as social security and welfare are dismantled before our eyes (across both Dem and GOP administrations), homelessness will certainly rise especially among the elderly. i for one won't let my parents die in the street but caring for them full time means never having time or money to have children of my own.
capitalism has taken so much from us.
not to mention the millions of man hours wasted responding to all these contradictory instructions across every federal office - having meetings, writing memos, discussing communication plans, notifying private partners and businesses, travel cancellations, etc etc etc...
in other words, tens of millions of taxpayers dollars in LOST PRODUCTIVITY.... all because a petulant incompetent nazi oligarch thinks he knows better how the entire government should be run.
you do understand how circular and self defeating your analysis is, right?
you say the problem is not punishing greed. okay. let's follow your last sentence to it's logical conclusion.... how exactly (in today's corporate controlled society) would we punish greed? keeping in mind, greed at the level of corporations is inarguably the single most salient and damaging type of greed.
could the answer have anything to do with say, corporations?
you use the internet but nternet is where racists gather. curious.
checkmate.
not every single person of the ~90 million who didn't vote "abstained" based on some high horse principles. you obviously understand that.
political news addicted leftists are a miniscule percent of that 90M which means at most a couple hundred thousand leftists might have "protest voted".
why be angry (and still keep bringing up) the actions of that subset, when you could direct your anger at actual racists and bigots that voted Trump?
i understand that it's more sneeringly smugly self satisfying to scold the former group, but you have way more in common with that subset than with the latter, who actually deserves the most scorn/ridicule. why attack potential allies when a mutual enemy is at the gates?
we need to move on already. the Dems lost, we're all in this together now.
we ofc already have graduated tax brackets but it needs to be shifted upwards so that people making below a certain amount should pay zero Income taxes (I'm not talking about a wealth tax or carbon tax or VAT tax).
also, top marginal rates NEED TO BE INCREASED AGAIN. during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.
Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth
sorry but I think you're dead wrong. also, we have more than 2 options. we can choose to support the progressives who the DNC has been actively suppressing. that's a different conversation though.
supporting the DNC only happens when they start supporting The People. I'm old enough to have personally observed just how the national Democratic party operates and how corrupt, ineffectual, and apathetic they are when regular working class Americans need lasting structural changes. all the programs and progress they made has been undone with a half dozen supreme court nominations and a wave of a pen executive order.
they don't take adequate action and don't break rules to achieve goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand that sometimes obeying the rules (even in a democracy) is morally wrong. in a society rapidly spiraling towards fascism, they fail to recognize that "trust the system" actually means "just follow orders" and that's a very bad very dangerous thing.
it's not a group worthy of my support, not until they do better.
relevant links if you're at all interested in understanding my perspective better (or just follow my comments):
The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)
The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)
you're right, unfortunately, we live in a time when people won't take action until they either experience the consequences personally or they're pushed beyond a breaking point.
perpetual gradual harm reduction and backsliding is imperceptible and slow enough to be normalized. but sudden changes cannot be ignored and often radicalizes people in response (or at least forces them to 'take sides' in a battle).
one of the major challenges of liberatory movements is not enough people join the cause and instead wait things out. these so-called centrists and moderates only have this option because they have socioeconomic privilege compared the most oppressed groups.
therefore we must then consider strategies to capture their support, including shocking their sensibilities with outrage, or even potentially stoking fears that they could be next. "what if they close my alma mater too or what if my kids' college gets shutdown also?" etc etc
I have a different view. he had two bad choices available and he chose the worse one.
he and the establishment Dems (hehem, Biden) as well as turncoats like Lieberman/Sinema/Machin/Fetterman who were inexplicably allowed to caucus with the party) are precisely why we're here today watching the rise of fascism and oligarchy. from failing to seat a supreme court justice under Obama, sabotaging Bernie (twice), fielding awful presidential candidate after candidate, allowing the military to expand endlessly, not codifying Roe (and doing nothing in response to it's overturning), to censoring Al Motherfucking Green...
the entire "opposition party" looks weak and disorganized and incapable of fighting every time a crisis arises. the party needs more progressive leadership and they need to realize that sometimes it's appropriate to break a few rules and take risks on big power plays. and forward popular plans that will actually energize the base.
these 'play it safe' supposedly harm reducing tactics are why we're here today. they had 8 years since 2016 to come up with ways to combat trumpism and the best they could do, after flopping on the election and then peacefully handing over power to a sociopath and a nazi billionaire - was... write an op ed in the New York Times.
I'm done with this group of shit heads. there are better senators who should be in charge. we need people getting mad and breaking shit, not another patronizing speech about having patience until the next midterm.
birth rates might go up because times get harder and abortion is illegal... but childhood/infant deaths, deaths from preventable communicable disease, and deaths from exposure to occupational hazards and accidents will all go up
deregulation, dismantling EPA, FDA, NIOSH, medical and scientific research, education. and most importantly, reducing the federal workforce by a couple hundred thousand people who work directly on keeping Americans healthy and safe... is going to have consequences.
I suspect life is going to get much more brutal and short for the next couple generations, assuming we survive that long amidst climate multi crises and wars for resources that are increasingly more expensive to find and extract. so while some people might have a few more kids to work in the slave pits, the life expectancy declines among the 99% is going more than counter act it.
besides, the population growth in America is expected to go net negative by 2033 without sustained immigration, and is rapidly decelerating globally.