We view the late 40s through the 70s as a golden age for the American middle class. People raising families off a single income. Yearly vacations. Affordable higher education.
Know why?
We taxed the ever-loving fuck out of the wealthy back then.
Then the wealthy bought the politicians and stopped that from happening.
And now we’re all sad.
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
Is absurd that we essentially have a regressive income tax. I also wouldn’t ignore the global environment during that period.
During those decades, the US was effectively the only industrialized nation in the world. Everyone else either never had factories to begin with, or had smoldering piles of rubble where their factories used to be.
I found it astonishing that there isn’t even a 0% tax bracket anymore federally. It starts at 10% when you make your first fucking dollar. We’ve gone batshit backwards in this country to the point where we’re trying to get every last dime from poor people so we can almost afford to have buy-borrow-die oligarchs that never pay a penny in federal taxes.
Technically the standard deduction is the zero tax bracket.
Yep understood but there’s a reason they made the switch and that reason is so they can keep the shit they took out of checks of those who don’t file.
I’m sure they did the math on it, they’re sneaky assholes through and through.
Sales tax as well as VAT are also, by design, regressive taxes.
We turned the planet into a human labour farm.
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
👏
Fuck everyone who voted for hillary clinton in the 2016 primary.
We need to point many fingers at them and give them the blame they so rightfully deserve.
It’s their fault, and they need to be reminded of it constantly.
There’s plenty of Kamala supporters that don’t see her as just a Hillary 2.0, democrats and MAGA both agree not to go after the rich people robbing them blind.
The pay gap between CEO and ordinary worker was the smallest back there, not because the taxes, there were less taxes back then, but because those CEO were decent people, not predatory like right now. Todays C-Suite are predatory people, they’re not humans, they’re money machines that need every penny. There should be law that don’t allow pay gap between CEO and ordinary worker to be greater than 100k USD or any other currency in other countries. Those who pursue luxury would say that’s very low. Yes it’s very low because everyone who works in successfull company deserve success. Not only small group on top. That is main difference between companies from 40s and 70s and companies right now.
Nah
Don’t vote for anyone, got it
It gets my vote!
DO. NOT. VOTE. FOR. ANYONE. THAT. DOESN’T. RUN. ON. TAXING. THE. WEALTHY. MORE.
Another liberal telling us to vote for Kamala just because her tax plan looks nice. Disgusting.
Comrade, the present situation ain’t bringing us closer to socialism.
Hello dumb shit or rich person. STFU
Uhh, Kamala didn’t run on a platform of taxing the wealthy either, that would break the contract she has with her corporate sponsors.
https://apps.urban.org/features/2024-candidates-tax-policy/
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party nominee, has proposed several policies that build on President Joe Biden’s recent budget plans. These include higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations and more generous tax breaks for lower-income workers, families, and small businesses.
https://itep.org/a-distributional-analysis-of-kamala-harris-tax-plan/
Taken together, the tax changes proposed by Vice President Kamala Harris would raise taxes on the richest 1 percent of Americans while cutting taxes on all other income groups.
If these proposals were in effect in 2026, the richest 1 percent of Americans would receive an average tax increase equal to 4.1 percent of their income. Other income groups would receive tax cuts, including an average tax cut equal to 2.7 percent of income for the middle fifth of Americans and an average tax cut equal to 7 percent of income for the poorest fifth of Americans.
Regardless of all of this data, Kamala is still a filthy liberal and you shouldn’t vote for her.
No shit, we’re being taken over by literal nazis. This place sucks.
Democrats need to stop being controlled opposition to nazis.
They need to start being the good guys. We need to stop voting for people like hillary clinton and joe biden in primaries.\
Shame everyone who has supported either candidate in the primary.
Almost zero chance of buying a home or affording rent. Prices going out of control on almost everything. A Nazi in the White House and social media so toxic it melts your mind. The beatings will continue until morale improves. What a terrible place we have created for the next generation.
Also your minimum wage is shit for a “first” world country. $7.25?
The US hasnt been in first place at much of anything for a long time.
Minimum wage is a joke. It only exists so corporations can say they’re not paying you minimum wage.
It’s actually quite funny, and sad. This generation sucks so bad. Too many punk-ass bitches just trying to look good in front of their peers and afraid of conflict at all costs.
War or bust in my opinion. Those pigs need to be fed waste. Grab the giullotines.
It pisses me off so much because the goddamn problem is RIGHT IN FRONT of everyone’s eyes and yet so much energy is spent on bullshitting the masses…I want off this ride
Is it that clear? What is the problem and what would be your aproach to a solution?
The problem is the entrenchment of authoritarian techno-feudalism combined with the hubris of “might makes right”. The solution is wildcat strikes.
I’d say the solution is a cultural shift.
We need to value different things.
- Stop thinking those who have more deserve more (shut up, most of you do it.)
- Stop thinking those who have less deserve less.
- Stop thinking products are priced according to what they cost to bring to market. They are priced according to what our dumbasses are willing to pay.
- Stop spending money on things you can be getting for free.
- Stop praising people for what they spend their money on.
- Stop expecting praise for what you spend your money on.
- Start praising people for what they do, not what they buy (notice there’s a lot less praise to go around now.)
- Value modesty. Consume less. Spend less. Do more.
Pretty much all the hippie-psychedelic counterculture that was snuffed out in the 80s was correct. Grow your hair out, guys. You’ve been conditioned to keep it short, and it looks like shit.
I think you may be correct in the sense that a great cultural change needs to occur for people to even contemplate that a wildcat strike as an option exists and is viable in halting the mechanisms of oppression/repression.
Fuck this shithole of a country and fuck the wealthy in my parents generation who threw away my future. Damn right young people are miserable.
I will never forgive the Baby Boomers for gleefully throwing every successive generation off a cliff while Boomers failed upwards through life.
yeah, people always come at me with “don’t blame generations, it is a distraction meant to divide us and besides there are plenty of older people who got screwed too”…
…and yes, this is vitally important to recognize, especially as a leftist that at least claims to be focused on building solidarity and refocusing the conversation on wealth inequality…
…however damn, if you meet wealthy baby-boomers or even “temporarily embarassed” wealthy baby-boomers who aren’t even rich just made it more than their peers… it makes it DAMN HARD not to hate baby-boomers sometimes.
This isn’t a generational thing, this isn’t even new, but the shear AMOUNT of narcissistic completely ideologically lobotomized wealthy baby-boomers there are actively strangling their kids futures in the US is fucking disgusting and it makes it hard not to hate the whole fucking generation.
I don’t, there are plenty of good people in the baby-boomer generation, but baby-boomers dont make it easy not to hate their fucking guts sometimes like holy shit.
I disagree. I think it IS a generational thing.
It is only ok to think of it this way though if you immediately qualify that with it is a problem with a specific subsection of a generation within colonial powers who are or believe they are middle-class, upper-middle class or wealthy.
I guess that can seem like a pedantic qualification, but it actually isn’t because all of the energy in people’s agitation just siphons off into hating old people from a perspective that doesn’t illuminate anything, and it REALLY isolates older people who weren’t included in that collective selfish foreclosure of our future. All the seniors who are forced to work, living in poverty or alone. Even if they have shitty politics, when we just talk about it as a generational problem we deny their agency and potential as individual human beings.
We also feed into an unspoken centering of the experience of people in colonial powers and ignore the colonized who have been excluded categorically.
At the same time I also bristle when people get upset at people exclaiming shit like “gahh man, fuck boomers” without an acknolwedgement that… yeah I mean fuck boomers kinda…
It is like if someone says “fuck men” in exasperation nearby me, yeah well I am a man and in my heart I try to be a good person and I know there are good men who are loving and mature… but like… I join in with the vibes because I know they aren’t talking about me (or if they are maybe I need to take a step back, breathe, and listen?). I don’t say “not all men!!!” and I think there is a tiny bit of that in the response people have to shutting down people exasperated with boomers because the truth is complicated.
TL;DR Vent, be wary of people who snap at you the moment you vent about something understandable, but also be wary of narratives simplifying to a hurtful point
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny. It’s like you’re a fresh faced college kid who just learned a New Thing and it blew your mind so now you have to talk about it all the time.
Ok there’s a point when you get so obsessed about shoving colonialism into EVERY conversation it just gets funny.
aw thank you, that is a very sincere compliment, as cynical as I can be sometimes it feels good to know I haven’t lost a youthful perspective : )
Does Britannia, when she sleeps, dream? Is America her dream?-- in which all that cannot pass in the metropolitan Wakefulness is allow’d Expression away in the restless Slumber of these Provinces, and on West-ward, wherever 'tis not yet mapp’d, nor written down, nor ever, by the majority of Mankind, seen,-- serving as a very Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes, for all that may yet be true,-- Earthly Paradise, Fountain of Youth, Realms of Prester John, Christ’s Kingdom, ever behind the sunset, safe til the next Territory to the West be seen and recorded, measur’d and tied in, back into the Net-Work of Points already known, that slowly triangulates its Way into the Continent, changing all from subjunctive to declarative, reducing Possibilities to Simplicities that serve the ends of Governments,-- winning away from the realm of the Sacred, its Borderlands one by one, and assuming them unto the bare mortal World that is our home, and our Despair.
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dude…americans OVER 30 are miserable too
It is normal for older people to be jaded. Having the young, idealistic age start out life jaded and miserable really drags the average down.
It is normal for older people to be jaded
google “is ought”
Why?
What’s “is ought” bro? You can’t just say random stuff and expect us to finish your thought, elucidate.
I have literally no clue how it applies to this but there is an is ought fallacy that because something is the way it is that is the way it is supposed to be.
Doesn’t apply here though because no one said that old people are supposed to be jaded just that they are a lot of the time.
Not just under 30. My husband is disabled and if ACA or VA benefits get cut he will die. Horribly but slowly, in our house where I will have to take care of him until the end. And pray we still have enough of a functioning society to bury him when the time comes. How I am supposed to feel anything other than horror and dread for the future!?
I’m sorry. I wish I could continue paying to keep your husband alive. It’s what a fellow countrymen would do. But half of our electorate is filled with sociopaths.
Fuck this place.
I’m 41 and I’ve been miserable since elementary school.
Its me, hi, im the problem it’s me
I think you should identify as a problem instead of identifying as the problem if possible. The former attitude has more ‘spunk’ as the yanks say.
“but look how much technology you’ve gotten to see as it evolved every 3 years.”
Tech can fuck off. All these technological advances have served some Capitalist at the expense of imploding the middle class, or distracting the masses with some shiny bauble while shareholders extort more flesh each quarter.
If tech advances don’t create a rising tide, they’re just a tool for exploitation.
Are you me?
Could be, we’re are these voices coming from?
anyone paying attention in the US should be
this country has been fucked since at least 9/11 and citizens united
so starting collegish for you but all the younger generations
Definitely, I remember being a senior in high school the day 9/11 happened and even then I felt that the world was going to change and not change for the better.
Checking in with the chorus of over 30s that basically don’t expect good things to happen again.
Well over 30.
I’m 95% certain our quality of life is going to degrade for the remainder of our lives in this country.
I’m not even going out of my way to be pessimistic. I’ve been alive for a while now and all the signs point to this being our future.
And it was all easily avoidable with even just a little common sense and critical thinking skills from average Americans.
Needless to say, I’m not really a fan of humans anymore. We’re pretty stupid animals.
You nailed it with your username.
(I also hate that I agree with everything you said. It’s so hard to be hopeful these days.)
The other day, I did some quick math to figure out what my family of five driving four cars across the country would look like. Several days and probably upwards of $5000 in fuel, if we can find it, and if cash is worth anything. I have a motorcycle that I would sell to fund part of that, and I’ve already decided which of the four cars would be first to sell on the road.
I am fully expecting things to escalate to the point where any time we have to leave the house to get groceries, fuel, medicine, two people will be required. One to do the shopping, the other to be an armed guard.
This chapter in American history is about as fucked up as it’s been in living memory, and we have a very long way to go yet.
Yeah that about sums up how I view the rest of my life playing out.
Only good thing that happened in awhile was the united healthcare CEO getting what was coming to him.
We need more rich people to suffer the same fate if we ever want things to change. Arguing isn’t going to work because they control the discussion.
Keep in mind, rich people kill poor people every day. Directly, and indirectly. Someone died in a robbery because a poor person was chasing that rich lifestyle? Blame the ruling class. Someone committed suicide because they have no prospects in life other than serving in dead-end jobs? Blame the ruling class. Somebody shot up a school because they have no prospects in life other than serving in dead-end jobs? Blame the ruling class.
Why don’t we have the resources to build and repair communities? Because any excesses we have go to the ruling class, not the people who actually need it.
It’s fucked. I genuinely hope we have mass executions for the ruling class and their children at this point if they do not willingly give over their wealth.
It would be a small price to pay for all the damage they’ve done over generations that will take generations to fix.
Those of us in our mid-50s aren’t exactly happy either right now.
You still at least had the option to buy a house. But yeah I get it.
Oh and it isn’t like Americans over 30 are any happier?
I’m here to assure you that we’re not. The only ones who are happy are boomers who lucked into an impossibly good economy that will never return. They amassed wealth and think it’s because they worked hard while in conditions that only existed because multiple economies were destroyed by war while USA was untouched. And now they continue to hoard power in government and refuse to let younger generations have a seat at the table. Fuck them.
TIL I’m under 30
38 and not doing great.
Boomers maybe?
Most boomers are miserable even if their purported political desires have dominated elections for forty years mostly uninterrupted.
How sad, so much winning and not happy.
What they were hoping for: Their voted party to make things miserable for their enemies and for them to benefit since they voted.
Reality: Their voted party is going around dismantling, liquidating and destroying safety nets that said voters rely on. Everyone is screwed.
Not bright thinking, not bright.
I’m European, and I get miserable reading about the USA.
It’s also quite telling that I see so many American expats here nowadays. It used to be quite rare, usually if you met an American living here they would be either working for an American company, or have a relationship with a local.
Now, I’m just meeting a lot of super talented and smart Americans who took a major paycut just to not live in the US anymore.
Seeing alot of (for good reason) depressed folks here. I think we need to build community, in real life or online if there’s no other way.
Or we can just emigrate to a better country. I’m going back to Korea after I save some more money at $job
If you have the means to, sure go for it. In the end I think you’ll need some form of community as well in any new country you go to.
In just 3 months the US became a developing country. That must be a record.
Developing? Is it?
Undeveloping? Regressing? Devolving?
Regressive sounds right, the opposite of progress is regress. The republican party is the regressive party.
Wouldn’t it be funny if that broken spirit is by intention because the possibilities of the internet are big enough that a motivated youth could change everything?
I mean, they would have to value different things if they want things to change.
For some reason, this generation is proud to be a follower rather than a leader.
It’s like they enjoy being foot-soldiers of the people who keep them in their destitute positions. Rather than fight the ruling class, they envy them.
I love your perspective.
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