Sinema officially did a flip to Independent, I wouldn’t be surprised if Fetterman does the same. All the more reason to primary corporate aligned incumbents and vote progressives in though; which currently occupy less than five seats officially in the Senate and about 100 seats in the House.
Hear me out, they could just offer a non-profit insurance option through the state; this would make private companies need to be offering better benefits to consumers to stay competitive. There is no need to remove baseline benefits for people at all.
Wow that changes a lot about the title.
Taking it at face value you’d walk away thinking this is the dominant attitude in most of the western world, when that’s not the takeaway at all. A title like that just makes most men and women think their country is more conservative than previously thought. Talk about not helping young people that have more balanced views.
This isn’t an issue of Lemmy itself, but I realized after I made the switch that I personally am a bit burnt-out from the Reddit model in general at this exact moment.
I’m using other Fedi apps more at this moment in time. I’ll probably be more active later in the year, but it’s a nice little break being on the smaller Fediverse apps where things are a bit more personal with the people I’m interacting with, which has been fun for me.
I think Lemmy/Piefed will grow to get more Reddit sized with time. Personally, I get like 10x the engagement on comments and posts here than I ever did on Reddit, which to me makes it much more joyful to be around.
Corporate Dems care enough that you’re not starving, but not enough so that you’re not living out of your car or relying on the government for some of your needs. Many of the Corporate Dems probably do care to an extent, but green is what matters most to many so if you have a pulse it’s okay!
Really it’s corporate Democrats trying to court corporate donors. It has close to nothing to do with this being the policy to win over voters. Imo, it’s why the corporate Dems need to be primaried out by progressives.
A corporate Dem is still a marginally better than having Republicans in office, only because they’re focused on personal greed rather than personally causing the pain.
Fast food likely would have been fine… if wages increased as much as the prices did.
The fact that the minimum wage doesn’t increase every year, yet prices do, meant that this was always going to be a recipe for disaster.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they do, more people might call them out if they over promise and don’t deliver when they have the votes to though.
If tariffs keep hitting people for another 3+ years, I feel that people are going to start demanding progressive legislation. These rich corporate types can skirt by when the average person is not actively in debt, but when people aren’t able to afford to own a home, start a family, retire, or even just buy a car then shit is hitting the fan.
I’ll take it. This means that the progressive side of the party is starting to cause enough ripples to sway even the most pro-corporate side. It could mean that the corporate Dems are willing to listen more to their voters rather than the corporate donors as well.
I disagree that you can’t have those reforms be done that way. I agree with you that the changes are not in-line with unchecked capitalism, but the whole concept of the “invisible hand” is just for show anyways.
To give some accessible examples; you can’t house homeless people or give people healthcare and higher education because homelessness and debt is a whip to keep the workers working for whatever wage and conditions are offered by a capital owner.
Corporations and bought politicians may try to prevent the help from trickling down, but help can actually reach people in areas that care about helping more than just extracting wealth.
I think the problem is that issues are pretty complex and always involve money being spent to address or fix the problems. The core issue is people have been hesitant to individually fund the solutions since it’s easier to spread the costs out among everyone (e.g., individual states understandably didn’t want to bear the burden alone and wanted the federal government to bear the costs). At this point in time though, that looks to be not an option blue states can count on anymore. Blue States need to individually fund these programs to help people in their state, and only afterwards could those help options scale to help people federally.
You can’t deconstruct racism because it was invented in the first place to keep the working class at war with itself rather than struggling against the conditions set by the ruling class.
I agree with you that racism isn’t something that will go away any time soon unfortunately. I believe social media has only made issues worse regarding this with all the bots and bad actors trying to stoke some people’s racism and hatred.
If those people have something/someone else they can blame for their problems then it’s another way of getting around people’s racial biases. Bernie Sanders for instance has been having success recently among people living in rural West Virginia to direct their frustration towards the billionaires causing their problems rather than towards working-class people.
You can’t stop imperialism because infinite growth requires infinite and unrestricted expansion into new territories.
The big corporations are more or less starting to hit that wall now where they can’t really expand too much more. Foreign markets have become more and more saturated with existing businesses which make it harder for these conglomerates to get a foothold. They’ve been underpaying about as much as they can get away with and cost cutting about as much as they can as well. They’ve big corporations have more or less sent themselves into a downward spiral where pretty soon no one is going to be able to afford their garbage. When a majority of people’s income is going forward their bare necessities rather than on things they want it doesn’t bode well for the corporations who have nothing left to fleece away.
The system of capitalism manufactures its own required conditions through cruelty and social inequality (and yet, it’s these very things that lead to resistance), and without those necessary components the whole system collapses. The ruling class will not allow this to happen, because this system serves their material interests, and thus fundamental change cannot happen until the working class; whose material interests are directly opposed to those of the ruling class; is in power.
The billionaires and big corporations have gotten a bit too greedy lately, the bubble they created where people are just comfortable enough not to care about how rich these people are is very close to popping. The fact that working class people can’t even afford to buy a home is a bad sign for these corporations, just where are they expecting working class people to have families after all?
The interests of working class people to have their needs met is growing by the day. If inflation keeps soaring as we have seen, then progressive change is going to be demanded from our representatives. I believe Blue states should be the focus for that since any corporate politician paying lip service can be primaried with an actual progressive willing to fund programs to help people.
The ruling class will pay lip service and the occasional half-measure in order to obscure this reality and make “reformism” seem possible, but 1) that is all they will do especially in the absence of a real threat to their power and 2) they will always eventually claw back even the smallest and hardest-fought of crumbs. Crumbs are good and all but there comes a point where our energy is better spent fighting for the whole cake.
The game is close to being up for the corporate leaders where they actually will need to do their jobs; people are needing these programs now more than ever since wages have not kept up with inflation. The demand is they either help their constituents or they lose their jobs at this point. They can try to push things back and try to keep getting their donor money, but people have caught on. The cake can be owned if we primary any Blue state congressperson that isn’t willing to pass progressive programs. If we wanted to make it even easier to primary people, then we could also vote in an alternative voting system in Blue states.
Oh it definitely is, mostly because they will finally have to be responsible adults and help their communities. The establishment Dems have close to no choice now but to enact the changes in their states.
They’re all getting close to losing their seats one way or another. Young people are getting fed up with the empty promises, especially when they don’t have the same opportunities as their parents. Either they help pass progressive programs or they are going to be primaried. If we’re struggling to vote out incumbents, then we can try to get an alternative voting system passed in our respective blue states to safely vote them out.
I mean progressive change is possible at the state level. With the hope of passing progressive change Federally getting pushed back, the focus can be solely on getting those progressive programs passed at the state level. Blue states can even go into debt to fund these programs. If other states see how successful those programs are then people may want to replicate them in their own states.
Imo part of the reason Democrats have struggled so much is because there has been no delivery of the product they are pushing for. People have been checking out since it’s just more of the same crap. Which was great for the corporate Dems/Republicans who were making bank this whole time, but not the rest of us.
The pendulum is not swinging back if young people don’t have hope. Right now, hope among young people is the lowest that it has been. If they have real progressive programs that help them have a roof over their heads, food on the table, and the ability to plan for their future then I’m sure we will see the pendulum swing back.
I wouldn’t say those three things are inherently logically incompatible, but there would be a lot of grey areas.
The power structure of the federal government doesn’t make it any easier to actually exercise the federal government to accomplish helpful objectives, but making things worse is a relatively easy exercise.
The focus on state level politics seems much more meaningful to actually accomplish any goals, since at least there is not as big of a hurdle where land and money have more power/representation than real people.
Ffs man, the prices are out of control for concerts. Live Nation needs to have their monopoly broken up.
For the record, I said several authoritarians, I didn’t say every one was one. I would say your reading of my comment was uncharitable at best and rude at worst.
I’m not convinced the most extreme comments you see online seeking to split up leftists are in good faith. It’s relatively easy for people committing espionage to pretend to be leftists, push their agenda, and then seek to divide and conquer.
I’m not saying there aren’t real people out there saying these things, but I do believe many of them have bought the narrative of bad faith actors that were disguised among them.
The same exact thing happens on the right, but it’s more so just spamming their bad faith rhetoric with bots in their case. Since their goal is just to convince the least checked-in person to disengage or believe their side a bit more by seeing their side first.
The frame is mostly enforced by top donors and the ones that do not want to rock the status quo, namely the Baby Boomers in Congress that are still benefiting from the current status quo.
That’s not to say Democrats wouldn’t fix some or many of the problems, but the very structure of the Federal Government makes positive change a big task. The fact that about half the states have been sold on a lie by the Republican Party contributes greatly to the problem. Republicans can say government doesn’t work, then when they get in office they actually break the institutions. They then point at those institutions they broke and say “See it’s busted!” as they actively had a hand in defunding the system.
Really, I feel the Democratic Party within blue states need to step up and implement the federal positive change they sought, but at the state and local levels instead. The only way Blue states will convince Red states to change at this point is by showing how their progressive policies work for them, and will in-turn work for us.
Namely, Blue states need to be tackling the housing crisis, creating well paying government jobs, investing in healthcare for all programs, providing more public housing options by potentially buying up private apartments, breaking up big monopolies, buy out the energy utilities to provide energy not-for-profit/actually implement energy system upgrades, and even implementing a statewide Universal Basic Income program.
I agree, having that and high taxes on the wealthy were part of the reason the US had such high levels of prosperity for the average citizen back in the olden days. The whole country should be getting connected via high speed rails, I feel. It would open up jobs for people living in more rural areas as well.
The fix is multifaceted I feel, everything you said is spot on for the issues.
I feel a fix requires Universal Basic Income and Housing, along with mental health support. A minimum level of support would at least help a lot of these people to be able to get off the ground or at least live with a modicum of dignity.
Universal Healthcare would help at least with health issues that people out on the streets face.
Both likes and dislikes, imo. Bad actors and their bots can make it appear as though their stance is a widely held belief, they can dog pile dissidents, they often attack a straw-person for a point you never made to pull others against you and derail the conversation, etc.
With user level tools at your disposal, such as on BlueSky, you can at least coordinate a response to flag potential bad actors and even have the options to mute/block them by default. If your account were to be hacked and publishing disruptive content which was not something you would post, then your account could end up on these mute/block lists and you’d need to communicate the issue with the individuals that maintain these mute/block lists.