It’s exactly that. We don’t matter because we aren’t in the club. The peasants are just supposed to do what the regional lords want and die in the wars they cause. We aren’t supposed to see through the bullshit. Thats why they keep wages down and make us struggle so we don’t have enough time to think about anything else.
Thank you! Not enough people realize this. Overpriced healthcare and restrictive abortion and reproductive laws ensure oligarchy remains stable. If you have to work 2 jobs just to be able to afford a surgery and/or children you are less likely to have the time nor energy to focus on what the politicians are doing.
Ramp that up with hot button distraction issues that actually have little bearing on people's day-to-day lives and the government and their millionaire/corporate backers can do whatever they want to keep the power in place.
Amen. It's a form of societal control. Comply or lose your job and therefore your ability to feed and house your family, plus your health insurance goes poof.
I'm guilty of it, instead of fighting the insurance company on some testing I needed, I picked up extra shifts at my second job because at least that had a guaranteed return for my time. Fighting the insurance company could have taken longer and with the same result - that they refuse to pay.
All that is the reason I'm saving as much as I can in a HSA. if they won't cover some test or scan we really need and it could be life or death, I'm getting the test done and fighting them later hoping for reimbursement instead of waiting months or years for the test while our health deteriorates.
Issues not just for distraction but to pit the serfs against one another as enemies instead of those that are making life harder for us everyday. Politics is the new team sport but both teams are owned by the same people so it doesn't matter.
Damn, crazy how that also aligns with Republican party platform pushes
Blocking any meaningful healthcare changes, trying to cut off abortion rights, messing with reproductive laws... jesus.
That's dark.
Not just that more kids means more new workers to exploit later. The more workers and the more desperate those workers are the less you can pay them and the worse you can treat them. It’s the same reason the border has always been a problem they half ass border patrol and then throw the book at illegal immigrants. Making them work cheap and dangerous and if they ever do much as say unsafe or union it’s call ins and get a new batch next week. Then they blame all the problems on illegal immigrants and say how they are stealing your job so you don’t blame the owners who hire illegals in the first place. Illegals get deported or face prison but the companies that knowingly hire them never even face a fine.
And yet, the majority of the country is against socialized medicine. EVERY country in the EU has public education and healthcare. Only difference between them and here? Tax bracket is bigger for the rich (not smaller)
Right? It's wild how the general population is so sold on social healthcare being a bad thing. It's easy to think you're wasting your money on paying for other people when you're young and healthy, but then suddenly the unexpected happens, or even just age.
When my sister moved to Texas, she couldn't believe how blasé everyone there was about massive hospital debt - they were content to pay minimum balances for the rest of their life, assuring her it was no big deal. My sister was tight for money for awhile and they did not have insurance, so having to calculate cost and weigh it against the severity/likelihood of her kid's injury or sickness needing medical attention was new and very scary.
Meanwhile, being from Canada, a current average of 3640$ per year of my 22% taxes is for health care, and in the last 25 years of my adult life I have only spent 15 of that in full time work.
I have had - to date - 2 births and 6 different surgeries that would have about cost 90,000$ total. It would take me 25 years to repay that at my tax contribution, nevermind if there was interest being accrued! This also doesn't take into account 25 years worth of regular doctor visits, CT scans and x-rays, lab work and ER visits. It also does not take into account the cost for my children's doctor/emergency/x-ray/labs for the last 10 years.
On top of this, I know I will need another 2 surgeries in about 8 years, and the current cost of both those procedures will be 80,000$. So at my present rate, I would need to work full time and contribute that much in taxes for 47 years total to cover just my surgeries.
I cannot imagine what life would be like having to decide which quality of life procedure to live without, or debating how much pain my daughter is in to determine if she really needs x-rays to see if she broke her ankle or if it's just a sprain. To debate whether a wound truly needs stitches or not.
Plus in Texas I would still be paying just over 16% in taxes. Only 3,000$ less than the 22% I pay here. So really, having to pay that extra money in taxes is absolutely well worth the trade for "free" health care! I have probably utilized it more than the average person, but we can never predict the future. Most of my procedures took place after the age of 37 - so 70,000$ of those expenses were in the last 6 years or so. All except 2 were outpatient and none involved staying in hospital beyond 3 days, so as far as costs go they are actually quite light. And that's terrifying.
The entire point of having private healthcare was to have competition to drive up quality and drive down costs. Turns out, lack of regulation, PE firms buying hospitals, widespread collusion, consolidation of insurance, listing companies on stock exchanges led to the opposite effect: higher prices and low quality of care.
So fed up with this country. Moving to Europe as soon as I can.
What people rarely realize is that literally nothing is ever illegal or banned. If you want an abortion it will always be available if you have enough money. Want a fully automatic weapon? $20k and $3k in tax stamps will get you one. Cannabis is fully legal everywhere, if you want to pay the right people. They’re not illegal, just very very expensive. The uniparty keeps control and money means nothing to the people who keep them in power. It’s only us who lose our rights. And people will keep voting like it makes a difference.
My MIL wants at least one grandchild, I dont exactly want to go through childbirth, and my husband is hesitant on giving a kid his health problems, and I mentioned I wanna be able to send that kid to a better school that the public one in our area.
if having kids isnt a HELL YES it should be a fuck no. Kids will know you resent them, and you will, if you have to sacrafice everything to not even give them enough. Dont sacrafice our life for a possibility.
I am a parent and I say this all the time to my friends who don’t have kids. If you aren’t 100% sold into the idea for the next 18 years minimum of true responsibility than don’t have kids and enjoy how you live. Kids take a lot of time and energy and whilst I love my child, a lot of interests are currently gaining dust because time limited
And the massive number nationwide of American kids who were and still are traumatized by school shootings have reached childbearing age remember and choose to not have kids.
I was in 6th grade when Columbine happened, so by the time I graduated the active shooter drills weren't a common thing yet (05) though it could have been cause I was in a hodunk school district. I still remember though that Sandy Hook was the turning point where the government said guns were more important than our children's lives.
It also doesn't help that I went to school in the district that if I had a kid now, they would also be going to. TBF though, I would wonder if they would have the same history teacher that I had that my dad also had. That was an interesting tidbit to learn we had the same history teacher in the same school.
I’m so sorry any American kid has been thru that. My own children made it through without a shooting (graduated 2015 & 2018). What a relief when they graduated.
My hubby was in a mass shooting. 13 coworkers were gunned down and the casino was set on fire. My husband knew the shooter. He was the casino security guard. From Israel. Who had had military training. It was a casino in Amsterdam in 1983. My husband hid in the upstairs bathroom. His Dutch wasn’t fluent fluid yet. Some coworkers ran into the break room and said “he’s got ‘tools’ !” was what my hubby understood. Tools being similar to guns. Then the pop pop pop got them hiding in the toilet stall. Soon they all smelled smoke. The fire department rescued them. The dead bodies outlines were left of the carpet as the fire ashes left their bodies imprinted like a police chalk line around a victim.
That my husband lived in Holland for 2 years and the USA for nearly 45 years, it’s ironic that the mass shooting he was in was in Holland and not in America.
The casino was run by an Italian mobster. His daughter dated the shooter but had broken up with him. He came back to kill her. But she was not at work that day. He personally knew everyone he killed. All of the deceased were employees. He only spent 7 years in prison.
Can understand that.. my family has a history of Huntingtons disease... after watching my mother suffer and die from it, I took the decision at 20 to have a vasectomy.
My wife and I moved across the country to an area with very low crime and a great public school system for our kid.
It was worth it and we love the new area. Better weather, better school and its much safer here. People here don't lock their doors or close their garages at night.
The funny part is we have twice as much house for the same amount of money even though it's a densely populated suburb just outside the city limits of a major city.
If YOU and YOUR HUSBAND (Not MIL) want to have a kid, adoption/fostering are viable options. You should not feel pressured to have kids if you don’t want any
Jokes on them. I’m one of the few people able to afford kids, thanks to a graduate engineering degree. And my kids are mixed race, like their wonderful mother.
Racists can go fuck themselves. (Because no one else should have to deal with their bullshit.)
I see plenty of other races with many children they can’t afford, they rely on us good ole taxpayers and then brag on tik tok about the thousands in EBT and free rent. Wonder what the future will bring when the government stops paying the way for people that can’t afford one child, but CHOSE to have six.
I have two adult children. Neither wants kids. I’ll never be a grandma.. but I look at the carbon footprints 👣 of just one kleptocrat billionaire and I think, they are destroying any habitable future for my own kids. We will go extinct. Climate change is here.
Not even just climate change, my mother said that if she had known how difficult the world would be for us (climate change, economy, political stress etc) she would have thought twice before having us. Not because she regrets us, but because in many ways life/dependence is harder to establish for people entering adulthood.
the bloodline ends with me & my siblings. all 4 of us have effectively taken vows to not have children. none of us want them, and i’m so glad my parents have no quarrel with that—i’ve seen too many “when will i get my grandbaby??!2??!!3!” posts. my dad told me that he would’ve reconsidered having me & brother had he known what the state of the world would be now, both politically and economically. harsh to hear from your father, but i understand. i think he regrets bringing children into this world, not that he regrets us.
Same here. One son and one daughter, neither want to bring a child into this world in its current condition. I don’t blame them one bit. They both have good jobs and have pets as babies. It’s a shame that the people who can’t afford to raise a child, seem to have baby after baby.
They also like sex with the young poors and working class, they say its just them giving them “opportunity” they wouldn’t otherwise have. They can only effectively do this with those they have power over, so people like us
First I’ve heard of anyone being forced to have kids lol. The only people I see reproducing at a massive rate are the people that think the government is responsible for paying for their children. If you can’t afford one child, why have 5 more? That’s a better question.
And eventually what will happen is that people who don’t follow their conservative politics won’t have kids because they realise the burden but the conservatives are I’ll and they are much easier to control because they don’t care about education or any policies unless it’s ‘making things cheap’ or ‘hurting the libs’
That's not incorrect but why is your generation not furious that they've made it so hard to live that you're even considering this as an option? Millions of years there's been life here. Success means one simple thing. You either passed your genes forward, or you didn't. The rich are still having children. They've been calling for depopulation for a century, what better way than to convince a whole generation that breeding is "cringe"
multiple states are getting rid of birth control, what do you think the reasoning for that is? to try and force women to get pregnant, and then they cant abort so theyre forced to give birth. Also why do you think forcing women to go through a dangerous medical procedure in the country with the highest maternal mortality rate in the "developed world" is not forcing them to have kids.
Do you not care or are you just too dim to link the dots?
I'm not convinced that forced pregnancy isn't on the agenda after banning birth control. Romania under that one guy fined childless adults and actively monitored women for signs of pregnancy.
It’s hard to call a club of 1% “big” in terms of membership. No matter how you slice it, the rich is a minority but their influence is disproportionately “big” because the messaging they control. The club by membership is extraordinarily small, their influence over the populace is “big.”
No, because I realize how many people are not in that room. The room full of wealthy does not blind me to the fact that there are billions of people outside that room not of the same wealth.
Again. 3.5 million is large, even if it's only a small portion of America.
By your logic, nothing can be called big, because you are arbitrarily thinking in proportions. It's like saying the universe isn't big because of theres an infinite number of multiverses. Our known universe is far less than 1% of all the potential multiverses, so it's tiny. It's just stupid and arbitrary way of thinking.
Really struggling to understand why this is the hill you're choosing to die on. But then again, so am I.
True, but we have numbers on our side. If those who understand all this would start organising ! But we're passive, have given up on collective action in favour of individualism etc etc. I'm v glad I'm 68 and will soon be out of it !
And look at where that got the Americans. If they had stayed with us, they would have had gun controls, Universal healthcare, and an economy which isn't 100% geared up to killing employees.
I didn't feel an ounce of guilt cheering the death of Lord Farquad, and I'm certainly not going to feel any guilt or shame for the rich/ruling class sharing the same fate, as they carry the same sentiment...that we are ants. Ticks on a ledger.
I would like to see them eaten by dragons, but bleeding out in Midtown will have to suffice, for now.
The worst part is the people writing that response are not even rich themselves, but they’re just trying to suck up to the rich folks in hopes of having something trickle down to them!
Think even further: his children will be fine without him, because they're rich. All the average Joe's are often the single provider of the family. Their children lose their father and have to deal with poverty. Think about that. Those billionaires aren't people, they don't act like it, thus I consider them as such. When they start to have compassion, so will I.
There's a song by Stupendium called The Fine Print, it's written about a game (I think fallout, maybe? I don't know, I haven't played the game it's based on) but the lyrics themselves are just to perfectly pertinent to modern capitalist society, with the upper echleons designing and organising civilization in such a manner as to maximise their profits, with the prolatariate working for the express purpose of being able to afford a place to sleep between shifts with no money to actually go out and generate an economy further than menial labour for the profit of monguls already set up in business.
Yea, we, the citizens, are the resources that get exploited.
Growing up, I was taught that we live in America where everyone is equal.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal..."
Majority of our citizens forgot that our government was created to be the people's government. We've let it become the corporations' government.
We need to stop letting these people in positions of authority forget that they are a citizen like the rest of us.
It's sad that 1 CEO died due to the actions of another person and left behind a family. But it's sadder that ~186 also died from the actions of other people and left behind so many loved ones.
Capitalism was great for creating all this growth. But now, instead of growth, it's creating decay in our nation.
I'm not saying we have to get rid of Capitalism. I'm saying it needs to be modified to fit our needs in this day and age. I'm not smart enough to figure it out. Though, there are people out there who are and have been thinking about it for a long time. They just need to gain traction as a good alternative.
We're living in the Technological era, and all of these holdovers from the industrial age need to be replaced with more modern iterations.
It's like if the NFL was still using equipment from the 1920s instead of the modern gear.
And it's still obv what they're doing. It's just that after all the "reality" they've worked so hard to create, we don't have enough energy to fight back.
Oh, they have also made sure that we have enough to fight about amongst the poor.
The ones who are not psychopaths (I believe most billionaires are) are scared shitless of the poors rising up.
Even just looking at the law enforcement and media response highlights this. Where I live people die from gun violence every week and those bodies and crimes are essentially swept under the rug as soon as they happen. The amount of effort spent into locating this dude is so disproportionate to almost every other murder.
…so we don’t have enough time to think about anything else.
This is why eggs and gas became the signal. Focus on the one thing that the larger collective engages in and make it a talking point so that you don’t notice when someone is rifling through your pockets.
Time is money and as such, many of us are destitute.
Thats why they keep wages down and make us struggle so we don’t have enough time to think about anything else.
I think that’s actually a pretty good point, I’ve always felt that the general population just doesn’t think criticality, I thought it was just from laziness. But now that you mention it, that makes more sense, I didn’t think of that. Because also in my experience when I’m too busy I realize I don’t have as much ideas flowing through my head compared from when I have enough free time.
35 year old teenager here. Since I was a child, all I saw were bigger children that were selfish and bullies rulling our world. Turned out I was exactly right. I'm sure I'm in a simulation because too many people are so blind. It was so obvious, almost immediately.
He was a gutworm of a high order, of course. So is this Zenkus guy. Did he do anything besides use this guy's death to get likes or views or whatever the fuck? No. He is also a gutworm. We can feel sorry for both the family of gutworms and for the people that lose their lives because of greed. We don't have to choose. This Zenk guy apparently has to choose. Lower life forms. They're everywhere.
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a child won't get treatment, or thousands of Americans won't receive lifesaving care, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old CEO will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order
We don’t matter to them because they have weaponized abstraction, of which money is the most succinct and crystalized form. They have the ability to not give a shit about the toll of their actions by simply burying it under layer upon layer of abstraction (despite KNOWING the real costs, through studies and graphs and meetings and measurements). They get to play two Santas; reaping all the benefits while pretending to have the moral high ground despite being responsible for the vast majority of avoidable deaths.
We have to flip the script and use their own language and weapons against them. I suggest pointing out the fantastic ROI on just a few bullets to the head of a given CEO. It’s only business after all. Our R&D team has shown it to be a promising avenue of growth, that will surely pay dividends to our fellow hum… I mean shareholders in the future. We have to be agile and aggressive if we want to survive in this marketplace.
I almost writes itself, given the bullshit “warrior” affect that so many businesspeople put on. It’s just taken awhile to realize that the enemy they talk about fighting is us, even when they pretend like it’s not.
Hey! You can't call us peasants. That's insulting to peasants! Peasants at least all had lives that benefitted from they're work. And they had nearly half of every year off from work!
We stopped threatening to revolt, unfortunately. Which meant they could get away with it. Funny how us becoming more, "civil," means they will tell us to go fuck ourselves. In a civil fashion, of course.
So the general difference is the system is broken however there is at least some free will to enter it. We need reform, won’t argue that, but someone in the system, this CEO has no life and for something that he did not operate maliciously. Obviously if he did then that’s different.
Health care is a ridiculous monstrosity but you don’t get your life back and for one person to be targeted is cruel. There isn’t a clear defense of every insurance company decision but there is least a process that is tacitly agreed too as awful as it is. This person was given zero process and I obviously think it was wrong to shoot him.
Do you hold the same sentiment to people like Bin Laden being killed? What about other people you consider evil? Corporations have politicians in their pockets and are able to have legislation shut down yet you’re claiming all we want to do is kill? No, we want to be treated like people. The blood of many people are on the hands of the now slain CEO. It’s high time we stopped playing with people’s lives because corporations have decided that a dollar is worth more than humans.
The fear mongering really has a hold on all of you and I feel sorry for y’all and I wish you guys would realize that we are blessed and that there’s people starving and here we are celebrating a murder. How do you celebrate someone being murdered and still think you’re on the right side of things? lol
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u/Rootbeercutiebooty Dec 09 '24
They keep bringing up that he was a father. Okay, what about the countless fathers who have died due to corporate greed? Do they not matter?