• circuitfarmer@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    The US has a problem of representation. Specifically and especially since the Citizens United decision, corporate interests can easily flow money towards politicians to make them do just about anything they want. This exacerbated an existing problem with the corporate tax rate and has now brought it into laughably low territory.

    That’s all an oversimplification of course, but it’s not that Americans haven’t “figured it out”. It is far more complicated than that.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Thank you. I’m getting quite tired of people posting the most fucking obvious takes about problems in the US, then going “why haven’t americans fixed this? are they stupid?”, when we have exceedingly small control over the actions of our shitass policy makers.

      It’s some real “everyone is dumb except for me” energy.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          OWS crumbled in ways right out of various leaked three letter agency guides to disrupting grass roots movements.

          I’d love to see it get another try, with how news sources have become far more decentralized. Less opportunity for major news orgs to kill the momentum.

          Full disclosure, the destruction of OWS is pretty much the one thing I allow myself to go “full tinfoil hat” over.

          • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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            3 months ago

            Covid protests and jan6… There is a always some fed running this things even ifntheu start organically.

        • Barx [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          OWS was not well-organized. Palestinian solidarity groups are doing better. The key difference is in being able to coherently make informed decisions as a group and then act on them as one.

          Every OWS encampment was basically 5-30 orgs all doing their own thing and then fighting about horizontalism and being naive about how the cops and City Hall would treat them. We need to be able to act like 1-3 orgs (even if there are more), politically educate so we can avoid mistakes, and create good structure as early as possible so that expectations are set and time isn’t wasted and bad decisions are avoided.

          The US left is basically slowly relearning the basics of organizing. Get involved and make it go faster!

          • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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            3 months ago

            If you are doing this shot at a gun point, you are no better than the regime you are fighting

            What a clown take to glorify Bolsheviks’ crimes.

            How is this anymore acceptable than “people voted for Hitler” shit?

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              If you are doing this shot at a gun point, you are no better than the regime you are fighting

              Oppressed people have the right to use violence to liberate themselves. Were the Haitian Slaves wrong for killing their Masters? Was John Brown wrong for killing Slave Owners? Were the French wrong for killing the Monarchy? Were the Bolsheviks wrong for killing the Tsar? Are Palestinians wrong for killing the IDF?

              Violence is a tool that should be used sparingly and carefully, yes. It should be avoided, if possible. However, if non-violence is proven to not work, then that leaves violence, or threat of violence, as the remaining path.

              The idea that using violence against oppressors makes you “no better than them” is useless moralism used to justify an extremely violent system that daily beats its subjects.

              What a clown take to glorify Bolsheviks’ crimes.

              Was it a crime to liberate Russia from the brutal Tsars and pull Russia out of the highly unpopular and bloody World War I?

              How is this anymore acceptable than “people voted for Hitler” shit?

              What on Earth are you talking about? Why are you comparing liberatory violence with voting in Hitler?

              • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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                3 months ago

                After they killed the czars, they turned on the people.

                That’s the part tankie won’t teach you folks but a quick Wikipedia search should explain to you what they did to the peasants, esp in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

                • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  After they killed the czars, they turned on the people.

                  Yea, they helped the people by ending famines, doubling life expectancy, getting to 99% literacy rates, provided free college and healthcare, and democratized government.

                  That’s the part tankie won’t teach you folks but a quick Wikipedia search should explain to you what they did to the peasants, esp in Ukraine and Kazakhstan

                  Are you genuinely under the impression that Marxists somehow spent their entire lives avoiding western narratives around the USSR, read dozens of books on history and theory, and somehow have never once seen the western point of view? Are you specifically referring to events, or their entire history?

                  As an example, prior to the current Russo-Ukranian conflict escalating in 2022, in 2019 62% of Ukranians said they were worse off then, than under Communism. Ukranians enjoyed being a part of the USSR more than they do being a part of the current Ukranian State. Similarly, Central Asia (including Kazakhstan) is not without Soviet Nostalgia either.

                  This is, of course, after you said using violence against oppressors makes you no better than them, which automatically makes you anti-Palestine, pro-Confederacy, anti-Haitian Slave Revolt, anti-French Revolution, and against all violent liberatory movements, if we assume you to be morally consistent.

    • FreudianCafe@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Imagine if americans were as excited to shoot politicians as they get about shooting kids in school

  • Hegar@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    Estate taxes is woefully small. There should be a 100% death tax on all assets after $1M, excluding a single home.

    • 1rre
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      3 months ago

      All assets after $1M

      too bad that family run business is either going to be floated on the stock market to get destroyed by the stockholders wanting short term profit or mismanaged by the government I guess

      • Hegar@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        That’s a fairly easy specific to avoid in any detailed legislation.

        • 1rre
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          3 months ago

          and you’ve just created a loophole where assets can be transferred to a family business to avoid the tax

          • Hegar@fedia.io
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            3 months ago

            I haven’t just created a loophole, I’ve just created a single sentence. Tax legislation is more detailed than that.

            • andyburke@fedia.io
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              3 months ago

              Friends, since we aren’t politicians here, couldn’t we find a middle ground?

              Let’s make the limit $10M and maybe you could add a way where a business can elect to pay the tax over time rather than selling or being broken up.

              Point being - we need some way for people who have astronomically more than they’ll ever need to help out with so many others who are fighting for survival.

              Hard work and success should be rewarded, but only up to a point. As much as the US is indoctinated with the individualistic ideology, that isn’t reality and hasn’t been since… well, the start of human history.

      • Hegar@fedia.io
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        3 months ago

        I’m not sure I understand your point so if I’m off base let me know.

        Firstly, inheriting $200k - $1M doesn’t keep anyone poor. It doesn’t even stop wealth from concentrating at a level that harms others and warps society - it just prevents that level of wealth from passing down to people who did nothing.

        Secondly, if everyone was poor who would be controlling them? You have to keep most people poor and a much smaller group of people unassailably wealthy to control them. That’s exactly the problem that high death taxes address.

        • ryannathans@aussie.zone
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          3 months ago

          In my part of the world $1m (even for USD, add 40%)is not even enough to buy a small house. A million dollars is a FUCKLOAD of work but you can’t buy shit. At best you get a country shack with maintenance required, no insulation kind of thing, and no money left over.

          Maybe that adds some context.

          And is that $1m cap per person or for the whole estate? Either way people aren’t gonna interit anything that worthwhile

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Most have, increasingly so, they just lack strong orgs. As Imperialism decays, more will be forced to grapple with reality.

  • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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    3 months ago

    TBF taxes on billionaires would go under individual taxes. And corporate taxes are relatively easy to fudge because corporations aren’t real except on paper.

  • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    An astounding amount of our government goes towards taking care of old people, yet it still feels like there is basically no safety net for them.

  • Tofu_Lewis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    The poorest Americans are constantly fighting with the bureaucracy to get assistance, this is by design to make them hate it.

    Any addition to the expansion of the state will be met with hostility.

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    No matter how you tax there isn’t 300+ billion of income to find. Endless new debt isn’t sustainable.

    • sunbeam60@lemmy.one
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      3 months ago

      Endless US debt is fine, provided there keeps being interest in the US dollar as a reserve currency. The US national debt is simply the difference between money printed and money collected. As long as the US dollar “disappears” into the global economy (which it does), inflation is kept under check.