Hey, maybe poor people don't deserve to starve?

But have you thought about the shareholders and the executives? They are the ones that really have it bad!

If only those lazy poor people worked harder and pulled themselves up by this bootstraps.

It's not like we systemically work towards keeping them poor so we can have the power!

Last quarter my 401k dropped by 0.3%! IM THE VICTIM HERE

To be fair when you have that much money 0.3% is a lot of money (for a poor person)
It's more that the 401k grew 0.3% the previous. Still growing, still a lot, just not quite as much of an increase.
We can't let the elites got taxed too hard. What if I finally win a lottery and join the elites? My wealth would be sucked dry by the excessive tax!

I’m in my 40s and I honestly still don’t understand the appeal of the GOP to the average American. I have never seen them put forth a policy that does not seem to be shitting on one group or another. What has the GOP done in the last 40 years to make the average citizens life better?

shitting on one group or another
That's the whole point. They're the party of oppression, and the people that follow that party believe that those groups should be oppressed.
That's the interesting thing they don't. They typically do the best they can to make lives worse for their constituents and they'll be happy about it as long as the "others" are getting fucked over more than they are.
- I don't think it even has to be "more" so long as others as being fucked over that's good enough for them
That they hate some of all the other people the consevative voters hate, and they are happy to starve if the group they hate starve too.
It is a stupid premise I know, but you can see posts about evil things the gop does, and somehow "centrists" find a way to blame the democrats for that.
- I think that is actually true. The average poor republican doesn't want to be wealthy, if that would mean that would also become more wealthy or have more rights. This also applies to other political subjects. I mean a poor republican who works a terribly paying job with no worker rights or healthcare would actively vote against politicians who say they'd want to change that situation, just to make sure that underage girls that got raped are forced to give birth to their unwanted childs they then can't provide for.
- Its partly like that but its MORE so that they are utterly convinced that all thier troubles including that they are poor is some other groups fault, and even when they do have doubts they are unable to express them without fear of losing thier status in thier in-group. So they will keep on voting against thier own interests and blaming the wrong people for the results.

If you don't let people starve. They'll learn to be lazy and it'll be the downfall of our society! /s

we should also get rid of the inheritance tax so I can make sure even more generations of my family will never need to work and be lazy! /s

Yes we need the society to look like Hercule Poirot's England where you had to wait for your uncle to die, or help them on the way, to get some inheritance.

The people whining are literally brain damaged. Conservatism is legitimately brain damage. Given the harm they do though I have no sympathy.

That study states that brain damage can cause more conservative views, but the reverse isn't true. Not everyone with conservative views has brain damage.
- arguable
- Idk I live in the south with lead pipes And lead has shown to cause brain damage And conservatives are the last to car about lead pipes
  Hell my house sewage is just being pumped under the street cause our streets water main is broken
  Yet the city claims it's our responsibility to pay someone to dig up the street and fix it
  We fixed our pipes to the main but we can't afford to do all of that
- Tomato tomato.
You've got cause and effect backwards my man
- Both can be true. Like a communicable disease, someone can have it and someone else can get infected and then also have it.
That is a very interesting research area.

When I feed the poor, they call me a saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry, they call me a communist. - Hélder Câmara, an archbishop

Hélder Câmara ❤️
Júlio Lancellotti ❤️

Commie. The poor will just trade the food for drugs, might as well throw it away as trash and shoot anyone that gets near it.

Walmart is that you?!?!
Source: I used to work at Walmart and they threw away so much stuff and locked it in a dumpster with constant surveillance

If there's one thing Hollywood is known for it's accurate depictions of the housing market.
- You're right, but on the other hand, no one in the 1980s watched Married With Children and thought, "a shoe salesman? With a house? How absurd!" Because houses were affordable.

One of the defining traits of the left is empathy.
One of the defining traits of humanity is empathy.
If you're not left you're less than. I said it. I stand by it.

Dehumanization of the other
Woaaaah there buddy
- I appreciate you
Humans are really good at empathizing. But we are also really good at delineating between in and out groups. It was crucial to protect your tribe over every other human. We now have a massive problem of entire countries or even the world being the "in-group" since we have enough resources for everyone to survive.
But those people wanting power are really good at exploiting that group mentality to cause groups to form in people's minds. Then they use that delineation to withdrawn empathy from those new out groups. And when those delineations aren't coherent among actual groups, it causes a lot of divisions that can be exploited.
- The average poor Republican would starve to make sure a "Welfare Queen" or "Tweeker" didn't get a free meal.
Empathy-like behavior and brain activity has been observed in many animals. Make it less than those as well

I've always wondered where i would land on the political spectrum if I didn't live in the US

Do you think the Means of Production should be owned collectively, or individually? Do you agree with horizontal power structures being dominant, or do you believe more in centralization?
There's a ton more to it, but those 2 questions pretty clearly give you a direction.
- Choosing the first options is communism, right?

What is Lemmy.ml’s perception of Lemmy.world for the shoutout?

From what I've seen lemmy.ml is basically hexbear lite
So anyone to the right of them is literal Nazis
- Pragmatism and nuance are for bigots and fascists, vote third party
  [edit] /s, christ-a-mighty
Pretty sure the general attitude toward .world is that the users tend to be liberals, especially those who came from Reddit during the API fiasco. Generally people who mean well but probably haven't engaged with the Linux, FOSS, Privacy, Anarchist, Socialist, or Communist communities before coming to Lemmy.
.ml itself is generally more leftist, a common misconception is that there are only Marxist-Leninists on .ml, when there are tons of Anarchists and Socialists as well, just much fewer liberals.
Where Hexbear is a big-tent "dirt bag left" server, and lemmygrad is an explicitly Marxist-Leninist-Maoist server, .ml is actually just focused on FOSS and privacy, and as such tends to attract more leftists than .world.
An example of the differences between .world and .ml I have noticed are on the recent death sentence for the KyoAni mass murderer posts. On the .world version, most seemed celebratory of the death sentence, while on .ml most were deeply saddened by the event but held the belief that the death penalty is wrong fundamentally, and that instead it should've been life in prison.
Just my 2 cents as a .ml user.

Tax should pay for healthcare of all citizens.

Why am I paying tax if I still have to pay to see a doctor?

Yeah I think Republicans and centrist Democrats are involved in a massive gaslighting campaign against the American citizens. ie: the overton window, aka shifting what's thought of as acceptable towards corporate donors requirements. Empathy is what makes us human.

Sounds very american to me. Its very normal here to at least try take care of the less fortunate.

Well, so long as they're not migrants anyway

Well, if you want to abolish currency, inheritance, and all personal property you may be far left. Otherwise you may just be a compassionate for the poor.

No leftist in their right mind wants to abolish personal property.
Private property (factories and machinery) ≠ personal property (your clothes and fridge)
- This is a far too little discussed distinction.
~~personal~~ private property, fixed it for you

I really wouldn't mind the whole rhetoric of pulling yourself by the bootstraps if it wasn't rigged. The system is literally made to make ppl fail.

There's also the fact that it originated as an expression meaning "doing something impossible" since pulling on your own bootstraps would PREVENT you from getting up.

Why is the proposed solution always to just pay people more and not just make things cost less? The only reason I can find is that making things cost less doesn't provide a scapegoat for everybody to rally behind, even though it would be more effective.

The solution isn't either, it's to collectively own the Means of Production.
Or just give people food. Where tf u bringing up cost of goods from?
Because the stock market is the economy as far as our leaders are concerned. And they decided that anything other than green line go up is abhorrent.
Money is a means of determining the distribution of resources. It doesn't matter if stuff costs less or if people make more money, what matters is that nessecities, at a minimum, are more equitably distributed. You can make that end goal take different forms. Money is a little awkward for that end because you use money to purchase both food and nice cars.

When you are to the left of someone, they always call you right-wing... Never fails...

I have never been called right wing, and I'm just about as far left as they come.
- I think the down-votes illustrates my point exactly.
  I'm pro expression of freedom, full bodily automony (my body, my choice), anti censorship, reign in corporate power, higher top marginal tax, ending foreign wars (inc Ukraine), diplomacy with every government (inc the ones labeled terrorists. Remember; Nelson Mandela was also labeled a terrorist), tax included high education, tax included healthcare, more money to public transport.
  Well thats some of it, and most of the first points are traditional left-wing issues, but in todays society, you get "right-wing" label immediately.

I used to be that guy the first 28 years of my life. Then I realized many so called socialist gvt are backed up by the biggest monopolies, which in turn grow freely thanks to socialist unbalanced rules of competitiveness.

It's cool to think socialist. It's not cool to feed the monopoly.

Good thing America doesn't have any monopolies under capitalism
- What a relief!
What are you genuinely talking about? What are Socialist unbalanced rules of competitiveness?
- Usually they refer to the government corporations.