The left needs to get people comfortable with the idea that we have to take money from rich people.
Not through taxes.
It has to be a seizure of filthy lucre and assets, gained through quasi legal but bad faith tactics.
They must be humbled before the people and grateful to escape with their lives and an annuity that keeps them comfortable.
Until it becomes *culturally acceptable* to do that, the left and the people are fucked.
@johnzajac Civil asset forfeiture for billionaires.
Was that yacht involved in any way in the bribery you allegedly committed? We don't have to prove it. We just charge the yacht and seize it. Same thing for your private jet. And the social media company you bought.
Yes! But we *must* start getting people comfortable with the idea that the assets and the wealthy must be taken.
Right now, you'd probably get 25% to say that sounds good. You need 80%.
@johnzajac @dalias I’m not convinced you’d ever get less than about a third of folk still expecting to ”make it” some day, and so wanting to keep all the privileges (not to mention actual private laws) in place.
That said, you’re not wrong, we need structural change that condemns and prevents the sort of wealth inequality we have.
But their belief that they'll "make it" some day comes from a cultural revolution started in the 1970s and finished by Bill Clinton (the controlled opposition).
That cultural and social cancer was deliberately created by Friedman and other people trying to engineer a "fixed" fascist state that could be durable.
We have to do a similar feat or we're toast. And the crises that are coming are our opportunity.
@johnzajac 100%. I mean I grew up believing in Keynes? maybe, and that we only really needed 10% of the population working to provide everything. Sure childish thoughts, and as an older, I recognise equitable distribution would look quite different, but I’m good with the principle.
I’ve also watched, bitterly, as the necessary education was attacked, and the obvious consequences came about. It just took me a while to accept that that, too, was intentional.
And that it will take time to reverse course.
John
Cassandrich
kit
Pope Bob the Unsane