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spacetoaster posted:I'm going to be charitable and say that he's in such a desperate state of poverty that he's terrified of anything changing and losing the crumbs he has. Here's a piece with some points on how a $15 minimum wage didn't hurt the NYC restaurant scene . The author includes some more links about how increasing minimum wage helps people in a crappy financial state. But it seems that he has FYGM going on so facts and studies aren't the best approach. Pointing out that his employer will pay him the bare minimum they need to and would go lower if they would might get you somewhere.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:26
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also i appreciate you spacetoaster for reaching out to a friend and also ur friend for trying to listen, introducing people to new ideas is always hard when theyve been fed a counternarrative. keep it up and let ur friend know that i wish them Big Money and a nice day 👍👍
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Feb 13, 2021 20:30
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The worst submarine posted:also i appreciate you spacetoaster for reaching out to a friend and also ur friend for trying to listen, introducing people to new ideas is always hard when theyve been fed a counternarrative. keep it up and let ur friend know that i wish them Big Money and a nice day 👍👍 I think he's getting very close to the crack/ping. He worked for UPS in the 90's and was telling me how awesome the union was vs the corporate shithole with no union he works for now.
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Feb 13, 2021 20:37
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spacetoaster posted:Yeah, talking about that with him right now is futile. tell him he shoulda fought his bosses harder so he'd had 15 dollars an hour sooner lol owned dont actually do that But seriously, if it's profitable for your boss to pay you some amount more than the other guy because it's worth keeping you over settling for the other guy, then that holds true even if the boss can't hire the other guy for less than what you are currently paid. He (and/or his union) will have leverage to demand a wage increase. Ruzihm has issued a correction as of 21:45 on Feb 16, 2021 |
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Feb 16, 2021 21:38
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Ok, the Venezuela situation. People at work are pointing to it being the obvious example of modern day socialism being a failure. I believe that the US/corporations are responsible for a lot of the strife/suffering going on there can someone give me a couple of the major things we've done? I'd just like to be able to respond with something simple that demonstrates how Venezuela is being hosed with and it's not a socialism failure.
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Mar 14, 2021 19:37
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spacetoaster posted:Ok, the Venezuela situation. You should point out what sanctions are basically doing these countries. Sanctions are often touted as a "humane" solution, but in reality they slowly genocide populations. Due to sanctions Venezuela, Iran, and Yemen have had an extremely hard time acquiring medical supplies in general and it's only gotten worse with the pandemic. The citations needed and ALAB podcasts are smarter than me and have also covered this way more eloquently. https://soundcloud.com/citationsneeded/episode-106-the-sanitization-of-sanctions https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-7-the-modern-day-siege
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Mar 14, 2021 20:08
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This is also a good article about the crisis: https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/the-politics-of-food-in-venezuela/ The big thing it points out is that Venezuela has had multiple economic crises before where an oil shock leads to a food shortage, and the pro-US government cracked down ruthlessly on resulting unrest. (Chavez was even elected in the wake of one of these incidents.) E: monthly review is good but also hardline Marxist so maybe just summarize it if you think that'd scare your audience
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Mar 15, 2021 04:39
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disaster pastor posted:I've got a friend of the kind we're probably all familiar with. She agrees with pretty much everything I say politically as long as I don't cite names, but she lives in a rural mid-South echo chamber, so the instant M4A, for example, comes up by name, she stops agreeing and we've lost her. If the fnords work despite prolonged engagment nothing short of deprogramming will work. Change your phone number, then put your new number on a paper scrap bookmark. If she never calls again but posts pictures of her bookshelf, she's a liberal. The thing about liberals is that until they have a weenie roast and move to some loving ebook service, they keep books around for smuggery purposes, where children might read them.
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Mar 17, 2021 04:51
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Border immigration stuff with someone from work. Does the US have any culpability for the situation that has made Honduran immigrants come to the US? I've maneuvered the conversation so that his next rebuttal to me is going to be: "Well, they should take care of the issues in their own country." I'd like to point out that the US is responsible for a lot of that.
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Jun 8, 2021 04:23
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The term "banana republic" was coined to describe Honduras
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Jun 8, 2021 05:01
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spacetoaster posted:Border immigration stuff with someone from work. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/07/crisis-of-honduras-democracy-has-roots-in-us-tacit-support-for-2009-coup lots of mainstream stuff you can find about the 2009 coup, basically the left president was considering running despite being term-limited and the military threw him out of power and installed a guy who starved government services, killed a bunch of labor/enviornmental/indigenous leaders, and himself changed the constitution to run for re-election in an election he probably stole. the chaos from the state violence and increased poverty is a big reason honduras had one of the highest murder rates in the world. the us was somewhere between approving and actively egging them on (obama was convinced to support it by secretary of state hillary clinton). in a peculiarly obama-era twist, the major resource at stake in the country was biofuels
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Jun 8, 2021 06:03
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Just want to say that this thread has been awesome. Several of the people I've mentioned in this thread are now on board and are actually arguing with other people about the stuff I was arguing with them. And none of them were liberals.
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Nov 22, 2021 21:45
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spacetoaster posted:People at work are pointing to it being the obvious example of modern day socialism being a failure. I mean socialism can fail. It's not a magic bullet. Collectivizing the wrong sectors, forcing a command economy where it doesn't fit, trying to industrialize too quickly, these can have catastrophic effects. You might gain more traction by recognizing any policy mistakes that were made and figuring out how a socialist project would correct them. If anyone suggests failures of socialism means we shouldn't try iterating, then you can ask them whether we should've iterated on capitalism after the Great Depresson.
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Nov 22, 2021 22:11
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New folks, new argument. I know just enough about M4A/single payer to dig myself into a hole. Is it true that it would actually SAVE money in the long run? What are the facts about that?
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Feb 5, 2022 16:13
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spacetoaster posted:New folks, new argument. tbh this kind of feels like being one of those imperial japanese holdouts, but if you're still arguing about this here's a good article- tldr is the estimates focus on the increased cost to the government but the same estimates show the sum total of spending (public and private) on healthcare would be like plus or minus five percent
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Feb 5, 2022 16:28
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StashAugustine posted:tbh this kind of feels like being one of those imperial japanese holdouts, but if you're still arguing about this here's a good article- tldr is the estimates focus on the increased cost to the government but the same estimates show the sum total of spending (public and private) on healthcare would be like plus or minus five percent Whoa, thanks.
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Feb 5, 2022 16:34
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Single payer also makes it very easy to introduce price controls for all kind of treatments and procedures, so it would be easy to bring costs down across the system. It's still not as good as UK-style nationalized healthcare, but it's head and shoulders better than what the US has now (hellworld).
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Feb 5, 2022 19:48
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The biggest thing to understand is that in the current system, the insurance companies are the entity tasked when keeping prices down, but they have an incentive to increase them. Definitely now, since their profits can't go beyond a certain % of their medical expenses, but also before, since government entities will always keep an eye on whether they're scamming us by charging us high premiums and pocketing all the money. If insurance companies are taken out of the picture and replaced by an entity with the intention and ability to keep prices down, it would massively change how a lot of things are done and cut prices by quite a bit. I'm in the camp that the US government is too hosed up, underfunded, and compromised to do that, though.
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Feb 6, 2022 19:18
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spacetoaster posted:New folks, new argument. The point of medical insurance companies is to take money from healthy people and use it to pay for healthcare for sick people. But inusrance companies get rewarded for doing this as inefficiently as possible. The more money the take and the less they give, the bigger their profits.
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Feb 8, 2022 20:19
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Good thread! Don't feel like typing stuff up rn but I appreciate it.
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Jul 11, 2023 03:53
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