US Politics Mega-thread - Page 5843

On July 07 2026 23:52 LightSpectra wrote:


Setting aside that this analogy makes no sense because USAID was funded by Congress and Musk illegally impounded it:

In ancient Rome, among other civilizations, they discovered that simply giving hungry people free food was actually a lot cheaper than paying for a guard to detain a hungry person trying to steal food, then paying for their food in prison anyway. It's just astounding that we have to watch right-wingers learn in real time lessons that humanity already knew for centuries or even millennia. This isn't just about USAID but food stamps, vaccines, xenophobia against immigrants, etc. I wish y'all would just read a history book instead of voting for idiots.

On July 07 2026 23:19 WombaT wrote:

This is my hypothetical, not yours.

You make a fair point, but for some reason it’s a point frequently made to defend billionaires and not in isolation. I think it also somewhat sidesteps the thorny matter that billionaires use their wealth to lobby in their own interests, it’s not merely that they don’t do enough philanthropy or whatever. And they simply have a ton more capacity to do some good by virtue of that wealth.

If I decided to live like a monk whatever residual income I might have is not going to stretch that far in terms of helping others

On July 08 2026 00:42 dyhb wrote:
But if we're taking this on principle, that Elon and Trump, "killed hundreds of thousands of people around the world," is it worth endorsing that if it also means saying that you've killed a couple people or a dozen around the world through your own financial decisions? You're still protected in the sense that it's a drop in the bucket compared to hundreds of thousands, but it means you've also killed people that you've never met.

I appreciate it (poking holes in the logic by following the logic) in terms of acknowledging hyperbolic rhetoric and judging the people that use it as not seriously believing what they say.

On July 08 2026 01:00 Jankisa wrote:




Well, sorry, my bad.

I misremembered how he qualified who should be killed / imprisoned, so it's not all socialists but basically anyone who wants to tax the rich, to me, socialists fit in that bucket so that's where my brain put it.

On July 08 2026 01:03 WombaT wrote:

I mean we can extend this all the way down. Is a pet dog responsible for the death of people in impoverished regions because its belly is full?

I mean power comes into it. Structure too. And a lot of poverty is rather a structural problem.

If x billionaire doesn’t wanna give a commensurate percentage of their wealth to charity, I mean I don’t think that’s ideal, but equally few give what they can in this domain. So that equivalence can be made to a degree.

If x billionaire leverages their wealth to make things actively worse for poor people, they’re a cunt.

Point taken, but I dislike its invocation. It’s rarely coming from a positive place to implore people to help their fellow (wo)man, which I’d support, it’s to defend billionaires from criticism

On July 08 2026 01:10 dyhb wrote:
Oh, it's stupid all the way down. And it starts at the top. Remember that invoking the most idiotic arguments against billionaires doesn't make anybody pointing that out to be "gross, just look at that guy defending billionaires from criticism." You're just trying to shield your own bad arguments and thoroughly stupid hyperbole from obvious criticism.

On July 08 2026 02:00 Jankisa wrote:
I love that people who are the most gullible and easily brainwashed in the world, the people who play defense for Trump and his billionaire buddies are calling other stupid and idiots.

Somehow, despite a huge body of evidence that extreme wealth accumulation is a horrible thing for any society these pillars of intellectual thought have come here to explain how the people who enormously benefited from the tax system and subsidies that USA provided them and their companies have 0 obligations to pay this back in any form, not only that, but they will cheer them on as they take away life saving medicine and other programs from the most impoverished people in the world.

In a just world, one that didn't convince half the population that they can be billionaires too, society would tax these people at a rate that allows for no deficits and for a nation as rich as prosperous as USA to not only have extremely obvious things like universal healthcare or maternity leave but to also fix an enormous amounts of problems world wide.

All of this would be possible if only these 0.0001 % weren't brain broken into hoarding as much wealth as possible and the 40 or so % who support them weren't so dense as to believe that one day they can all join the 0.0001 %.

And then there's oBlade who still thinks that Trump is a peacemaker, that Iranian nuclear program has been re-obliterated 3 times and this time the most prolific liar in the history of the world is speaking the truth when he says he'll make a deal that will bring about world peace and security with the people who's head of state he assassinated less then half a year ago.

On July 08 2026 01:48 WombaT wrote:

No, my objection is that these arguments frequently come up solely to defend billionaires.

To criticise such elevated beings I apparently have to don a burlap sack, and exist purely on gruel while living in a hovel somewhere that I built myself and use all income that I don’t need to survive to fund a Somalian tribe or something.

Expectations that are generally dropped when I’m not criticising billionaires, funnily enough.

I don’t even especially care about what they spend their money on, so long as it’s not for political influence so they can be extra shitty.

On July 08 2026 02:23 dyhb wrote:
Now you're running dangerously close to holding these two conflicting ideas separately:
"Yes, I know it's stupid and illogical to accuse billionaires of killing hundreds of thousands of people"
"It's just so wild that people say billionaires aren't killing hundreds of thousands of people in the context of people saying they are killing hundreds of thousands of people."

It's endorsing a win-win rhetorical trick. Attack a disfavored group, say they're small in population or otherwise hated by the public. If your arguments are bad and get beat down, now is the time to point out how weird it is that all these defenses regularly come up after the attacks. Let the insinuation of special pleading do all the work for you, and brush your palms together at a job well done. I don't think you've examined the problem at the root here, and I think it's all rubbish, root and branch.

On July 08 2026 02:35 WombaT wrote:

Nah not really buying that, given I didn’t say half of that.

All I really did say is that billionaires have a lot of structural power, and that the stock ‘why don’t you give everything to charity?’ defence is both silly, and not often invoked outside of defending the influence of billionaires.

Neither are all billionaires complete wankers, even if I don’t think that level of wealth should exist. But some absolutely are, and their purchasing power is beyond that of big tracts of ‘regular folk’

On July 08 2026 02:20 WombaT wrote:
That a handful of individuals could fund the entire US government for a year is kinda the point.

On July 08 2026 02:39 oBlade wrote:

989 is not often described as a handful.

On July 08 2026 02:39 dyhb wrote:
You must be thinking of somebody else. I specifically separated out the ludicrous "billionaires are killing hundreds of thousands of people," and your response to me was pointing out how that always comes up in defense of billionaires.

Kindly don't put words in my mouth to debate instead. I said what I meant, and I'm now understanding that you meant to say all you did to something other than what I wrote.

Now you're running dangerously close to holding these two conflicting ideas separately:
"Yes, I know it's stupid and illogical to accuse billionaires of killing hundreds of thousands of people"
"It's just so wild that people say billionaires aren't killing hundreds of thousands of people in the context of people saying they are killing hundreds of thousands of people."

On July 08 2026 02:53 Jankisa wrote:
It's mind boggling to me that people can smugly advocate for individuals having more money and power then whole nations of tens of millions while 5 million children die from consequences of poverty every year and still sleep at night.

I almost wrote "and feel good about themselves" but the individuals posting this shit here are clearly miserable so that definitely wouldn't work.