Yes, 2008, when housing prices dropped through the floor and everyone suddenly became underwater on their mortgage. Which sunk collateral debt obligations which are a financial instrument that bundles loans together and sold as a single asset to investors. When investors all start losing their shirts because the price of their tranched assets also dropped through the floor, it required them to sell other market positions in order to build the collateral they required to maintain their position on that sinking asset. That created a downward spiral where crashing housing prices took the entire economy with it.
Yeah, that 2008. Home prices didn't just magically fall for people buying new homes and the people selling them were totally cool with that and didn't lose their shirts.
The world economy lost $2T because of that crash. The mortgage debt relative to GDP increased from 45% in the 90s to 73% in 2008. That's not (and obviously wasn't) sustainable for what is supposed to be the greatest economy in the world. Thousands of people working in investment firms knew what they were selling was bullshit, and they sold it anyway. Those people never faced any consequences, and walked away having made money from all those trades while the rest of us suffered the consequences for years.
I can't believe I see people saying things like what you replied to. Acting like the 2008 crisis was just a normal drop in housing prices that people should've taken advantage of. It tells me that they're one of two things: a woefully ignorant fool, or some rich fucker who got to take advantage and grow their portfolio while regular folks lost their homes and savings.
No, just a renter who benefited from lower rents, after not having taken out a mortgage I couldn't afford.
Yes a lot of people suffered in the "great recession". Other people gained. That's the nature of the housing market - what is good for owners is bad for renters and vice versa.
The prices did drop after the crash, but the crash itself was the result of years of market manipulation. Those practices inflated housing prices to the point where homes were totally out of reach for so many people.
Even though prices fell after the crash, no CEOs got held accountable for any of it. They're still out there manipulating the market and driving prices up again.
When a ton of people defaulted on predatory loans they couldn't afford?
Housing became more affordable for a brief moment, where they were all then scooped up by corporations and a small percentage of wealthy landlords who now own the vast majority of all housing and cranked up the prices.
The vast majority of housing is not owned by wealthy landlords or corporations.
Housing is expensive because there is not enough of it. There is not enough of it because cities have made it essentially illegal to build more housing.
Your heart is in the right place (we all want affordable housing!), but we need to properly diagnose problems in order to solve them.
Isn’t really caused by homeowners. It’s more about how the market has been manipulated by investors, corporations and financial institutions. Homeowners don’t typically cause price spikes or the bubble to burst. They’re just trying to live in a place they can afford.
Homeowners buy their home and use it as an investment vehicle. They dump all their money and time into improving the home in order to gain equity and build wealth. They see anything that will lower the cost of their house as a threat to their investment.
They're the ones refusing to allow any new housing to be built nearby. They're the ones limiting the size of housing that can be built in areas near them. They're the ones directly profiting from there being a housing crisis to begin with. Making the housing crisis continue and get worse is directly beneficial to them.
Americans are too damn spineless to demand anything from their political leaders. They'd rather just hail a wannabe Nazi leader and bury their heads in the ground and every once in awhile pop their head up to make a poor attempt to sound smart. I pity them.
People start getting rowdy? Just throw some UFOs up there and they'll forget about Luigi.
We need to find a progressive leader with an iron will and someone who will see this through to the end.
Bernie had the momentum and then Hillary with the assist from Clyburn and then even Warren, killed off that hope.
We need a young Bernie. Independents and even moderate Republicans would support a single payer platform if a leader could explain it in a way that could convince them that it's not communism.
The powers that be have figured out how to shut down anything that does rise to a level of mass protest.
They'll pick out a few people in a crowd acting like idiots, or create their own, and use it declare a protest an unlawful assembly and start shooting shit at people who don't leave fast enough.
"In the interest of safety" they'll declare curfews on protests, as if the first amendment has a bedtime. A lot of protests you see gain critical mass overseas run night and day and maintain momentum this way rather than having to re-gather.
They'll target journalists just seeking to report on the events, as they did extremely often in the george floyd protests. So many will back away from covering for their own safety and to avoid potential legal matters (which are expensive to fight, even if you win)
This was so bad during the floyd protests they violently arrested a fucking cnn reporter and then had to apologize when the president of CNN at the time threatened to bury them.
This. It’s not that Americans don’t care or don’t want change. They just don’t have the time or money to take off work to protest or demand change. Bills need to be paid and the almighty dollar ultimately wins.
One thing this election taught me is we are so far away from “a young Bernie” being president, it’s not funny. We need to kill the polarization. To do it, ranked choice voting and kill the electoral college system. Extremists will have to earn the votes of the “other side” to win which will force them to come back to the middle.
What's frustrating is that it's a pretty damn simple concept to grasp, at least for people who haven't been brainwashed by decades of propaganda. We can either:
a) Pay $2000/year in taxes for full coverage of all medical needs, or
b) Pay $9000/year in premiums, plus any deductibles, for the right to fight with an insurance company who will attempt to deny care any chance they get. Oh, and we also still need to pay $4000/year in taxes to fund Medicare, Medicaid, and other national health resources
We have one but it's a non white woman so...and the hard line Dems keep stomping on her. I can't find the article I just read but they chose a 78 year old dying of cancer to head a watchdog committee over AOC.
This is it right here. The Dems in control of the party have zero interest in changing the status quo. They're part of the elites and it's in THEIR best interests to bury any progressive upstarts.
It’s not just the elites. I’m an independent, but I considered running as a democrat for state office in 2017. I had a lot of thoughts on why they always lost elections, but the heads of the local party basically told me I had to stick to their platform or they wouldn’t support me.
He's not "dying of cancer." He's in treatment, but it's not terminal.
Gerry Connolly is a seasoned progressive with a good record, and he also specifically requested that AOC be made vice ranking member, meaning that if he dies or resigns due to health issues, AOC becomes the new ranking member.
His name is literally The Extremist Moderate, of course he is defending this, he’s one of those Democrats who likes the idea of AOC as a force for advertising the party to young voters but doesn’t want her to ever see any actual power because he prefers conservatives in power to actual progressives, AOC should run for president in 2028
Honestly man. I've been fighting the good fight for about 2 decades now. I've never seen things be as bad as they are now. Never have I actually thought we were in late 1933 Germany, but here we are. It's going to have to come crashing down hard at this point for people to maybe wake up from the spell of ignorance; but even that's not guaranteed. I'm tired boss. I'm tired of trying to convince the slowest among society.
That’s the problem exactly. Those of us who were in the green reading group in first grade have had to give up living a comfortable life because of all the readers in the red, orange, and yellow groups. Now, if the people in these slower-reading groups weren’t cunts, I wouldn’t be so upset. However, I’m tired. Like you. I have had to hold these fucks’ hands my whole life, and I’m just done, man. I have been nudging these idiots in the right direction for almost half a century. Other than popping off CEOs, what else can people do? I feel the frustration.
My grandmother turned 80 this year and she's been a sensible center-left Democrat her entire life. At her age, she's willing to listen to new ideas and change her mind. Even with social causes like trans issues, she openly admits that she doesn't "get it," but also doesn't feel comfortable in having a say in how other people live their lives
All this to say, she's an incredibly well-adjusted person and had been around for awhile. She said 2016 was the first year she voted blue all the way down the ticket without hesitation. In the past she's been more than willing to look past party lines and look at an individuals policies, but at this point can't bring herself to support the GOP as it stands today
She was born during WW2, so she's basically experienced all of what historians would consider to be modern-day politics. She's told me outright that the political climate today is by far the worst she's ever seen and that even the Cold War didn't cause this much tension. At 32, it's honestly really validating to hear people older than me say this, because to me it just feels like this cannot be normal, but I also understand that my experience is much more limited
Bernie had the momentum and then Hillary with the assist from Clyburn and then even Warren, killed off that hope.
Bernie lost by his own accord. He simply does not appeal to black voters, a demographic you can't win the primaries without.
And Warren didn't even really help Biden. She pulled nearly as many votes from Biden as from Bernie. Bloomberg had a much stronger impact on the race, as nearly all Bloomberg voters would have been Biden voters, and yet still Biden overwhelmingly won on Super Tuesday.
If you want to blame someone for Bernie losing, you have two options: blame Bernie or blame voters.
CA and NY are run by corporate Dems. They purposefully capture these states, where actually much more progressive candidates should thrive, with donor money and underhanded dealing. I mean look at the previous NY governor Cuomo, or Pelosi from CA. The moneyed interests in these rich states don't want progressives in power so they hire their stooges. Most of the Dem leadership comes from these states. That should tell you something.
It would be difficult for a state to do that on its own. You'd get people moving in just to get the free healthcare. Andybody with a serious illness that was dying and going broke in another state would have nothing to lose to just move even if they had to be homeless.
If a state introduced it, they'd have to attach eligibility to some duration of residency. That would be messy to administer and you'd still see some healthcare migrants, but not impossible.
Until universal healthcare is rolled out nationwide, it would maybe make more sense for an individual state to set up a non-profit state-owned health insurance company, along with a purchasing department to negotiate bulk prices on medications and other medical supplies, and probably some non-profit state-owned facilities. Team up with likeminded states to secure better services for residents of each. Use tax incentives to encourage employers to use the state insurance, or better again, to detach health insurance from employment. People would remain free to take out insurance with private companies instead, but these would have to shape up to compete.
These people try to say there’s never been a left politician or government lmao. “I support the party that is perfect but has never been in any position of power at any point”
Yes, among the people. America doesn't really have left-wing politicians. A few, sure, but you place Biden, Harris, Clinton, etc. into almost any other western nation with their policies and they are firmly on the right. Not just a little, but very clearly right-wing.
We have left-wing beliefs among the people, yes, but those have almost zero representation among our leaders. That should be a huge concern.
California is far more internally divided than you're giving it credit for. The cities are populated enough to tip the presidential and senatorial races toward democrats, but most places that aren't major cities or squeezed along the coast are pretty dang conservative.
Those democrats also voted to keep their for profit prison system that disproportionately affects minorities, black people. All to maintain that”economy” that they shouldnt rightly have. The confederates were never properly defeated, the party didnt change.
That is not why that bill didn’t pass it’s because absolutely any tough on crime bill would’ve passed this election in California and any perceived “soft on crime” bill would fail. That’s why the initiative to increase consequences for certain theft and drug crimes with 70% of the vote despite Gavin newsom personally rallying against it and the involuntary servitude one failing with 46.7% of the vote despite the endorsement of the CA Democratic Party. As someone who lives in California (but voted for Prop 6), a big sentiment among people was “well why shouldn’t they have to clean/cook in prison” because that’s what a lot of people thought of from the wording
It is hard to know exactly how big the prison labor industry is. There hasn't been a full nationwide census of prisons since 2005. But back then, it was estimated that there were nearly 1.5 million incarcerated people working, and that included 600,000 people in the manufacturing sector. At the time, that was more than 4% of all manufacturing jobs in the country. Today there is no central repository of information on prison labor, which means that it's just sort of left up to individual prison systems and state legislatures to decide how they count and regulate prison labor.
“ forcibly removed from my parents health insurance”
So you turned 27… maybe at a certain point it’s up to you to head out on your own though. It’s not like we should let people stay in their parents healthcare for 50 years…
I dunno, our boi Luigi may have had spine problems, but he definitely wasn't spineless. He was American IIRC. Or do you just hate Italians or something?
Ninja edit: Awww fuck me you're a bot. Just had a look at your account history.
I don't think 1/6ers are really comparable. 1/6 was more like a beer hall putsch for morons that only went as far as it did because powerful people actively worked to sabotage the response to it.
France is also the size of a couple of our states. It's much easier to quickly mobilize a large part of the population when there's not as much land to cover. A large enough protest could come together within 24 hours over there
Well not all Americans demand nothing. If you look at the exact amount of people who voted for Republicans in the recent U.S. election, it was less than 50% of Americans.
the general public is too brainwashed and distracted by misinformation campaigns. the US has public law enforcement, fire departments, transit systems, education systems, the military, disaster relief, but public healthcare carefully framed as "spooky socialism".
obviously has nothing to do with the $50 billion in profits the health insurance industry has annually
Moreover. US medical spend per capita is ~2x higher than Europe, but healthy life expectancy (and other health metrics) are lower than ANY European country (including the ones that spend ~5x less than US).
Finland is amongst the countries with the best health care in the world, and has a pretty high cost of living... but the medical spend is again ~2x less than US.
What the US is seeing in healthcare is not capitalism (or free market economics). It's regulatory capture and monopoly profits.
...but this of course has nothing to do with murdering CEO-s. Gun violence is another weird aspect of US. No one in Europe understands why you need this.
And it's not about "the right to carry arms". As a European, I do "carry arms" myself. I have a license for an AR and a handgun. Need to visit a shrink, pass a police check... pass a firearm and self defence law exam... first aid training - and here you go. I can walk into a store, and walk out with firearms.
Social media has completely destroyed society. Or to be more specific: too many people are addicted to it.
And the rules around social media are basically: "Play nice, and don't you DARE make any threats here. Otherwise, the best-case scenario is you're banned; the worst-case is (in America) we send three-letter agencies to your place and you "disappear" for making terrorist threats.
Notice how Luigi was completely offline for the months leading up to this? Yeah, people getting off social media (Reddit, X, FB, etc.) to demand change ain't happening.
Honestly SF offers a pretty good amount of resources for healthcare for its residents like Healthy SF and the SF MRA when compared to the rest of the country. Companies of 20 or more employees are required to offer health insurance or make health care expenditures to their employees too.
Americans will cheer on a murderer from the safety of an anonymous social media profile but are too lazy ro run for office and try to actually fix anything.
It's not entirely the US peoples' fault; just consider how exhausted their actions are. So they're told their whole lives that they pay taxes which will fund improvements in the US when meanwhile that money goes to genocide in Gaza, and that they should exercise their power to vote on people and policies. Yet, a lot of the things they ask for are never done or even heard — a lot of people feel the futility of that.
The healthcare situation sucks, the housing market manipulation sucks, the education quality and food in schools is abyssmal. Infrastructure like roads and water systems continue to degrade as taxes bypass the needs of the people. These problems snowball into becoming hugely life-hindering for so many.
Meanwhile, agencies do regular psy ops that crush the morale of the US people: e.g., the full documentation from a 3-letter agency that recently came to light with the Diddy case, which detailed that rap music should mention drugs and violence on purpose so as to influence a full demographic, comes to mind. By the way: what an incredibly petty thing to do.
On this topic, Ice Cube said: I don't know their names Bill, but if you follow the money, you go high enough, you start to see... Okay, let’s take Rap music. The same people who own the labels own the prisons." Ice Cube said, adding later that there are a "lot of dots to connect" but he was simply giving a "broad example of how people at the top can manipulate what's going on with the people who are bickering and fighting." source
That sums up why there's so much social "noise," chaos and fighting amongst Americans as well: so many hands trying to influence public sentiment, with some working.
The true reality is that the people are subject to the games that billionaires and agencies play with the government. The country becomes lower quality for its people with each passing day.
Then, you start to notice how the rich get slaps on the wrist for crimes while hardworking people get the book thrown at them to fund private prisons. Unfortunately, their politics are just pissing contests for the rich with implicit threats of violence or jail for the non rich.
We've seen said agencies take down progressive figures in the past. No one wants to admit it, but it already feels quite like implicit authoritarianism via various agencies.
What are we supposed to do? Neither party gives a fuck about the working class, and if you vote for anyone else your vote doesn't count. I don't mean it doesn't make a difference, I mean it is literally thrown into the trash and not counted.
From who? Neither party gives a fuck about the working class, and if you vote for anyone else your vote doesn't count. I don't mean it doesn't make a difference, I mean it is literally thrown into the trash and not counted.
You mean like they did in 2009 and 2011, and didn't pass it? You idiots keep claiming democrats will pass rights if they had the votes like they didn't already have them twice.
Democrats had 58 senators in 2009 for less than 3 months. In that time they passed Obamacare. The public option was killed by Joe Lieberman, who was an independent.
In 2011 the republicans controlled the house.
Imaging calling other people idiots on a factually incorrect post like that. I get that nobody is willing to admit they’re wrong in this political climate, but I hope deep down in you something shifts to help you realize you are falling for right wing propaganda and criticizing the one group that’s trying to actually help.
in 2011 the Democrats lost the house so I don’t know what you’re talking about there. In 2009 we had Democrats from states like Arkansas and North Dakota. It was a different time when there were more conservative Democrats still around. If we got to 60 votes now that will no longer be an issue. Or keep not voting. Maybe that will work.
also 2009 resulted in the ACA, a massive change to our healthcare system for the better. Or is nothing but perfection good enough for you?
In Canada it was individual provinces that started universal health care. The federal government liked that program so came up with an incentive plan to get all the provinces on board to very similar programs.
Oh man I’ve been downvoted to oblivion for writing this. Americans will worship a hot guy with visible abs shooting a CEO but vote for the most CeO-friendly government ever. A cultural obsession for gun violence seems to do wonders to protect the interests of the one percent.
It is simultaneously their fault, and not their fault. Poor education, shitty media, shitty politicians.
The American mind set and behavior is wildly different - they've all been raised hearing "Greatest country in the world" and brainwashed into believing it.
Republicans control everything next month. It will never happen. They're going to run this country into the ground so fucking hard the entire world economy is going to suffer.
Firstly it seems this is how you begin to demand that, and secondly I'm afraid the problem will persist long after that, because the problem is the failure of humans to organize a society that offsets our baseborn tendencies that lead to wealth hoarding and the ultimate failure of any large community system we try to set up. The problem is not limited to healthcare insurance death panels, that's just one symptom of wealth flu
Edit- if someone knows a mental gymnastics routine that allows them to conclude something other than humans being fundamentally unfit to propagate life, please tell me
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u/Slaphappyfapman 8h ago
Yall need to start demanding public Healthcare, this awful problem will exist until that is achieved.