Isbjørn

Agreed.

Anyway, since someone brought up "the leechers", let's just suppose that "leeches" are, indeed, a signifigant problem that's worth solving. Cutting in welfare all across the board to "incentivize" people to find work is a typical neoliberal solution that negatively impacts everyone, so let's just dismiss it out of irrelevance. Here we're talking about ways to find and deal with the "leeches", specifically. If that even is to be possible, a couple of questions appear that need answering:

Who are to decide who "leeches" and who doesn't? Follow-up question, how do we prevent this from becoming a bureaucratic and costly nightmare?

What do we do if people are incorrectly classified as freeloaders? Taking away someone's benefits when they actually need them borders on violence. We need to prevent situations where people who genuinely need benefits lose them due to bureaucratic mismanagement. There are already many instances of this happening - people being deemed "fit to work" when they actually have chronic diseases that keep them from working, and who need public money to afford medicine/implants/protheses etc.

Considering these things, is targeting "leeches" even worth the effort? I don't think so. Being a welfare recipient is already a very undesirable scenario, and signing up for benefits is a bureaucratic and discouraging process in most places. Furthermore, most places require unemployed welfare recipients to actively look for work (in Norway, you're not even registered as "unemployed" until you sign up at the Labour and Welfare Administration and agree to look for work. You have to agree to accept just about any job offer you get). If anything, we should be looking for solutions that make welfare less bureaucratic and less demotivating. Some people have proposed implementing a universal basic income (subsistence wage) that one receives regardless of their work situation. If you want people to get employed, fund job training and reeducation programs. Publicly invest in infrastructure - this will boost the economy and create jobs for many people who are unemployed but fit to work. And so on. These are totally realistic and feasible solutions, even for people who aren't anti-establishment.

Socialists (here represented by Elphenor and me) would argue that unemployment is a natural occurence under capitalism that serves to keep down wages and create competition between workers for the jobs. To permanently fix unemployment issues, we need a planned economy that takes care of the interests of the collective rather than the interests of corporations. By allowing workers influence over their workplace and democratic input on the economy as a whole, people will see work as more than just a means of subsistence, but work to better themselves and their community. But that's another discussion.

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Isbjørn

Yeah, it was campaigning lie by Ronald Reagan that has just stuck around. Not the only time a president fabricates ridiculous stories to legitimize their equally ridiculous policies

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Isbjørn

The anti-war movement should step up against US aggression towards North Korea like it has done before. The last time the US actually bombed North Korea, a third of their population died. All their cities were levelled. The Koreans have not forgotten that, and this makes US aggression towards them frightening to say the least. Bombing the Koreans would be a mindless decision and an act of evil.

I must admit that for a while I believed that Donald Trump had the potential to be a candidate for peace, who would seek friendly relations with Russia and bring a temporary halt to US interventionism. Now I'm just hoping for as little human suffering as possible and that a third world war doesn't break out in the next couple of years.

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Anteater

As I said before, people should have pushed harder to get anyone other than Hillary Clinton as the Dem. Party nominee if that's the case.

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

djchameleon

It didn't matter what the people wanted. The DNC was set on getting her through by any meana neccessary.

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Fame, fortune, power, titties. People say these are the most crucial things in life, but you can have a pocket full o' gold and it doesn't mean sh*t if you don't have someone to share that gold with. Seems simple. Yet it's an important lesson to learn. Even lone wolves run in packs sometimes.

Mindy

he said he didnt know it would be this hard

OccultHawk

I'm a hater so it comes naturally but it is especially easy for me to hate Hillary and Sanders. Not even taking into account their politics. Just the smug condescending I'm smart look on their faces. The way Sanders gesticulates makes me want to punch him in the ****ing face. Like put your hands down you old rich white ****. And Hillary with that power hungry smile. Goddamn she's hard not to hate. Whatever y'all think of me I know more about politics than the average voter. And as much as some of you might hate me, if you remove my politics from the equation my gut reaction to people is very redneck. You may think the typical redneck hated Obama but that's not true. Only political rednecks hated Obama. The typical redneck had a favorable outlook on him because the ****ing guy is likable. It's not politics; it's charisma. It's a very small base of voters that even understand politics enough to vote based on a political foundation. Like y'all know I hate Trump. But the truth is I hate him for political reasons, not personal reasons. Pussy grabber, bashing POWs, mimicking the disabled, bashing minorities on stage, ripping off the poor, amping up the arms race, whatever- but my reasons for hating him are political not personal. I love to hate him. Compared to Hillary who I just hate. Sure it's frustrating but that's democracy. President or Prom King and Queen. It boils down to the same petty bull****.

Isbjørn

^ What would you say about a third party that opposes unjust invasions, arms races and political corruption, which speaks for the interests of regular working people as well as minorities, which isn't led by a team of smug people in suits, and which doesn't sell out to Wall Street-backed candidates on the eve of the election?

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Chula Vista

Let's remember that Clinton defeated Trump by 3 million votes, just over 2%. And if not for 10 years of agressive GOP led gerrymandering, most likely would have won the electoral college.

Trump "won" by the worst margin of any other president in history.

He's also has the lowest approval rating of any other president ever over the course of their first 100 days in office.

The dude hasn't been able to accomplish any of his major campaign promises even though he has a GOP led Senate and House, and he refers to the nation's capital as a swamp - even though his campaign slogan was Make America Great Again.

I have some bridges to sell to any of the 90%+ who say they'd still vote for him today. Denial is not just a river in Africa.

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

That doesn't really work when you're reading it.

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