I kinda agree, but the problem is not that there are no ways to improve the situation and that people want to improve it but are waiting for some genius idea on how to do it in terms of technical fixes.
Reich and others have been writing a lot about potential solutions for years (in various areas such as campaign financing, tax law, “consumer” rights, regulation of lobbying, industry monopolies and so on).
The problem is not the identifcation of fixes for these immediate problems. The problem is that nobody in power wants a fix because they would lose power, influence and money. So the real fixes have to be on a higher level for these meta-level problems - how do we fix things that are purposefully locked by people and networks with a lot of political, economic and media-related power. It’s possible that solutions on this level have to be vague and/or unrealistic until some form of tipping point is reached and things start to change because something, somewhere started to shift.
We know that the GOP does not give 2 shits about the people outside the 0.01%. It’s been the case forever. Everything they ever do is to syphon the money up and pillage the masses.
Just yesterday, it was mentioned that Amazon will get over $600 millions in money back from the tariffs that their customers were forced to pay. Since that aligns with their lobbyists/donors perfectly, the corporations do the happy dance and get all the laws they want changed in their favor. Meanwhile, the population gets even more fucked.
When in power, the Democrats are too chickenshit to do anything to limit how the power was and will be abused by the GOP when they were in power and the moment they regain power. They are also in the pockets of all the most powerful corporate lobbies that exist (pharma, tech, war/guns, retail, etc.) but make it less evident by being not as ruthless because they haven’t entirely forgotten they’re supposed to serve the people, not annihilate them.
There are amazing people that are trying to move things - AOC, Mamdani, Sanders. The result? Their own party shits on them, robs them of a final election to put Clinton instead (in the case of Sanders), and do all kinds of nasty stuff to make sure they don’t get elected vs their chosen “centrist” that no elector actually wants.
Life is not a movie where a magic event or person will fix things. The closest could have been Obama if he hadn’t been constantly stifled by O’Connell and the GOP who spent all their time blocking everything positive he was trying to do. How many times did the GOP-led Congress vote to repeal the ACA and failed, instead of doing anything of value? Last I read, it was something like 57 times.
It is a long, never-ending grind to change things and, most importantly, mentalities. People like Reich are essential in waking up the masses, by pointing out all the disfunctions and unacceptable things that are happening while you’re not looking.
You want fixes?
#1:End Citizens United
#2; End the Electoral College: EVERY.SINGLE.VOTE counts as 1. This is the end of BS gerrymandering and elections stolen on the basis of states that are forever one-color states and dodgy swing states that can be manipulated more easily to go one way.
#3:No more 2-party split. Allow for other perspectives, as is the case in Europe.
How do we make that happen? That’s the one billion dollar question.
Voting out old shits that shouldn’t be in power in all local and regional elections is a good start. Mamdani has done more good in 6 months than any other politicians in years or decades.
This was the original vision of the country. I’ve written about this elsewhere, but go back and read George Washington’s farewell address - the only president to not be affiliated with a party. He said in 1800 that we shouldn’t get into political parties, that elections should be based on merit and character. 226 years ago, he called that shit. I agree here. The issue is you have multiple industries built around 2 parties now. I honestly feel like the GOP is on the ropes at this point. I registered Republican in 2012. I do not recognize the party less than 15 years later. I am ashamed to stand with them. And I am absolutely not the only one who feels this way. I want a party for smaller, more efficient government. What I have is a party that rips out functioning parts of the government to make way for people and corporations with favorable political ties and does nothing to ensure that the society it leaves behind can continue to function.
I voted democrat in local elections for the first time this year, and I will almost certainly be doing so in the midterms as well. When it gets to 2028, we’ll see. Frankly neither party has brought me a candidate that I didn’t feel was an offense to this country since 2012. I feel that both parties don’t really give a shit about what they stand for and will just put whoever they can in office to get elected and be in power. Not really what a party is supposed to do, but that’s what they’ve decided. All that said, I think the democrats are in a superior position as a party to republicans on the outside looking in. I feel like Trump has put so many cronies into the party that it will never go back to being what I want. I may register independent, honestly. And again, there’s a lot of us who feel that way. Enough people leave and instead of having a coherent opposition to the Dems you have two half-sized oppositions that can’t get their votes together to oppose team blue. It’s happened before, the Republican party is the 3rd incarnation of the US right wing party. There was an entire decade in the 1820s where the US only had one party. The Democrats have existed for as long as we had parties in the US, the Republicans started with the Civil war (with Lincoln if you can believe it, he was the first republican and it was the democrat states that seceded and formed the Confederacy - not that I think any of this has any bearing on how the parties are today just fun facts).
My sincere hope at this point is the Republican party disbands and is replaced by a more sensible, less extreme right wing alternative. Or the breakup of the GOP also leads the dems to split into a more and less radical party and then we have 4 parties instead of 2. My guess is when Social Security has to be defunded in 2032 because it runs out of money then some things are going to get shuffled politically because it will be suicide for whatever party is in power when that button gets pressed.
As according to Kanye..and the poop cruise Netflix documentary…
The poop cruise Netflix documentary was shitty…I cant believe I actually watched that shit. Just goes to show people will watch whatever kind of shit…for shits sake.
I knew that shifting age structures put a lot of stress on social security in all industrialized societies (as a leftie, my main solution for that would be trying to fix it with taxing the gains at the top, but I know that it’s not gonna happen that easily and that we should debate this a lot deeper than my $0.02 thoughts and that I don’t have time for doing any research on it atm), but I didn’t know that it is really that bad already in the US.
As a general note, not that things aren’t going to shi*t fast in Germany, too, btw. If I shared what some of my friends here in Europe describe and expect for the next few years it could be it’s own enshitification thread for sure.
I have to share a concept and maybe video (if he translates it to English) from a friend who is working on community-driven ways to find solutions to problems at some point, but it’s not public yet. It’s basically about people taking up different roles in a ritualistic discussion of problems, like personifying different aspects of society. It sounds crazy but I really liked the idea. Although the same problems noted with regard to existing technical fixes apply in this context, too, sadly…
Yeah, I think I make it sound worse than it is. What really is going to happen is that benefits will no longer go up with inflation. Basically, the money in the account is not earning enough to grow as fast as the drawdowns are growing, and 2032/2033 will be the tipping point where automatic increases shut off to protect the principal so that it doesn’t get eaten up to prevent future generations from being able to collect. Unless some laws get quietly changed between now and then. From there it’s another 30-ish years of no change before we are like OUT of money.
I agree with higher taxation on wealth, though that comes with a lot of practical realities that make it difficult. Our tax code is written to tax income and not assets for a reason - assets are difficult to value. Income is easy, how much did you get paid this year? How much an estate is worth… more tricky. Easy enough if you own all publicly traded liquid assets and cash. But if you own any significant amount of… art. Well, we don’t really know what a painting is worth at any given time. We know what it sold for last time it was at auction. We might know what similar pieces from the same artist or similar artists are doing at auction. But if the last time that painting changed hands was 40 years ago, do we just tax that? What if it went to market and sold for less than previously? Do the owners get to write down that asset? Do they get money back on previously paid taxes that assumed a higher value? At what point do they if so? This has to be done for everything in an estate, every year. Most of the wealthiest people don’t own publicly traded stocks/bonds, they own small/medium size businesses that have to be valued more like art than like a stock. What exactly is the family dentist office down the street worth? The hairdresser downtown? Or even Open AI? We know what the last round of funding valued it at, but that may not reflect it’s value today in a market moving as fast as the AI field.
That said, I don’t think all this stuff is an excuse to not TRY. It won’t be easy, but clearly the current tax system favors asset owners over wage earners pretty heavily. I think that’s not really fair by itself (encourages passing down assets rather than selling them and recognizing a gain (income) leading to generational wealth), and our estate tax which is supposed to keep generational wealth in check has been absolutely neutered by Trump for the last decade. Seriously, you have to have an estate worth almost $30 million ($15 million if single) before you will pay a penny of estate tax if you die in the US. It impacts something like .04% of all estates. But basically everyone who owns a home is over the prep threshold and has to prepare a 30 page return to show that. What a joke.
Thanks @White_Noise! You raise many great points. It’s always very insightful to hear your perspective on things. (I might add some thoughts next week when I hopefully have some more time.)
The search for utopia always ends in utter disappointment. its how we make due with what we have that defines us as humans. Often, that fails. We’re inherently flawed as beings and well, we just cope with that shit until we can’t.
Yeah, but I’m not completely giving up hope that improvements are possible. How much we can improve - future generations have to find out if humanity survives. I’ve probably watched too much Star Trek as a kid though
If I remember well, the federation of planets only started after close to total annihilation of the planets in the galaxy and they figured out that the only way forward was peace.
I do believe we’re headed towards something like this. I have no doubt there will be a WW3. If there remains a livable planet afterwards, the survivors will hopefully have learned something.
I remember some TNG and DS9 time travel and Q episodes about the history of humanity with horrible conditions, so it might still all be going according to Roddenberry’s plan
