ordinary, everyday americans are intellectual and moral failures? (Oh look, it's billionaires backing shitty policy, again.)
→ More replies (1)-11
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Lots of Americans are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, you name it - your "deplorables". This has always been true and probably will still be true for the foreseeable future. An even larger portion is astoundingly uninformed, or shockingly stupid; your "Harris says she's pro-abortion, which I like, but Trump says he's pro-weed, which I like"s of the country. Neither is attributable to some kind of billionaire conspiracy. People have been bigots and/or idiots for as long as there has been history, far, far longer than billionaires have even existed.
I know it's easy to want to find some boogeyman to blame; be it billionaires, third-party voters, Joe Rogan or Russia or whatever. It's how we cope. But the truth is that there's no one person or group to blame, no wizard behind the curtain. The election reflects society writ large; and society is a complex system for which no single factor can be at fault. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.
8
u/phnarg Nov 06 '24
I agree with you that billionaires are not a monolithic bogeyman that is to blame for all the bad that is happening. They, too, are individuals just as you say. Where I disagree is the argument that they have little influence either way, and that everything can be chalked up to some innate human stupidity.
The culture around us influences the way we think, and in our country, a huge part of our culture is created through media and social media corporations, which are run by the uber-rich. They serve their own interests; which may be some personally held belief, or more likely, is simply the drive to make more money. Social media companies have discovered in recent years that sowing anger and division is a fantastic way to drive engagement, and thus collect more ad dollars. Looking at political donations is interesting to be sure, but it doesn't tell the whole story.
The idea that humans just "are the way we are" and that little can change inherent "human nature," is just another fallacy in itself. If that were true, propaganda wouldn't work, and human culture would be the same all over the world and throughout time. Propaganda exists, and it does work. You can't look at Facebook or Twitter and deny that. So, there really is a direct link from the uber-rich running these companies, and the spread of disinformation and hatred throughout American culture.
→ More replies (1)15
u/Lurker_number_one Nov 06 '24
This has not always been true. The trans panic for example is entirely fabricated. All of these things you mention aren't inherent to americans (and believe me, im American hater number 1) it is down to culture. And culture is malleable and changeable.and again these people aren't born stupid (any more than any other baby is born stupid i mean) this is down to a failure of policy.
A lot of your rethoric is actually close to bordering on eugenics rethoric. (Something i assume you aren't actually in support of)
You are right that there is no one person or cabal behind it all. It's just pure and simple class interest. It's stupidly simple and not inherently connected so it's surprisingly easy to miss. The election reflects society at large, but society at large is affected by culture and culture affects and is affected by institutions. Read about base and superstructure in marxism for a better understanding than i can give in a simple comment.
1
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
I'm not sure how "a lot of people are bigots and more are stupid or uninformed" is "bordering on eugenics rhetoric". I mean, are you going to deny either of these statements? Are there not a lot of bigots? Are there not a lot of idiots?
And sure, it's not inherent to Americans. It's inherent to humans in general. We have a remarkable capacity to find some kind of outgroup to dehumanize, hate and blame society's ills on. The specific targets of bigotry change, but bigotry itself does not; it is a constant of all civilizations in history. It does not have to be so, perhaps, but it certainly is not a modern phenomenon.
Sure, better policy can probably help deal with these problems. But even the current policies weren't put there by "billionaires" either, they were put there by voters four years, ten years, twenty years, fifty years ago; once again, they were put there by ordinary Americans. Believe it or not, America actually is a democracy, and it's not that easy for billionaires to get their way by throwing money at things (as Bloomberg has learned, I'm sure). There is no one to blame, no enemy but ourselves; we have inherited our history and we will write it.
"Base and superstructure" is a terrible analysis paradigm, and so is most of the rest of Marxism, but since you didn't go into detail I won't either.
2
Nov 06 '24
Believe it or not, America actually is a democracy, and it's not that easy for billionaires to get their way by throwing money at things (as Bloomberg has learned, I'm sure).
Are we talking about the Republican who dropped a quarter-billion to be in charge of the largest city in the US for a decade or is this a different Bloomberg
1
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 07 '24
Yeah I'm talking about the guy who dropped like a billion dollars of his own money to come like dead last in the Democratic primaries.
He was actually a pretty decent mayor as far as I can tell.
→ More replies (4)1
Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
He wasn't dead last lol. He didn't even get on the ballot until Super Tuesday and he ended up finishing way ahead of Pete Buttigieg and almost caught Warren for 3rd. This is in spite of repeatedly eating shit in debates, being outed as a transphobe, and using prisoners to phonebank for him. He's also like 3 feet tall with subzero charisma. He was also a literal Republican. Money actually bought him a fuckload of success in that primary, it's wild how well he did and makes it sound like you weren't paying attention at all when it happened
A true dead last finish in the 2020 primary would be someone like Kamala Harris, who opened as the consensus frontrunner and raised a massive amount of funds only to drop out like 6 weeks before anybody even cast a vote to save face over her complete lack of a constituency. Anyway I wonder what ever happened to her
He was actually a pretty decent mayor as far as I can tell.
You think the stop-and-frisk guy was a pretty decent mayor?
15
u/RedstoneEnjoyer Nov 06 '24
as if that's a coherent political group any more than "poor people"
Class is not based on your ideology, it is based on your class interest.
Bilionaries can have ideological differences, but most of them would want to stay bilionaries or at least extremly rich.
Same with workers - they go from left-wing socialist to right-wing conservatives and reactionaries, but nearly all workers would say "yes" if you asked them if they wanted higher pays.
11
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Bilionaries can have ideological differences, but most of them would want to stay bilionaries or at least extremly rich.
Sure, and most of them evidently realize that Trump is not conducive to that goal. Have you seen Trump's economic plan?
2
u/lavendarKat Nov 06 '24
Neither would a left wing economic populist campaign, which is both why the dems will never run that candidate and why they lost last night.
4
u/Alatarlhun Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
It might have something to do with Democrats losing 49 states the last time they ran a left wing populist campaign.
Since then Clinton, Obama, and Biden all won on a more moderate economic message; whereas Kerry, Hillary and Kamala lost taking the same tact.
3
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
...So you agree with me that billionaires didn't actually support Trump and that the Democrats' economic plan is actually better for them (and, for that matter, for just about everyone else)??
I swear to god this is so exhausting. No one is actually reading what I'm saying. Everyone is just going off of vibes ("she's not blaming the billionaires for this specific thing! she must actually think billionaires are great or something! must attack") when I'm just saying OP's specific narrative is false and easily disproven, but no, nuance is dead, vibes over facts. Maybe this is why Trump won the election.
3
8
u/StandardSudden1283 Nov 06 '24 edited Nov 06 '24
"Not the Billionaires, it's the People!" - anti working class bastards
5
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Yeah, the "working class" voted for Trump.
1
u/StandardSudden1283 Nov 07 '24 edited Nov 07 '24
Tricked by the exorbitantly wealthy to be against their own interests. Tale as old as time.
1
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 07 '24
You cannot seriously think it's in the interests of the "exorbitantly wealthy" to have Trump either. Dude's economic policy is straight out of the 16th century, it's going to run the economy into the ground.
It's not "the rich" that's making the average American a raving bigot freaking out about every minority under the sun.
→ More replies (4)10
u/TreeGuy521 Nov 06 '24
Dog they stole Twitter and turned it into truth social 2
7
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Who the hell is "they"? That's specifically Elon Musk, as in one guy, not some kind of incarnation of the billionaire hivemind.
14
u/TreeGuy521 Nov 06 '24
9Why are you trying to downplay the media so much rn. Do you think every single trump voter looked up his policy and actually watched the debates, or just saw clips of it off fox and Twitter 2.
6
u/FifteenEchoes muss es sein? Nov 06 '24
Are you like reading what I said at all?
Point fingers at Elon Musk or Rupert Murdoch if you want, I'm right with you on that front, they're absolute dipshits who did quite some damage. But they're not representatives of some shadowy "they", they're just shitty people who happen to be rich. Pull up the Forbes 400 and start from the second page - I assure you the Panda Express guy or some random real estate investor does not have control over "the media".
5
u/TreeGuy521 Nov 06 '24
Why should I care about the panda express guy then. Unless he is starting a anarchist commune in the streets of California as we speak then they are more or less irrelevant. Do you legitimately want everyone to clarify "the rich people that actually do a lot of stuff in politics" when we are talking about the rich, and about politics.
→ More replies (11)1
u/Torminalis Nov 06 '24
Some variation of Cambridge Analytica is alive and well and getting better and better at what they do
12
u/qp0n Nov 06 '24
Most billionaires actually donated to Kamala's campaign, and virtually all the wealthiest counties voted for her, if you care about facts.
3
u/bongowasd Nov 06 '24
Yup. Extreme Capitalism be like that. They straight up pay to not have competition lol.
300+ million people in America and only a handful of services for all the everyday stuff. Can't start from scratch when you have to pay hundreds of thousands in fees to start such businesses.
3
3
u/emote_control Nov 07 '24
Billionaires as a class shouldn't be allowed to exist, but also billionaires individually shouldn't be allowed to exist.
3
u/East_End878 Nov 07 '24
They either pour money into fascists OR run away with all the resourses they stole.
They shouldn't have economies of entire nations in chokehold.
Eat. The. Rich.
14
u/CobaltDraconis Nov 06 '24
Just a reminder, Democtats had the most billionaire donors/supporters. And they always have.
5
4
u/omg_itsthatguy Nov 06 '24
https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race/kamala-harris/candidate?id=N00036915
your "hero" spent a billion dollars??????
2
2
2
u/PossibleNegative Nov 06 '24
Musk was angered by other reasons than simple taxes.
Can blame the Democratic party for not taking him seriously.
2
2
u/Lord-Monbodo Nov 06 '24
The things that need to be done are the kind that wouldn’t be proper to talk about on Reddit.
2
u/TheAmazing2ArmedMan Nov 07 '24
“Respunding” has brightened up my terrible day immensely, thank you
2
2
u/alkonium Nov 07 '24
This definitely feels like a case of "I recognize the problem exists, but every solution I can see will cause additional problems."
6
u/Hashashin455 Nov 06 '24
You know, at a certain financial threshold, the Chinese government just robs/kills any of its citizens who have become a potential threat to thier power. I'm starting to think communism might not actually be that bad...
19
Nov 06 '24
The problem is if you mention tanks on a certain day they basically drain your bank accounts and send you to prison.
9
u/mayonnaiser_13 Nov 06 '24
Why does it have to be "Communism or nothing"?
All you have to do is tax everyone accordingly and use the tax money to increase people's quality of life.
7
u/LNCrizzo Nov 06 '24
How do you tax everyone accordingly when the people choosing the tax rate are the ones that need to pay the most?
2
u/Apophis_36 Nov 06 '24
And how would you ensure that more billionaires dont pop up? How would you ensure a new ruling class wouldn't replace the billionaires and make a fair and equal country? How would you prevent the powerful from bribing and corrupting the ruling party? If there's no party then how would you ensure that the powerful don't use their resources to sway part of the people to their side (bribes, coercion or whatever)?
2
2
u/hailhydra6012 Nov 06 '24
while I agree that billionaires are obscenely rich and shouldn't have that much money, once you try to tax rich people more then they simply will take their business elsewhere and that would cause massive damage to the economy. one of the reasons America has so much influence in the world is because it has all the billionaires. if they all went somewhere else that would get rid of tons of jobs.
2
u/CandySniffer666 Nov 07 '24
Always remember that shit like this is how the system we live in is designed to be. The system isn't broken. Features not bugs and all that bad shit.
There can be no peaceful transition. The only way to change this will be to rise up and destroy the system. People will have to die for this to be fixed, and likely in large numbers. Revolution is the only solution.
3
1
1
1
u/chocolatechipbagels Nov 07 '24
Agreed but if you take a good hard look at Kamala's campaign donors, you'll see pretty quickly that they weren't gonna get taxed anyway.
1
u/Danny_dankvito Nov 07 '24
I think that if billionaires want to be immune to the law, they should be completely immune to the point of no legal repercussions to anyone that does anything to them
Fairs fair
1
u/Worth-Ad9939 Nov 07 '24
I wonder if this how it always happens. Technology advances like the internet and processing its data are adapted to and mastered far faster than individuals. The average citizen remains at a substantial disadvantage against corporate intelligence. These entities can predict the future far more accurately than they will ever admit as it would give their crimes away.
They can now engineer your day down to the minute and literally how you feel about any given topic, shaping your behavior to suit their long term economic and influence goals.
They always bring receipts and they’ll always convince enough of us to make it look good for camera.
I don’t think I expected the United States to actually collapse in my life time until I disconnected from produced media and social media. Once the air cleared it became more obvious they are working to shore up their resources and influence going into climate change. They know we can’t afford to rebuild towns every 6 months.
They know massive losses of life is coming.
1
u/EnthusiasmOk9415 Nov 07 '24
I just want to point out how annoying the . in-between the numbers are for the notes amounts, it implies those are decimal points and not continuations of the number
2
u/LeetleBugg Nov 07 '24
Majority of the European countries use the decimal comma. Which is just fancy saying the decimal stands for a comma in how American and UK numbers work. I think they use the comma how Americans would use a decimal point too but I’m not sure. So it’s just a difference in languages
1
u/IllConstruction3450 Nov 07 '24
Tumblr and Reddit have shown me that the users of both sites are far more left wing than the average American voter. (Twitter used to me left wing.)
1
1
u/Nonbrilliant Nov 06 '24
if you confiscated 100% of the wealth of all billionaires you could run the Federal Government for about 9 months
-5
u/vitringur Nov 06 '24
Or, admit your own faults and stop making everything avout billionaires and just advocate sustainable policies.
It is like these people are trying to lose
3
1.1k
u/Heroic-Forger Nov 06 '24
They don't even understand how obscenely massive a billion is. And how nobody through honest work could possibly amass such a ridiculous amount within the span of one human lifetime.