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Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such
That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
- Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
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- Ableism
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- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
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- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
Voters are saying it is because of inflation. Not because she didn’t go further left.
Sure, but if she had spent her few months promising to tax the shit out of Elon Musk and other billionaires I bet people would have been more excited and actually showed up to vote than when she promised to keep the course and also appoint a Republican
Harris literally campaigned with a promise to tax the billionaires more.
Billionaires countered her campaign by doing things like literally buying votes.
Now people on lemmy are pretending she never promised to tax billionaires more.
Sorry, I meant she should have been Bernie-style grandstanding about it and hammering it home and making it a core part of her campaign more than it not being in her plans at all. I feel like she started with that kind of message and was doing well and ended with the Cheneys like me and ill put a Republican in my cabinet and lost
The polls show most voters were motivated by inflation and thought democrats were to blame. Republicans and the billionaire class convinced enough voters that increasing taxes on billionaires would make it worse.
thats nice, did you figure out how that would translates to americans affording a roof, eggs, and milk?
Ya it’s called common sense. See our government expenses are paid with taxes so if billionaires pay less taxes the rest of us pay more so we have less money for a roof, eggs and milk.
If we tax billionaires for their fair share then we pay less taxes and have more money.
I guess common sense isn’t so common.
😂 oh boy. Child i said eggs, milk, and roofs.
Taxes are literally the last thing thats the problem there. We're at historic lows. Lowering them for the low/middle class isnt going to get them food/housing.
You crow about common sense and then completely misfire.
Dont get me wrong I'm all for taxing billionaires hard. But thats not going to put more money in your pocket for the items above.
You'll need to do a lot more than tax billionaires harder to fix those issues.
And im here for those changes in addition to taking billionaires more.
The benefits don’t end there. If you really need me to keep explaining economics to you then just go take a course. If we taxed billionaires their fair share we could afford public services like child care or health care. Income inequality is the root of many of our problems in America. Including politics because now the wealthy have enough to literally buy votes as we saw with Elon Musk.
I dont need the economics courses but you might. The three basic things i listed are the three things people put before any other priorities. Please revisit your economy studies if you didnt recognize this. Your points about taxing billionaires dont matter until those three things are met for the voting population. And atm people are struggling with food (inflation), roofs (inflation, housing crisis), and fucking safety (muslims friends and family are literally being murdered by us).
So kindly before you think about lecturing people on economic policy of taxing billionaires make sure you understand wtf people are dealing with.
Because news flash: im all about taxing them and probably understand the 2nd/3rd order impacts of doing so better than you. But i also understand that such a policy wouldnt have shifted voters struggling with the first three issues.
I’ve aced all my macro and micro economics classes. If you think you know more than an accredited college the go teach yourself the basics because you’ve already proven you don’t know what you’re talking about.
😂 child i have two degrees, one masters (cs), and two bachelor's (cs, biology specifically a medical degree for my humanitarian work). My college required economics courses. Ive forgotten more math than you've probably been introduced to.
congrats acing your economics courses. I remember acing them too while sleeping through them. Clearly they didnt teach you how to think unfortunately but not unsurprising.
Demonstrated by the fact I literally told you i agree with you on taxing billionaires, just that it wasn't relevant to voters who are struggling. They dont care if billionaires are taxed or not when they can't put food on the table, a roof over their head, or are unsafe. If you want to win an election telling people we'll tax billionaires when they want food security and their friends and family to stop being murdered is asinine.
So please either revisit your economics courses or at the very least learn how to comprehend what you're reading.
This is Econ 101. It doesn’t matter how many degrees you have if you don’t understand entry level concepts.
You keep speaking on behalf of all voters like you think you are psychically connected. lol. Inflation (which was caused by the pandemic and price gouging) and immigration are what motivated the people that voted according to the polls. Your feelings don’t matter here. Voters understanding of the causes for those problems are primarily based on the ads that republicans ran.
yes, and did harris run any ads remotely similar? no. she ran ads about 'danger! danger! trump' 'the economy is banger!' vs 'the economy sucks and I'll fix it' trump ads. so stop thinking people dont understand economics because your reading comprehension and reasoning abilities suck.
seriously. try telling people the 'economy is doing great! and im going to tax billionaires to fix your problems' while they're stuggling to get food/shelter/safety and see what they tell you. it'll likely be 'fuck off dumbass' just like the voters did to harris. They. dont. care. about. taxing. billionaires. if. they. can't. afford. food. econ 101.
You inserted yourself into a conversation I was having with someone else about how vocal Harris was about taxing billionaires to make a comment proving you don’t understand how taxes affect disposable income. Proving you don’t understand entry level economics.
She couldn’t run ads remotely similar because the brunt of the inflation was experienced under Biden’s term and the majority of Americans didn’t understand the causes so they just believe the ads.
Democrats lost because leftists didn’t vote, the economy had to recover from the pandemic under Biden, the repbublican propaganda was as strong as ever and the billionaires pulled strings to make sure they were not taxed according to the plan Harris campaigned on.
yup its called a public forum welcome. didn't want people calling out your nonsense should have done it privately.
I absolutely understand how they effect disposable income. do you realize her tax policy would only fractionally mitigated the loss of spending power americans have lost over the last 4 years? first off 1 part of her policy is a child tax credit. many americans don't have children. so this would not impact them. The 2nd part was a tax credit. which means people won't get it anything from either idea until the they file for tax returns. that doesn't fucking help them pay for food/shelter the rest of the year. If you made 60k a year the child tax credit would barely touch 10%. Americans lost 22% of their purchasing power due to inflation.
she absolutely could have. she could absolute on day one said 'yeah we didn't get what we needed done economically, I'm going to push for things that actually increases americans income.' but she didn't remotely go anywhere close to this.
so in summary: harris had a shit policy and shit ads if her goal was to convince americans she was going to make them financially more secure. trump didn't (ad wise, policy wise hes far worse). she lost.
its not a voter problem when you don't have good policies or good communication skills. though I suspect given your constant nonsense about me not understanding economics because I called out the nonsense of a 1%er tax not actually addressing the immediate needs of the populace, not to mention she doesn't even have a proposed tax for them just she wont raise taxes for those making <400k, as absolutely bollocks not communicating well is pretty much your forte.
The convo was about whether or not Harris campaigned on taxing billionaires. All you did was change the subject to argue about something you repeatedly proven you don’t understand. Just like you are now proving you did not understand the topic of the convo.
Yes that was the point you have been arguing against this whole time. Thanks for finally admitting you are wrong.
This is controlled by the federal reserve. Not the president. Thanks for again proving you dont understand basic economics.
How can you be so stupid that you don’t see how this would be used against her? You must be trolling. No one is that stupid.
Look at how you contradict yourself. You say Trump had worse policy but he won. But claim that Harris lost because of her policy. Maybe you think Trump is a good communicator. You’re incoherent rambling sounds just like him.
sigh this conversation was never worth the time. oh well. at least we're past the 'blahblah dont understand economics nonsense' I'll toss some final notes and then ignore you. =)
Harris both failed to communicate effectively that she wasn't a fucking inhumane monster over gaza, and that she actually understood americans needs economically. and as a result it doesn't matter which of her actual policies were actually useful since she already lost people on all 3 of the base motivators: food, shelter, safety. if you fail those 3 issues you will have a hard time making a case for why people should vote for you.
And if you don't understand why harris absolutely needed to distance herself from bidenomics well frankly there is no hope for you at this point since it just goes back to food, shelter, safety.
And non-voters don't get to have an opinion or seat at the adults table because they enabled fascism.