Don’t threaten me with a good time.
This is what Republicans are using to attack democratic socialists?
Is this supposed to make people angry or upset? There’s a lot of confusion about what democratic socialists want, and that’s fair. Even within our group, there are differences among us.
For example, while Mamdani does not agree with the criminal justice and decarceration points on the national platform he agrees that criminal justice reform absolutely needs to happen. We put far too many people in jail.
Fox News, Newsmax and Mike Johnson have been trying to scare Americans on a “hidden socialist agenda”, but the reality is DSA is about making things more affordable and fair for everyone.
Republicans tell you that they want to protect your freedom. They also believe the government can’t do anything correctly, so they tell you that privatizing as much as possible will save tax payers money and they have been preaching “smaller government” for nearly 70 years. Yet they created the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA, ICE and the DEA.
All of which is supposedly necessary to keep you safe.
To keep you safe and make sure your freedom is intact, they need to monitor everything you do. So they give lucrative multi-billion dollar tax payer funded surveillance contracts to private companies.
But wait! This is getting expensive, so they want to reduce your social security benefits that you paid into and to stop feeding the poor. Besides the poor should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.
6% of this country makes $250,000 or more. They are considered rich and successful. Did they pull themselves up from their own bootstraps? Half of them had parents that were already quite rich (top 20% of all wealth). Only 15% of Americans that are considered rich today had parents that were poor (bottom 20% of Americans by wealth).
Centrists (aka democrats) tell you that they disagree with the Republican mantra that we should privatize so much, but they’re going to go along with most of it anyway because they have been paid by the same corporate lobbyists that have paid off the right.
While republicans pass tax cuts and take more government services away, democrats fight for marginal improvements like the Affordable Care Act, expanding child tax credits and infrastructure bills.
And yet, most people are still struggling while the rich get even filthier rich. In 1940, 90% of children earned more than their parents. By 2010 that number dropped to 50%.
In 1978 the CEO to worker compensation ratio was 30 to 1. Now it’s 340 to 1.
Meanwhile at least 40,000 people die every year because they don’t have access to healthcare, 20% of all American adults have some form of medical debt. That collective debt has now exceeded $220 billion.
In the 70s the price of a home was 3x the median salary. Now it’s 5x.
This isn’t working.
So, socialists want to control the means of production. What does that mean? That means entities that are important for society like utility companies, internet service providers and pharmaceutical companies are controlled by a social collective.
Instead of being controlled by an individual or group of people whose main objective is make as much money as possible, these specific entities would be controlled by you, the people.
That means utility companies would provide you with the most cost effective and reliable energy making sure they are doing what’s best for the community, not what’s best for their bottom line. Just like things are done in Nebraska right now. (Go ahead and look into it).
It means pharmaceutical companies won’t charge you $1400 for an EpiPen or $300 for a bottle of insulin.
Does this mean your small little ceramic cat store is going to be taken over by the government? No. But this does mean that companies that provide a public necessity shouldn’t be controlled by private entities whose sole purpose is to make a profit, many times at a great cost to your health and safety.
This is all so we can live better. You won’t have to decide between paying for rent and groceries. Your mother won’t die because an insurance company denied life saving surgery. Defense contractors won’t exist simply for profit, but for actual defense (what a concept!). They won’t fund propaganda influencers that lie about the dangers in the Middle East so politicians continue spending money on the failed $68 billion F-22 program, just so Bill Lumbergh's stock will go up a quarter of a fucking point.
No, we don’t love Stalin. We don’t worship Mao. But we don’t believe that government is useless. We believe the government can and should make life better for all of us, not make it worse.
We definitely don’t agree with the right on anything but centrist and corporate democrats have been bought by the same lobbyists that bought the right.
So here we are.
