201–210 of 399 posts
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Except nowadays even small local police departments have tanks and swat teams.
Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though. I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.
OT: I've always wondered, if some multi-billionaire became personally offended by some lesser multi-billionaire and decided to destroy them, what could they do? Assume that they don't want to do anything illegal enough to get themselves into serious trouble. For example, suppose Bezos decided he really hated Rupert Murdoch ($15B). If Bezos decided he could happily live on a mere $100B, that would leave him $50B for t…
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This goes against every ounce of history I've been taught.
Virtually all credible historians agree that the New Deal itself was largely ineffective in solving the Great Depression. It started in 1933 with unemployment rate of 25%. Half a decade and many millions of dollars later, unemployment was 19%. [1] The Great Depression ended only when Europe went to war in 1939 and financed the American economy. Depending on who you ask, the New Deal was either ineffective because it…
Absolute numbers are important, but the rate of change more so. Were unemployment raising to 25% or already going down? It's the difference between those 19% being a meager improvement and staving off absolute disaster.
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Today we have a military industrial complex supported by both parties and our most vital student loans (championed by our "left" party) come with no bankruptcy protection. We do have a very strong Federal government, but it's designed to funnel money to various interest groups. By making compute infrastructure affordable and by making consumer review data available for all products, Bezos is a champion of the little…
Completely agree. Bezos is great. This is not so much an attack on Bezos as it is an attack on a system that let's 30 single individuals amass more wealth than the bottom 3 billion.
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Except we actually had a functioning federal government during the last gilded age, so we ended up with things like the Sherman Antitrust Act, and eventually the New Deal. I doubt we'll be so lucky this time around. Things are about to get absolutely brutal for the 90%.
Today we have a military industrial complex supported by both parties and our most vital student loans (championed by our "left" party) come with no bankruptcy protection. We do have a very strong Federal government, but it's designed to funnel money to various interest groups. By making compute infrastructure affordable and by making consumer review data available for all products, Bezos is a champion of the little…
He didn't do this, his workers did. How many of his workers are making minimum wage, with no health insurance or health insurance they can't afford deductibles for? How many of his warehouses don't have air conditioning? How many people working for Amazon are forced to pee in bottles, pushed beyond their limits?
He's not sitting there shipping all packages, not sitting there soldering amazon echo's, his workers are.
$150 billion shouldn't exist for Bezos and Bezos alone, as the wealth should be spread around the company to the workers who actually do the work. We likely wouldn't be this situation of extreme inequality if this was the case. It's disgusting selfishness that is allowed by our current system.
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Most Americans have guns. The police has better weapons, but it would be a war of attrition, and I doubt most police would want to go on killing sprees against their fellow countrymen. Although I doubt it'd reach the point of massive insurrection. That would require a total loss of trust in the government, and I think we're still far from that.
Most Americans don't have guns. Gun owners are a minority with a very loud voice.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/29/ameri...
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This goes against every ounce of history I've been taught.
Virtually all credible historians agree that the New Deal itself was largely ineffective in solving the Great Depression. It started in 1933 with unemployment rate of 25%. Half a decade and many millions of dollars later, unemployment was 19%. [1] The Great Depression ended only when Europe went to war in 1939 and financed the American economy. Depending on who you ask, the New Deal was either ineffective because it…
It seems unlikely that some huge portion (say, > 90%) of those historians further believe that New Deal policies had no or little positive effect on the Great Depression. Are the "credible historians" just the ones who happen to agree with you on this topic?
In my opinion, the biggest risk to Bezos' wealth is the same thing that drew me into the service to begin with. In the mid-to-late 2000s it was easy to go to Amazon, search for "thing I want" and blindly purchase the 4.5-5 star item with enough reviews to appear legitimate. I could do this and expect to get a great product _every_ time. Now, I find myself spending an hour screwing with the filters and reading reviews…
Honestly, I fucking hate Amazon. I love going to a store, feeling the product and then deciding if I like the look and feel of a product. And Amazon doesn't even carry good stuff anymore. It's all just junk nowadays, and the useful stuff is often overpriced or out of stock. I want somewhere where I can find unique, good quality brands, and brick&mortar will always be best for that.
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Small local police departments are also staffed by the 90%, though. I find it difficult to imagine an uprising against the 1% in America any time soon, but if it did happen I can absolutely imagine the police siding against the 1%.
From my experience, police officers generally don't like rich people. Also, I don't think that members of the police force or the military are as obedient or loyal as they used to be in the past.