No. of Recommendations: 22
So I would turn the question back to you, PP - what do you think is the biggest thing that Democrats could get behind that you think would be very popular among voters, that they should run on as their policy against the GOP?
The median household income is $80,000. After taxes your take home pay is just north of $60,000. Average rent in the US is $24,000/yr. Utilities including cable and phones are another $4-5,000. The USDA thrifty food budget for a family of four is $12,000/yr. Health insurance is another $18,000/yr. The average cost of a new car is $12,000/yr. So far we have spent $70,000 of our $60,000 in disposable income and not a penny has gone to clothing, kids costs, savings, vacation or entertainment.
Average Americans are hurting.
There are 13 billionaires, or 1.5% of all American billionaires, sitting on Trump’s cabinet. They are presiding over the dismantling of the social safety net. SNAP? Waste, fraud and abuse. ACA? No subsidies for the average American family. Medicaid? Waste, fraud and abuse. College costs? No tax payer support for state universities. Make the user pay. The billionaires are making damn sure that there will be no social investment in American families on their dime.
Meanwhile, the techno billionaires are building the greatest job destroying machine in history with no plan for the labor market displacement they will cause. Amazon hopes to cut 75% of its work force. It’s estimated that AI will destroy 100 million jobs over the next decade. You can’t deport enough immigrants to plug that drain. Finally, capital will be able to achieve the dream of eliminating the labor tax, and keeping all the wealth in its proper hands.
What will work look like in the AI hellscape the billionaires are building? Who’s going to buy their Teslas and order their labor free commodities, manufactured and shipped by Cobots across the world (if trade still exists)?
The billionaires are destroying the state because they know that only their money can solve the vast social problems they are unleashing on the world, and they’re going to make damn sure the clamoring masses don’t get any.
Mamdoni is right. It’s about the rent. It’s about the basic costs of living and inability of families to stay afloat. Hedge funds buying up houses and renting them back to workers at higher and higher prices. Billionaires taking back their billions, forcing millions to go without health care. Demigods of capital raping children on private islands because they can.
The grotesquerie that is American capitalism today should be an easy target for “progressive” democrats if they didn’t have to swat back Clintonites intent on defending their access to all that billionaire wealth. This is an easy story to tell, but instead of telling it the democrats vilify, attack, and marginalize the folks telling these hard truths.
Make billionaires the enemy. Make clear that wealth is public, not private. Musk can hissy fit his way to a trillion, but only in a mad bourgeois fantasy did he earn it. Target that greed. Target that shit and link it to the hunger and lack that millions of Americans feel every day.
