Middle ground
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
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Too many of our fellow Americans are institutionalized as fuck for defending the system and people that take advantage of them.
Some people are so brainwashed, they’ve fully bought into the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” trope.
The statement “Billionaires should be taxed higher and poor people should have a true living wage” shouldn’t be a controversial one
Americans are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome by the rich and it makes me sick as someone looking in.
Stop telling us that we can’t afford to raise the minimum wage.
And THIS is why I have always respected AOC.
They go to great lengths to make others seem unreasonable. Suggesting that “maybe billionaires can afford to allow poor people a true living wage” shouldn’t be controversial, nor should it be misrepresented as an attack on people who aren’t wealthy.
WTF is it with Americans demonizing the idea of people being equal? How is this a bad thing? What are the pros of people being homeless and starving and unemployed?
As a guy I would like to say to other guys, please stop trying to match wits with AOC. She is intelligent and she doesn’t just say things to be relevant. If she speaks on something you best believe she knows the subject inside and out. If you think you are going to trip her up with a half ass remark on social media you are vastly underestimating her and drastically overestimating yourself.
still cant believe theres people who defend millionaires like they have shares of their money
Fairness gets twisted into a radical idea.
There’s actually a good answer for this. Mike Norton and Dan Ariely (famous for work on behavioral economics) surveyed Americans to find out how they think wealth should be distributed between five 20-percentile buckets of our society (top 20%, next 20%, etc.) and how they think it is *actually* distributed.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-in-the-us-is-much-more-extreme-than-you-think-2015-6](https://www.businessinsider.com/inequality-in-the-us-is-much-more-extreme-than-you-think-2015-6)
People generally want a relatively even distribution, and they incorrectly believe we’re close to it. Instead, the top 20% own 93% of the nation’s wealth. And that ownership is concentrate in the top 1%, which owns 40% of the nation’s wealth.
Wealth inequality isn’t income inequality, but there’s an obvious relationship.
Everyone with common sense here in the US feels the same!
This is literally the most reasonable take ever. Like, how is this even controversial?
The sad part is that people voted for more billionaires and more poor people to prop them up.
This is the energy we need in politics. Fairness doesn’t mean everyone’s equal, it just means no one’s struggling to survive while others hoard billions.👏
This is what happens when a nation worshisp wealth/money. To them billionaires are gods and all-knowing, infallible — how else could they have become billionares if they didn’t have these qualities – they think
But we know what happens on Wall Street and none of it is ever fair to the workers who actually make companies function or productive.
Classism is bigotry as much as racism is
Income inequality is a government created problem thanks to the policy of inflation [ currency devaluation ] which fleeces 99% for the benefit of the 1%
Source :
But one day I will be rich, so don’t change anything
Should there be some income inequality? Undeniably yes. There are jobs that require more education than others, are more stressful than others or are harder on the body (among, I’m sure, a great many other qualifiers). You need some way to motivate people to take these otherwise undesirable jobs.
IMO, the ideal scenario would have nobody having to work to earn a living at all, but that’s unrealistic. A more feasible ideal is that everyone can afford a healthy standard of living off a 40 hour work week. They should be able to afford a home, to run a car, to feed themselves and 2-3 other people healthy food, to heat/cool their home and provide electricity and other utilities, to have savings with which to repair/replace items and to have some disposable income to fund a reasonable hobby.
At the other end of the scale, every extra penny earned is disposable income. Ergo, if you double someone’s base salary you’ve actually increased their disposable income disproportionately. Ergo, I see no reason for anyone to ever earn more than double the base salary. As a compromise, I would have the absolute maximum salary possible capped at five times the base salary – to be earned only in the most extreme circumstances.
The other issue is that we have distorted the connection between the desirability of a job and the pay. The idea that management is definitively worthy of more pay is illogical – there are people who want power and authority, and the workload itself doesn’t necessarily require more skills, knowledge or stress than other roles. Conversely, the people who are trading their physical health for a living tend to be some of the worst paid.
Has anyone checked this for logic?
She says the acceptable inequality is between between X and Y.
If she had said between 3 and 10 we’d know she meant above 3 and below 10 but she gave examples instead.
So she wants an income equality that is worse than when teachers have to sell blood but not as bad as with billionares with helipads and foodstamp workers?
Or she wants a society worse than billionaries with helipads but not as bad as when teachers sell blood?
…… she doesn’t mean between those things, she means without both of those things. I hope.
Aaaaaand the billionaires tell the politicians to lower the qualifying level for food stamps.
Inequality solved!
Mary works on the line and is paid above market value for her work at a low-level job. She’s doing fine financially. Jane works right next to her doing the same thing, but she has three kids so she’s not doing fine. Is the employer supposed to pay Jane more than Mary for doing the same job to keep her off food stamps?
Dude’s probably never even heard of Rawl’s theory of justice or veil of ignorance. Fucking loser.
Society defending billionaires is an ego-driven thought of “one day, it will be my turn to be rich and power trip everyone”. We’re led to understand that “new money” is almost like a lottery for the worshipping believers who work “hard enough” – believers of the same government who pushes everyone to hate their immediate lower class, as if it’s that economical class who is draining all resources for themselves keeping you from having the chance to be a billionaire. Once people stop being selfish and chasing the illusion, we’ll be able to be a better society.
[futurama](https://youtu.be/K_LvRPX0rGY?si=PGMMh9XzM-QLks5a) summed it up nicely in an episode how Americans are apparently thinking
Teachers selling blood to pay rent vs billionaires with helipads is not the vibe society should be going for
Might want to include “Criminalizing having nowhere to live” and “Hunting the homeless for sport” in there somewhere.
So, not a policy proposal at all. Not a good look AOC
Harry is licking the boot and loves how it tastes.
I got to work for someone with their own personal heli pad, I was in charge of their multiple estates electronic goodies. Gates, cars, computers, Internet, iPads, etc, etc. I was paid well enough but the hours were fucking insane and since I was hired by the individual and it was all private and he had an army of lawyers they would make the craziest demands of me. It’s no way to live but I think it really helped me realize how ungodly and exorbitantly wealthy some people in the world are.