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Kim O\x27Brien
Hillsdale College
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Comments by "Kim O\x27Brien" (@kimobrien.) on "The Middle Class and Why It's Disappearing | Highlights Ep.36" video.

@ar6985 It''s the natural workings of capitalism that pushes the middle class out of business and replaces skilled labor with unskilled labor and machines.
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That is one of the most important realizations.
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@ar6985 If only things were as simple as a historian like yourself claims. If Stalinism was the continuation of Leninism why would Stalin need to frame up and murder the old bolsheviks and charge his opposition with Trotskyism. NAZI Germany was a capitalist country it sent thousands to be executed in a final solution to the Jewish question. Stalin's fear was internal opposition not capitalism. What kind of choice do the young have when the Imperialist sound the bells for war? A choice to become cannon fodder for capitalist profits? Read a book? Well I suggest Trotsky since he was Stalin's biggest fear, his most voracious critic and assinanated by the NKVD in Mexico City in 1940.
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@Random-rt5ec That is the way capitalism works. The purpose of patents and copyrights was never to create massive riches for a few like Bill Gate or long term monopoly but to encourage the development of the arts and science and secure a living for the producers. Capitalist production ends not when needs are fulfilled but when the rate of profits drop. If Chinese labor becomes too expensive than their factories will close and production will move elsewhere.
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@lancebwilkins Capitalism gave political power to the merchants over the landed aristocracy. But the middle class shopkeeper and small businessman is continually replaced by the larger more efficient uses of economic power. The same happens to the middle class professionals. The independent MD has been replaced by the group practice. When you buy the goods and services during a normal week do you even know the owners of the places you shop? I travel around the country and I see the same brands for the same goods everywhere. People like Truckers are middle class they aren't just workers who own their own tools and supervisors may think they are middle class but the have to follow orders from above and are easily replaceable.
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@droe2570 Right what you want to do is define capitalism by its past and then claim what we have today isn't capitalism. As Karl Marx correctly observed on a world scale the only class that is increasing in size is the proletariat all other classes decline. The biggest challenge to the small business owners are machines and economies of scale not regulations and taxes. Every natural periodic economic crisis clears out the weak by bankruptcy. The fact that the bosses need labor and they can't find workers at minimum wage reflects the end of the lockdown and the fact that inflation has made a minimum wage not raised in over ten years not enough for even a single worker to live on in some areas. Companies that can set monopoly prices can pay higher wages and union membership is also a factor in wages. Capitalist is driven by greed and those who think they have allies in business soon learn otherwise.
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Why is the middle class in decline? Just when did he answer that question?
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@willardchi2571 That is because capitalist greed for profit is insatiable and the natural working of capitalist economics drive it into crisis after crisis with each getting worse than the last.
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@brothermac9719 The natural workings of greed. Capitalism you will own nothing and like it while billionaires take carnaval rides into space.
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@droe2570 People quickly leave sinking ships. If you have to rely on paying non competitive wages to stay in business don't expect to be in business long. You may have a right to start a business you don't have a right ti make a profit.
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@lancebwilkins Cuba educates plenty of Medical Doctors many go on foreign medical missions. Do they all just run for the US Embassy? Most Cuban's want to live in Cuba and support their government. Even Cuban's like Cuban American Iraq war veteran Carlos Lazo have turned against the blockade and US interventionist policy.
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@robc8468 What's your definition of middle class? Is it based on occupation or income? Most people at the beginning of capitalism were farmers of some type or other. In England they had to kick the peasants off the land by passing the manor enclosure laws to create a propertyless working class to be used as laborers in the factories. In America the working class was created out of immigrants, former slaves and economically destitute free farmers as capitalism developed here.
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@mattschrader5047 Ya hope in religion if only we could return to the days when the pope could tell us what to think about how the sun rotated about the earth and keep Galileo locked up or executed instead of just in lifetime house arrest. Ideas have a life of their own and the advancement of culture and education dooms capitalist exploitation no matter who or why it is practiced. The only snake oil being peddled is that that claims that capital produces something on its own and that billionaires are billionaires because they are born as a special genius class destined to rule over everyone else while blasting into space on expensive carnaval rides.
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@lightfox11 Wall Street does not ask for your permission. They and the two parties make their decisions based upon shareholder value and profits. Your not invited into their party.
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@23wisegal You give theses politicians including Trump to much credit. Trump couldn't do much in office because he's just one person at the head of a vast bureaucracy of decision makers. He can do even less out of office because his popularity and influence have stagnated.
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@JOHN----DOE That's the only hope I see. A number of recent strikes against two tier wages have taken place. Both my father andI I were on strike when we were young.
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@bender9222222222 Capitalism needs order takers not thinkers. As far as the capitalist are concerned education and healthcare is wasted on us since they can hire all the labor they need and buy all the healthcare they want.
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Work ethic was nothing more than capitalist propaganda. You work and they sit in a chair counting their profits. Capitalism is a system that promises something for nothing where the rich pretend that the are both smart and work hard. They are neither.
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@learninghowtodothis8062 First that is NOT an example of history repeating itself since what you claim hasn't happened yet. Second the statues torn down honor thousands of white men fighting to PRESERVE slavery. I think you need to go back to history class now
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@jb-2714 Had nothing to do with Antifa like you claimed. None of what you originally stated makes any sense. One hundred ninety thousands Black men fought in the Union Army where's all the monuments to their sacrifice? Republican's betrayed Blacks when the agreed to the Hayes Tilden compromise and the Republicans on the Supreme Court found separate but equal constitutional.
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@jb-2714 Now that you claim not to be defending the original post I responded to you make even less sense. You just wanted to create confusion so you could make you claim about erasing history. The communist movement split in 1928 and its been the Stalinist who have tried to erase history including that of Leon Trotsky organizer of the Red Army victory over 14 Imperialist Armies including the US/UK. Did they teach you in school that President Wilson ordered the invasion of the Soviet Republics? That he continued the war after the armistice? That's a subject they like to avoid in US history class. How about at Hillsdale college do they talk about the US invasion of the Soviet Republics? Were you one of the people who condemned the tearing down of statues at the end of the Soviet Union also? Or do you just condemn rioting when it suits your political purpose.
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@jb-2714 "Tearing down statues is what communist do." I've never torn down a statue nor can you claim that it wasn't done during the French revolution before Marx was even born. It's just another so called crime that people like yourself claim is something communists do. Maybe US Troops shouldn't have pulled down a Statue of Saddam Hussein for the MSM TV audience or are US Troops communists also? LMAO. Capitalism is responsible for racism and benefited from the overthrow of the Southern Reconstruction governments and the imposition of segregation. Only socialism and national self determination can lay the ground for the abolishing of all racial discrimination.
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@jb-2714 Racist ideology only began with the development of New World and the European markets demand for the crops raised in the tropics like Sugarcane, Tobacco, Cotton, and Indigo, The need for labor in the tropics enabled the Black slave market. Elese where European capitalist conquered the world for profitable markets and resources. Communism is a movement not a nationality. Its one classes history, the modern proletariat, of victory and defeat in the modern worlds class struggle with the other most important claas the capitalists. Our power is that of working people in the industrial trade unions worldwide and the Cuban workers state. It was the industrial workers at the Gdansk shipyard and their union solidarity that began the popular revolutions that ended the Stalinist monolith with ex Stalinist bureaucrats wana be capitalists seizing control. .
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@stevecobb12550 Right open a lemonade stand and then join one of the two parties for goo goo (good government)
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@forestchicken3302 Your screen name says it all. Keep flapping you wings someone else might get scared.
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Get something straight German Big Business bailed out Hitler's the National Socialist GERMAN Workers Party which was headed for bankruptcy. They provided strike breaking service for the bosses. Henry Ford is the only American mentioned favorable in Mein Kampf. Ford also published the anti semitic rant called the International Jew. translated by the NAZI's and was awarded the "Order of the German Eagle" just before war broke out.
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@Goodkidjr43 "HOW is the middle determined?" It depends on the social structure of a society. That structure also determines the thinking that goes on within that society along with its level of development and economic direction. The personal slave of the ancient world didn't produce anything of value and survived at the will and cost of the owners. Most of us in the wage earning working class produce value and survive when we don't produce value because we were part of the class that produces value. The capitalist class survives because it owns capital. The capitalist may manage his business or have another occupation but what makes him a capitalist is the ability to survive without the need to labor. The business owner who can't afford to place the business under professional management and still make a living belongs to the middle class.
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@lancebwilkins I don't look at it that way the capitalist control the two parties, government and markets free or otherwise. The Coal miners have partial control over their healthcare fund. They've used the fund to build hospitals and clinics in the coal fields. Despite supposedly be the richest country in the world for every three doctors who retire we rely on a new immigrant to fill one of those spots. I like the Cuban system. They educate way more Doctors then they need and get outcomes that are better or rival the US for a lot less money. .
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@williammorse8330 Well the industrial revolution is what really drove capitalism forward and all kinds of new industries developed also. You have huge companies that have control of mining, minerals and oil who create semi finished goods and then you have the big distributors like WalMart and Amazon. Between them you have consumer manufactures who are crushed from both sides. When you see the money Walgreens says you saved with insurance it has nothing to do with the manufacturing price of the drug. A drug leaves an Indian factory for 7 cents and bu the time it get to the pharmacy its a dollar at the insurance company price.
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@mikerodrick2430 The capitalist profit comes from not paying the full social value of the labor in the product to the workers but instead privatising it as profit. Now if he takes the profit and reinvests it into making more products for the market that's the best the workers can hope for because that will naturally draw in more workers have the tendency to allow the workers to demand a higher price for their labor. However he must have and see a market for expanded production. What does he do with the profit if he sees no way to expand production? If he raises wages then the workers would be able to purchase more but he doesn't do that because then profits would go down so he invests in driving up the value of capital itself. Stock, bond, mortgage prices, national debt, ect. However a realization sets in that theses paper values are too high and then they drop. The values oscillate up and down all the time but every 7 to 10 years they go though a major crisis that effects the economic well being of the whole economy and even the whole world's economy.
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@williammorse8330 If you wanted to do things that way you'd have to have workers control and economic planing of all the major industries and distribution networks. Otherwise the prices in markets along with advertising decides everything. WalMart and Amazon don't want to lose any of their place in your life. So they will keep saying they started as successful small businesses and that we all need less regulation and ability to run our business free of any "outside" or "government" control. Of course the local building inspector may act like a tyrant over a homeowner but you don't think they get away with acting that way to big business.
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@murrayscott3513 Anything worthy of being called education is not going to happen with capitalism because the system needs order takers not thinkers. An educated working class will not sit still for its own exploitation.
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@ronm6359 Elon Musk is the wealthiest man in charge of one of the biggest frauds in history the electric vehicle as the solution to pollution. Capitalism began destroying the world with World War one. The middle class is completely incapable of doing anything but decline under capitalist rule. In Cuba they replaced the privileged middle class with proletarian Administrators, Doctors , and Engineers. They waved good by to those who wanted the consumerism of the United States and its world wide Imperialist system of oppression and war. People like you shriek in horror at the thought of a Princely Doctor earning the wage of a Taxi Driver. Your terrified of your fate under a capitalism that has less of a place for you today than it had yesterday.
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@mattschrader5047 Basic industries are monopolized as is the means of distribution. Any small manufacture is squeezed from both sides with no way out except to squeeze his employees. Billions are out of poverty because of the struggles waged against Imperialism capitalism's final stage. None of the societies in the East went through the kind of collapse that occurred after the 1st and 2nd Imperialist world wars. Nor have the capitalists been able to inflict a big defeat on the industrial trade unions like in NAZI Germany or Fascist Italy or Spain in any of the industrialized countries. Popular struggles lead by working people defeated the Stalinists leaders in the East allowing some of theses wanna be capitalist to seize industries and the banking system.
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@mattschrader5047 "This debate has already been settled by honest economists and historians," You mean among the paid lackeys of capitalism in the Bourgeois Universities. Your proposal is nothing more than a massive witch hunt and murder purge based in the flag waving of constitutions written by the leisure class. Cable TV, Internet, cars, and cell phones are no more than modern day beads use to buy Manhattan from the Indians and even those are not universal. A system based in nothing but numbers in accounting books that loses all relationship to reality is headed in only one direction that of collapse. The rich must be satisfied with a return on investment despite the world market having a finite size. So you must keep accelerating the printing of dollars until you create a hyperinflation since the value of a dollar has no relationship to actual wealth or labor time.
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@mattschrader5047 he difference between a capitalist and Marxist economy is private property and private profit. The first thing the state does in socialism is to take control of basic industry and then operate it on a needs basis not a for profit basis. You don't need nor is it necessary to have centralized state control over every nook and cranny of the economy. If you leave basic industry in the hands of private owners they will just run int into the ground until they can get tax money to recapitalize it. Nor can capitalism work without a government. That's a fable told by libertarians who's economic thinking reduces everything to a lemonade stand. That's why workers control of industry is essential not government control. If all you do is put a few creampuffs in charge then you will get capitalism no matter how you start or what you call you call yourself. This is why the Stalinist in every country had to destroy workers democracy to maintain power. The Scandinavian bosses have the economic advantage that comes with the US paying the cost of Imperialism and Volvo bosses behaves in the US the same way all the other bosses do threatening to use strike breakers. People don't "provide for themselves" as individuals otherwise there would be no need to trade. You could just swing from tree to tree like Orangutans eating low hanging fruit as there would be no need for markets or world trade either. You can see how a no government planning approach works in every natural disaster with capitalism.
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@gregl6759 T There is no way that segregation can be reimposed in the US short of a counter revolution. The bosses don't even dream of that during contract negotiations nor are the getting away with in a way anywhere in the US. When has history ever repeated itself?
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@mghegotagun The only problem with that theory is welfare payments have been curtailed not being maintained by either party. Clinton did what Reagan couldn't, "Ended welfare as we know it."
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@mattschrader5047 The more or less government politics is nothing more than a Republican electioneering slogan. They have no intentions of starving themselves of bigger profits at our expense. They talk endlessly about the national debt but never do they talk about who owns the debt. Control of the debt and government spending has nothing to do with electioneering slogans and everting to do with what the ruling class sees as necessary to maintain power. .
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@gregl6759 Segregation was imposed by extra legal violence in the Southern states by the Democratic Party as agents of the old plantation owners and approved by the Republican Party based in the newly rising American capitalist class. That included job segregation and lower pay for Black workers doing the same job. That's a lot different than Black people who are still defacto segregated in housing neighborhoods choosing to live together in dorms. The Leninist idea of national self determination for oppressed nationalities is that they get to decide how they want to overcome their oppression and develop their own culture. That of course is at odds with the we are all the same and need to integrate for the good of the former oppressor nation. So just as you would not support forced Russification of Eastern Europe why would support forced Americanization of Blacks and other nationalities that were incorporated into the United States.
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@mattschrader5047 Individual liberty? What kind of liberty did the Russian Peasant have when he was sent to the front and had to wait for the death of another soldier so he could use a rifle to get a chance to die for the Czar? You think the Chinese peasants had liberty under the warlords and Imperialist amies who plundered the country at will? in world war one the British killed 10,000 German soldiers with a single underground blast of the German line. You think Truman wouldn't have nuked China if Stalin did have an atom bomb also? What chance do we have after nuclear winter? The US is a COVID disaster because of capitalism compared to Cuba. The basic problem with capitalism is greed and you can't regulate greed out of a system that glorifies property rights and profit above everything else. Does the system work? Well slavery worked for Rome and for agriculture in the southern States until it became itself an obstacle to economic development. One of capitalism's biggest never talked about problems is the tendency of the rate of profit ti drop as machines replace labor. Now the capitalist may be able to settle their differences peacefully within their nations states but who will settle trade disputes among the nation states? That's where the drive for Imperialist war originates. Are the capitalist becoming more international in cooperation or more nationalistic? If the US can't play the role of world policeman what will replace the US?
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@kriss9652 What this really is about is the creation of a propertyless working class which has no interest in profits and private property. Without a middle class to sing the praises of capitalism and upward mobility people who own nothing and must work to survive become dangerous because we have nothing to lose in a confrontation with the bosses of capitalist industry. This is cause for fear among capitalist liberals as well as conservatives.
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@mattschrader5047 Religion only becomes a problem if the Church uses it for a basis to attack the revolution. We had a guy who was a mormon who wasn't sure he could go on strike he didn't try and cross the picket line and instead was happy about the raise and the union after the strike.
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@mattschrader5047 Where do you get this information that we can just outlaw religion? Much more religious freedom in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe under Stalin than in a place like Saudi Arabia.
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@oldsalt8011 Capitalism always has a tendency to move production form areas of high labor costs to cheaper labor costs as a way to boost profits. Almost all trade between the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc countries,China and the United States was prohibited by US law during the first half of the cold war which ended with the US defeat in Vietnam. Opening up trade became a way to gain promises to thwart support from Moscow or Beijing for anymore revolutions in the third world. China wanted trade and investment and if the US said no than Europe and Japan would only be too happy to engage in trade and investment without the US. Job decline occurs because capitalism is about profit not jobs. Capital seeks to replace skilled and higher priced labor with unskilled and lower priced labor along with machines. Since labor is the source of profit this also has a tendency to reduce the overall rate of profit as the capital value rises.
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@emp0rizzle A car and a house isn't much good if a nuclear war breaks out. Same with your health. You can see how well a system that prioritises profits responds in a crisis. Capitalism by the numbers has to come to an end because as capital replaces labor profits rise temporarily only to decline as the labor needed to produce does and with a higher capital value the rate of profit must continually decline. The problem with debt is when it becomes unplayable.Then hyperinflation sets in money is printed and disrupted so fast it loses value in hours instead of months or days. Germany is the largest country that ever had that problem.
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@emp0rizzle Such as? My advantage is not owning anything larger than a pickup, a camp trailer, hand tools and the ability to fix most things.
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@bigreaper7425 Why don't you tell us. Instead asking us to explain your opinion or observation?
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@Sandalphon777 You must be really afraid of losing that pot of gold.
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@buzztrucker Speak for yourself. Religion is in decline because all it was is ideological justification for pre capitalist systems of social organizations. Capitalism raises economic competition and love of money as the new Gods of the capitalist nation state. It works to create lives of luxury for a few and misery and poverty for the majority who serve theses ultra rich bosses of capital. Unlike agricultural based societies which had tied the productive to the land the proletariat has no chains other the those of the system of private property and unlimited greed that created us with exactly oposite interests of this tiny few greedy bosses and bankers. A socialist world is the historic task of the proletariat.
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@Parla Verita When have the Democratic Party officials been communists? Most have never belonged to a trade union never mind a communist party of any kind. We don't write the tax laws or control what Congress debates. If the middle class wants communism its because of the failure of capitalism. I don't care if you don't like the symbol of the Russian Revolution or how many Bourgeois take offense at your capitalist country cultural dinner parties.
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@forestchicken3302 The American Imperialist began their assault on the Korean people when the entered after the surrender of Japan and set up shop as the US Army Military Government of Korea raised the US flag over the old Japanese military headquarters and made English the official language using the hated Japanese Imperialist as administrators.
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Hiccum Blurpaedius Talk like Alex Jones and nuts will follow.
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@AnnaLVajda Don't kid yourself WalMart wouldn't be possible without all kinds of government services starting with good roads for truck traffic. For the capitalist everything is about how can I boost my profits and cut costs. Now if you get in the way and end up homeless well they had out chicken feed for you.
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@bender9222222222 The is no such thing as fair with capitalism the rich should pay all the taxes and the working class should pay zero. The national debt is held by wealthy bond holders who instead of paying taxes are lending the government money from which they benefit with a guaranteed return on investment.
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@bender9222222222 The rich also know that you can't just print as much money as they want because history shows inflation can get out of hand and when that has happened it called hyperinflation it became so bad in post ww1 Germany that the price of lunch changed while you were eating and workers were paid daily taking home the wages in a wheelbarrow.
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@bender9222222222 Like I said get rid of all the taxes on workers like sales and state taxes. Then make the rich pay all the taxes. Capitalism is a fraud. Capital only accumulates it produces nothing. It based on the idea that an investor deserves to get back more than he puts in. its a "free lunch" for the do nothing bosses. 100% Tax on profits.
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@bender9222222222 Class struggle is the road to socialism. Make every job a union job. Put everyone to work who wants a job build things working people need and train more Doctors and nurses at full government expense. Cut the military budget to zero, retool the defense plants for civilian needs and close all the foreign military bases.
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@bender9222222222 I came through the Port of Boston dressed in a donated salvaged British potato sack on a ship that nearly sunk for the insurance value.
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Did some one from the Communist Party come in and explain their plans?
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@vonrock6862 Who wrote the books? When I was in High school the only bonafide communist pamphlet I could find in the local library was the Communist Manifesto. "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." Is that a clear enough plan?
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@peterharris4386 Tell me something just when did he say what the cause was? You think all those debt contracts have no owners?
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@peterharris4386 Of course not he has to talk and then pretend like he doesn't know. just like the cause of inflation The root cause of inflation is bosses raising prices. Wages haven't gone up because bosses wanting more profits refuse to raise them and our union officers have refused to lead a fight back.
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@InfoNathan Who do you think your talking too? Some dumbie in a classroom somewhere? People like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates become rich because they are clever thieves. The government works for them. What you describing is capitalism where government protects them and everything the capitalist are able to steal from us by labor exploitation. We are robbed by central bank created inflation because people think money has value when it doesn't. Its just a way to steal our labor power and give it to the rich.
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@InfoNathan Gates was a destroyer of small business if that's what you think is a solution to monopoly. The electronics industry is a world wide low wage industry including the engineers jobs. The government itself will be too big to fail. Gates and Jobs used business secrets and monopoly tactics to set themselves up in choke points to make themselves rich. They don't do anybody any favors. There goals were and are profit and market share maximization by any means necessary.
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@jimsilvey5432 The Cuban revolution proves we don't need to make Engineer's, Doctor's and Chemists into worldly princes like Bezos, Musk and Gates. You shrek in horror at a Taxi Driver making as much or more than an MD. Yet does not the Taxi Driver have the same living costs? The creation of labor privilege in capitalism is not accidental the system requires it. Who would sing the praise of the big bosses of capitalism if there were no middle class? From the Bourgeois University come the ideas that we aren't ruled by wealth but a meritocracy of "Brites" who know everything. One of the biggest frauds currently in progress is that the Electric Vehicle will solve the pollution problem. Just as the plastic bottle of spring water solved the decline of the public water supply.
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@napkinhoarder21 Being able to drink is your last worry. Look into getting a job and apartment with friends than.
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@mr.vinegaroon3132 Any mechanical trade is good work until the body gets old. A lot of pipefitters and plumbers died young from asbestos exposure used as insulation on heating pipes. Plus if you regularly need a plumber in the home you don't know the simplest aspects of the plumbing trade. Any real economic crisis and every ham and egger while be doing those jobs license or no license.
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@gianpakasa Can't be very important if you've been waiting that long. Nobody is in a rush to do a 20 minute job just so you can complain about the price either, talk about how your going to call consumer protection and yada yada yada. .You want to have consumer protection so you want everyone to work 8 years of 40 hour weeks and pass a test on the plumbing code to get a license so they can come and turn off a shut off valve and then change the worn out parts in a faucet which any person with average mechanical aptitude should be able to do. A guy who learns how to read blueprints and can run a large commercial construction job with water, heating, fire protection and sewer pipes isn't the guy you want to fix your leaky faucet. But the system insists only a guy with 8 years in the trade who passes a code test can make a legally binding contract to fix a leaky faucet. .
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@gianpakasa If your a worker living in rental housing you'll probably have the landlord fix it or if your a worker that owns their own home either you'll do it yourself or find a family member or friend at work to help you. In doing repairs practice enables speed. Your just replacing what you've already got unless it wasn't done right to begin with. My guess is their is a youtube video that shows what you need to do. Plumber without a license can't legally advertise and he can be the victim of a consumer protection sting. Each state is a little different in how they enforce their laws. But what an inspector doesn't witness doesn't really count.
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@learninghowtodothis8062 History never repeats itself. Rather humanity has been on a course of acquiring a greater and greater surplus of production.
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@jb-2714 Well that was just another of Trump's no evidence lies about the vandalization of the Fredrick Douglas statue besides Fredrick Douglass was Black man not a white civil war soldier. As for the Elks what does that have to do with the civil war? You've gone from skating on thin ice to no ice at all.
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