Comments by "michael" (@michaeld4861) on "Second Thought" channel.

  1. Well said, this issue of false equivalency is a huge problem in our society. Sad, cause most of the problems are so obvious and ridiculous but billions in propaganda only supporting one side seems to be effective enough to overcome common sense, decency and evidence.
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  2. OMG, that's simultaneously awesome but also horrifying that the teacher would be so blindly uncritical and that an 11 year old has to point out basic reality to someone that is supposed to teach kids how to think critically.
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  3.  @lizziemallow  Here in the US it's generally a rate set by each company for health insurance. Nothing to do with income. Might be $200/month or might be $600/month (or more) depending on how much you want to be covered. That's why tens of millions can't afford health insurance and tens of millions more that do have some coverage can't afford to go to the doctor either because the insurance doesn't cover enough to be able to afford to go. For example, the cheapest health insurance plan through my job is about $4,000/year. But that's just to say I have insurance. If I actually get sick the insurance company pays nothing until after I've paid the first $8,000 of health costs. So in reality they pay nothing for my health bills until after I've paid $12,000 for the year. And that's literally half my entire yearly income. And I work for one of the big health insurance companies too! Plus, setting aside the cost, I've literally seen cancer patients denied cancer treatment (radiation) because the insurance company deemed it "not medically necessary"! The whole system is a scam.
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  4.  @gallowglass2630  Yeah, there's an interesting book outlining how Nelson Mandela utilized South Africa's rugby team to help overcome (the white people's) fear of ending apartheid. Helped some of the more ambivalent white folks realize that black folks loved the same sport and humanized them enough to change some minds.
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  5. Yeah, that really is a perfect analogy. "It's her fault she has a black eye, she shouldn't have had to ask to make me a sandwich, she should have just done it!"
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  6. Dang! Way to put it into perspective. US hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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  7. HAha the joke about eating urinal cakes is killing me 😂😂
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  8.  @lizk96  I think it might be good to add that speculators (I'm assuming) also includes real estate companies/private equity/hedge funds etc. and not just the "property brothers" flipping 3-5 houses a year. I've think we've seen enough this past year or so with the whole Redfin and Zillow debacles and private equity firms buying entire neighborhoods at a time to count speculation as at least a co-defendant in the trial of Who Caused It. Also in reply to Donnelly. The government didn't create an incentive for banks to do any of that. That's what capitalism does. That's the whole point of investment banking. The banks do illegal and overly risky things all the time, they literally view it as their job and prerogative, especially those deemed "too big to fail". They also gamed the system with the credit rating agencies to rate those subprime mortgages higher than they were which helped lay out the house of cards you described.
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  9. Nailed it! I'll never understand how people rally behind these assholes. Republicans continually vote against their own self-interests in order to give billionaires and corporations more money and power to make their lives worse. Often because of some nonsense culture war boogeyman or because of their own racisms that they wont admit.
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  10. US "Democracy" is a joke.
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  11. The US also has the highest per capita prison population in the whole world! And prisons are publicly traded on the stock market and pay dividends.... talk about fucked up. Trickle down sure has worked wonder huh
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  12. Terrorists for sure. It's infuriating and heartbreaking what the US does.
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  13. Bill Gates had access to computers as a child (when they were as large as swimming pools) and his mother was an executive at IBM. He was handed unprecedented access to the technology of the future which almost nobody had at the time and money, his mother also got him lucrative deals with IBM. Can you imagine being handed future technology and loads of money and privilege and thinking "why can't poor people do this, I did it, wasn't that hard?"
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  14. Well put, our current system is insane and not democratic.
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  15. They've done well to clean up their image. Everybody likes a good underdog story, if you just convince people that it's true or even believable they gobble it up and become your slaves willingly because you gave them hope that they could someday be like you and that makes the society they created fair.
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  16. If there's one thing that says We're the good guys, it's mercenaries for hire killing children for fun and getting full pardons. I'm actually baffled that they were even tried in the first place.
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  17.  @animeepisodes7442  So you are saying greed corrupts? Gee, who would have guessed?
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  18. Your videos are always so well put together. Also, you should make some shirts/merch. Just put the lightning bolt on a shirt. I'd buy that to support.
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  19. I feel like ranked choice voting would be an excellent way to counteract this extremism. That way people aren't fearmongered into voting for corporate dems just cause they are the lesser of two evils.
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  20. Sounds like she was actually the Mother of the modern day Republican party. "Thoughts and prayers. Now give me all your money before you die you poor sick bastards. And remember, you're pain means my success!"
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  21. @闘将ダイモス 100% "Your call can't last more than 5 minutes." But what if they have 50 questions? "Not my problem"
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  22. Damn, well said as always man! Love to hear more about Milton Freidman and Reagan as they seem to be the league of villains in economic US history.
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  23. In that case I am Jesus, therefore I am a god and you cannot argue otherwise. lol
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  24. Yeah that was a great book, super interesting and easy to read.
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  25. Yeah, the simple fact that mortgages cost less than rent, while also being an investment and kept behind banking gatekeepers is just a blatant scam to oppress and keep people poor.
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  26. Another fantastic video!
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  27. It's alarming how easily billionaires can just buy our entire media and basically our brains by extension and every other aspect of society as well. They are like the thought police and the inception-as-a-service business model all in one.
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  28. Damn, this is a hell of a video! You should get some merch so I can support the channel (it's hard for me to do recurring payments for things like patreon). Just the basic logo or something would be great.
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  29. Wow, I hadn't even heard about the climate activist setting himself on fire at the supreme court. That's how little the media cares about climate change I guess.
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  30. The number of people that die every year in the US because they don't have access to healthcare is astounding.
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  31. Dang that's a hard hitting quote
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  32. Well said, as always!
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  33. A video on the Black Panthers, Cointelpro would be great!
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  34. We will forever miss a good Hitchslap.
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  35. Milton Friedman has been a plague to society. Also, with profit being the only goal of shareholder capitalism these call centers are actually supposed to be a good thing. Anything that generates profit is supposed to be "good". Like might makes right, except, money makes right.
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  36. US hypocrisy at its finest.
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  37. Anybody who thinks that corporations are not bureaucratic has never worked for one.
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  38. Capitalism = Authoritarianism. Socialism = Democracy.
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  39. Companies seem to be laying off massive amounts of workers simply to lower labor costs as they make record profits. One company starts and they all follow like dominoes. Waiting with their trillions on the sidelines to buy up every aspect of your existence and rent it back to you for 10x the cost after your life has crumbled due to their callousness and greed.
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  40. Yes! Finally someone saying the wage price spiral is bs! If wages haven't kept up with inflation for 50 years then there is literally no possible way for a wage-price spiral to exist. The only wage-price spiral that does exist is the "wages" of billionaires and big corporations.
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  41. So he signs a bill that says children need to learn about the "evil of communism" but the bill also states that colleges need to have a diversity of ideas and not be shielded from ideas.... yeah... openly saying we need to better brainwash kids cause they are still learning the truth.
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  42. Wow I had no idea the founding fathers were so young at that time. I just always assumed they were old when they did anything significant.
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  43.  @gabrielrae7647  So the rich are allowed to steal from the poor but the poor are not allowed to fight back. Got it. Nice world view you got there. Please do elaborate on how what Jeff Bezos is doing is not stealing. That's not even to mention the countless times Amazon was caught siphoning wages from drivers tips to feed Bezos's dystopian fantasies.
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  44. The whole practice of policing dumpsters is fucking insane and dystopian. "I know you are starving and going to die but I have to throw this away and make sure you can't get it." I see it in my town too, the gas station I cut through to go to work has built an entire fence with a lock on it and a security camera on top around their dumpster even though it's never been an issue. They don't even have security cameras at the front of the building, they are literally more concerned about their trash than the product being sold.
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  45. To be fair I have seen (even right wing thinktank) studies saying GDP would go up if we nationalized healthcare because of the sheer number of people that can't work due to treatable disabilities being able to join the workforce and thereby increase their spending.
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  46. Nothing could possibly be more cringe than a CIA propaganda video pretending like they are selfless heroes.
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  47. For the wage-price spiral bs, you should use the McDonalds prices between US and Denmark. I mean this literally proves there's no wage-price spiral for labor. Wages would have to outpace inflation significantly and with no increase in productivity to even get towards a reasonable argument. Big Mac in USA: $4.80 Big Mac in Denmark: $5.15 McDonalds worker salary in USA: $7.25 McDonalds worker salary in Denmark: $22
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  48.  @BarrySlisk  Billionaires ARE dictators. They are dictators of the workplace and they influence government through lobbying to write their own rules. And are never held accountable for the actions. Using child slave labor is 100% a dictatorial move. The use leverage to oppress people and get government subsidies to start/scale their dictatorships or in the case of oil they just plain steal money from the people via subsidies to then send to shareholders which are mainly the superrich. They also pay the police to be their own private security or in the case of "defense" contractors, they just lobby for war to profit.
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  49. Dang, your videos are always so well put together! The right's full on embrace of the propaganda and tactics of fascisms is insane. Literally everything they do and say now is directly out of Hitler's playbook.
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  50. You should do a video more on the IMF and Milton Freidman.
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