#IncomeInequality #CostOfLiving #Protests #CorporatePower
Hey everyone, I stumbled upon this thought-provoking post about the possibility of “eating the rich” or having mass protests in America. It got me thinking and I wanted to share my perspective on the matter. 🤔
Here are some key points to consider:
– It’s nice to imagine a revolution against corporate greed, but realistically, many of us have too much at stake to risk it.
– The recent swift crackdown on protests, like the one involving college students and the abortion issue, shows how easily dissent can be silenced.
– Corporations hold so much power over essential aspects of our lives, making it challenging to organize and sustain a large-scale movement.
– Prioritizing our families’ safety and well-being often takes precedence over fighting against systemic injustices.
– The younger generations taking office may not necessarily lead to significant change if money and power continue to dictate decisions.
It’s easy to feel discouraged about the future, but there are potential solutions to consider as well:
– Educating ourselves and others about economic disparities and advocating for policy changes.
– Supporting grassroots movements and community organizing efforts to address inequities.
– Voting for candidates who prioritize the well-being of all citizens, not just the wealthy elite.
While the road ahead may seem daunting, it’s important to stay informed, engaged, and hopeful for a more equitable future. What are your thoughts on this complex issue? Let’s keep the conversation going! 💬🌟
Yes, mass protests on a scale to really change things would require the majority of the population behind them. Right now, there isn’t even a majority to acknowledge capitalism as a problem.
Most of the republicans would probably say that there are at most few individual persons who are “bad eggs”, and that the underlying system is OK as it is and thus they won’t want to change it.
That’s one of the big perks of Marxism btw., it acknowledges that even the worst capitalist isn’t a bad person per se, they just act out their role as dictated by the rules written. But obviously even bringing up that point would end any discussion then and there for those people.
The president of the UAW wore an “Eat the Rich” T-shirt on TV for a nationally broadcast interview, and at a few rallies if I remember correctly.
[https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/eat-the-rich-how-a-union-slogan-set-off-a-merch-bonanza-95b98ff0](https://www.wsj.com/style/fashion/eat-the-rich-how-a-union-slogan-set-off-a-merch-bonanza-95b98ff0)
So you only need to open your eyes and look around, very little thinking is actually required to see what is already taking place, you do not need to speculate at all.
Edit: Also you seem to think corporations have some magic power, we the people are the worker and the consumer and without us there is no corporation or market.
Met loads of people sharing that sentiment during Occupy.
I truly believe, can’t give you a timescale, but there is s problem coming due to AI.
The first stage is less people required to do the job, so you are going to find more of the comfortable middle class out of work, thrust into lower paying jobs and disaffected.
When you only have a certain amount of people unhappy and struggling nobody really cares, increase that figure and things will start boiling over. Increase in homes being repossessed, debt mounting, unemployment queues rising. Like here in the UK….Number of food banks rising, child poverty. Cases of rickets rising.
Mass unemployment is going to be a problem or at least those in comfortable finance, tech, banking are going to have to do menial tasks due to scarcity of work.
This is just my opinion. Not a doomer, just a thinker.
I think it will be a slow creep, not a pleasant time but hopefully something good will come out of the bad.
If every person really put their money where their ideals are, so many issues would be lessened or even gone. But progressives are still buying Teslas, eating at Chik-Fil-A, watching and listening to shows that make dumb rich people richer… I don’t hold out much hope that “eat the rich” will ever be more than a catch phrase in my lifetime.
But I’m old and cynical. I hope Gen Alpha rises up and revolts, because that’s what it’s going to take.
Well if you unionise and start to build a fund for protests it might work, but as long at it’s up on every individual it won’t work.
It’s kind of easy, United we stand, devided we fall. And you’re divided.
It’s the same over here in Europe but we have the culture of unionising in our hearts and when we’ve had enough we strike, but the corporations have worked very well to explain it as people who wants to steal your money and such…
You can try to prefigure horizontal counter-institutions to have to depend less and less on the current system.
wait until we go third world. thats when it will get interesting
Well not with that attitude.
Were you alive in 2011?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
If you say “we have too much to lose” then by definition it can’t be that bad, yeah?
Trump will become president again. This is the real America.
People won’t as long as they are comfortable. Once things become highly uncomfortable, change will start to happen.
Too many people think they’re going to “be the rich” to want to “eat the rich”
Because the US folks have been so thoroughly beaten down, broken, distracted, mislead or divided that they’ve lost the ability to really mass together.
They just arrested everyone. Then change thr laws to make protesting even non-violently illegal. So…yeah…
I agree with you.
Most people are too comfortable to do anything, too worn down by life/expenses, or both.
There was a clip of a news anchor type person from I think the seventies, where he was very angry, yelling at the camera about how unfairly things are going, and how Americans are only concerned with “allow me to go home, to my sanctuary, allow me my few hours at home, my peace, allow me that and I shall continue to match in line.”
I’ve seen it elsewhere, but it was also in the Zeitgeist movie, the first one I think.
Revolutions get people killed , engagement in your local and federal politics is how to change things .it’s boring and time consuming but it doesn’t get people killed unless you live in Mexico or Russia .
And the French monarchy thought they would rule forever.
>Those of us with children and families will not sacrifice their safety and comfort.
Notice the current gen are not having kids and starting families. It’s going to happen. I hope during my lifetime.
You don’t have “too much to lose” – you have “just enough to lose to keep you from doing anything different”
Lenin pretty famously said the same about Russia. Revolution isn’t a predictable neat event that happens in a certain way when certain boxes get ticked.
get everybody legal weed and don’t fire just because someone tokes on their downtime off work, and everyone’s complacent.
70k is only the average income if you include the top 1,000 richest people in the US. The average WORKER makes way less.
Well. Average pay isn’t really a good indication of what most Americans make. It gets skewed by the people who earn tens to hundreds of millions. Median pay is $42k. Median meaning half make below and half make above. And $42k ain’t cutting it unless you got no kids and live somewhere cheap. So a majority of Americans are struggling right now. I expect there will be another economic crash. And at that point there will be massive organizing and a huge influx of people into real socialism. And then the government will do what FDR did when that happened in the 30s. Scrape together something that improves peoples’ lives a little bit, raise taxes on the rich to fund social programs etc. and most people will be placated and the cycle will begin all over again.
For 20 years I’ve been reading, “The people won’t stand for this!” posts as conditions have steadily worsened. No one can afford to risk their livelihood to so much as hold a sign on the street, get arrested and face unemployment with a criminal record hung around their necks.
Of course not. America has a history of literally machine gunning and dropping bombs onto protesters as a deterrent.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/battle-blair-mountain-largest-labor-uprising-american-history-180978520/
A more effective way than taking to the streets would be to stop engaging in any economic activity. Look what happened during Covid.
Yup. People won’t so much as risk being fired. They’d dig cobalt by hand first. People are people, and people to our owners are a known quantity. We would have dislodged bank rule decades ago if we were ever going to.
I think part of the issue lies with the fact that the working class has effectively been turned against itself.
Way too many people seem to believe that they’re just down on their luck billionaires, and that anyone fighting for workers rights and increased wages is trying to steal away their billions.
>Those of us with children and families will not sacrifice their safety and comfort. You can’t stop working, paying rent, buying food.
This is another aspect. Most people literally *can’t afford* to protest. Two days missing work to attend a protest could mean some corners need to be cut to pay rent/mortgage, bills, grocery, gas, and insurance.
I think your cynicism is rooted in ignorance, as blunt a statement as that is. what steps have you yourself taken to find political action groups? to engage with politics?
surely there’s a college full of clever people nearby you can contact, or online activist figures like ms. Crimew you can find information from?
eating the rich is a multi-pronged problem and you’re no less or more exhausted than the rest of us. push past it and put your money where your mouth is.
The housing crisis might do it. America’s been doing this thing for decades where there’s tremendous incentive to put your money into a home. Landlords want maximum rent. Both landlords and homeowners have a financial incentive to keep scarcity high.
Homelessness is increasingly being criminalized. That’s going to make homeless people and people in peril of being made homeless very desperate.
The propaganda that was really successful that no one talks about.
Thinking we can do these movements successfully as individuals.
We keep skipping the most important steps of organization and community to enable our neighbors and peers to be able to join us.
We just expect them to sacrifice with us with zero help.
You are right, there will never be a mass strike or “eat the rich” moment when we all still act as individuals about it and don’t raise each other up ourselves.
Typing out “solidarity” on the internet is not the solidarity we need. It needs to be actually tangible.
Look at the difference between bus boycotts of civil rights era vs what would happen now. Back then, they made sure to put in place systems and community to help their fellow boycotters still function without busses. Vs now…where we would tell people to boycott buses and sacrifice/figure it out themselves for the “greater good”.
Our sense of community has been obliterated over the past decades.
The thing is marriage has steadily dropped over the last 50 years. Possibly the only ones getting married are same sex couples. Add into that the declining birth rate. The family you protect is declining rapidly.
Not as long as healthcare and no universal basic income exist. Can’t be getting arrested and losing family healthcare.