If only it were just dudes. My mom is like this. I can get her to agree with that things need to be better and that social spending is good but… when I explain to her that we need to tax billionaires to do that suddenly it’s “BUT THEY EARNED THEIR MONEY! WE SHOULDN’T TAKE IT FROM THEM!!!”
How old was your mom when they stopped putting lead into gasoline and paint?
Huh. This turned out to be a more complicated answer than I thought. My parents were born in the mid 60s. Lead paint was banned in 1978, so they would have been in their teens. Lead gasoline, on the other hand, was gradually phased out starting in 1973, so a little earlier, but shockingly wasn’t completely banned until literally the month I was born, Jan 1996.
Lead pipes are even more wild. NEW installations were banned in 1974, but it allowed existing ones to stay in.
The classic circular reasoning.
“They’re rich because they worked hard for that money so they earn it. How do you know they worked hard? Because they’re rich of course. If they didn’t work hard they wouldn’t be rich!”
yup! i worked my ass off, and a very generous expected audience for my book is maybe 4000 to 5000, over the course of the next 20 years. not per year, total.
and i would not change a word of it.
Ask her why that line of thinking doesn’t apply to her. She earned her money. Why should they take it?
I do try to explain that, but she just won’t listen. It’s like there’s a mental block stopping the connection from happening.
The crazy thing is she’s worked insanely hard in her career and until a couple years ago barely made any money from it. (Although some of that is the gender inequality of her being out of work to take care of us when we were young for a few years.) She doesn’t understand how her being this hardworking professional who still only makes enough for half of a middle class income is different than someone who’s never worked a day in their life siphoning money off of workers so they can buy their 3rd mansion, private jets, and elections and somehow still has MORE money after all of that.
It’s not entirely her fault. The billionaire class has been dumping money into that fire since before you or I were even born.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
Let’s not ignore the contributions of lead poisoning!
Let’s talk about death taxes in America. You will hear the line about paying taxes when you’re alive and then paying taxes when you die. I checked this out a few years ago, so this information is out of date, but that means the exemptions have only gone higher.
While you’re alive, you could gift about $10k to each child per year, from each parent. This meant if you had 3 kids, you could do a tax free wealth transfer of $60k per year. When you died, you could give each child $10 million, again per parent. This means the absolute minimum wealth required to pay an estate tax on was $10 million, providing the wealth was held by only one person and they only had one child. If the scenario above was used, with 2 parents owning the wealth jointly and having 3 children, you could transfer $60 million, plus another $600k if you had started working on your estate planning 10 years before you died. And even then, you were only paying taxes on the portion above the tax-free amounts listed above. All of this doesn’t even require any trusts or other tax haven’t shenanigans.
tl;dr Pretty much anyone who is paying estate taxes can afford to.
In 2024 there were a lot of Trump flags in my area. In 2026 there are 2, one is hanging from an overgrown bush outside of an old mobile home that has no less than 3 cars that haven’t moved in many years, the other is in an open field next to a storage unit facility that looks like it’s been abandoned.
I have to say that in both cases it’s a perfect example of what’s left of the Trumpers delusional support of something that they can not begin to comprehend and that they will never know just how far they really are from the truth. They don’t understand that just because he speaks the same hateful words doesn’t mean that they are a part of his world.
I’ve noticed more trump supporters taking down those Flags, not because they don’t support trump but because they don’t want their house vandalized
The amount of Talarico signs I’ve seen in deep rural Texas towns has been shocking. I don’t think I’ve seen a single Paxton sign in a yard.
They’ll vote for the next one. Guaranteed.
Racism and hatred of the other and they’re all in. Doesn’t matter who speaks it into a mic as long as the ® is there.
that’s not fair. those rich 30killionaires may be whiny, but some of them whine that millionaires and billionaires should actually contribute to society. being a 30killionaire is rough, i don’t blame them for whining.
“So long as they own the libs”
As they commonly say
They dont want a better country for anyone
They want other people to suffer, not themselves (chudservatives)
Only when the pain is too great for them too when they also start suffering and crying from the consequences
Yes, but they own them by preventing changes that would benefit themselves. So I’m not really sure if that owning is what you really want, Cletus van Yokel.
But getting your face stomped on by the boot of wealthy elites repeatedly until the day you die because you have been bred to believe they are your betters is the American way.
B-but innovation!!
I make more than double that and spend tons of time online: Tax these rich assholes their due so they’re paying their fair share like the rest of us.
30k is quite generous.
I see people disagreeing that communism is the answer. Or asking specifics about what they want to tax.
Honestly I’m not quite sure who’s more cucked anymore.
Is it the poorer rightoids who watch a fuck ton of free market slop and are against taxing the rich for no good reason?
Or is it the centrists and leftoids who still think the state works in their interests and will use the money for social spending (don’t laugh!) instead of war or subsidies to “prop up the economy” that will go back to the same millionaires that get taxed?
Is this meme assuming that everyone who disagrees with you politically is poorer than you, and making fun of them for earning less? I feel like this is rooted in a misconception of “people get paid according to their intelligence” - and the reverse: “STUPID people who i disagree with deserve to have their labour exploited.”
But I could be wrong…?
I think it’s about bootlickers who mistakenly associate themselves with the ultra rich who start crying when anyone suggests increasing taxes on the actually rich people.
Yeah I’ll write it off as an overanalysis and over-reaction on my part. I’m too sensitive to low earnings being presented in a negative light
Yeah I totally get your initial assumption, but as far as I can tell this is basically just making fun of the “temporarily embarrassed millionaire” type of person who thinks that if they just vote against taxing the rich now, then when they inevitably become rich and successful one day, then they’ll benefit.
Perhaps even more relevant is that when when people are desperate/afraid/confused they look to strength and power to solve their problems. I can’t remember the name of it but it’s a documented psychosocial phenomenon. It is essentially being a sycophant or bootlicker but the academics have a more neutral term for it.
Problem really is though parties promising money for the poor take it from the middle. Middle (or the left’s definition of rich here) starts at 60k. Election interviewers would specifically ask this. Well, this is apparently not the democratic will.
I’m not saying the other “side” is better but this drives alot of people away from leftish parties.
That’s not true. Harris said she wanted to tax incomes over $1,000,000/ year, not 60k. And add a wealth tax on people who had over $100,000,000 dollars.
I’m sure many here would want those numbers lower, but no one is calling 60k rich here unless they are talking about another country.
You’re making shit up to try and rationalize some irrational shit.
