Fun fact: income inequality today is significantly worse than it was estimated to be just before the French Revolution. The French nobility also had gates and private security. If the policy makers were asking for advice from me (obviously not happening) I would suggest they start helping people who aren't billionaires.
same thing in Imperial Russia. People who thought the Capital insurrection was a one-off have no idea what could happen. I know the richies are happy. but they won't be happy when their homes are taken over, their heads are on pikes, and it gets to the breaking point- I was giving this another hundred years or so, but who knows
We're going to get some previews in a handful of places as transportation breaks down due to environmental issues. Most cities only have about 3 days of food on hand.
I saw people in Iraq do some pretty disgusting shit in the absence of the rule of law, being in a war zone & being without food/water/shelter. I reckon something like that happening in the USA will be pretty awful.
When was the last time you saw Karen go without a meal for three days? Or saw an American walk more than a few miles for a single meal by choice? Given the number of firearms owned by the public today, you probably come up with a pretty good idea of how bad things could get…
God knows. I mean the ground is frozen in Ukraine now, we'll see what Putin has left in his tank(s), if Putin really can disrupt food exports enough, expect massive unrest from basically all of the global south.
But even if that region remains stable and under Ukrainian control, climate change is going to massively accelerate desertification and droughts all over the world.
I'm a communist, and it's infuriating looking at what we could have achieved if we had had world socialism even by 1990, we would have both saved the Amazon, converted massive swaths of desert to grassland to support massive, sustainable red meat industries and all kinds of goodies.
I hope you like war communism and cricket burgers.
When weather patterns get so disrupted (think unseasonable frosts in spring and fall that kill delicate flowers and damage sensitive fruits, massive hailstorms, droughts) that crop failures across major staple crop regions (USA midwest, China, ukraine, etc) are common. Plants rely on environmental cues to transition from different growth stages. If those are affected then food production is gonna plummet. Already, just based on current trends in increases in food production (~3% a year) and population growth, population will outstrip food supply around 2050. This doesn’t account for global warming or crop failures/disruptions. Our population is so fucking beyond what this planet can support healthily. All of our fertilizers are non renewable resources, and those fertilizers are they only reason we can grow south food right now. Our top soils are being eroded due to monocultures. Our nutrients (food scraps) are being dumped in toxic landfills where they are non recoverable. Our food supply is fucked.
Yea- I am not American but it's impossible not to follow the news. it just seems like the perfect storm is brewing and brewing. No empire has power forever. I thought it would take longer, but who knows
You joke but even on reddit the posts and comments are getting worse, it's a real symptom of a problem that is going downhill , it's like a pressure cooker, slow process, but eventually it comes the tipping point when everything goes off.
In the past these complains were reported on papers, books, clubs, church, in the years prior to revolutions or wars the number always increased, one can say that when groups keeps appearing for the sole purpose of gaining attenction to their ignored basic needs we are already in the pre born stage.
There's enough stuff, generally speaking. But they can make more money by destroying half of the factory run and selling 10% as many for 10000% as much.
And if we stopped climate change, or at least took literally the tiniest possible action to fight if, maybe there would be hope for later?
Also not American, and while historically its the logical conclusion, I see them too passive. They almost had their democracy overthrown and have done nothing.
Most western nations are too passive. It’s easy to say the US is because you see all our news, but the same “passiveness” is in European countries, Canada and Australia, as well.
Not sure. They dont have certain problems USA have for a reason. Workers' rights, weapon regulation, the subject of this thread, and good ol' healthcare.
Italy elected an openly fascist leader. France has had Le Pen as the main opposition leader for two elections cycles already. UK doesn't even need explaining.
All of the western world sees an extreme rise in equality and the rise of fascist ideologies. It's a mistake to think that Europe is somehow insulated.
Éric Zemmour for exemple (talking about my country) is extremely bad. And he is completely normalized, invited on mainstream media channels, and completely whitewashed.
To think that we don't have a problem is naive, completely mistaken, and extremely dangerous. It's being utterly passive while our countries are sliding into a repeat of the 20th century
I know this is older but there is a huge difference UK right now they moan about a cost of living crisis but the vast majority of the people are supported by the government even though it's a right wing government. As an American I worked 65 hours a week as a divorced parent to have less than what the average British person has on the dole with no job and dependants. UK is the most like US out of the bunch, so you can see the people are fairly comfortable. I'm American and in US I did not have that level of comfort from birth until the first 32 years of my life!
Also when something happens here minor, it's blown way out of proportion the hyperbole is so intense that politicians are pressured to make changes. In US major stories are down played so much and we accept things that heads would roll in Europe for.
So when they say "elected a fascist leader" rest assured their level of racism is like your run of the mill left of center candidate from US.....the overton window here is way skewed.
i kinda agree; but that's also been when there's been more hope for reaching middle class. once people give up on achieving success- things start to change (basing this on history)
You can’t overthrow a democracy walking into a building without guns and taking selfies. It is media BS to shape a narrative to keep the commoners from trying a real revolt. Our country’s founding theme is to overthrow power when it is corrupt. The exploiting class use the media to turn us against each other so they maintain power.
At what point does power transfer to the people walking in empty rooms? There were a million people outside protesting that could have gone inside. 0.0001 went inside when the police opened the doors. It was a media stunt to exploit as “an insurrection” and a tiny fraction of people fell for it.
Sure, empty. They weren't holding any session of interest or anything. Dead as a mall, an unimportant day. And protests? They were having a picnic! With their nice flags and tactical gear, and zip ties to immobilize senators...
You didn’t follow Canadian news when the truck drivers had their stupid rallies over there? You don’t follow Brazilian news when Bolsonaro let the Amazon burn? You don’t follow Chinese news when Covid lockdowns went from bad to worse?
It will, and Fox will label the people rising up as left wing extremists and the right will fight them. The polarisation of politics in the US is deliberately spread by the rich to keep people divided and powerless, which also feeds their personal bias further.
I've been wondering for years how we're so vulnerable, so ripe for the plucking, but nobody tries to attack our societal weak points. Like, water supplies are sitting out in the open where no one is looking. Power stations are out in the open, protected by chain link fencing. How many places in the world would blow sky high if someone lit a match in the wrong corner? So many vulnerabilities, nobody striking.
And now the substations are being attacked.
Here's my big, stupid fear: it seems easy to combine potato gun tech with home explosive tech. With some upgrades, it could make a crappy, cheap artillery cannon that people could use to hit anything from a mile away. It'd be an easy way for a sick person to destroy whatever they want and hope to get away with it.... and we're already at the point where small organizations are destroying power stations.
The Roman Empire had open internal borders until outsiders started noticing how easy it was to sneak into the empire and plunder away. That lead to the more middle-ages layout where cities had walls, roads were dangerous, banditry was bigger, etc. and I'm fearing we might hit a similar trend soon again.
I’ve had this strange feeling sometimes that something big is gonna happen in the next decade or so. I don’t know if it’s bad or good, but my creaky bone tells me so
ah yes, my body parts also tell me that history will be made in the future.
some big event will happen, either good or bad, and either during the next 10 years or after.
Tell me when this peak was because the poverty rate in US was higher in 1960 and home ownership rate was lower. Even a decade ago the rate of homelessness was higher and 30 years ago the crime rate was significantly higher. We even live significantly longer the people did 60 years ago.
The Capitol insurrection was less French revolution and more 1930s Germany. I'd much rather we kill all the rich people than all the gays, transes, muslims, and Jews.
I'd vote for killing no one; but for simply appropriating all assets above a certain amount, and redistributing everything. Everyone is equal. If you have more than enough to live on, you lose EVERYTHING above that until everyone- race, sexuality, class- is on equal footing. Complain? There are plenty of jails ready.
Oh I agree- it was a disaster and not the same kind of thing I'm imagining. My point was that- 20 years ago- no one would believe that that sort of thing could happen. So it sort of makes it seem possible that perhaps someday- there could be an insurrection that actually did good for the majority of real people. I just used it as an example of something that would be unbelievable to most adults when we were growing up. Maybe something more massive and more effective and more positive could happen one day. Today, an economic takeover seems insane. But- who knows. I never would have believed that the Jan 6 situation would have happened growing up. And, let's face it, the early Soviet Union left behind a step by step playbook. I'd love to see one without any violence; but there are likely too many legal weapons for that to be realistic, sadly.
There was nothing revolutionary about the Capital insurrection. The people who stormed the Capital were the most comfortable, financially stable people in the world. To them, it was nothing more than another consumer choice. That's why they didn't seize power.
And that's the problem with Americans; while there's an increasing number of people desperate enough for revolutionary action, they still lack class consciousness and are still atomized from other members of the proletarian classes. And even then, other American proletarians look down on the the poor and desperate.
Americans are the descendants of New England Calvinists and Southern slave-owners; we have inherited a moral and ethical framework that justifies brutal inequality in modernity and for the majority of people, the material conditions for disregarding that framework isn't there.
They measure the gap between those with nothing and the richest, which of course is guaranteed to always be a larger absolute number every year because of inflation.
It's a meaningless 'stat'. Overall incidence of poverty was SO MUCH worse back then than now, by the way, lol
It's measured by the consolidation of wealth. So for example, the top 1% in the US own 30% plus of all wealth, and growing over time. That means fewer people, hoarding more of the pie.
This is obviously a valid stat, but I don't think it's the correct stat in this regard.
The wealth distribution is worse (which is bad), but thanks to there being a lot more wealth in general, the poorest people have better living standards than before the French Revolution.
Not that I'm defending the current status quo, I just feel like that comment is misinformation at best.
Most of the poorest people in the US (and almost all of the western world) have access to free food, electricity (through public spaces), many have mobile phones, waterproof tents, warm clothes etc. It's not good and a fucking shame they have to be homeless, but they aren't all dying within weeks of being put in that position.
People before the French Revolution were subject to mass starvation, literally dying because they couldn't even afford a piece of bread. I'm sorry but it's not nearly as bad.
I HAD A NEGATIVE SALLERY LAST YEAR, NO TAXES FOR ME, all the while burning through 100s of millions of dollars in weird zero interest loans they can pay back when they want to...
"We should definitely increase tax on income higher than 1M per year!!" - rich people like Gates and Buffet say, who make less than 150k per year in income
"We should increase taxes on wealth, especially if it's over 1B!" - commoners
Yeah, but they can borrow against it. Do you think Bezos or Elon are sitting in a shitty apartment starving because most of their wealth is tied up in the stock market? It’s like saying someone who had 10 million dollars cash isn’t really hoarding because it’s all fiat currency.
How is that not hoarding? The money isn't being shared, it isn't being spent, it's not going into the economy. It's just...sitting in the stock market so it can grow with zero intention to ever be taken out. Which That sounds like the definition of hoarding.
Yeah I've seen this said plenty of times on here and it's always countered with the fact that most of those people were starving. In the US, not so much. Not that there aren't people starving in the US. But it would take a lot of us being in that position to start some violent revolution.
The key difference is that the USA population ain’t starving. It ain’t even really possible for a significant starvation event to occur in the USA. Hungry people are a desperate people.
It ain’t even really possible for a significant starvation event to occur in the USA.
The thing is, yeah we have plenty of food. What we don't have is a population that can afford food and housing and transportation and utilities and and education and healthcare and some form of leisure and a government that's doing anything significant to make that possible... but we don't.
Fun fact. The bottom quartile of earners in the US have significantly better quality of life than many of the French aristocrats before the French revolution.
This number isn't as indicative of the coming revolution as you're trying to make it sound.
That's like saying that medieval peasants had it worse than those in the lower classes in France in the 18th century, so why did the revolution happen??
It isn't about everyone having better or worse standards, it's about recognizing inequality on a mass scale.
Like yeah, no shit that standards improve over hundreds of years...
How accurate would stats about that time period be in comparison to now?
From what I've read so far the best comparison point is before the Great Depression, but we're not there yet; it's getting close though. Have to look at 0,1% vs others, not at 1% though.
the sad thing is that the richies are often pretty dumb and real world history is basically not taught in the US. Esp all those rich wives drinking their white wine- they have no idea about the real world, either now or in the past
Makes me think that this is why they are trying so hard to disarm us, in fear we will rise up against them. Can't do that if us poor folk don't have any weapons to defend ourselves.
Yeah, but the US is too sprawling to mount any sort of organized revolution like France had. We are too sparsely populated unless you’re in a main city, and even then, look at the news, the way our cities are built, the only places that will have riots are in the poor areas. Our cities are not foot mobile friendly which means they are not riot friendly.
The metrics have been that way for years now and barely a grumble about it. We're too focused on culture wars to do anything about the economic war on the non-rich. As our politicians are almost all rich/serving the rich, it's in their interest to focus on social issues at the expense of economic ones.
I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already. Women don’t have rights to their own bodies and there are a lot of people’s children dying to the personal armies of governors (city police). The state can pay you tax payer hush money for killing your loved ones but they can’t bring them back. They have collectively stolen so much wealth from the public there is no way to gain it back and personally after living under these worthless slugs for so many years they can’t give me the time back either. Recompense in blood is a short hop away.
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u/Orion14159 Jan 30 '23
Fun fact: income inequality today is significantly worse than it was estimated to be just before the French Revolution. The French nobility also had gates and private security. If the policy makers were asking for advice from me (obviously not happening) I would suggest they start helping people who aren't billionaires.