No conflict of interest.
US Politics
- Thread starter Nick 0208 Ldn
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No conflict of interest.
A pertinent question is how much influence does the two car NYC doctor or lawyer have politically. The answer is probably not much.
Net worth is a better standard to define "rich" than income (or perceived income). Once people start getting a ridiculously high net worth, they start cultivating political influence and then their interests and the interests of other high net worth individuals like them gain prominence. These interests are rarely compatible with those of the average person.
We must not let perceptions of affluence cloud our vision. This is a lie sold to us by those with much more than all of us combined have.
Net worth is a better standard to define "rich" than income (or perceived income). Once people start getting a ridiculously high net worth, they start cultivating political influence and then their interests and the interests of other high net worth individuals like them gain prominence. These interests are rarely compatible with those of the average person.
We must not let perceptions of affluence cloud our vision. This is a lie sold to us by those with much more than all of us combined have.
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Well-paying profession =/= "rich af"
Well-paying professionals =/= the people that need to be taxed more.
I find your view overly simplistic to the point of not being a useful way to look at the world.
Salary professionals might eventually have relatively well-paying jobs, but they also have hundreds of thousands in school debt, can't start earning until much later in life due to spending time in graduate school, have to study like crazy and make sacrifices in their late teens and early and mid 20s, often have to work long, difficult hours when they are starting out, are often quite vulnerable to any health or medical conditions long before they even out their debt. They also provide essential services to society that require heavy education and training but are absolutely necessary for modern society to function (unlike high-frequency traders, trust fund babies, or inherited property owners like Trump, Kushner, and their ilk).
Additionally, this group pays the highest taxes on their income of any group and significantly more taxes already than the truly wealthy who earn from unearned income. It's not this group that isn't paying their fair share in taxes, it's the groups above the salary professional that benefit from the current system and avoid paying their fair share.
So sure, eventually, by their 50s, salary professionals are not doing bad (assuming they don't get unlucky or make a few bad choices in investments) but they are not even remotely in the same category as the truly wealthy, those that make unearned income, own a lot of revenue-producing property instead of working, exploit the workers around the world and create the codified laws to keep growing the wealth inequality gap.
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I am a fake doctor with a PhD an engineering. The degree is not worth the paper its printed on.
AOC is a young Nancy Pelosi.
Absolutely true. Taxing probably should also be based on net worth although we'd have to revamp our ability to assess net worth as the truly wealthy hide it in many ways.
The people you are describing are still better off economically than those working multiple jobs and barely make 40-50k per year. And therein lies my main point. Anyone who has ever been to law school or med school or even grad school has a better chance of living a decent lifestyle than the people I am talking about. Yes, they do have financial troubles, student loans, etc. But that is nowhere near as bad as working multiple jobs delivering food and living paycheck to paycheck. Hope you can see the distinction I am trying to make and why I find it weird to lump doctors making 100k$ as "not rich".
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Rich is relative mate. From an outcome perspective (I may be wrong) raising taxes on those guys making $100K a year will probably have less impact than raising even a smaller % of taxes on the people making millions or billions.. I think that is the point. Right now the system is messed up such that those people and companies essentially don't pay taxes (as I'm sure you know as you seem to be knowledgeable about it)
progressives subsections hating AOC is exactly why the core/mainstream party just laughs at every "progressive challenger" that comes up. All they have to do is wait and the progressive wing eats their own.
This is from a quick google so it might be wrong but in the primaries Sanders(Who was and still is the most popular socialist in the US) struggled with high income voters(Primaries tend to have richer voters)and in the presidential/general election Trump and Republicans won voters over 100k.
Even if you think people on over 100k aren't loaded, it's seem that voters base disagrees and is Doing all it can to vote against the policies AOC favours.
Even if you think people on over 100k aren't loaded, it's seem that voters base disagrees and is Doing all it can to vote against the policies AOC favours.
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so the new reason to hate AOC is because she points out that the absolute concentration of wealth is not with doctors and lawyers but in the hands of a minor few that essentially write the tax code to capture even more wealth?
JFC did any of you read Capital in the 21st Century?
JFC did any of you read Capital in the 21st Century?
i agree with this.
yes they aren't as personally powerful as musk or bezos who can get local govts to change policy or shower them with money by saying a few lines. but, as a group/class, they do have influence, a lot of the structures of democracy work best for them.
...
on AOC i don't think this "proves" anything about her being a psyop/traitor/strategic genius. she's a well-meaning soft-leftist within a rotten party that she's committed to, she's not a marxist. her policy stances are usually identical to bernie, what's most different is their aesthetics and presentation (and sometimes, foreign policy, where bernie's marxist background shows up clearly). because she and bernie are now 100% committed to the party, there are massive (self-imposed) limits on what they say and do.
and i don't really think she or her faction are going to win, or that she'd be doing bigger things outside that party. so i think a lot of intra-left fighting is the fighting of a dying group, choosing one of two losing strategies as the correct one and calling the other side traitors.
No I don't think so. I think they laugh at the new progressives because they are so easily bought off.
If you take money from people to campaign for M4A and then can't bring yourself to vote against the speaker if that speaker will not call a vote on the issue then you deserve the derision you get. Wearing a dress that says tax the rich is easy but when you are in the middle of a pandemic and you can't even get a vote on your most important health policy, when you have actual leverage over the democratic leadership who need your vote. Its a sell out pure and simple.
Its not a mistake, its throwing your principles out the second it might cost you something personally. It showed exactly who she really is and what her priorities really are and then the lies start and arguments like yours appear to try to obfuscate.
Damn those progressive subsections for wanting the thing they voted for and being unimpressed when the politician who says she wants the same thing to get their votes then sells them out.
Hey but she has a nice ass so lets not be mean about her.
So what you want is a firebrand to shout at people, achieves nothing, has no leverage over those establishment cronies, is essentially an outcast in congress, but makes you feel good inside when you see a 30 sec video clip of them shouting at Pelosi etc?
Wouldn't happen to be a Jimmy Dore fan would you?
I support the exact the opposite to that which seems like an accurate description of Cortez.
In politics there are moments when you do have leverage and moments when you don't. You either use your leverage when you have it or you achieve absolutely nothing. They had the votes and Pelosi needed them. Whatever you think, Cortez never had more power to forward her agenda than she did then. I have yet to see any real down side to attaching a vote on M4A in return for support as speaker. I have heard plenty of bluster and bullshit and lies dressed up as reasons though.
Politically It was a genuinely brilliant idea if you actually want to move forward and to try to get health care for everyone. If on the other hand they are just words to get you elected so you can have a longer career and look after yourself then you bargain away your leverage for whatever baubles you are offered.
By the way, what did she get in return for helping the octogenarian multi millionaire, who has stood in the way of real health care reform, stay in power? Hope it was worth it because the progressives are now ignorable. How many people will die do you think from a lack of accessible health care in that lost time?
I can deal with horse trading within politics when its valid but some times you have to be resolute and as uncompromising as those who work against you too.
Is M4A the most important thing or isn't it? Are you going to fight for ordinary people like you said you would when took their money and votes or aren't you? I never saw the campaign speech where she equivocated on the matter. " I will fight for M4A unless it means I have no leverage and become an outcast in congress". I bet you can find loads where she says she doesn't care about that because she isn't like all the other politicians.
I can't decide whether she never really gave a shit or more worryingly she did but the system is now so corrupting that it can make make her sell out so quickly.
Why would you attach that condition to a demand that is going to lose? What does AOC get out of it to progress M4A? So she forces a vote, the vote loses by hundreds....and AOC achieves what? You get a list of names to angrily whinge about and then what? The progressive movement is going to primary hundreds of house seats when they can BARELY maintain the ones they have?
Again, you actually think AOC bringing down pelosi or getting a vote that was guaranteed to lose wins AOC anything? What on earth do you think would happen to any or all of the progressives in congress if M4A lost by 300 votes? It boggles my mind that you actually believe progressives are now "ignorable" yet either removing Pelosi or losing a M4A vote by HUNDREDS of votes makes the progressive movement power players in congress that will garner respect. Do you genuinely not understand how powerless progressives would have been if M4A was obliterate in votes?
Do you know what AOC's actual mistake was? She didn't leverage her vote for a range of high value committee positions and to strengthen her progressive colleagues. To start building a stronger and harder to ignore coalition of members that have key positions....maybe even get some endorsements at the elections. To die on the hill of an unwinnable vote is just plain dumb.
Your entire post suggests otherwise.
And i don't know what's worse, progressives sacrificing everything so they can scream into the void about corrupt democrats and achieve NOTHING, or people getting some kind of weird "feel good" vibe because they get to hate on someone that's in their tent. Because there seems to be nothing more that us progressives love than tearing down other progressives.
@WPMUFC she also voted to increase the budget for ICE after doing a photo op crying outside their detention centers because they were putting kids in cages.
Are you sure about that? She was the only Dem to vote no in 2019 on the border funding bill. Is it a more recent one, because the only other ICE funding thing I can think of was the general DHS funding bill.
She voted for the DHS funding bill...which includes ICE funding as part of the shutdown negotiations to end the shut down and remove money from the border wall.
She then voted against it strictly on the basis of ICE funding
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/co...-vote-against-bill-re-open-government-n962111
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/6/26/house_progressives_vote_against_dhs_funding
unless i'm missing a newer vote?
the second vote is performative. the first one is the vote that matters. it is also not uncommon to bury such legislation and couple it with DHS funding because it deters anyone from voting against it.
So we differ because you think that the US gets the major reform of its health care system because AOC gets this or that committee seat ( which she didn't get anyway). I think that is a crock of self serving shit and an excuse for political cowardice. The reason the progressives can't hold on to their seats is because they let their voters down all the time just like AOC did here. Then they have the nerve to blame the voters for turning on them, like you are doing.
You ask what was to be gained by calling a vote that was going to be lost. Why don't you pull up the speeches where AOC explained the reasons that she wanted such a vote. You might listen to and believe her more than you would me. Or even give it a month or two and watch her make the case for a vote again when she can't do anything to make it happen and so it doesn't cost her anything.
For my part if you believe in this policy then you are trying to win the argument with the public for the next election, find out who will actually support the policy and who won't, show your own supporters they can trust you to honor your pledges which will mean you don't lose the support of disillusioned progressives. This was happening in the middle of a shut down costing millions of people their jobs and losing their health care as a result.
There are times you can move the needle but we are never going to find out now are we because apparently the risk of losing Pelosi as speaker was so profoundly detrimental to the progressive cause that it couldn't be chanced. Is that is your reason?
Or the cost of losing the vote would undermine democrats that will never vote for M4A even during a pandemic because it is much better to give them a free pass in congress so they can all pretend to be on the same page ? I am not sure how you can ever get M4A unless you can get senators to vote for it which means some of these people will have to be moved out and the others put under the pressure of risking, hopefully growing, progressive support unless they vote for progressive measures. The movement can't grow by selling out its voters.
And the people who get sick and can't get health care, they can wait and wait and wait while AOC gradually moves up the pecking order of the democratic party by selling them out repeatedly for the next couple of decades on trust that when she really has some power she will remember what she initially stood for and bring forward a vote for M4A. We know this is what she secretly wants because of the messages on the dresses she wears at parties.
Tbh even if you think she is a sellout or a well intentioned politician, the answer is still the same which is progressives don't have an institutional power or a social base to get any of the legislation/reforms they want.
The best thing people can do is ignore all it and laugh at the very stupid parts. I can't wait until AOC turns up at the Jackass 5 film premiere with workers power tattooed on her forehead, telling us why it's important black working class lesbian woman should also get a chance to play beehive tetherball.
It's all a meaningless spectacle.
The best thing people can do is ignore all it and laugh at the very stupid parts. I can't wait until AOC turns up at the Jackass 5 film premiere with workers power tattooed on her forehead, telling us why it's important black working class lesbian woman should also get a chance to play beehive tetherball.
It's all a meaningless spectacle.
this really sums it up for me. pelosi didn't even have to try to get her to toe the line. it was already assumed aoc would vote in line with everyone else. therein itself, you lost whatever little leverage you have. like, how are you going to lecture people about imperialism after voting in favour of increased defense spending??? the same goes for bernie too. all it took was a phone call and overnight he dropped out. it is only deluded bougie types who mislead people into thinking progressives have tons of leverage and this time it will be different.
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Better off =/= rich af and a better chance at a decent life after extensive schooling and sacrifices is, again, not even remotely on the same level as the wealthy that pay a fraction of what the salary professionals pay in taxes and use their wealth and political influence to keep the income inequality increasing. AOC and the original poster are right. It's not the average 100K family that needs to be targeted with more taxes.
It's not just weird but it's counter-productive. Plenty of working-class, blue-collar, poor people vote the same way as the hedge fund managers because people vote moral values. Heck, I've heard homeless people go on pro-Trump rants. And sadly, the right has been far better at framing their moral values than anyone on the left which includes both Biden and Bernie (see Moral Politics by Lakoff). And ranting on twitter at families making 100K needing to be taxed more certainly doesn't qualify as a more effective framing tactic.
Reading through this to find out that my wife and I are "rich" now...
Agree. Aside from the silliness the one thing I really do hate is it's pretty clear all this progressivism or democratic socialism shite in the US is another form of media consumption. The people who making are this content - Progressive politicians, left commentators, media organisations, podcasts, streamers etc are using a genuine(A bit small in numbers) feeling of wanting radical change to give themselves a very decent standard of living.
To improve the conditions of the working class it's very important I attend wealthily fashion shows and that you accept you're landlord is just like you!. Oh also don't forget to hit the like button as every like brings us closer to universal healthcare!
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Reading through this to find out that my wife and I are "rich" now...
Same apparently. Of course we will be working well into our 60's/70's to pay off the debt and to make up for the fact that we didn't make above minimum wage until our mid 30's. Nice to know I'm rich af though, that makes the mortgage/student loan bills much easier to open and pay now.
too bad bernie didn't know that. all he had to do was show up at the met gala and be grumpy. his next stop would have been the white house.
i have student loans as well. but i consider myself lucky to not be in a position that requires living paycheck to paycheck or work multiple low-paying jobs to make ends meet. as to your point about how the argument is framed, it barely matters imo because right-wing media is going to misconstrue it anyways. it's what they always do. they think defund the police is already happening all over the country when the reality is the exact opposite.
Seems suitable for a Succession quote
Connor: You can't do anything with five mill, Greg. Five's a nightmare.
Greg: Is it?
Connor: Oh, yeah. Can't retire. Not worth it to work. Oh, yes, five will drive you un poco loco, my fine feathered friend.
Tom: The poorest rich person in America. The world's tallest dwarf.
Connor: The weakest strong man at the circus.
Connor: You can't do anything with five mill, Greg. Five's a nightmare.
Greg: Is it?
Connor: Oh, yeah. Can't retire. Not worth it to work. Oh, yes, five will drive you un poco loco, my fine feathered friend.
Tom: The poorest rich person in America. The world's tallest dwarf.
Connor: The weakest strong man at the circus.
Should be a fun race
Get ready for Abbot to run "Beto is more radically left then Marx and Lenin combined! He wants to take your guns and melt them down to make hammers and sickles for everyone!"
As Cruz attempts to outsmart himself with witty tweets.
For a guy that everyone swears is brilliant he's.... not.
