Why “of course”? It’s not clear to me why that would the case. For instance, we wouldn’t expect the top 10% to account for 50% of all food consumption simply becuase they control 50% of the wealth.
Yes we could.
Wealthy people eat more expensive food.
Sometimes insanely more expensive.
While the majority of Americans are debating whether or not to buy a dozen eggs this week,
a wealthy man is spending a million dollars a year to feed themselves. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyABU75DKjA
I knew you'd say that,
so I already have my answer: you're substituting your own definition of 50% for the articles definition: consumer spending.
I'd say you're moving the goalposts but trying to change "amount spent as an economic measure" to "caloric content" is more like looking at a football field and asking where home plate is.
Why should control of 50% wealth equate to 50% of all consumption? Why not 70% of consumption or 40%? What is the reason that the two percentages are expected to be the same?
Because in the US wealth and consumption are considered two sides of the same coin.
Wealthy but not conspicuously consuming?
You're not keeping up with the Joneses.
Conspicuously consuming but poor (thanks, easy credit)?
You'll be mistaken as having more money than you do.
The two sides often come together in the upper-middle classes,
where people with more-than-comfortable incomes and financial resources will grossly overextend themselves on credit appear more well off than they already are.
You think Citizen’s United was a good ruling. You think the Voting Rights Act hasn’t been gutted despite thousands of polling stations shutting down. You think there was some bureaucratic state plotting against the executive despite no evidence. Your link is an article about people taking Project 2025 and Trump at their word and trying to plan accordingly. You have no objecticity. Your logic is horribly flawed. You are the problem.
> You think there was some bureaucratic state plotting against the executive despite no evidence.
What more evidence do you need than a WaPo article talking about federal workers that declared they would resist Trump’s policies?
> Your link is an article about people taking Project 2025 and Trump at their word and trying to plan accordingly.
The article is from February 2017. And “trying to plan” what?
> You have no objecticity. Your logic is horribly flawed. You are the problem
Let me ask you a question. You agree that, since Trump won the election, federal employees should work just as hard implementing Project 2025 as they did for Biden, including coming up with creative legal theories like Biden did for student loan forgiveness. Right?
What is most interesting is the presence of Vance and that he started the argument. Yesterday he was with Trump and the British PM and accused the UK of being against free speech. I don’t recall VPs being active in such meetings before now. It says a lot that Vance is taking such a prominent role in areas that VPs traditionally do not publicly venture in.
IMO the issue is that if they want to stage an argument, Trump on the campaign trail has often lost his train of thought. That would not look very "strong" so Vance is there to do the job.
He needs to establish himself as a leader (this behavior doesn't help beyond maybe their base) if he wants to be president after Trump. It's also ingratiating behavior towards Trump which will help ensure he remains on his good side and part of the in-crowd.
I think it's actually Thiel who is in control and pulling the strings here. He essentially got Vance into his current position and is obviously still linked to Musk.
Maybe. Trump's temper can still get him sidelined. He needs to remain front and center to be a viable candidate in 2028. And nothing about Thiel or Musk suggest they'd throw money at him out of loyalty, they'd throw money at him if they thought he could win. Otherwise, they'd find another candidate.
He is a deeply lonely person. He has no real friends and appears to be incapable of forming genuine emotional connections. He needs friends but doesn’t have any and the pursuit of adulation from strangers is a poor substitute but it’s the best he can do.
We never really addressed the issues of the Civil War. Desegregation caused white men to destroy the social fabric of the nation. We used to have municipal pools that were free to use. Ambulances used to be free as well as trash collection. The idea of communities running services ended with desegregation and white flight from the cities. Now we have become an “i’ve got mine, fuck you” nation.
Foreign diplomatic personnel stationed in the US sometimes have babies while in the US. These children get the same birth certificates as any other child born in the US, but they are not citizens. Ergo, a birth certificate is not proof of citizenship.
I’d be willing to bet that >99.999% of people with US birth certificates are citizens, but it most certainly is not 100%.
It works the other way, too; I know a guy whose parents were US diplomatic personnel stationed in Tehran at the time of his birth. His US passport says he's from Iran, which is technically true, though he's not Iranian and he's never held Iranian citizenship.
In such cases, there is usually a “consular report of a birth abroad” that the embassy sends to Washington and the parents get a copy of. Military servicemembers also frequently get this. It’s not required to be done by any means and it is not a birth certificate though it can usually be used in place of one.
But! I think it may be the only document issued about a birth that is proof of US citizenship. And, paradoxically, is not available to people born inside the US.
The person I responded to thinks a birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship. My birth certificate can not be used to establish citizenship even though it was issued by the U.S. government and I’m a natural born U.S. citizen.
What’s your stance on Trump’s $30 billion crypto thing? His 30 felony convictions and being found by a jury to have committed sexual assault? When he lusts after Invanka does that cause you concern? Do you find it dignified that he hawks products from the Oval Office? Do you think it is statesmanly to engage in a Twitter feud with a 15 year old kid? When he used a sharpie to change a NOAA hurricane map to fit his own uneducated view did it make you proud of him? When he mocked a disabled person’s disability did that feel good to you?
Having the only two options being: really bad or less bad, leads to long term problems. Clearly the system needs an overhaul. The DNC wants only small, incremental changes and wants to keep the status quo in place. Trump is a lying piece of shit but the Democratic party is dead to me. They remind me of Cicero trying desperately to keep the Roman Republic alive when it was clearly already dead.
In my opinion the system needs an overhaul. The number of Representatives hasn’t been updated in over 100 years. It is absurd that North Dakota has slightly less federal power than California. The rules of the Senate need to be overhauled and so does our entire representative system. The system set forth by the Constitution is outdated and no longer works.
Short of revolution, I see no viable path forward for a complete overhaul of the American government. While a Constitutional Convention is a theoretical option, replicating such a process today is exceedingly unlikely. The last Constitutional Convention in 1787 was a unique historical moment.
You're forgetting why the Roman Empire succeeded. It ended a period of tumult and so brought great prosperity. The people were for it. What's happening in the US today is not that. Things are getting more tumultuous and the prosperity for the majority is being reduced. It's much harder to get, and maintain, people's support for that.
People supporting Trump did so believing their economic situation would improve. Their economic situation is worsening, and we've only just begun. The Roman Empire went in the opposite direction when it first started and so enjoyed the support of the people.
My point is that Trump is no Julius Caesar. Caesar loved Rome and was a brilliant military general, statesman, and orator. Trump, on the other hand, appears to prioritize his own interests and lacks Caesar's positive traits. The Roman Empire, despite its eventual collapse, managed to thrive for over two centuries due to its strong leadership, military prowess, and effective governance. In contrast, the American Empire seems destined for failure before it can even get off the launchpad - maybe that's what you meant when you said we were going straight to collapse?
Anarchy argues that supreme executive power should not rest in a ceremonially selected individual but instead derive from a mandate from the masses.
Yes that’s paraphrasing Monty Python. But real anarchism isn’t the rejection of all authority, just the rejection of hierarchies of power in favour of ideas of collective responsibility and decision making.
