he deserves much much worse.

amen.

I think you’re onto something… Thiel and the billionaires who bankrolled JD Vance knew exactly what they were doing when they made a deal with Trump for the VP seat.

tinfoil hat time: they will keep Trump for as long as he serves them, then it’s 25th amendment time, and then theyll have their boy JD in power. even if it’s only the remaining term, it’ll be long enough to get the pieces into play for their ancap fantasies of a balkanized USA, with different CEOs over regional corporate fiefdoms.

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same reason people say “unalive” and “fuggen” and “child 🌽”… the Internet has become a place for self censoring idiot babies afraid of being algorithmically demonitized/banned

corporate monopolies of all popular platforms has kneecapped actual free speech by training entire generations to be afraid of violating terms of service, I guess

this.

and also, “tHiNk oF tHe cHilDrEn!!”

precisely. the distribution of wealth is a more important indicator of economic health than simply looking at the national debt or total tax revenues. imo we need to increase taxes on the ultra rich, not because we need to reduce the deficit but because taxes prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth (and the resulting regulatory capture epitomized by modern American oligarchy).

Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%.

anyone have a source for this claim of increased revenue? if so, was it just a temporary effect with longer term structural implications? besides, wouldn’t the solution to evasion have been increased enforcement? taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.

your argument falls flat upon historical analysis. if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’ then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. this all happened before Reagan and coincide with top marginal rates between 50-95 percent.

inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim. those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.

low tax rates are precisely how we got to people like Trump, Musk, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and the incredible rise in number of hundred millionaires and billionaires who are now destroying our social safety nets even more so they can flatter their egos and act out middle aged divorced guy power fantasies.

inequality is why people can’t afford things and is presently the single biggest problem of our society. taxes do make a difference in combatting that. Regean had a role in creating this system, whether you like it or not.

the power to tax is the power to destroy. we build prosperity by keeping oligarchs in check.

once these assholes are dead by whatever means necessary, we can solve the whole Social Security problem (and many others) by restoring top marginal rates to the levels that built a strong safety net and prevented runaway wealth accumulation in the 1%

during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

great analysis. worth the time to finish and absorb. it’s not enough for them to dismantle “woke capitalism”, they are reshaping the notions of what the state is and using it to clear the way for a new economic order which a select few capitalists control.

when the state has become so captured by private interests, whoever controls the state can use it to carve out their own fiefdoms. this may be the beginning of an era where cabals of elites take turns scorching the earth, vying for supremacy using government as a bludgeon against each other.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the war on “woke capitalism” was more than just theater. Trump’s minions really are prepared to take down whole economic sectors—the very summits of neoliberal capitalism—to elevate their own faction of private investment partners, company founders, and controlling shareholders.

How far the war on “woke capitalism” can be pursued without provoking an all-out recession (or intra-capitalist revolt) remains to be seen. What we can be sure of, however, is that Trump’s business allies will be spared the DOGE austerity treatment. As Musk’s raid on the Treasury and Trump’s attempts to interfere with the Federal Reserve make clear, libertarians don’t actually want to abolish the state, much less the massive fiscal and monetary powers embodied in the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Instead, they want to drastically narrow the scope of beneficiaries to a small group of ultrawealthy private capitalists (company founders or controlling owners) and private fund managers in the world of crypto, security, real estate, and fossil fuels. This group of people is so small that we know their names; their faces are literally stamped onto their own privately issued coins, which will no doubt require propping up by the Federal Reserve in due course. Rarely has capitalist power been so personal, yet so massively inflated by the public purse.

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you do understand how circular and self defeating your analysis is, right?

you say the problem is not punishing greed. okay. let’s follow your last sentence to it’s logical conclusion… how exactly (in today’s corporate controlled society) would we punish greed? keeping in mind, greed at the level of corporations is inarguably the single most salient and damaging type of greed.

could the answer have anything to do with say, corporations?

you use the internet but nternet is where racists gather. curious.

checkmate.

not every single person of the ~90 million who didn’t vote “abstained” based on some high horse principles. you obviously understand that.

political news addicted leftists are a miniscule percent of that 90M which means at most a couple hundred thousand leftists might have “protest voted”.

why be angry (and still keep bringing up) the actions of that subset, when you could direct your anger at actual racists and bigots that voted Trump?

i understand that it’s more sneeringly smugly self satisfying to scold the former group, but you have way more in common with that subset than with the latter, who actually deserves the most scorn/ridicule. why attack potential allies when a mutual enemy is at the gates?

we need to move on already. the Dems lost, we’re all in this together now.

we ofc already have graduated tax brackets but it needs to be shifted upwards so that people making below a certain amount should pay zero Income taxes (I’m not talking about a wealth tax or carbon tax or VAT tax).

also, top marginal rates NEED TO BE INCREASED AGAIN. during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

sorry but I think you’re dead wrong. also, we have more than 2 options. we can choose to support the progressives who the DNC has been actively suppressing. that’s a different conversation though.

supporting the DNC only happens when they start supporting The People. I’m old enough to have personally observed just how the national Democratic party operates and how corrupt, ineffectual, and apathetic they are when regular working class Americans need lasting structural changes. all the programs and progress they made has been undone with a half dozen supreme court nominations and a wave of a pen executive order.

they don’t take adequate action and don’t break rules to achieve goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand that sometimes obeying the rules (even in a democracy) is morally wrong. in a society rapidly spiraling towards fascism, they fail to recognize that “trust the system” actually means “just follow orders” and that’s a very bad very dangerous thing.

it’s not a group worthy of my support, not until they do better.

relevant links if you’re at all interested in understanding my perspective better (or just follow my comments):

The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)

The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)

you’re right, unfortunately, we live in a time when people won’t take action until they either experience the consequences personally or they’re pushed beyond a breaking point.

perpetual gradual harm reduction and backsliding is imperceptible and slow enough to be normalized. but sudden changes cannot be ignored and often radicalizes people in response (or at least forces them to ‘take sides’ in a battle).

one of the major challenges of liberatory movements is not enough people join the cause and instead wait things out. these so-called centrists and moderates only have this option because they have socioeconomic privilege compared the most oppressed groups.

therefore we must then consider strategies to capture their support, including shocking their sensibilities with outrage, or even potentially stoking fears that they could be next. “what if they close my alma mater too or what if my kids’ college gets shutdown also?” etc etc