Over half of Americans claim they're nowhere near achieving their definition of financial freedom, with 36% saying they have less than $1,000 in their savings accounts.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn’t a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct “customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third” model to the “investors first, second, and only” rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen’s of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It’s a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of “efficient distribution,” got his “opposition” to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn’t reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven’t been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they’ll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren’t willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don’t see the will, we’re too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society’s many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
We could, it’s kind of the the Gene Roddenberry vision, use our burgeoning automation/robotics/AI to do the labor so that Humankind could pursue our passions for everyone’s benefit, but of course those technologies will be patented and used for the exclusive further profit of the non-laboring owner’s club at everyone else’s further expense, exploding our population of homeless peasants with nothing, and “our” government will continue to defend their ability to get away with it at gun point.
It’s like so many things. Human kind should have been united in celebration when we split the atom and harnessed it’s awesome energy generation, a warm light for all mankind, instead our first monkey ass impulse was to use it to incinerate a rival monkey tribe.
Humanity: Juuuust smart enough to be a belligerent threat to ourselves and others, yet too impulsive, short sighted, selfish, and stupid as a species to be anything more.
In the mid to late 1960s economists were predicting 20 hour work weeks and month-long vacations. So it was perfectly reasonable for Gene to imagine a future where nobody had to work.
It wasn’t a falsehood. It was stolen by Reagan and the owner class. Reagan gave away the store and shifted all societal power to the oligarchs, while corporate America, led by GE, shifted from the correct “customers first, employees (who were valued!) second, investors third” model to the “investors first, second, and only” rigged market profiteering dystopia we all suffer today.
The citizen’s of happiest developed nations of the world, not our gold plated cesspool to be clear, as a rule get months off a year, in addition to innumerable social supports. It’s a proven lie that this is how it has to be. This is just how the greediest/most sociopathic people want it to be, and since those traits are what our society rewards, and punishes their opposites, they have all the power.
I think it happened well before Reagan. The gap between productivity and earnings starts around 1971.
The play by the owners started well before Reagan. Reagan codified it into law in perpetuity, institutionalized funneling all the money to the owners under the lie of “efficient distribution,” got his “opposition” to take the bribe money en masse, our modern neoliberals, and basically got America to cheer for their own destruction in the decades to follow with his intentionally divisive and manipulative narrative.
Until Trump, Reagan was still the Republican mascot long after his death, that even Democrats claimed reverence for.
So what do we do about it? What’s the answer?
Long term, the only faint hope I see the Ranked Choice voting compact between states, some of which have passed in some states, but hasn’t reached critical mass yet. Unlike the Federal government, the oligarchs haven’t been able to fully or reliably capture all state governments.
If we keep being presented candidates from the only 2 relevant already purchased parties, there is no hope. Neoliberal Democrats and Fascist Republicans screech over social issues, but are largely the same on economic policy, ie give everything to the owner class and maybe they’ll piss on you one day herp derp.
The only other way this ends is overdue revolution, as even the framers admitted would be necessary at some point. The problem is, our people suffer, but they are also hopelessly addicted to opiates both literal and metaphorical: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc, and aren’t willing to risk losing those small comforts even to save their larger situation.
So either ranked choice voting or the eventual, inevitable painful collapse are the only 2 possible salvations. Revolution would be preferable to waiting possibly generations of suffering peope for collapse, but I don’t see the will, we’re too intentionally divided by our common enemy the oligarch owner class to see straight enough to agree they are our common enemy and the source of our failing society. Too many gullible Americans will blame a political party, or anyone who says something is wrong, or darkly hilariously homeless people and people with nothing, as if our society’s many, many victims have any power whatsoever.
Month long vacations? That’ll never work. Can you imagine if a developed country took several weeks off in the summer? No one could do that!
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Having magic machines that can make anything is the only way a communist utopia ever happens, so it’s not that amazing.
You know what the sad part is? When you tell people that’s exactly what we should be doing, exploring space, etc, they get mad at you and demand you tell them how pursuing anything more meaningful than throwing shit at their enemies benefits them. How it pays their bills. How it pays their rent.
That’s why we can never truly go anywhere.