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General strike in the US seems like less of an impossibility year by year
Just restating some of the greatest hits:
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Universal healthcare
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Universal education through university level or trade school
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At least a month pto annually
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Parental leave for births
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Guaranteed sick leave
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32hr new full time threshold before overtime
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Only public, equal funds for elections, no PACs/dark money/donations, no lobbyist bribes
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Any elected official over a certain level cannot engage in trading of individual stocks or own businesses, dump it all in an index fund or hand off management to someone else they cannot contact without a mediator and recording, immediate expulsion & no longer able to hold office when found in violation
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No billionaires/oligarchs, anyone with earnings and assets over a billion should be taxed at 100% and assets redistributed
Edit: May 1st 2028 looks like a good target thanks to the UAW https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/general-strike-2028-unions-labor-movement/
Remember when the railroad threatened to strike and nacy pelosi said they would throw them in jail if they didn’t go to work…fucking unreal.
A few take aways:
They need us so fucking bad
They will do anything to maintain control
No one at that level is fighting for you
Solidarity will be hard to achieve because those threats will be too much for people on the ropes in their day to day life to endure.
Remember when the railroad threatened to strike and nacy pelosi said they would throw them in jail if they didn’t go to work…fucking unreal.
There’s a great WTYP on this, detailing how the inability/refusal to strike has resulted in an exodus/early retirement of train engineers sufficient to knee-cap the industry already. Increased incidence of train derailments, higher rates of rail jams and mechanical failures, and generally slower delivery times are all the result of the decline in experienced and knowledgeable industry workers.
None of this matters to the train management, which has reaped an enormous windfall in profits at the steady marginal decline in network efficiency. Monopoly means you either pay the cartel for degraded service or you ship using a more expensive method.
Solidarity will be hard to achieve because those threats will be too much for people on the ropes in their day to day life to endure.
Its important to recognize modern capitalist control as a form of hostage taking. “Pay us the ransom or your critical infrastructure get its”, even as we’re receiving fingers and earlobes in the mail with every passing year.
Solidarity is about liberating these critical components of infrastructure and operating them for the benefit of the public. The goal isn’t to shut down these institutions, but to run them without profiteers leeching the excess revenue. That’s why some of the most effective popular economic protests don’t involve suspending services, but operating them while refusing to collect fees for service.
Its important to recognize modern capitalist control as a form of hostage taking. “Pay us the ransom or your critical infrastructure get its”, even as we’re receiving fingers and earlobes in the mail with every passing year.
This is so fuckin true.
Solidarity is about liberating these critical components of infrastructure and operating them for the benefit of the public.
BINGO if we have the power to protest effectively then we can actually make them hurt. Right now I feel like we don’t have that power at all. Just citing my example of the railroads, they stepped in quick and made sure the goods kept moving.
The goal isn’t to shut down these institutions, but to run them without profiteers leeching the excess revenue.
Absolutely.
That’s why some of the most effective popular economic protests don’t involve suspending services, but operating them while refusing to collect fees for service.
This is interesting to me I always understood keeping services running for the sake of not harming innocent citizens But I didn’t really think it was effective. I could see a public transport rail system doing that and it working, but how do workers in other industries prevent the corporation they work for from taking in the revenue
how do workers in other industries prevent the corporation they work for from taking in the revenue
Keep doing what you’re doing without operating the cash register, whether that’s serving meals or fixing cars or whatever.
For some stuff this won’t work (entertainment, for instance, needs a full work stoppage to compel capital concessions). But if you’re working to rule at a point of critical infrastructure, the only thing that really needs to stop is the financial side of the business.
Nothing about replacing First-past-the-post voting?
Campaign finance reform under 7 would allow further reforms to follow, without those regulatory capture and bribery are legal and prevent any other electoral reforms benefiting the working class.
It’s questionable if that’s enough, though. FPTP means we’ll vote for people who maybe took small bribes, and it’ll become a slippery slope to a fully for-sale goverment again.
Why not beta test a general strike on Jan 6, 2025?
Because then they’ll think it’s about Harris, when she would’ve just delayed it.
Sad, but likely true. Especially sad given how fast the Harris team just rolled over and shut up.
General strike in the US sounds more like a civil war
I’d recommend a longer full time week. If the full time week is too short, many people well rely on overtime for their salary. This completely destroys the benefits of some of your other points, since you can’t do overtime during vacations, parental leave, sick leave, etc. Overtime should not be the norm if you want a good social/financial security.
Edit: part time job should of course always be possible if your revenue allows you to work shorter weeks
@ #9; Whoa there. 100% is unreasonable. Still there’s room to start at a hard 90% at about 250 million and then incrementally scale until the tax is say, about 95-97% by about a billion.
Unfortunately you cannot tax anyone 100%; that would ultimately be unfair and demotivating and only motivate corruption to avoid the tax
It’s progressive. You’re still allowed to have a billion. That’s just a cap. Anything past that goes to the public.
Makes perfect sense. It’s like having $999,999,999.99 in a management game.
It doesn’t go above that, but if you buy a ton of assets and set them down, it’ll probably climb right back up there to the limit again at some point.
You still have a billion bucks to do whatever with.
Although yeah, businesses routinely buy things for billions (like acquiring Minecraft? Hah) So they’d find some clever way of putting it all in some kind of “company trust” or something, so they don’t have it as an individual.
But I’m no lawyer. I still think having it on the books would be better than not, if it went to healthcare and education instead of funneling into the defense industry, that is…
they’d find some clever way of putting it all in some kind of “company trust” or something, so they don’t have it as an individual.
That’s fine, as long as there’s legal stipulations as to how that money can be spent, similar to campaign finance laws. That kind of money should go back into the company to the benefit of both the workers (via continued employment and fair compensation) and the consumers that support the company (via the quality of the company’s product). It should not go to any individual executive to pocket and walk away with.
You’re still allowed to have a billion
Why? Why do you feel the need to hold on to this “aspiration”?
You will never become a billionaire, stop defending your exploiters.
demotivating
that’s the motherfucking point, bootlicker.
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No, don’t throw the younger generations under the bus to clean up our messes.
If nothing else we are ride or die with them.
Unfortunately you won’t die with us, you’ll die much sooner, not choking on a lack of oxygen or dying of dehydration.
We need more elders like those in Japan who volunteered to clean up nuclear waste because they wouldn’t have to live with the long-term side effects of being exposed to radiation.
As elders, y’all wouldn’t have to live as long in jail ¯\(ツ)/¯
I mean. Heck, if you have a terminal illness I don’t see the downsides really.
Just get a vasectomy so your children won’t be wage slaves. EZ
https://theintercept.com/2024/10/04/hurricane-helene-north-carolina-mountain-view-prison/
Path to the right is not mutually exclusive from the left.
When you take away people’s reason to live, their time, their hobbies, their ability to raise a family, their loved ones, you make those people very desperate…
…you might not be glad that you did.
glares in Nick Fury
“The most dangerous man is the man with nothing to lose”
very apt quote.
With the suicide rate as high as it is, I’m honestly shocked more people don’t try to take these scumbags with them.
Who’s to say you can’t get conscripted out of prison to die in the climate wars?
Russia already is doing this!
They’re so ahead of the times!
Surrender and/or nade the commissar tent?
Lol, like anyone here is going to do anything other than protect their own comforts
I say we embrace the French culture and take up guillotines.
jail is not fun. no computer.
Sneak one in in your butt
By 2028 this may be possible idk.
Depends on the country
Which country has both abusive crony-capitalist billionaire CEOs and fun jail?
There’s only so many CEOs and billionaires
They’re outnumbered :)
And they’re stuck in here with us
Or be like me and try to do such a deed then realize your bad aim in video games carry over IRL, then you get shot dead by their security and go to some purgatory with this moment replayed forever, reminding you how much of a failure you were.
The only reason I don’t want to try is because if I miss, its gonna be so embarassing, I don’t even wanna thinkg about it.
I bet that’s why poisoning was so big before guns. Like who has the time to learn archery.
This would be me if I took the three squares with free housing and healthcare route.
For me American prison sounds a lot worse than whatever comes from climate change, so personally I’d pick that.
For now. Give it a few decades when the effects of climate change start forcing people out of their homes, cause widespread crop failure, kill thousands with heatwaves and storms, etc.
If you’re choice is between
- losing your home, starving to death, or in some way dying in the streets
Or
- losing your home, starving to death, or in some way dying in the streets after holding those responsible to account a la the adjuster
More and more people will choose option 2.
You’re more likely to die in a heat wave in prison right now.
IDK maybe that’s more reason to fight, just to the death.
For now that’s the case. But if there ever becomes a time when life outside of prison means starving to death, dying in a heat wave or storm, it won’t matter.
People still have things to lose. But people are losing things.
I mean even thinking that that’d be the actual situation for me where I live in few decades vs. spending those few decades and rest of my life in American prison, it’s going to be a very easy decision for me
I mean, come on. Uncertain future some decades ago vs the certainty that I’m rotting in an American prison for the rest of my life starting now. Easiest decision of my life
It very well could be the rest of your life in both cases.
Yes and that still gives me some decades before something might happen vs spending those decades and the rest of my life in American prison. I mean have you really considered the options here lol
I think you’ve misunderstood. I’m talking about the choice that people make when these effects start happening, not a choice now. Of course most people aren’t opting to get violent yet, there backs aren’t yet against the wall.
In that case I wouldn’t worry about either choice if it’s decades away. I’d wait and see how bad it gets before making the decision.
Sure. But my whole point is that we’re headed in that direction.
Plus the two aren’t mutually exclusive. You could just as easily go to prison and then just be abandoned there once the climate becomes uninhabitable anyway. Wouldn’t be the first time:
Back in 2005, when Katrina hit New Orleans, prison guards abandoned prisoners in locked cells as the floodwaters rose chest-high. Several thousand of those inmates were eventually rescued, but then miserably housed on a broken piece of interstate, directly exposed to the Southern summer sun.
International history is filled with examples like this. The history of the Russian gulags is probably the most stark example, they were actually pretty decent (comparably) before everything outside went to shit…
3 squares a day and lots of admiration vs unlimited access to distraction-ary cat pics
I did electrical work at a state prison in Nebraska a couple times. Most of the inmates had tablets with semi restricted internet access. So they still get the cat pics
Some prisons let you have a kitty
on the plus side, i now know that if a climate disaster doesn’t do me in, the french revolution 2 electric boogaloo will
Who would win?
2700 soft nerds with at least one billion small pieces of paper each
VS
300 million chimps with access to the internet and Mountain Dew™
I’m all jacked up on mountain dew
What I didn’t see coming was mountain dew becoming the drink of the ppl
You gotta Do the Dew before you do the deed.
