this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2025
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Over a decade ago, Obama proposed significantly expanding AmeriCorps, the tea party Republicans basically did everything they could to water down the expansion to amount to basically nothing.
I wonder if Twitter Republicans even know AmeriCorps exists...
Anyway, what we should actually do is mandate that everyone who earns double area median income for 3 years in a 5 year period has to spend 6 months working in a call center, retail, customer service, fast food.
Stop demonizing your neighbor. Demonize the 1%.
That income range still very much encompasses “normal” people who already pay a large share of income taxes.
Tax the super rich (both income and wealth), and redistribute that money via healthcare, education and social programs like UBI.
Even more than the 1%, the 0.0001%. An excellent resource to illustrate this point:
Wealth Shown to Scale
I feel like everyone should go through this at least once. It’s eye-opening. Even people who we generally think of as crazy rich, like the average hedge fund manager, are just a drop of water in a pond compared to the ultra-wealthy.
I made it to the trillions but I clicked the paper billionair link and then had to restart. Fuck that haha
From there it just talks about a lot of things we could do with a fraction of the wealth of the wealthiest 400 Americans. Things like ending homelessness in America, ending malaria worldwide, and many others. By mildly inconveniencing 400 people, who would still all be absurdly wealthy billionaires even if 60% of their wealth were taken, we could dramatically improve the world.
To be fair, we can't get to higher taxes and social services without both mass labor organization and recent successful Socialist revolution, which is what allowed the New Deal to go through. Socialism is still a necessity, and that starts with organizing.
Yeah people don't get this. Many of those people may agree with you and were simply lucky enough to get comfortable in life. They are certainly not the main contributors to inequality in our society.
I like to say it like this: I’m doing alright, but not “able to weather serious healthcare in America” alright. I think that’s a decent way to lessen the confusion of class divide.