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Business, Economics, and Taxes 2: That's Why We Fight to Take the Means Back
- Thread starter Kepler
- Start date
FadeToBlack&Gold
Microlot Marxist
Funny, I tend to follow the adage that to find the best version of (**insert regional specialty food here**), don't go looking in its place of origin. Obviously that's not always true, or possible, but you'd be surprised.
MissThundercat
Are the cis okay?
Target and Starbucks are teaming up with a new seasonal drink, hoping to win back customers. That's fine... instead of reinstating DEI and paying employees fairly, they'll try a gimmick and fall flat on their face.
ticapnews
Never graduate.
I'm confused about who is boycotting Starbucks right now. I'm seeing a bunch of people on both the left and the right boycotting but different people on both the left and the right bragging that they are continuing to buy from Starbucks. Leftist mayors like Mamdani and Price are pledging not support Starbucks, but people on the right are posting that they LOVE Starbucks. But other people on the right are still butthurt that Starbucks cups don't say Merry Christmas. Not that I care. I'm a Dunkin' guy.
FadeToBlack&Gold
Microlot Marxist
If I wanted "bad" coffee, I would just buy a can of Folgers Black Silk or French Roast and brew it at home in an auto drip. It could be your mom's 30 year-old, loud, permanently stained autodrip machine and it would still cost less and taste better than Starbucks.
Long but maddeningly, completely correct:
The Normalcy Illusion
By Tony Pentimalli
It would be easy to dismiss Bill Maher’s latest monologue as another tired commentary from a man who has not updated his political worldview since the Clinton presidency, but that would miss the point. What mattered was not the messenger, but the ease with which he delivered the message. When Maher mocked young voters for believing capitalism was “tired,” when he warned Democrats to abandon socialism and run to the center, and when he waved off economic despair as a generational quirk, he was not presenting a novel argument. He was reciting a script that the American political class has rehearsed for nearly half a century. His confidence came from knowing that he was speaking a language the donor class understands, the editorial boards applaud, and party strategists quote verbatim. Maher did not reveal anything about the left. He revealed everything about a political establishment that is terrified of acknowledging the collapse of the world it still pretends exists.
Maher framed the moment as a battle between moderates and socialists, as if America were choosing between responsible pragmatism and reckless idealism. But this framing is an illusion. The real divide in American life is not ideological but material. It is a clash between a public that can no longer afford a home, a doctor, or a future, and a political class committed to defending an economic order that has trapped millions in permanent precarity. When Maher pleaded for a return to the political center, he was defending not moderation but the stability of a donor driven system that equates incrementalism with virtue and treats structural reform as a threat. There is comfort in believing the country is divided between left and center. It spares the political class from facing the harder truth: the center has failed, and the people know it.
To understand why young Americans are turning toward economic populism, you have to understand the world they inherited. This is not a matter of cultural preference or aesthetic rebellion. It is math. Since the year 2000, home prices have increased 118% nationwide while wages have grown only 15%. Median rent has grown more than twice as fast as median income, and in cities like Austin, Denver, Tampa, and Atlanta, rents jumped 30 to 50 percent in just three years. More than half of Gen Z renters are considered rent burdened, and in some metros that number is closer to 60%. Millennials at age 35 have a median net worth of $48,000. Baby Boomers had $128,000 at the same age. More than one in four adults under 34 now lives with family, a rate higher than any modern era except the Great Depression. These are not fringe statistics. They are the lived experience of tens of millions.
The healthcare failure is even starker. Employer sponsored health insurance premiums have risen 240% since 2000. Medical debt is so pervasive that one third of all GoFundMe campaigns are now created to pay for medical care. Research published in The American Journal of Public Health found that roughly 66 percent of personal bankruptcies involve medical bills or lost work from illness. Delayed care has become a national norm, with one in four Americans skipping doctor appointments because they cannot afford them. Meanwhile, the United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any country in the world yet has lower life expectancy than nations with half our GDP. Maternal mortality has doubled in several southern states. Rural hospitals have closed across at least thirteen states, most of them because Republican officials refused to expand Medicaid. This is not normal, and no amount of rhetorical centrism can make it so.
Wages tell the same story. From 1978 to 2022, CEO compensation grew 1,460%. Worker pay grew 18%. Productivity soared nearly 60 percent since the late seventies, yet the average worker’s wages stagnated. Sixty percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck, and 40% cannot cover a four hundred dollar emergency without borrowing. Corporate profits as a share of GDP are at their highest point since World War II, and during the pandemic the largest corporations posted their largest profit margins in seventy years. Inflation was driven not by wage growth but by corporate price gouging. This is not speculation. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than half of recent price increases in key sectors came from expanded corporate profits rather than labor or supply costs. The structure of American capitalism is not merely stressed. It has been rewritten to funnel wealth upward.
Against this backdrop, Maher’s insistence that socialism has never worked is not simply wrong. It is historically ignorant. He invoked North Korea and Venezuela because those examples require no explanation. They have been used for decades to frighten voters into accepting that any strong public sector is one step away from collapse. But he never mentioned Norway, where a $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund built on public ownership of natural resources now provides universal benefits and some of the highest living standards in the world. He never mentioned Denmark, where universal childcare, healthcare, and subsidized higher education coexist with thriving businesses and one of the most competitive economies on the planet. He never mentioned Germany’s co determination laws, which require corporations to include workers on their supervisory boards, a system widely credited with stabilizing wages and limiting inequality. He never mentioned Japan’s strict regulation of healthcare prices, which has kept costs stable for decades. He never mentioned Australia’s higher education model, in which tuition costs are a fraction of U.S. rates. These omissions are not accidental. They are strategic. If Americans understood how many versions of capitalism exist and how many yield better outcomes than ours, the center would lose its authority.
The contradiction deepens when you examine what the United States already practices. Maher himself listed the programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Pell grants, disability benefits, veterans benefits, food assistance, farm subsidies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the vast jobs program embedded inside the Pentagon budget. If these are socialism, then socialism is not some fringe concept America must avoid. It is the foundation of the modern American state. But he did not mention the subsidies that flow to corporations: the twenty two billion dollars oil and gas companies receive every year, the billions defense contractors receive for weapons the military itself has deemed unnecessary, the seven hundred billion dollar TARP bailout for banks, or the trillions in Federal Reserve liquidity injected into financial markets during crises. If this is not socialism, it is something even more brazen: the public subsidizing private profit.
This is where the bipartisan nature of the problem becomes impossible to ignore. Democrats and Republicans have spent decades cultivating a political center that serves donors rather than voters. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall, deregulating Wall Street and paving the way for the 2008 financial crisis. His administration, led by Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, crushed attempts by Commodities Futures Trading Commission chair Brooksley Born to regulate derivatives, a warning that proved prophetic. Joe Biden supported the 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it harder for ordinary Americans to escape crushing debt, a gift to credit card companies headquartered in Delaware. For years, Democratic leaders blocked Medicare drug price negotiation, a policy opposed only by pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists. The Democratic Leadership Council once boasted of its alliance with corporate power, and its ideological descendants still dominate the party’s biggest fundraising circuits.
Republicans have been no less faithful to donor interests. Paul Ryan built an entire career on attempts to cut Social Security and Medicare. The 2017 Trump tax cuts delivered eighty three percent of their benefits to the top one percent. States controlled by Republicans refused Medicaid expansion even when federal funds would have covered most of the costs, leaving millions uninsured and contributing to rural hospital closures. Kansas governor Sam Brownback’s radical tax experiment collapsed the state budget and nearly destroyed its public school system. Florida removed 250,000 residents from Medicaid in 2023. Texas, despite leading the nation in uninsured residents, continues to reject the program expansion that would save both money and lives.
At this point in the story, it becomes impossible not to see the historical parallel. American politics today resembles the late Gilded Age, a period defined by extreme inequality, corporate dominance, and a political class that insisted everything was stable until the moment it collapsed. Reformers of that era were dismissed as cranks and radicals. Yet the public eventually forced through antitrust laws, labor rights, and the foundations of the modern safety net. Today’s establishment repeats the same mistake, insisting that demands for universal healthcare or affordable housing reflect extremism rather than necessity. History shows that this kind of denial does not preserve stability. It accelerates unraveling.
This is where a single warning from the past speaks louder than anything Maher said on air. In his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned that the country must guard against what he called the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex, adding that only an informed and alert citizenry could compel the proper meshing of private and public power. His point was not just about defense contractors. It was about the danger of allowing any concentrated power to shape a nation’s destiny without democratic accountability. That warning resonates today with an eerie precision because the concentrated power Eisenhower feared now resides not only in the defense industry but in the corporations that dominate healthcare, housing, energy, technology, and finance. The danger is not radical reform. The danger is allowing this system to continue without challenge.
The political class hides behind the claim that the center is safe, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The center is where inequality thrives. The center is where corporate power goes unchecked. The center is where politicians tell voters that universal healthcare is unrealistic but record defense budgets are inevitable. The center is where both parties shield themselves from accountability. The center is where incrementalism becomes paralysis and paralysis becomes cruelty.
The people know better. They know that an economic system that produces stable misery is not worth preserving. They know that the wealthiest country in human history has the resources to guarantee dignity. They know that the crisis is not the demand for more but the acceptance of less. The political class insists that change is dangerous. The voters understand that refusing change is more dangerous still.
Maher wanted Democrats to return to normal. But normal gave us record inequality, declining life expectancy, collapsing public trust, rising authoritarianism, and a generation that sees no path to the stability once promised to all. Normal produced the crisis. Normal sustained it. Normal cannot save us.
If the old order is failing, then the future will not belong to those who defend it. It will belong to those who refuse to pretend it still works. What the center calls radical is often nothing more than the belief that Americans deserve a life that is livable. That belief is not extremism. It is the first step toward a country that finally becomes what it claims to be.
*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
The Normalcy Illusion
By Tony Pentimalli
It would be easy to dismiss Bill Maher’s latest monologue as another tired commentary from a man who has not updated his political worldview since the Clinton presidency, but that would miss the point. What mattered was not the messenger, but the ease with which he delivered the message. When Maher mocked young voters for believing capitalism was “tired,” when he warned Democrats to abandon socialism and run to the center, and when he waved off economic despair as a generational quirk, he was not presenting a novel argument. He was reciting a script that the American political class has rehearsed for nearly half a century. His confidence came from knowing that he was speaking a language the donor class understands, the editorial boards applaud, and party strategists quote verbatim. Maher did not reveal anything about the left. He revealed everything about a political establishment that is terrified of acknowledging the collapse of the world it still pretends exists.
Maher framed the moment as a battle between moderates and socialists, as if America were choosing between responsible pragmatism and reckless idealism. But this framing is an illusion. The real divide in American life is not ideological but material. It is a clash between a public that can no longer afford a home, a doctor, or a future, and a political class committed to defending an economic order that has trapped millions in permanent precarity. When Maher pleaded for a return to the political center, he was defending not moderation but the stability of a donor driven system that equates incrementalism with virtue and treats structural reform as a threat. There is comfort in believing the country is divided between left and center. It spares the political class from facing the harder truth: the center has failed, and the people know it.
To understand why young Americans are turning toward economic populism, you have to understand the world they inherited. This is not a matter of cultural preference or aesthetic rebellion. It is math. Since the year 2000, home prices have increased 118% nationwide while wages have grown only 15%. Median rent has grown more than twice as fast as median income, and in cities like Austin, Denver, Tampa, and Atlanta, rents jumped 30 to 50 percent in just three years. More than half of Gen Z renters are considered rent burdened, and in some metros that number is closer to 60%. Millennials at age 35 have a median net worth of $48,000. Baby Boomers had $128,000 at the same age. More than one in four adults under 34 now lives with family, a rate higher than any modern era except the Great Depression. These are not fringe statistics. They are the lived experience of tens of millions.
The healthcare failure is even starker. Employer sponsored health insurance premiums have risen 240% since 2000. Medical debt is so pervasive that one third of all GoFundMe campaigns are now created to pay for medical care. Research published in The American Journal of Public Health found that roughly 66 percent of personal bankruptcies involve medical bills or lost work from illness. Delayed care has become a national norm, with one in four Americans skipping doctor appointments because they cannot afford them. Meanwhile, the United States spends more per capita on healthcare than any country in the world yet has lower life expectancy than nations with half our GDP. Maternal mortality has doubled in several southern states. Rural hospitals have closed across at least thirteen states, most of them because Republican officials refused to expand Medicaid. This is not normal, and no amount of rhetorical centrism can make it so.
Wages tell the same story. From 1978 to 2022, CEO compensation grew 1,460%. Worker pay grew 18%. Productivity soared nearly 60 percent since the late seventies, yet the average worker’s wages stagnated. Sixty percent of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck, and 40% cannot cover a four hundred dollar emergency without borrowing. Corporate profits as a share of GDP are at their highest point since World War II, and during the pandemic the largest corporations posted their largest profit margins in seventy years. Inflation was driven not by wage growth but by corporate price gouging. This is not speculation. According to the Economic Policy Institute, more than half of recent price increases in key sectors came from expanded corporate profits rather than labor or supply costs. The structure of American capitalism is not merely stressed. It has been rewritten to funnel wealth upward.
Against this backdrop, Maher’s insistence that socialism has never worked is not simply wrong. It is historically ignorant. He invoked North Korea and Venezuela because those examples require no explanation. They have been used for decades to frighten voters into accepting that any strong public sector is one step away from collapse. But he never mentioned Norway, where a $1.6 trillion sovereign wealth fund built on public ownership of natural resources now provides universal benefits and some of the highest living standards in the world. He never mentioned Denmark, where universal childcare, healthcare, and subsidized higher education coexist with thriving businesses and one of the most competitive economies on the planet. He never mentioned Germany’s co determination laws, which require corporations to include workers on their supervisory boards, a system widely credited with stabilizing wages and limiting inequality. He never mentioned Japan’s strict regulation of healthcare prices, which has kept costs stable for decades. He never mentioned Australia’s higher education model, in which tuition costs are a fraction of U.S. rates. These omissions are not accidental. They are strategic. If Americans understood how many versions of capitalism exist and how many yield better outcomes than ours, the center would lose its authority.
The contradiction deepens when you examine what the United States already practices. Maher himself listed the programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, Pell grants, disability benefits, veterans benefits, food assistance, farm subsidies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the vast jobs program embedded inside the Pentagon budget. If these are socialism, then socialism is not some fringe concept America must avoid. It is the foundation of the modern American state. But he did not mention the subsidies that flow to corporations: the twenty two billion dollars oil and gas companies receive every year, the billions defense contractors receive for weapons the military itself has deemed unnecessary, the seven hundred billion dollar TARP bailout for banks, or the trillions in Federal Reserve liquidity injected into financial markets during crises. If this is not socialism, it is something even more brazen: the public subsidizing private profit.
This is where the bipartisan nature of the problem becomes impossible to ignore. Democrats and Republicans have spent decades cultivating a political center that serves donors rather than voters. In the 1990s, Bill Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall, deregulating Wall Street and paving the way for the 2008 financial crisis. His administration, led by Larry Summers and Robert Rubin, crushed attempts by Commodities Futures Trading Commission chair Brooksley Born to regulate derivatives, a warning that proved prophetic. Joe Biden supported the 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it harder for ordinary Americans to escape crushing debt, a gift to credit card companies headquartered in Delaware. For years, Democratic leaders blocked Medicare drug price negotiation, a policy opposed only by pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists. The Democratic Leadership Council once boasted of its alliance with corporate power, and its ideological descendants still dominate the party’s biggest fundraising circuits.
Republicans have been no less faithful to donor interests. Paul Ryan built an entire career on attempts to cut Social Security and Medicare. The 2017 Trump tax cuts delivered eighty three percent of their benefits to the top one percent. States controlled by Republicans refused Medicaid expansion even when federal funds would have covered most of the costs, leaving millions uninsured and contributing to rural hospital closures. Kansas governor Sam Brownback’s radical tax experiment collapsed the state budget and nearly destroyed its public school system. Florida removed 250,000 residents from Medicaid in 2023. Texas, despite leading the nation in uninsured residents, continues to reject the program expansion that would save both money and lives.
At this point in the story, it becomes impossible not to see the historical parallel. American politics today resembles the late Gilded Age, a period defined by extreme inequality, corporate dominance, and a political class that insisted everything was stable until the moment it collapsed. Reformers of that era were dismissed as cranks and radicals. Yet the public eventually forced through antitrust laws, labor rights, and the foundations of the modern safety net. Today’s establishment repeats the same mistake, insisting that demands for universal healthcare or affordable housing reflect extremism rather than necessity. History shows that this kind of denial does not preserve stability. It accelerates unraveling.
This is where a single warning from the past speaks louder than anything Maher said on air. In his farewell address, President Dwight Eisenhower cautioned that the country must guard against what he called the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex, adding that only an informed and alert citizenry could compel the proper meshing of private and public power. His point was not just about defense contractors. It was about the danger of allowing any concentrated power to shape a nation’s destiny without democratic accountability. That warning resonates today with an eerie precision because the concentrated power Eisenhower feared now resides not only in the defense industry but in the corporations that dominate healthcare, housing, energy, technology, and finance. The danger is not radical reform. The danger is allowing this system to continue without challenge.
The political class hides behind the claim that the center is safe, but the evidence suggests otherwise. The center is where inequality thrives. The center is where corporate power goes unchecked. The center is where politicians tell voters that universal healthcare is unrealistic but record defense budgets are inevitable. The center is where both parties shield themselves from accountability. The center is where incrementalism becomes paralysis and paralysis becomes cruelty.
The people know better. They know that an economic system that produces stable misery is not worth preserving. They know that the wealthiest country in human history has the resources to guarantee dignity. They know that the crisis is not the demand for more but the acceptance of less. The political class insists that change is dangerous. The voters understand that refusing change is more dangerous still.
Maher wanted Democrats to return to normal. But normal gave us record inequality, declining life expectancy, collapsing public trust, rising authoritarianism, and a generation that sees no path to the stability once promised to all. Normal produced the crisis. Normal sustained it. Normal cannot save us.
If the old order is failing, then the future will not belong to those who defend it. It will belong to those who refuse to pretend it still works. What the center calls radical is often nothing more than the belief that Americans deserve a life that is livable. That belief is not extremism. It is the first step toward a country that finally becomes what it claims to be.
*Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky
@tonywriteshere.bsky.social
ScoobyDoo
NPC
Good news everyone.
bsky.app
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com)
Tim Scott: "Thank god we're less than 60 days away from the beginning of a brand new year. 2026 will be the year of affordability"
bsky.app
psych
Well-known member
Eh, that guy, Tony whatever, lost me at “the people know better.” No, they don’t, otherwise we wouldn’t be where we are in the first place. That thought process, that people know better, is misguided and dangerous. Or, worse yet, they do know better, and this is what they want, Tony. Dumbass.
ticapnews
Never graduate.
MichVandal
Well-known member
At least one can easily show the complete failure of their example arguments- the core problems with North Korea and Venezuela isn't socialism, it's the dictatorship they live under.
In terms of resources, Norway and Venezuela are very similar that they are sitting on huge oil reserves. Norway is a very successful version of socialism because it's got good representation and actually gives a damn about the population. Venezuela uses the same resource to benefit a handful of people at the expense of the population.
And since we are comparing communism- NK vs China and Viet Nam. None are perfect, but NK is pretty much a failed state vs. the other two.
As for socialist countries- all we have to do is emulate Europe, and it works really, really well. Various countries make stuff there with really high labor costs and strong unions. Why can't we? And they make money doing it. Where Europe really gets it is that there's a real limit to how rich people help. They do have power to invest, sure, but at the same time, they have way, way, way more money than they will ever be capable of spending. As a cruising fan, it drives me crazy that we actually believe that we can't build ships when you see Finland, Germany, France, and Italy constantly building mega ships- as if they are not socialist countries.
The honest delusion in this country is the myth that you can build yourself up to be a billionaire from nothing. Which is why people are so willing to give the rich unneeded breaks- because poor white men think they will join them someday. That's why all of these tax breaks for the rich still resonate after almost 50 years of good data showing that trickle down economics (of whatever you want to call it) is very, very bad for the economy. As opposed to understanding that our entire economy is driven by consumption- so the more consumers, the better the economy. And it's pretty easy to see that 1000 people making $50k/year will spend more money than one person making $50M.
And add to that the delusion that making sure people have access to food, healthcare, and a place to live will make us end up like NK and Venezuela. To the point they will cut off their ears to spit their face.
MichVandal
Well-known member
One more thing to add- the whole notion that rich people will leave if we tax them.
Where will they go???? Seriously? Where?
There is no place like the US to make money, there's no place like New York City to make money. Tax where the money is made, done. The countries that pretend that they offer a place for the rich offer no way to actually make a lot of money in any way. No industry, no markets, nothing. Let them move, and tax the money they make in our market. Heck, if they live overseas and make money in the US, tax them at an even higher rate. Done.
Where will they go???? Seriously? Where?
There is no place like the US to make money, there's no place like New York City to make money. Tax where the money is made, done. The countries that pretend that they offer a place for the rich offer no way to actually make a lot of money in any way. No industry, no markets, nothing. Let them move, and tax the money they make in our market. Heck, if they live overseas and make money in the US, tax them at an even higher rate. Done.
FadeToBlack&Gold
Microlot Marxist
North Korea isn't even communist. It's a military dictatorship and kleptocracy based on quietly manufacturing meth for Chinese factory workers.
ScoobyDoo
NPC
So, they are providing an important need to the World.
FadeToBlack&Gold
Microlot Marxist
American capitalism is built on the indoctrinated idea that you should have the biggest of everything that you can afford - biggest car, biggest house, biggest steak, biggest TV, etc. - and if your credit is good, you can afford it! As long as you've got the biggest dildo on the block, quality be damned. you're 'winning' in America. I once had a Republican uncle justify his 300+ lb weight as "part of my success". This is a guy who always blew his money on man-toys (boats, motorhomes, etc.) and was constantly broke. 
ScoobyDoo
NPC
I have a friend like that. Lots of man toys, no money. Meanwhile the only man toy I have is my computer.American capitalism is built on the indoctrinated idea that you should have the biggest of everything that you can afford - biggest car, biggest house, biggest steak, biggest TV, etc. - and if your credit is good, you can afford it! As long as you've got the biggest dildo on the block, quality be damned. you're 'winning' in America. I once had a Republican uncle justify his 300+ lb weight as "part of my success". This is a guy who always blew his money on man-toys (boats, motorhomes, etc.) and was constantly broke.
French Rage
NICKERSON HAS [CENSORED]
"Your kid only needs three pencils and grandma can go barefoot. Things are going great!" https://bsky.app/profile/factpostnews.bsky.social/post/3m5u4lx7lnl2z
MichVandal
Well-known member
Yes we have trended way to much into excess. Even into new housing with massive McMansions.American capitalism is built on the indoctrinated idea that you should have the biggest of everything that you can afford - biggest car, biggest house, biggest steak, biggest TV, etc. - and if your credit is good, you can afford it! As long as you've got the biggest dildo on the block, quality be damned. you're 'winning' in America. I once had a Republican uncle justify his 300+ lb weight as "part of my success". This is a guy who always blew his money on man-toys (boats, motorhomes, etc.) and was constantly broke.
But at the same time, everyone needs to eat, everyone needs clothing, everyone needs housing (and furniture to sit and sleep). By reducing the basic flow of goods via tight wages, the base of the economy gets weak.
Handyman
Hug someone you care about...
This is what some of them want (especially Millennials and younger) because they know what it leads to. Crashing the system leads to reform...and they have zero incentive to be part of the system because they are completely screwed.