No, no, no; if you work really hard and really apply yourself, you too can become a titan of industry and make your billions of dollars. If you aren't at least a millionaire, it's because you are just too dumb and lazy to succeed. Go back to school, work longer hours, read more books, get better ideas. In the meantime, I'm hungry, flip my burger faster, and what do you mean you want more than $7.25/hour, it's not like this is a real job.
Look the law is the law and police have to enforce the law. Except for their friends and family or city officials. Or if they just don't feel like enforcing the law. But other than that the law is the law!
No, she's from the generation that did buy diamonds, and this is how they treated her. She could've afforded rent if she hadn't wasted all her money on stupid shiny rocks. This is why we're smart for not doing that. /s
This is just how dismissive and callous it is when similar things are said about millennials and zoomers. I feel bad for her. I'd rather be dead than homeless after like 60 years old. At 93, she literally couldn't survive a week on the streets, and that suits the capitalists just fine since she's just a net negative number on their spreadsheet, and their entire goal is to maximize that number.
Among the countries you could have picked, I could not think of one that better supports the idea that capitalism is terrorism the way Cuba has been harrassed for decades for essentially doing some pragmatic reforms - to the point they were forced to side with the USSR to prevent invasion by the US.
Cuba makes a huge amount of money from the tourism industry and it doesn't all get redistributed to the people according to their needs. Just because a country calls itself a communist country doesn't mean it's true. Believe it or not, the DPRK is not actually democratic or a republic.
Cuba that is self sufficient and has the best healthcare in the world? As well as the most beautiful beaches? Yeah it’s on my list if countries to flee to when Trump wins my dude.
Enjoy continuing to live in this shithole country.
Cuba is doing well despite brutal Imperialist sanctions from the US, but is not a developed country yet. People are driven by their Material Conditions, and are products of their Material Conditions, so it does not make sense to move from a developed to a developing country purely out of ideological purity.
Instead, people should try to shape the State they live in to be more equitable. Changing a Capitalist country to Socialist is a good thing.
The price to build a house is nothing compared to what it will sell for. The selling price is mostly speculation. Housing used to be something you just owned, like a car, we as a society decided it had to be an investment and everything has gone to hell since.
Ideally the governnent with our tax money instead of using it all to bomb nations that aren't a threat to us and lining the pockets of politicians and their friends.
When you decommodify a thing the state takes a role to ensure the good or service is provided to all. You can have a mixed system with private and public construction. But as long as there is a robust public housing sector, prices for all houses will be much lower than in the current system where we have scarcity.
I don't understand how comments like this are made. Is the status-quo so deeply ingrained in people's minds that they literally can't even think of any alternate method, or was there not even any consideration put into it to try to?
Does literally every action, in your mind, come back to profit? Have you never helped a friend just because it was the right thing to do? Why should our system of focusing on profit be the only consideration when regular people can obviously consider more noble goals, such as good or happiness, as end goals to chase themselves? Clearly the system that promotes profit over these more noble ideas is the issue, right?
the US had a fairly successful public housing program until the 1980s when it was defunded then the coffin was nailed shut with the faircloth amendment passed in the 1990s.
One way would be to stop enforcing private property privileges for one's second house. We already have more housing than people, and thus don't need to subsidize additional construction.
Not the cause of the issue, but still a player. Another bastard cop, "just doing my job - that I chose to pursue and will continue to do." What a hero.
Exactly. They only rely on police because for the time being it's cheaper and more cost effective to outsource their violence to the state. The minute they can cut out the middleman, they will.
America has great public housing, free meals and they even provide everyone with a job. I just don't understand why residents need to wear those funny orange suits.
Equal treatment. Can't accuse of inequality if everyone dresses the same. As for why orange, because it's a warm, neutral colour that can more easily turn to brown or red as needed.
But which people directly involved in any of these things went to the convention or training seminars about cruelty maximization.
Painting it like that makes it seem deliberate but that's not what the real problem is, it's a broken systems that needs to be carefully unpacked and constructed in a way that works - as much as we want to imagine heroics unfortunayely just going in and beating up badguy goons like we're batman isn't going to help
Sort of the joke in Western countries. We took all the absolutely critical domestic infrastructure that we all agree needs to be funded and we all rely on to exist and passed it off to the most greedy sociopath assholes we could find.
Now we're shocked to discover that our planes crash and our retirement homes price gouge and our tech companies just do fake money scams to the tune of $2.5 trillion dollars. Our local sports teams are all run by a big casino. Our universities are all run by sports team owners. Our domestic energy companies keep getting pranked by the fake money scammers, while complaining that environmentalists just made the price of natural gas go vertical. And our health care system is six hedge funds in a set of doctor's scrubs.
But when push comes to shove, if you ask an American why this country seems to be circling the drain, the answer is some combination of "Woke Communist Joe Biden put transgenders in charge of the military industrial complex" and "Cheeto Mussolini Donald Trump gave Putin/Xi the sticky note with all our passwords on it, right after Barack Obama had fixed everything."
You'd never even know Blackrock Financial, Goldman Sachs, Citadel Advisors, and Berkshire Hathaway exist, much less why they have more control over the global economy than any two dozen elected officials you could name.
the real reason why american has gone down the shitter, ironically, is the existence of political parties. The parties ironically haven't done anything themselves, though they're trying to. It's the lack of action outside of the parties that's causing it.
If we weren't so fucking laser focused on calling people idiots for no reason, we'd have a productive and healthy society. But no the elites have their own class, and they give us this shitty fodder to play with while bored, and we just fucking eat it up like pigs in a feed trough.
if you ask an American why this country seems to be circling the drain
You could always ask. I know that I'm not the usual American but I'd say that the reason (and reason why nothing of note has been done about it since neoliberalism set its hooks) is as simple as the increase in wealth disparity.
Conservatism is a fucking plague of oppression, misery and death that targets the most vulnerable first. It needs to be eradicated and innoculated against.
We need some revolutions in education technology and theory. These conservatives really only learn when they actually touch the hot stove. So something like that alien device from Star Trek that let Picard live an entire alien life. Or that monument to the alien war from Voy that let a bunch of their crew experience the people's memories.
I would say it is not just capitalism as it happens in other non capitalist societies too. It is corrupt governments/economic systems that who favour big money over protecting and fostering a healthy society. To their own detriment eventually.
I don't really believe we've attempted non-capitalist societies at large scales, such as a pure democracy communism/socialism, but I will say that China claims to but they still have hundreds of millions of homeless, so yeah definitely a problem that exists everywhere.
While no politicians have actual hearts, opting to have them replaced with mechanical pumps and dark magic, the ones down in the south do enjoy devouring them - preferably while still beating.
Objectively no? I mean, the Golden eagle lay 2 eggs, but only provide enough food for one so that the stronger sibling kills the weaker one as a random example.
It was 7 years ago so statistically she probably isn't even alive. She did get a lot of donations and professional caretaker assistance at the time, and her charges were dropped.
Who the fuck cares? It indicates a massive flaw with the system. Either they can't afford it or we aren't doing anything to help it, or they're just exploiting her to gain more wealth. Whatever the reason is, it isn't a justification. It's only an indictment of the system that allows it to happen. The fact the police are used to support the little lordling and not the poor old woman just makes it worse.
There are independent landlords out there. One of my cousins rents out a bit of his property to some dude because its seperated by thick brush and its easier to just rent out the remote edges of the property than it is to make trails and do the required paperwork for the permit. He also rents a chunk out to the road maintenance company.
My point being theres landlords and then theres Landlords one is just someone renting out property for whatever reason and the other makes is running it as a business.
Should people get free housing at 92? At what point does a squatter get a free pass? Should we force the owner to give charity to the elderly squatter? What makes her more deserving than, say, Doctors Without Borders?
Yes. At the point where an owner can easily afford to lose that building as a tax write-off. Yes, if their own wellbeing isn't dependent on that property, with a reasonable compensation for their loss. She was there first.
She was there first?!? It's the owner's building! What does "easily afford to lose that building as a tax write-off" even mean? What do you know about tax? I presume zero based on your comment. smh
If they're wealthy enough, yes. Or ideally, people who can't afford a home should be given one by the government. No landlords needed. Having a roof over your head should be a basic human right.
Nothing. Again, basic human right. Everyone is entitled to a home.
Ok so govt is the landlord then, got it. Who gets to decide who gets free housing? Housing inventory is limited so somebody is going to be homeless. Seems like the govt agency, or worse, agent, has the keys to the kingdom and wields a lot of power in your scenario.
What does that even mean? Concrete, lumber, electric, plumbing, plus location location location that everyone else wants. How can it NOT be a commodity with fluctuating prices based on basic market forces like supply and demand? Explain