eat the rich, they taste like pork
If you see these numbers and still think tax is the solution, you’re not paying enough attention.
A system is what it does. Our system created this disparity, and will continue to allow it to grow as long as it exists. Any solutions within the acceptable limits said system has set out will never stop it, only placate the masses enough to stop us from tearing it down.
Please explain what you’re proposing. Are you saying to get rid of democracy or what?
How about we tax the rich so there are no billionaires, take the corporations out of housing and rentals and fix our gerrymandering? These would go a long way to fix the problems.
Can you please explain your line of thinking here? This person purpose more drastic measures than just taxing, and you jump on them being against democracy. How is democracy = some people being ultra rich?
Like, for me, democracy means people decide how the society is ruled, so Im excited to hear how changing the system to get rid of disparity is the same as abolishing democracy
What do you think that poster is proposing?
Look around, there’s States with a somewhat working mix of capital and social. Take that as a minimum, while some of them already talk about universal basic income.
Some historical presidents and judges literally sold you out. That’s not democracy, you’re a plutocracy.
Do you think that poster is specifically proposing these things? He’s talking about getting rid of the system.
Edit: Go deeper into the thread.
Honestly, i don’t see how you can fix it without starting anew.
It’s not really a great idea to troll the mod.
You don’t have to go that far back to find a time when the rich were heavily taxed and income disparity was much smaller. Keep going back and you can find other times when the disparity was greater and the rich were taxed less.
The best outcome may require the system to be torn down, but it’s clearly also possible to tax the rich significantly more even with the system already in place.
Exactly. Post WWII the tax on the richest was 90%, it stayed there until the mid 60s when it was lowered to 70% and then in the early 80s Reagan and that congress lowered it to 50%, then briefly to even below 30%.
It probably wouldn’t have happened without the combined effect of the Great Depression rolling directly into WWII. With those two events, it was possible to raise taxes that high, and the rich actually (to a large extent) paid them.
Even though the “Again” part of MAGA is very ill-defined, I think a lot of MAGA supporters would point to the post WWII era as a time that America was great. A greater shared prosperity was probably a significant reason why things felt so great then. Unions were strong, rich people were heavily taxed, and everyone was better off.
Lmfao, looking back longingly at feudalism (with a stop over in the cold war era? Because that was such a prosperous time for so many in society /s) I’m guessing isn’t making the point you think it is. You’re literally arguing in favour of maintaining a disparity. The size of isn’t the point, it’s existence in the first place is.
Maybe have a think with yourself about why you’re so attached to the idea of there being a rich and ruling class at all, whose graces and willingness to pay back a tiny percentage of the money they extracted by exploitation society should depend on…
What the hell are you talking about? We’re talking about increasing taxes for the ultra-rich. Saying ultra-wealth people should be paying >90% tax has nothing to do with feudalism, and it certainly isn’t supporting the concept of a rich and ruling class.
and it certainly isn’t supporting the concept of a rich and ruling class.
It certainly is. There shouldn’t be any people who have that much more than everyone else that a tax bracket that high should even exist. To get to that point you have had to be exploiting others, and allowing them to continue to exploit society and have vastly more power than anyone else, as long as they pay back some (even 90%, that still leaves the likes of Musk and Bezos billionaires) is still maintaining the status quo, no matter how socialist it makes you feel (90% tax isn’t socialism, workers owning the means of production is, which leaves no room for such disparity). So feel free to ask yourself that same question I asked above.
E: as for feudalism, that’s all capitalism is - feudalism with extra steps. You having been indoctrinated to believe there needs to be a ruling class doesn’t mean that’s true.
I agree that there shouldn’t be any people with that wealth, and so does the person you were responding to. But taking away 90% of people’s money above a reasonable threshold is definitely not going to help those people become ultra rich. It would make becoming ultra rich more difficult, and instead spread the wealth across the wider population - decreasing wealth disparity.
And although there is almost certainly a better way possible, this method is relatively easy to implement and is an obvious improvement over our current situation. So we can just go ahead and do it while we continue to find consensus on a better system in the long run.
You seem to be arguing that taxing the rich is somehow bad because it isn’t perfect. Your argument makes no sense. You are saying that taking their money helps them maintain a position of wealth. That makes no sense. Of course taking their money will make them less rich. Surely that’s easy to understand.
They got nation-states by the balls. They’ll never let you tax them. At most there will be some concession made that just makes them look like they did something, how the ultra rich always do. Unfortunately liberal pacifism isn’t nearly enough.
Better yet, end all taxes on individuals. Instead, all taxes should be levied against corporations, and they should cover the entire bill for a functioning society… And society should democratically decide what that entails. Tax the corporations so much that their stock prices fall back to realistic numbers. Then we won’t have any of these fake billionaires who’s “wealth is tied up in stocks”, but also they can get loans against them. It should be very easy to get “rich” by working yourself, it should be very hard to get rich “letting your money work for you”
Ok, so every American company becomes the subsidiary of a company registered in Bermuda or Ireland. They report no profits from their American subsidiaries, so they pay no taxes.
Corporations don’t have to “live” anywhere, so they don’t have anything to lose by ceasing to exist in high tax areas and “moving” to low tax ones. It’s why companies based in Kansas City switch back and forth from being Kansas-based or Missouri-based, whatever’s convenient for their taxes.
If they want to sell their shit in the US they have to allow us to audit them everywhere
Maybe a hot take, but I actually think individual progressive taxes are great. Have a generous tax free threshold, but individual taxes stops excessive wealth hoarding and (in the case of inheritance tax) dynasties
It’s just an extra step… Everyone gets a paycheck from a corporation of some kind… Instead of hundreds of millions to deal with, the IRS could just focus on the companies
I agree, and on inheritance anything over like $1m should be taxed heavily. Anything over say $10m or so should be taxed at or near 100%.
Inheritance tax is very good and fair. But a tricky problem is that if one place has a big inheritance tax, and another place doesn’t - then rich people basically just put all their money in the place with no inheritance tax. … We should do it anyway, but it does mean the bulk of that money probably won’t get taxed.
A tax on the amount of CO2 released per person, both directly and indirectly?
Good, but hard to measure fairly. Essentially all the emissions for everyone are ‘indirect’. They are the result of the processes used to produce the goods we consume, etc. So then, should the consumer be responsible for those emissions directly, or should it be the factory workers, or the people who own the factory, or the people who supplied the fuel that was used to run the factory, or the people who payed the people who supplied the fuel… etc.
We could think about untangling it, but probably easier to just tax the rich and then tackle the CO2 problem separately - probably by also taxing the people who own the factory for emissions.
The tax will burden the end consumer the most - perhaps that’s what’s need to end especially polluting buying habits: charge the true cost.
I am not a tax expert (IANATE?), but with all the tax havens and multi-national businesses would they not just relocate? I am very much interested in the simplification of the tax code such that the burden shifts back to those keen on wealth extraction. I just dunno what that looks like as code and in impementation.
If they want to sell their shit in the US they have to let us audit them everywhere and tax accordingly
Sure, they can relocate. But you could structure the law so that you can’t sell anything then. Apple is free to leave the US and not pay taxes, but then they are not allowed to sell anything in the US, have any offices in the US or hire anyone in the US. Of course such a law would never happen. But it’s absolutely possible in theory.
But you could structure the law so that you can’t sell anything then.
So, why would they sell anything? What incentive does a corporation have to do business in a region where taxes are punishing? Why not just focus their efforts in Europe, South America and Asia?
It would be like Cuba. If you want a car, you can buy one… but it’s going to be a Franken-car built from the parts scrounged together from the last time there were car companies operating in the country.
They’d still be profitable… At the end of the day the workers create the wealth. All we’d be doing is putting that wealth towards what we collectively agree on before anyone can take it as profit. But, there’d still be profit left over.
Minimum wage shouldn’t ever be a specific amount, it should be a percentage tied to some other economic metric, so that as inflation or cost of living rises, wages increase with it as well. This BS of having to wait for out-of-touch millionaire Congress members to approve of minimum wage increases is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, Congress has raised their own pay multiple times since they raised the minimum wage back in 2009.
Actually, looking into it, it seems that they gave themselves an automatic annual pay raise back in the ethics reforms act of 1989! Fucking assholes.
https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/97-615.html
“The automatic annual adjustment for Members of Congress is determined by a formula using a component of the Employment Cost Index (ECI),…”
“…This adjustment formula was established by the Ethics Reform Act of 1989.”
In Europe we call this wage indexation, you should try it!
Don’t worry, we won’t.
Canadians and Europeans, hold on to this stuff. There are people trying to take away universal healthcare from Canada and Brexit happened. This shit can happen to anyone if you get complacent.
Kamala Harris promises to tax the top 1%
Donald Trump promises to tax the bottom 50%
Democrats already have the government right now and before that was trump and before that was 8 years of democrats again.
So since 2012, democrats had the government for 8 years and republicans for 4 years.
What makes this time special that they will finally tax the 1%?
I still think that harris is better than trump a lot, but it kinda makes you think if these promises are just that, promises.
Next step: specific campaign promises unkept by end of term become criminal fraud
I guess y’all don’t know what the point of capitalism is haha.
Exploiting your fellow humans for personal gain…we know exactly what the point is
At this rate, we’re going to have our first trillionaire by the end of the decade. How much is enough? How big does that pile of money need to be?
deleted by creator
That’s not how exponential growth works. A ×10 increase in 1.2 years implies a ×1010 increase in 12 years. According to these numbers it should be ×10 in 6 years which roughly aligns with the end of the decade.
lol i seriously messed up the math there sorry, thanks for pointing it out
I am bad at math, but I would love someone to do the math and figure out how many thousands of dollars would have to be on the ground for it to be worth the time of Musk or Bezos or Zuckerberg to pick up.
I mean they’d actually get into a brawl over a penny, but that’s a whole other issue.
You’d need geniune “marginal” income data not wealth to calculate that accurately. Wealth is an illusory “value” it is inflated by asset pices that mean you can only sell it slowly without potentially reducing the price. This is far less true of widely accepted ( ‘liquid’) assets like cash.
Their marginal value of +/-1 minute worked is probably actually very low, since most their income is “unearned”. but ignore that for the sake of stupid calculation. assume they sacrifice an average amount to pick up this cash.
You can start with say roughly +$270bn over 12 years being a bit less than $50k per minute. That +270 can cover inflation adjusting the 2012 start point to crrent prices, it’s in the rounding.
But even assuming they converted it all to liquid assets art once , and tank the asset price so that, instead of £50k/min the break-even might be $5k/min. very roughly i’m looking at $100 per second. That’s your break even you have to get close to.
After that it’s a matter of practicality, face value per bill, ordering/stacking, spread/density, and wind. Assume no tools, vacuums, or scoops, just what can be gathered by one greedy c*nt by hand.
If it’s , say, a single $100 bill already at their feet, then it is probably worth it to them (or maybe handful of $100s if you prefer to think wealth = cash).
A few $20s? probably; if they could gather 5x$20s per second and reach the break even rate - seems doable if the density is there. $10s or lower? I doubt it - unless the cash was neatly stacked or bundled.
But, suppose they were put on to an effectively infinite but random mess of $1 bills; I dont think it’s worth it to them. I don’t think they could physically gather it fast enough. Plus at scale, they’d have overhead costs to store, transport, bundle , count it and then wait in line at the bank and other such indignities.
If it was more like this: https://youtu.be/YEbs0RUyksI?t=363 then no chance.
Damn, I didn’t think it would require that much math! Thanks!
You misspelled hang.
Tax solves problems
Violence solves result of problem
People are super mad at the Chinese police for arresting Jack Ma, prosecuting him, and having the guy do community service work for a few years. But that’s honestly way better than a guy that greedy and exploitative deserves.
Eat the Rich,
Eat the Rich,
Don’t you know,
Life is a Bitch!
Eat the Rich,
Eat the Rich,
Out of the palace,
And into the ditch!
They have so much wealth it’s hard to visualise how much they have.
Q: What’s the the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars?
A: About a billion dollars.
Thanks for sharing this! I had not seen it in a while.
Eh, buying a president as your personal bitch and jumping around on stage with him in an undersized t-shirt with your belly sticking out like a brain damaged orangatan is a pretty good visualization of how disgusting this much money is.
buying a president as your personal bitch
Trump didn’t buy Musk. They’re ideological co-conspirators, eager for the day when they can each unleash the full force of the police state on their personal enemies. The fact that they both act like dim-witted children should warn the rest of us what too much money and too little social responsibility does to the human brain. Musk acts like a washed up 80s hack celebrity desperately flailing for attention because he’s fucked in the skull, not because Trump pays him to behave that way.
Errmm. Don’t think anyone thinks for a moment Trump is paying musk. Did you mix up your rich fascist dipshits?
It might be more akin to a Trump escort service. You can buy him for a few nights and go around seeing the sites (rallies) like some kind of weird instagram influencer where you can get the attention you’re craving (news cycle) and everyone will be calling you again (media) to reinforce how important you are.
Of course that only lasts for like a day since Trump is a gold fish, he’ll be back to insulting the industries and generally dismissing Musk unless he stays right in his peripheral view.
You got it backwards friend. In the grand scheme here Trump isn’t comparitively rich, he has an empire that constantly hemorrhages money but value wise he is sitting around 3. 6 billion.
Musk’s currently valued at around 269. 8 billion. He spends a ridiculous amount of money on super PACs and uses his purchase of different platforms to kill news stories that show Democrats in a positive light and bankrolls a lot of Republican stuff. Musk isn’t being bought, Trump is.
They hate each other. They all do.
But the difference between Trump’s wealth and Musk’s wealth is very close to Musk’s wealth.
A billionaire’s worth isn’t the size of the bank account but the limit on the credit card.
To date, I’ve seen nothing to suggest either Trump or Musk have a limit on how much they can borrow and spend. That’s largely because our historically fascist oligarchy of banking executives love their brand of politics.
Yeah, it’s one of the reasons Anna Sorokin took so much.
Banks were falling over themselves to lend money to her. They thought she was one of them.
Why should the workers settle for only higher taxes and slightly more social programs, the workers deserve everything because without the workers there is nothing (furthermore without the capitalists there is everything).
Because we do not fight under conditions of our choosing, we fight where we stand.
Taxing the rich is a short-term solution, but it’s one that we can do RIGHT NOW that would be a step in the right direction. You can’t just quit capitalism cold-turkey without a bloody revolution. You have to take steps to transform society in a gradual manner.
And by tax, we mean their actual wealth, not whatever pennies they give themselves each year as a “salary”.
The US minimum wage hasn’t changed in TEN YEARS?! You guys need to revolt, that is awful.
10 years… how refreshingly optimistic…
In 2007, Congress passed the increase to 7.25 to take effect in 2009. The minimum wage change 15 years ago was passed 17 years ago.
I wonder how hoarders of wealth will be thought of in the distant future. If we survive, I hope they are seen as fools with misguided goals, and criminals for being vacuums of human potential.
People should be contributing ideas, creativity and wisdom instead of worrying about their next meal.
It’s way beyond that, but the majority of the population has become weak and complicit. Either a general strike or full-on revolution is needed. I guess people will wait until everyone is suffering except the mega rich to be angry enough to break free from their day to day fantasy of blissful ignorance.
Because eXcEptIoNAliSm and mEriToCrAcY, tHe aMerIcAn dReAm!!!1122
It just goes to show how powerful the indoctrination really is.
Seriously, I made overtly anti-fascist comments on a politicalmemes post that are getting downvoted…
Edit for your reading pleasure: https://lemmy.world/comment/13098744
For what it’s worth, you’re spot on and I gave you my upvote lol
But yeah, the resistance to the truth in favour of temporary comfort is quite scary to watch as it unfolds live in front of our eyes, but that just means we have to say it louder.
Thank you! And very frightening, we absolutely need to keep repeating it and louder in this sea of propaganda. Though it seems history will repeat itself, and “comfortable”/ignorant people won’t budge until they are all personally affected and suffering themselves.
Yup, “first they came for…” seems as relevant as ever, it’s almost like we never learn (more like are deliberately kept ignorant and just comfortable enough to benefit the ruling class).
The US minimum wage hasn’t changed in TEN YEARS?!
The vast majority of employers can’t pay the minimum rate, because their employees wouldn’t be able to do basic shit like travel to the jobsite or afford to eat. Wages have been rising (particularly post-COVID, after a few million Americans dropped out of the labor force for some mysterious reason) as demand eclipses supply.
And a big reason AI has caught on as a techno-panacea is business analysts are looking at the median age and size of the labor force, the stark hostility to immigration, and the perpetually increasing need for technical work, then realizing this is going to put huge upward pressure on wages unless much of that workforce can be automated away.
But market forces are happening even in absence of legislative action. Union activity is reemerging as a socio-economic force. Not everything rests on a federal majority manually raising the wage floor.
You know, something always feels a little off with an underpantsweevil comment. I could never put my finger on it though, always seems so close to being factual but for some reason skewed. I think it’s the declarative statements which turn out to be more of an opinion or editorial piece that’s only backed up by other vague references much like a matt walsh or tim (can’t remember his last name) might make.
Wages have been rising…as demand eclipses supply.
This is a weird general statement that reinforces that “supply & demand” is a worth-while endeavor that has worked out for everyone economically and socially. Of course wages have been rising… it would be beyond a depression if the average salary went down for the past couple of years. The important caveats are completely missed though…
While salaries are up, salary growth is down — the increase in average earnings is lower compared to the 7.3% rise between 2021 and 2022. The gender pay gap, while shrinking by 1% over the last 10 years, was only cut by 0.7% between 2022 and 2023. This means the average male makes $63,960, while their female counterparts make an average of $53,404
The average white male earns $64,636, while the average Hispanic or Latino male makes $47,996 annually.
With the annual inflation rate for 2023 at 3.4% for the year — up from 3.1% previously — salaries aren’t keeping up. A Smart Asset report based on MIT’s Living Wage data found that the average salary required to live comfortably in the U.S. is $68,499 after taxes.10 This is nearly $10,000 higher than what the average salary currently is. link
AI… are you talking about like a general AI or chatgpt? What right-wing or doomscrolling blog are you reading about AI from? All these companies trying to cram some type of “AI” into their program is a problem for sure, but it’s just a fad which only the most useful implementations will stick around. If anything, the companies are spending more trying to make it work (which it doesn’t).
Amazon Fresh kills “Just Walk Out” shopping tech—it never really worked - “AI” checkout was actually powered by 1,000 human video reviewers in India.
Here is an article by the Mckinsey Global Institute.
One of the biggest questions of recent months is whether generative AI might wipe out jobs. Our research does not lead us to that conclusion, although we cannot definitively rule out job losses, at least in the short term. Technological advances often cause disruption, but historically, they eventually fuel economic and employment growth.
This research does not predict aggregated future employment levels; instead, we model various drivers of labor demand to look at how the mix of jobs might change—and those results yield some gains and some losses.9 In fact, the occupational categories most exposed to generative AI could continue to add jobs through 2030 (Exhibit 4), although its adoption may slow their rate of growth. And even as automation takes hold, investment and structural drivers will support employment. The biggest impact for knowledge workers that we can state with certainty is that generative AI is likely to significantly change their mix of work activities.
“But market forces are happening even in absence of legislative action. Union activity is reemerging as a socio-economic force. Not everything rests on a federal majority manually raising the wage floor.”
Interesting you’ve again promoted “market forces” (reminds me of trickle-down economics). Union activity has been beaten down by a war being waged for decades, proper legislation and officials protecting the rights of Unions are the only way they will continue to have a chance. The recent changes in the Biden administration shows that unions can stand a chance if the branches of government would actually support it.
Wouldn’t having a federal majority, manually raising the wage floor, protect future workers when the AI revolution comes? If the market determines the wage minimum, won’t your points become moot when there is no more demand? I’m just still flabbergasted that you believe “employers can’t pay the minimum rate, because their employees wouldn’t be able to do basic shit like travel to the jobsite or afford to eat.” I don’t know what social circles you are in, but this isn’t the reality most lower income people are facing.
This is a weird general statement that reinforces that “supply & demand” is a worth-while endeavor
It’s a fundamental pricing mechanism. Low supply pushes demand up.
What right-wing or doomscrolling blog are you reading about AI from? All these companies trying to cram some type of “AI” into their program is a problem for sure, but it’s just a fad which only the most useful implementations will stick around.
Efforts to shoehorn AI into daily business activity aren’t just at the retail end. We’re seeing it show up in doctor’s offices, to replace transcription services, and legal offices, to replace paralegals, and in IT to replace developers.
The implementation is routinely worse than the human labor it replaces, but the cost is so much lower that business owners will justify the transition.
Union activity has been beaten down by a war being waged for decades, proper legislation and officials protecting the rights of Unions are the only way they will continue to have a chance.
Union organizers who wait on corporately captured politicians to save them are fucked. You build the union first and you get the legislation later, when politicians recognize the union as a force worth pandering to.
By contrast, the Wildcat Strike and the Slow Down… hell, the very act of collectively bargaining, leveraged market force to exert pressure on employers.
Depriving businesses of their labor supply compels them to increase their compensation. That’s Econ 101 tier material analysis.
Wouldn’t having a federal majority, manually raising the wage floor, protect future workers when the AI revolution comes?
Sure. But you need a movement large enough to obtain the corruptive force of private capital first. Where do you get that movement?
By the time you have a coalition big enough to compel the federal government to change, you’ve already built a union big enough to force private industry to capitulate independent of a legislative fix.
Again, just baseless conjuncture that sounds “almost right”. You have the general principles, you even reference Econ 101, but analysis and expert opinion goes further (why there’s so many armchair champions out there, unfortunately). Please cite some actual sources that have analyzed the systems and what your perspective has been formed by. This just seems like base-level pandering that gets no where like a “group chat” on one of the mainstream news outlets.
Things do not happen in a sterile chamber. You can’t create union movements when they’re getting destroyed by officials
For approximately 150 years, union organizing efforts and strikes have been periodically opposed by police, security forces, National Guard units, special police forces such as the Coal and Iron Police, and/or use of the United States Army. Significant incidents have included the Haymarket Riot and the Ludlow massacre. The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force. In all three examples, a strike became the triggering event. (link)
Your AI argument is fear mongering, as I stated above, with sources, a net increase in jobs is projected. This is the telephone/computer technology fear now for the 2020’s. You’ve yet to provide an actual argument for why technology shouldn’t proceed. Should oil and gas not go through the same transition? God forbid we have less administration and more skilled workers, as my sources concluded would be the outcome.
Yes, supply-demand is a fundamental pricing mechanism, as econ 101 will teach. Unfortunately the subsequent classes that economists take after also include the million different factors with changes that mechanisms output. For further understandings, I would suggest Unlearning Economics (here is one of his videos going over a Sabine Hossenfelder’s video on capitalism). He comes with credentials,
My background is as an economist who specialises in behavioural economics. I did my PhD in economics at the University of Manchester and from 2019-23 was a Fellow at the Psychological and Behavioural Science Department at the London School of Economics. I remain affiliated as a Visiting Fellow.
I have quantitative skills including mathematics, statistics, and coding which are illustrated by my PhD and current research. I am also a published author, with my book The Econocracy selling 15,000+ copies and having over 200 citations on Google Scholar. I also have excellent communication skills and have presented both my research and book at numerous conferences and universities.
Please cite some actual sources that have analyzed the systems and what your perspective has been formed by
Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century is a solid one.
Richard Wolff also has a great podcast on the subject
Your AI argument is fear mongering
That is part of the strategy to depress wages, certainly. But substandard substitution is also a standard business strategy.
To be fair, many states and cities have their own minimum wages higher than the federal minimum. I’ll let you guess which states don’t.
The ones where the people are most afraid of communism and think minimum wage is socialism?
That’s a bingo
You just say “bingo”.
But you said—
For anyone about to downvote - it’s a quote from Inglorious Basterds ^
It’s an older quote, sir, but it checks out.
50 states makes this game too difficult. Can we just guess colors instead?
I live in a red state with an $11/hr minimum wage. We got that by amending the constitution, thereby overriding the legislature which was opposed to the increase. Unfortunately $11/hr is not even close to enough to live on here so apparently it’s time to raise it via another constitutional amendment. Sigh
Gotta double it to catch up, and pin it to inflation at the same time so it stops falling behind.
Surprisingly, Florida has a higher minimum wage–nearly double that of the federal minimum, and will reach $15 in 2026. Of course, you can’t survive on that working 40 hours a week.
And most people in those states that don’t have their own don’t work for the federal minimum wage. My state has no minimum wage, and most “minimum wage” jobs start at something like $10-12.
start at something like $10-12
Which is still garbage. How does someone survive today on less than $25,000/year?
Live with their parents. It’s doable to “survive”, it’s just that someone cannot “thrive”, i.e. live the American Dream, or have health insurance, thus getting back to your point about survival, although that’s generally considered a separate thing than income, bc e.g. someone could be on their spouse’s health plan.
And then there are all sorts of tricks to go below minimum wage too… including having more black people locked up and working in for-profit prisons than were ever used as slaves; or Waffle House’s trick where someone only gets a base wage of like $3.25 an hour and then while the minimum $7.25 per hour is guaranteed, in order to get more than that they have to make up the difference with tips (on what is <$10 meals).
But how do you help people when (a) things like the electoral college and gerrymandering exist, (b) preachers say from the actual, literal pulpit that God commands to vote Republican, and (c) those areas vote conservative not only for themselves but also apply that to the nation at large, e.g. keeping Mitch McConnell in power, and making abortion illegal in those states.
TLDR: it’s how they choose to live. And they might be about to fight an actual civil war to extend those “rights” further.
And they might be about to fight an actual civil war to extend those “rights” further.
Well we know how American civil wars end, and the country could use some more Reconstruction
