t ๐ฝ๐๐️๐ข️@turkishliberal.bsky.social on X - "Believing in free markets doesn't require you to believe free markets are perfect, private companies all virtuous, or pursuing profit always optimal. It only means that, whatever flaws free markets have, you believe non intervention is generally preferable to state intervention."
Free markets will lead to better outcomes than mixed or socialist economies, even if they are not flawless : r/austrian_economics - "How can anyone blame regulatory capture on markets without realizing how braindead that sounds? So you're telling me that massive and powerful regulatory agencies imposing regulations on the market which protect incumbent institutions and increase barriers to entry are... The fault of the fucking market? How exactly are government laws the fault of markets? It doesn't even make sense on its face. This is actually a microcosm of how broken the progressive mindset is. You pass a ton of regulations and brag about how you're "protecting the poor", or whatever stupid ass claim. Then, the regulations harm the market and lead to less choice. So, you respond by blaming the market itself, and demand to... Pass even more regulations to make the problem worse. And the cycle continues until the market is quasi state run and almost entirely non functional. At that point, you talk about how this market simply needs to be nationalized because it's probably "too important to leave to greedy businesses." It's all such a played out trope. Insane that you guys never put it together. By the way, those rich people you're afraid of literally gain monopoly power in their industries via the various regulatory agencies. That's literally how those monopolies form. You talk about hating the rich while simultaneously supporting every policy that makes it easier for them to exploit you on "the market". And you call me a shill for not wanting a criminal institution to continually distort the markets that I use to buy and sell goods? Fucking braindead."
Meme - Commie (with Pride bracelet, pimply face, vape and Red Hammer and Sickle Beret) to guy with yellow hard hat and overalls: "Maybe you feel alienated because you don't own the means of production?"
*Mosque, withered tree, car on fire, black niqab clad women and drab apartment building*
Meme - Commie (with Pride bracelet, pimply face, vape and Red Hammer and Sickle Beret) to guy with yellow hard hat and overalls: "Maybe you feel alienated because you don't own the means of production?"
*Plane flying trans rights banner, drab apartment building flying Pride flags with Black Lives Matter banner, femboy (?), commie in pink shirt and black beret, squatting crying soyjak with Communist tee, colourful pants and mask with something on fire behind him, mosque with angry fat feminists protesting in front, with one wearing "I love male tears" shirt and with one pink haired person, people protesting in front of withered tree with picket signs*
Meme - Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders: "Billionaires in the U.S. are .0005% of the population, yet accounted for 18% of 2024 electoral spending. Just 150 billionaire families spent nearly $2 billion. This is not democracy. It is oligarchy. Time to overturn Citizens United and move to public funding of elections."
"You notice he doesn't include millionaires in his rant, because he is one."
"You wouldn't be saying that if the democrats had won the election"
"start with your own party aka Harris spending $1,000,000,000 in 3 months"
"Didn't seem to bother you until @elonmusk stepped up for conservatives."
"You aren't exactly broke yourself"
"Why did you stop barking at millionaires, Bernie?"
Richard Hanania on X - "Washington DC is suing Amazon for not delivering fast enough to low-income neighborhoods. You can't make this stuff up. Amazon is an oppressor that destroys communities. It is also an oppressor of people of color if it doesn't provide them enough Amazon services. Why not let them be free of the horrors of two-day shipping? The problem was that Amazon used its own drivers for wealthier areas, but relied on the post office for poorer areas. They oppressed local communities by forcing them to use government services! Amazon notes that they stopped sending their own drivers to certain neighborhoods because they are too dangerous. This is what parasitic government looks like. Let crime be out of control. Have terrible services. A corporation comes along that nonetheless through a miracle of logistics bring goods to the doorstops of a community that government has failed in every way, sue it for not being fast enough relative to some other community without the same problems. What a disgrace."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "An interesting thing about at least street-level left-wing thought is that it rests on two directly opposed propositions.
(1) "You should be in 100% un-influenced control of every decision you ever make." This is why a >>>0% of young people genuinely feel that it is abusive for your partner to have any sexual or financial expectations of you at all.
But...
(2) "You have a human right to food, shelter, health care, collegiate education, and all other basic necessities."
Combined, what these positions break down to is: you have an absolute right to expect other people to support you in reasonable comfort, and they have no right to expect you to do anything at all. This is the life philosophy of a tape-worm."
Meme - "Obligatory reminder that this is the clown definition of "capitalism" that most socialists operate by. To socialists, capitalism is when rich people do bad things against non-rich people."
"Well, that's because capitalism inevitably leads to fascism."
"Is it capitalism when large landowners violate peoples' property rights by expropriating their farms to make more profits?"
"Yes. Corporate Capitalism is still capitalism."
"Is it capitalism when Adolf Hitler exterminates so-called "untermenschens" for profit?"
"Yes. It was, late stage capitalism. Which without fail turns to fascism."
Meme - Robert Reich @RBReich: "Wall Street and corporations have stood by Donald Trump and his enablers, all for tax breaks, bailouts and deregulation. Don't think for a second that they have any real allegiance to American democracy. Their allegiance is to profit."
"Robert Reich Makes 36% More Than Average CEO and Gets $40k for a One- hour Talk Vs. Average Worker Pay of $46k/year"
Unhappy Returns: A Preliminary Estimate of Taxpayers Responsiveness to the 2016 Top Tax Rate Hike - "The top 1 percent of earners reacted strongly to the federal tax hike on high earners 2016, according to a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Unhappy Returns: A Preliminary Estimate of Taxpayers Responsiveness to the 2016 Top Tax Rate Hike,” author Alexandre Laurin finds the underlying behavioural response of taxpayers resulted in $1.2 billion in fresh revenue for the federal government but cost provincial treasuries about $1.3 billion in lost tax revenues."
Left wingers want to "tax" the "rich" not primarily to raise money but make the "rich" suffer, after all
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "Reminded me from another post but this drives me insane. Happens in people who get mad at the term or some people even using the term Eat the rich does NOT mean. The 3 generation of drs family, it does mean the guy whose dad invented magical purple toilet paper that changed the industry Eat the rich refers to billionaires with masses amounts of wealth they can only get through slave labour, exploitation of human beings . That's what the term means There's so much hate towards well off families like JESSICA THEYRE NOT THE PROBLEM GO USE THAT ANGER TOWARDS ANYTHING ELSE. Eat the rich DOES NOT MEAN WELL OFF FAMILES THEYRE NOT THE PROBLEM Makes people like me look stupid cos they're stupid and don't even know the enemy."
"I was told I was included in "eat the rich" when our household income was a little under $100k a few years ago lol"
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "I remember being 18, bagging groceries at the supermarket for $6.50/hr. I thought the front end supervisor was part of that privileged class, they probably weren't even making $10/hr."
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "That's the Martha's Vineyard defense. It's what privileged people tell themselves so they, too, can play the victim card. If you're making $150k annually, you are rich. Period, full stop. The fact that there are even richer people does not change that reality."
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "Most people define rich as "makes more money than me!"
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "If you can have a cleaning lady and go on holiday with the family twice a year in today’s economy - yes your f’ing loaded - eat the rich is definitely talking about you."
So many left wingers sprung out to refute this ridiculous claim
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "I think you give too much credit to the human race. I've seen plenty of people exhibiting this "eat the rich" hate towards people who were, by no means, billionaires. Heck, not even millionaires. Just richer than them. Maybe Reddit gathers the majority of frustrated people, but 2 particular posts come to mind: one was of a woman who was asking for advice on how to confront the maid she suspected of stealing some items; another was a guy posting he found his brand new expensive car scratched in a parking lot. The vast majority of comments were "haha, you deserved it", "stop bitching, you have money to replace/fix that". There was another post, a guy was asking for recommendations for a reliable private detective, because his neighbour was changing cars every 5 years and taking his family for holiday to a nearby ski resort couple of times a year. And surely this neighbour was doing smth shady to afford all that. This guy, who clearly wasn't swimming in money by being frustrated at someone taking domestic trips couple of times a year, was willing to spend out of whatever he had, just to meddle in his neighbour's life. And he got plenty of advice, some unorthodox, on how to fuck with the more well-off neighbour. I remember all the posts post-Titan implosion, and comments after comments from people cheering that those rich people died. I think you have to be a special kind of person to find joy in the death of another human being, especially since one of the victims was a 19 year old, especially since those rich people, unethical as they were, were not some dictatorial tyrants that committed genocide. I find it terribly hypocritical of those people to "eat the rich" with such hate, since I would bet an arm that, given the circumstances and opportunities, they would jump at getting rich, irrespective of what bodies they'd have to walk on. Surely they'd find a way to justify it."
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "Yes, but the reality is that when governments implement policies to “tax the rich” it is never Bezos or Musk who suffer. The reality is that it is ALWAYS the surgeon, partner at a law firm, medium family business etc that end up paying more."
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "Eat the Rich means the people sitting on more money than god..... abd instead of using it to better anything, they use it to squeeze out even more money from poor people. And then keep sitting on the rest. It's stupid a doctor or something wouldn't understand the divide. But I gotta say I really hate "billionaire apologists". Dude, Elon isn't a car or spaceship inventor, he's the heir to a South African emrald fortune who bought companies, and cheats extra out by cutting corners, taking government money without making good in what's being developed, buying politicians so he pays less in taxes across these adventures, etc. Ironically, he's not even as objectively "talented" as other Sociopath CEOs when it comes to grinding humans into increased profits, he just has so much money at this point he can buy "mulligans" when he dicks up. Millionaires and corporations could be forced to heel by government regulations and taxation tactics (would you rather pay us 41% in taxes or 20%? Cool, the 20% requires you to pay your hourly non-exempt people $XX an hour minimum, follow these other regulations on Exempt non-officer positions with these other restrictions, plus these Healthcare mandates and environmental sanctions.....) Billionaires only exist because the government has failed at everything except taking bribes and dividing people. And because Billionaires exist, it's mathematically impossible for large swaths of the population to have a reasonable quality of life with food, shelter, and financial security."
More evidence of the zero sum mentality of the left - someone cannot be well off without making someone else worse off
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "The best way to put it is: “would your death impact the economy?” If yes, you are rich that should be eaten. If no, stay calm and carry on.:
This is revealing. Left wingers want to destroy the economy
People thinking "eat the rich " means millionaires / well off families : r/PetPeeves - "Your story about that particular "mega-penny" person really shows the financial chasm between rich and poor. I cannot even envision wasting that kind of money."
Weird. I thought the left prided themselves on their "empathy"
Evangelicals oppose removal of tax status in Canadian proposal
Bid to remove charitable status from religious groups draws ire of Evangelicals in Canada : r/canada - "The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada has raised concerns about recommendations presented to the Canadian government calling for the removal of charitable status to religious charities and anti-abortion organizations. The potential negative impact not only on the religious sector but the many people it serves would be immense, the group warns."
The thread was full of left wingers who just wanted to spite evangelicals and who didn't understand what a non-profit was
Of course, pro-abortion groups are fine. Political lobbying is good when it serves the left wing agenda
Douglas Carswell๐ฌ๐ง๐บ๐ธ on X - "Home Depot is worth more than all the European start ups created in the past 50 years combined. Home Depot."a>
Clearly, there wasn't enough regulation
Meme - Emil Kirkegaard @KirkegaardEmil: "Why does USA suck so bad at science? Is it because the taxes in the other NW European countries are so bad, that talented people rather try out their fortunes in science than business?"
"Scientific productivity by region / country
Academic publications per 1M residents"
Tony Blair tells Brits to stop self-diagnosing with depression as 'UK can't afford spiralling mental health benefits bill' : r/unitedkingdom
Of course, the left wingers were very upset, because they think it's everyone's human right to live off the state
Dave Bondy on X - "๐จ New Michigan Law: Starting February, workers can no-call, no-show for 3 days, and employers can’t discipline them—fines apply! ๐ฎ๐
"
Billy Binion on X - "I had to research this bc it sounded too absurd to be real. It is real. Laws like this are truly psychotic. I don't care what your political persuasion is. It is not "pro-worker" to bar employers from disciplining negligent employees, whom they are paying to WORK. Beyond parody."
Angelo Plume on X - "Do Jews tell their kids to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and work at a fast food joint?"
Andrew Fleischman on X - "We should run an experiment where we take millions of Jews, strip them of all their wealth, send the survivors to the ends of the earth and see if they're still wildly successful. Oh wait."
Over 10,000 millionaires left the UK in the past year - only China has greater exodus of wealthy residents : r/uknews
Naturally, the left wingers were mocking them and cheering their departure
Meme - "The fact the catchphrase is "tax the rich" and not "help the poor" is telling."
"That's because it's an ideology premised on envy and resentment tone, the altruism is merely performative"
Meme - Tribunus Plebis: "It doesn't have to be this way, billionaires, if you just wound back the greed enough to make a society where no one went homeless and without... But you won't. The pitchforks will eventually come if you stay on the path you're on."
David Milner @DaveMilbo: "People keep saying we only need to eat one of the billionaires and the rest will fall in line, and that's probably true, but I think it's also worth remembering we COULD eat them all"
Cal @callum6052: "Nah you gotta eat 3. The first is a one-off. The second, a coincidence. The third, a message."
Matthew Yochim: "Psst. If you took ALL the wealth from ALL the billionaires... .not their yearly income, 100% of everything they have, you wouldn't even have enough money to fund the federal government for a single year. What are you gonna do once all the rich have been "eaten?* What are you going to do when there's no jobs, no paychecks, no tax base, and no functioning government? Communism makes on lot of sense when you're stupid."
Left wingers just hate the rich, besides being ignorant (assuming they truly believe that billionaires' wealth can truly solve all the problems of the world, even though governments spending more somehow cannot)
Billionaires Aren't All Bad, Taxing Them More May Backfire: Experts - Business Insider - "Jessica Flanigan, the Richard L. Morril Chair in Ethics and Democratic Values at the University of Richmond, and Chris Freiman, a business professor at West Virginia University, are the authors of "Wealth Without Limits: in Defense of Billionaires." In the essay, published in the academic journal "Ethical Theory and Moral Practice," they argued that billionaires are often more accountable to the public and better placed to tackle global problems than government officials. They made the case that raising their taxes could result in less money flowing toward reducing poverty... billionaires often improve the world — and enrich whole ecosystems of customers, workers, suppliers, and investors — while building their vast fortunes... Market-made billionaires get rich by offering people goods and services. Often, they become successful because they invented a cool new product or they found a way to make a more affordable product. In other words, people become billionaires by making the rest of us better off, not worse off. The economy isn't a pie of fixed size —market-made billionaires make their billions by "baking more pie." We also think people hold billionaires to higher moral standards than powerful public officials. There's a widespread belief that governments should tax billionaires primarily and spend that money on public goods and anti-poverty programs. That is not how public officials spend most tax revenue, though, whereas billionaire philanthropy often focuses on providing public goods and helping the poorest people on Earth, not just people who live in their country... it's important to notice the double standards. There are politicians who have amassed way more power and influence than most citizens ever will, but whether we think that's unfair depends on how they got that power and what they do with it. In both cases, the bare fact of inequality isn't itself a reason to call a distribution unfair... Market-made billionaires don't need to redeem themselves, though, because being a billionaire isn't morally wrong. There is also an important question about whether giving away their money rather than keeping it in productive investments does the most long-term good. Billionaires who invest their money benefit their fellow citizens, too... Wealth inequality, as such, is not morally objectionable. What's objectionable about the gap between rich and poor is the poverty, not the gap. After all, there's a gap between multimillionaires and billionaires, but that's not something to worry about. The US government doesn't allocate much tax revenue to alleviating poverty; — much more goes to middle-class retirees. So this isn't a strong argument for taxing billionaires. Moreover, increasing taxes may slow economic growth, which harms those in poverty over the long term."
Meme - Mask: "Capitalism has failed"
Behind the Mask: "I don't have as much money as people I envy do"
Meme - Russell T. Warne ๐บ๐ธ๐จ๐ฑ๐ฎ๐ฑ @Russwarne: "The poor in the U.S. have better living conditions than the middle class in Europe."
"Living Space: American and European Housing
Square Feet per Dwelling. Square Feet per Person
United States: All Households 2005. 2,171. 845
United States: Poor Households 2005. 1,400. 515
European Average (Unweighted). 857. 363 "
Leo Kearse - on YouTube & GB News on X - "After seeing a sick crow being given food, other crows also pretended they were sick, and inadvertently created the British welfare state"
wanye on X - "Leftists will tell you with a straight face that poor people aren’t capable of thinking through incentives as well as birds"
FischerKing on X - "Welfare makes it possible to be a single mother, so you get more of it. Social Security/Medicare means old people don’t need their kids as much - meaning they don’t care as much, don’t treat them as well, or consider them in their wills - they don’t work to leave them as much. Paying for all this falls on young people, who then feel cash-strapped and have fewer kids. So then you have a birthrate decline which exacerbates all the fiscal problems, on top of government intervention damaging basic bonds among families. It’s all straightforward and obvious - but we’re so deep into this mess that getting out is borderline impossible. If we ever get out, hopefully we remember and avoid it in future."
The left will just screech about "empathy" and accuse everyone who disagrees with being horrible people
Meme - ArcArts @Arcs_Arts: "you ever watch star trek? that's what the left is actually offering if only ya could actually see the forest for the fucking trees. instead of just constantly fishing for excuses for to avoid having to actually have compassion and grow as a person."
Left wingers are unable to distinguish between fiction and reality. No wonder Marx is so seductive
Globe editorial: The red alarm creeping cost of federal red tape - The Globe and Mail - "A recent Statistics Canada study measured the scope and pace of regulatory creep at the federal level. That pace is relentless. The number of regulations rose almost every year between 2006 and 2021. The business of making regulations is a steady one. It’s also a booming business. There were 234,200 federal regulations in 2006. By 2021, that tally had swollen to 320,900 – 86,700 new regulations. That growth is a bipartisan sin: the rollout rate of additional regulations was roughly the same during the Harper and Trudeau governments. All of those rules come at a steep economic cost, on top of the direct compliance expenses. The Statistics Canada study estimates that the growth in regulations over those 15 years – not including the 234,200 regulations already in place in 2006 – reduced gross domestic product by 1.7 per cent. (Based on November’s GDP figures, that’s just over $38-billion.) Employment growth was 1.3 per cent lower due to the additional regulations over that time span, the study estimates. And the increase in regulations meant that business investment was 9 per cent lower in 2021 than it would have otherwise been. Imagine the political storm if Ottawa enacted a tax hike that blew a recession-sized hole in GDP, killed jobs and depressed business investment. But that considerable cost comes from tens of thousands of decisions, making the damage harder to discern. And the full bill is certainly higher, since the Statscan analysis doesn’t include the effect of provincial and municipal regulations. The most pernicious effect of the growth in federal regulations that Statscan identifies is the decline in business dynamism. Both entry and exit rates for businesses are pushed down by the weight of red tape. Faced with a growing regulatory burden, fewer entrepreneurs are willing to launch new businesses. And without the pressure from such innovative new entrants, uncompetitive firms are able to stick around. That is a formula for stagnating productivity, exactly the predicament in which Canada currently finds itself. Beyond the economic costs measured by the Statscan study, there are also strategic distractions for corporations. The greater the growth in regulations, the more incentive there is for large firms to build up an infrastructure to minimize those costs – the legal and accounting departments – and to push government for favourable treatment through lobbying. Playing the system rather than winning in the marketplace becomes a key to success."
Of course, left wingers love regulation because they want the government to control everything. They love government and hate the private sector
Comment: "First Nations are building their towers at the south end of Burrard Bridge in Vancouver is record time. The reason, no government bureaucracy in the way. In Vancouver and many other locals in BC, re-zoning application takes over 2 years simply due to red tape."
