I have always said that so long as McDonalds has a hot burger for a few bucks on every street corner, there will not be a revolution in the US.
Rather than starving to death, we have an obesity epidemic along with an opiate epidemic, which prevents the revolution from getting up off the couch.
Not trying to claim a conspiracy here, just the way things are.
Yeah, the gap between the wealthiest and everyone else literally does not matter at all, when it comes to ‘motivation for revolution’.
The overall level/amount/condition of poverty is what matters. And let’s be real, things are not nearly as bad in the US today as they were in France before the French Revolution. Not even close.
Fact is, if you magically bumped everyone up so that no one was making less than $75k a year, the wealth gap would be essentially identical to what it is now, because the gap between zero and 75k is nothing compared to the gap between 75k and hundreds of billions. But no one would be suffering in poverty, so would anyone care about the wealth gap, then? I seriously doubt it.
Great point!
McDonald’s charging $10-20 for shit-tier burgers in some of the US:
McDonald’s is expensive now.
A double cheeseburger was a dollar a few years ago, sure. But it’s almost that much for a single nugget these days.
A hash brown is 3.50 at the one by my office.
Looked it up:
McDonald’s double cheeseburger hasn’t been a dollar for over 15 years (started in 2002, and in 2008, the McDouble replaced it, which had one fewer slice of cheese). And the McDouble itself stopped being a dollar in 2013, over a decade ago. Bit more than “a few years ago”–I think Covid screwed up everyone’s perception of time more than usual, lol.
That said, I get lunch at work several times a week at Wendy’s and always pay less than $5, not too bad all things considered imo.
Wendy’s is still a pretty good deal. A cup of chili and some nuggets ain’t a bad price.
It only takes about 3% of the population to push effective revolution. That’s still over ten million people. We might be getting close.
Ahhh so the Wall-E form of public control.
I can see it
Conspiracies happen in secret. There’s no hidden agenda, just the publicly-stated agenda.
Just offer free food and specially free opiates if they start a revolution. There’s many means to a end
Elon Musk could transfer $1 million in stock to each of his 153,473 employees,
which would cost him $153 billion and he would still have a net worth of $302 billion!
He’d still be the richest man in the world and would still have $56 billion more than Jeff Bezos!And some of that money he has came from under-paying factory workers at his Fremont, California assembly plant. For a long time the hourly rate was $22 (not sure what it is now) but auto plants in the Midwest were paying that or better and he was paying $22 per hour in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country.
Elon is now worth more than Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates combined.
And some of that money he has came from under-paying factory workers at his Fremont, California assembly plant. For a long time the hourly rate was $22 (not sure what it is now) but auto plants in the Midwest were paying that or better and he was paying $22 per hour in one of the highest cost of living areas in the country.
All those employees were given stock options as part of their total compensation which those other auto factories did not give to everyone.
All the early floor workers would be multi millionaires if they kept their initial stock, not counting using the employee program to buy more at a discounted rate or further employee incentives.
Anyone who joined a little after the Model S was being sold and the early model 3 time up to around mid 2020 would have around a quarter million if they didn’t aquire any additional stock.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Tesla as a company created the most employee millionaires of any recent USA company due to giving every employee stock as part of their compensation.
Early SpaceX employees are in a similar boat, but it’s harder to get rid of their shares since it’s private so it’s harder to quantify it.
Tbf, if he transfered that stock, the price of it would crash as the employees sold it. He’d have to do some kind of slow transfer over several years.
All businesses should be worker or consumer cooperatives. Capital shouldn’t be divorced from stakeholders like in our current capitalist system, but rather socially owned by the direct stakeholders like in Mutualism.
The French people do not tolerate shit, the Americans on the hand will wallow in it and say work harder for less.
It’s one of the main reasons our owner class has sought to mock the French with “surrender” slurs and “freedom fries.”
They’d very much like the citizenry to forget Frances contribution to America and “western culture” over the last 200 years lest they get any ideas.
100%
In France, they set shit on fire at the drop of a hat. Can’t have that in 'Murica.
Oh we definitely set some shit in fire after watching how they lynched George Floyd
Spot on!
the propaganda machine seem to do its job better in the us
why would you crop out the source declaration?
“Data for Boston 40% in France is extrapolated from a single data point.”
Oh I see, this is reliable data.
You want absolutely precise statistic data from XVIII century?
I want more than one data point. This is poor scholarship being presented as rigor.
Why would you post an image of text?
Americans are too weak to demand what we deserve. Too complacent.
Worker productivity has skyrocketed over the last century, but we’re still working the same 40+ hour work weeks. What’s the point of advancing technology and increasing efficiency if our lives don’t get easier/happier?
Healthcare is dogshit and we’re all categorically getting ripped off by it.
We used to tax rich people appropriately in this country and, surprise surprise, the middle class was way stronger back then.
Now we’re just pussies that let the useless mega-rich do whatever the fuck they want to us and idolize them for it.
We’re a bunch of bitches is what we are. Too feeble and uneducated to bring about real change. Even voting against our own best interests because we can’t be bothered to learn anything. We’re honestly pathetic.
Despite the current wealth inequality a good number of people are still living decently enough.
I’m waiting to see what happens when Trump starts putting his taxes in place. When people are miserable enough they’ll take to the streets and protest. If we reach a breaking point where living conditions completely break down and there still aren’t protests then it may as well be over for democracy.
As if the US is currently a Democracy
Never has been
As if there is really a democracy left anywhere. We’re going back to fiefdom baby!
America is a frog getting slowly heated in a pot of water. The only hope is to turn up the heat fast enough and high enough that the frog jumps out of the pot before it gets cooked
Yeah there is no single explanation for revolution. Looking strictly to wealth distribution is reductionistic at best. I mean, wealth distribution was arguably better in the U.S. in the 1860s than it was in the prelude to Revolutionary France and yet we had a Civil War lmfao. There are endless examples that disprove this rule. The reality is: popular unrest is extremely complicated, and the factors that lead up to it are varied with fluctuating levels of influence at different stages of development. Sure, perception of wealth is a key component… but its hardly an explainer.
Despite the current wealth inequality
It’s not “despite” the gap, because the gap itself does not cause poverty. If the poorest person in the US made $75k/year (in other words, poverty completely eradicated), the size of the gap would still be pretty much exactly the same (after all, the difference between zero and 75k is nothing compared to the difference between 75k and hundreds of billions, which is the current net worth of those with the most wealth).
After all, 50 years ago, the gap was significantly smaller, but the overall incidence of poverty was much higher.
Someone’s always going to have the most. And new wealth is constantly being created. And net worth is a valuation, a price tag, not an amount of cash (which is the primary reason it can go up as fast as it can–cash money simply can’t do that). Given these facts, expect this gap to always exist (and almost certainly continue to widen), even after poverty is eradicated.
yes but have you considered that in nk they have no food and push the trains? (source: CIA) instead of all this radical talk i think we should VOTE harder, especially for progressive like bernie and aoc
Careful, bub, there are people lurking who think this quite seriously
You don’t? Tankie detected 😠
Gasp! My clever disguise has been sundered!
they shaped their culture around anticommunism. you bet they will keep alienating their people further, and will hold off a revolution for as long as possible.
The revolution was about missed meals and lack of food. The US isn’t there yet.
I’m not sure I would characterize it that way. It was a bourgeois revolution, lead by the bourgeoisie, who were not starving. Same with the American Revolution. These were revolutions led by & funded by people who owned the means of production.
This is faaaar too low. The French Revolution was really triggered by famine and people not having enough food.
Looking at wealth distribution on a country-by-country basis is a mistake.
Take that US wealth distribution graph and then graph it with the rest of the world; the reason there’s no revolution becomes obvious.
please provide image
The top 10% have 70.7% of wealth in the US currently (from the federal reserve website)
They let us eat cake.
Information control. Most people believe socialism is just taxes.
It’s less misinformation and more willing disbelief. People accept narratives that go along with what they believe supports that which benefits them. I highly recommend reading Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”. People aren’t stupid, they seek approval for their actions and support, which explains the anger expressed at factual debunking of their worldview.
I mean…there was an attempt. The chronically online seem to think a revolution in the USA would be socialist, but these are Americans we’re talking about. Its either be back to 1800s style libertarian ethics or fascism, corporatism, something like that, decimating government power not increasing it.
Maybe. There was occupy wall street and an assassinated CEO this last week though
Occupy wall street wasn’t socialist, it was irritated, and Luigi seem like an RFK fan
can’t say I’m a huge fan of Nick Cruse or the rest of RBN, but a graph’s a graph I guess
