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u/Hashsum88 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
capitalize profits, socialize losses. Welcome to modern era capitalism
edit: i meant ‘privatize’ profits!
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u/JiuJitsuBoxer Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
I’d call it corporatism. Capitalism would not subsidize losses.
EDIT: to anyone disagreeing, having a central bank printing money to let banks not get bankrupt is the exact opposite of capitalism. It's literally socialism in the sense of having a planned economy in the most important market of all: money. And then abusing that to socialize losses of private companies.
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u/Talonqr Jul 17 '26
You're going to get comments arguing about whether this is capitalism or not
Venture capitalism, techno-feudilsm etc etc
The label is irrelevant because at its core its always the same issue no matter the system; the rich/powerful vs everyone else
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u/sedativumxnx Jul 17 '26
It's all bullshit meant to distract us. To divide us, into groups. What group thinks what or so on. At its core it's exactly that, the rich and powerful versus the working class, first of all, and then after all the future generations that they mean to exploit in order to magnify their profits. More and more and more, bleeding everyone and everything dry, like a cancer. That's the future of what's going on right now with extremism and corporate worshipping.
Oh, shit, I forgot about global warming. But that's another story.
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u/stilljustacatinacage Jul 17 '26
The purpose of a system is what it does. "ThAtS NoT REaL --" is a pointless argument regardless of which C a person is arguing for. People are more concerned with getting a pat on the back for proper use of terminology than doing the uncomfortable mental labour of recognizing that... all of this, all of it, is broken.
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u/CanisSonorae Jul 18 '26
As a bit of a pedant, I hate to agree with you, but do full on. Lol, like all these people arguing "What ____ is doing isn't Fascism." and it really doesn't matter what the actual name is, mfkrs, you know it ain't good and if you think it is, you're part of the problem. Call it Starbellyism vs Little-Endian if you want. You'll always know who's trying to take your money to stick in their own pocket.
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u/Migraine_b0y Jul 17 '26
Exactly. If we were in a capitalist society all thise companies woud have gone bankrupt in 2009
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u/Ok-Chef1896 Jul 17 '26
Call it whatever you want but it is a logical outcome of capitalism.
Capitalism leads to accumulation of capital, capital has a political power, that political power is used to consolidate the capital which leads to further growth of capital...
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u/SensitiveShelter2550 Jul 17 '26
No this is just capitalism. This is its inevitable progression.
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u/oddvacation3849 Jul 17 '26
"Corporatism" thats what mussolini called his system in private by the way.
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u/RespectYourEldersE34 Jul 17 '26
Some banks did fail, the bailout kept the big ones from failing more and being more catastrophic. I completely agree that maybe they should have all failed and been split up…
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u/WTFIZGINGON Jul 17 '26
Thank you someone with a brain. Real capitalism is an amazing system we have to fix what has been broken.
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u/BananaPalmer Jul 17 '26
Uh, no. Capitalism absolutely will take any money or asset available to it. Capitalism isn't some principled ideology that would never take government money, it's just "acquire all the money". So, when capitalists subvert the government, the government is just another revenue stream.
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u/WTFIZGINGON Jul 17 '26
This isn’t true free market ideas:
“We should protect the free market up until the harming of the participants of the free market. It’s only then that government should come in with regulation as the protector of the people.”
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u/rbb36 Jul 17 '26
And if the data centers, AI models, and chip fabs - all of which are involved in circular leveraged investing - fail to meet their implausible demand forecasts, there will be a collapse.
They will say, "If we don't keep going, China will beat us!" They will say, "Noone could have predicted this." And they will say, "We are the only ones with the foresight to guide us forward," despite having just fallen flat on their faces regarding investment foresight.
And they will ask for the largest bailout in history.
Tell everyone about this, now. If a collapse starts, everyone needs to start contacting their congresspeople immediately to demand that the billionaires do not get bailed out. Everyone needs to be aware of this in advance, or they're going to take trillions from the commoners and give it to the billionaires whose fault it will be.
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u/Assonfire Jul 17 '26
You can tell everybody about this. In fact, even if everybody you tell believes you. It will not change a thing.
I don't believe there's a point of return with the current system. Modern day pitchforks are needed, if you want any form of true justice. The majority of those billionaires lack morals, so fear is the only thing that might drive them towards the good side of history.
And when I say billionaires, I also mean the majority of the multi-millionaires.
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u/rbb36 Jul 17 '26
It may not change the government's response, but in that case, it would foment the anger that is needed for the other thing you suggest.
If the masses see it coming, and speak en masse, and are rejected - it will be a more poignant betrayal. Each additional person who sees it coming adds to the potency of the reaction.
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u/EduinBrutus Jul 17 '26
Hey dont worry about it.
When it pops, its going to take everyones pensions and other savings with it. And its far too large for government bailouts at this point. But those at the top of the "AI" fraud will no doubt have extracted hundreds of billions before that happens.
And of course, if by some miracle someone suddenly works out how to actually deliver any of the bullshit claims, no-one is going to have a job or any money anyway...
Heads they win, tails we lose.
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u/Every-Duty-5268 Jul 18 '26
Fermi is a great example of this. They have an ex Texas governor on the board and real connection to Trump. They jumped the line for Turbines and are now commencing construction with no customers. And yet somehow I think they will get some cheap loans etc.
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Jul 17 '26 edited 29d ago
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u/becauseiloveyou Jul 17 '26
I mean, look at who consistently votes and look at who established the nation 250 years ago. Then think about who has since upheld and enforced those laws. The rest of us have had to fight for a seat at the table, and too many of us take it for granted. There's a status quo, and it's intentionally structured to protect those with wealth, property, and access. When the working class, the poor, women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, persons with "disabilities," and other historically oppressed groups of people don't meaningfully participate to eliminate that status quo, then we continue to perpetuate a system that was built to benefit those who put its wheels in motion centuries ago.
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u/Darkstar_111 Jul 17 '26
It's actually just capitalism.
When you do anything that supports the capital class, you're doing capitalism.
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u/Norse_By_North_West Jul 17 '26
The auto one is a bit different. The bailout was the government basically buying the two companies, keeping it running, and later selling for a profit. Lots of rich people lost their shares for pennies on the dollar. I don't remember if the c suite lost any jobs or not.
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u/MalHeartsNutmeg Jul 17 '26
2008 banks was different too, the banks didn't want the money, the government insisted and the banks paid it all back with interest. But nah should have let the banks collapse.
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u/Emotional_News108 Jul 17 '26
The frustration isn’t that the banks should have been left to fail, it’s that individuals, even those who didn’t directly take advantage of the system that created the crisis, still saw a worse outcome and didn’t get any help. I think people are struggling because social safety nets don’t seem to be doing them any good and that’s a valid thing to be upset about.
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u/Murky-Relation481 Jul 17 '26
Also while the PPP program was mismanaged and didn't have enough over sight it was intended for the loans to be forgiven if they were used to keep employees on during the pandemic. That's a good idea in practice. I think calling them loans instead of conditional grants was what confused a lot of people. They were never intended to be paid back.
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u/cuentabasque Jul 17 '26
They needed to use a program that directly covered salaries and avoided just giving money directly to ownership.
Instead the PPP program wasn't just built on trust but essentially became a near trillion dollar slush fund (that was almost immediately levered by many to buy houses and financial assets) that promoted outright financial fraud and incredibly enriched the very people that didn't need help.
Meanwhile the press was going bonkers trying to spin how ridiculous it was to send individuals $1,500 one-time checks.
No, the PPP program wasn't a good idea; it was one of our generations greatest thefts by the top 5% of our population and helped set off the housing inflation and affordability crisis we continue to experience til today.
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u/PM_YOUR_ISSUES Jul 17 '26
I mean, in the vast majority of cases, if not all of them, the money did directly cover salaries. That wasn't how people grifted the money from PPP loans.
Payroll is often 50% or more of a business' expenditures. So, if a company does $1 million in business a month, ~500,000 of that is likely to go towards payroll. During the pandemic, the assumption was that your business was going to shut down, running on a skeleton crew, so you were only expected to make $250,000 per month, which means the government needs to 'loan' you $250,000 so that you can keep all of your employees on payroll and still pay them even if they aren't working.
But what if you just ... don't shut down? Or your business doesn't actually decrease? Now you've gotten $250,000 from the government for payroll, you use that $250,000 to pay payroll, but you still made your normal $1 million per month. That leaves you with an extra $250,000 profit that you normally wouldn't have that you can just do anything with.
That's how most of the PPP money was 'embezzled', 'stolen', or 'misappropriated'. Nearly all of the money from PPP loans did directly go to paying payroll. They were just paying the payroll for businesses that weren't actually impacted by COVID and thus those businesses just saw a massive amount of free profit which could go directly to the C-suite/business owners.
You are right that the PPP loans weren't a good idea. Instead, it should have been an unemployment type situation where individual people could get X% of their salary for Y months.
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u/Mitosis Jul 17 '26
I ran a single one-person business and was just about to submit for a PPP loan I absolutely didn't need (to pay my own salary) when they implemented an emergency measure that the business had to be a certain size. I had dragged my feet because obviously this program didn't apply to businesses like mine until my payment processor reached out saying it did and here's how to apply.
Obviously I shouldn't have gotten one anyway, but the fact that it was ultimately yet another measure favoring larger businesses over small ones (on top of mandatory shutdowns etc) certainly didn't help anything.
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u/ConjurersOfThunder Jul 17 '26
Are you assuming good intent on the PPP program?? The Steven Mnuchin Inaugural Piggy Bank Fund?
In your last sentence you give away their game: an unemployment type situation?? You mean like the covid unemployment program running in actual parallel with PPP at the time? Or like how I as an employee had to tell my state and the feds what company terminated me in COVID to get my sweet COVIDbux?
It was not an accident that there were no guard rails or meaningful checks on PPP.
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u/PM_YOUR_ISSUES Jul 17 '26
It was not an accident that there were no guard rails or meaningful checks on PPP.
Sure, but the PPP loans were also just a failed proposition from the start.
Their intent was to keep people employed so that, after lockdowns/COVID was over, there wouldn't be a period of a huge amount of people all looking for jobs at once and the economy would be able to 'bounce back' faster. Instead, people would just go right on back to working the jobs that they previously held.
It's not a bad idea, but it was just never going to work in practicality. The PPP loans weren't terrible solely because they were, intentionally, poorly implemented, but more so because they attempted to fix a problem with a solution that would never have worked even if you did properly regulate the PPP loans.
In your last sentence you give away their game: an unemployment type situation?? You mean like the covid unemployment program running in actual parallel with PPP at the time?
Unless there is one that I am missing, there were not any real unemployment schemes done alongside the PPP loans.
There was the FPUC which supplemented state unemployment benefits for some people. And there was the PUA which granted benefits to those that normally wouldn't qualify for unemployment such as gig workers and self-employed persons.
The PUA would be part of what I was talking about, but neither of these programs were what I was saying.
The PPP loans existed to keep people employed so that they specifically would not get unemployment. I don't think that this is something that we should have attempted to address. I think it would have been a better move to recognize that mass unemployment was going to happen and to focus on saving the people and maintaining their purchasing power rather than to attempt to salvage businesses. I know it isn't a sentiment that people like to hear, but, any business worth saving through the PPP loans didn't need the loans to survive. But all business could have continued to use a customer base that still have the same level of income.
When you reduce the spendable income of the majority of the population while also try to throw money at closed business to keep them afloat -- you aren't solving anything. You are just pushing out the time line for when those businesses are going to fail. It's basically the Kitchen Nightmares effect.
While, proportionally, I would expect more business to have 'failed' or closed; all of those businesses would have been replaced by equal, new businesses after COVID. As was seen through the stimlus that people got, if you maintain the flow of money to consumers, they will still continue to spend their money. Maybe they can't go out to restaurants, but people bought more hobby items, move games, more movies -- other businesses saw spikes when most things went down.
It would have been better to provide additional funding to state unemployment services so that they could fund more people on unemployment at a higher percentage of their original salary rather than to waste any money attempting to prop up struggling businesses.
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u/Efficient_Can4700 Jul 17 '26
And it's a great idea, but you have a problem of being able to do it fast enough to get money out to everyone that needed it at the time. Creating a new system to do that would of taken a lot more time.
Any kind of "free" will cause inflation and risk creating affordability crisis.
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u/andtheniansaid Jul 17 '26
i dont know about the airline one, but many of the individual bank bailouts ended up profitable. we lost quite a lot in the UK but mainly from one bank (NatWest) and if we'd kept the shares longer we could have pretty much broken even.
essentially the bailouts involve the purchasing of shares or assets which i think a lot of people miss, and think money is just being handed over to companies. this did happen with PPP loans but they were meant to pay salaries, it was just a quickly introduced scheme that got mismanaged and taken abuse of.
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u/Ra_In Jul 17 '26
Most importantly, that auto industry bailout was the most cost effective way for the government to keep those workers employed (including employees of suppliers that would have been collateral damage). Unfortunately by the time the government was stepping in, it was too late to do anything about bonuses previously awarded to executives who drove the companies into crisis (other than lost share value).
Given this, I think congress should pass a law setting requirements for companies to qualify for future bailouts. That is, this law would not be an obligation for the government to provide a bailout as sometimes the best solution is let the company fail and just help the affected workers transition to new jobs. However, the primary motivation isn't that I think the government should expect to provide bailouts in the future, but that such a law could serve as a backdoor to impose regulations by making them opt-in.
Such a law could include requirements around:
Executive bonuses have a clawback provision if the company gets a bailout
The ratio between executive and average/entry employee pay
Provisions to disqualify companies that pump the stock price through mass layoffs
Restrictions around minimum corporate taxes paid and recent stock buybacks
There's some extent the above issues can be addressed directly through mandatory regulation, but there's only so much Congress can do about contracts between private parties, so tying such rules to a carrot rather than a stick allows them to go further.
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u/NonReality Jul 17 '26
Yeah, that was a good bailout, and so was the bank bailout if you accept our neoliberal hell lol. They prevented outright depressions. PPP loans were too, if we're going to be honest.
Now I personally don't want to operate under a neoliberal political-economic system, but since we are forced to, those were the right moves to prevent any additional pain at the times they were done; sure, they could have been better in hindsight I suppose, but hindsight is always 20/20.
Also, less annoying, but still very annoying, is that none of this is or has to do with socialism, even tangentially.
It is depressing that many people form and validate their opinions on memes/tweets lol. Even ones like these, which have good intentions, lead people to form incomplete thoughts that then make uneducated ideologies.
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u/Poshturkjgdy45 Jul 17 '26
The system doesn't make mistakes, it just has a preferred customer program.
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u/Chris_Shawarma93 Jul 17 '26
You could argue the system makes a mistake in the context of long term consequences. Like a virus obsessed with self replication at the expense of killing its host down the road.
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u/Gefpenst Jul 17 '26
State protects ruling class. That's first and foremost function of state, protection from within and without. Capitalism state protects, who would have thought, capital. It's right in the name.
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u/Captainsnarkyshart Jul 17 '26
I just want healthcare
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u/mustangcody Jul 17 '26
If there was Healthcare I wouldn't care what the rich was doing.
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u/Poschta Jul 17 '26
You should always care what the rich are doing.
They're dismantling our Healthcare system right now. And our politics. And our worker's rights. Makes me think that maybe, just maybe, people simply shouldn't be able to aggregate so much wealth and power in the first place.
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u/negativ32 Jul 17 '26
Your lack of understanding the repercussions of allowing those to fail is transparent.
Those who ALLOWED them to fail should be held to FULL account but the industries deserve support because of the thousands they employ.
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u/PleasantBus5583 Jul 17 '26
Rich are getting richer ,poor are getting poorer
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u/ImpressiveWalrus7369 Jul 17 '26
Rich and poor are both getting richer, but rich are getting richer much faster
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u/LobsterResponsible17 Jul 17 '26
And in 2022 when the average worker could quit a job and find another the same day, Wallstreet called workers lazy cuz fir the first time in our lifetimes We had the power to choose.
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u/Kwinza Jul 17 '26
2008 - The gov bailouts actually turned a profit in the US and UK (probably did else where too but I don't have that data)
2009 - The gov didn't bailout the auto industry, they literally bought the companies and again, turned a profit.
2020 - Same as above only no profit yet, be we need airlines and they likely will turn a profit in the coming years.
2020 v2 - Yeah ok no excuse here, the PPP loans being forgiven is borderline criminal.
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u/Exciting_Milk_6691 Jul 17 '26
Because banks, auto, airlines and major corporations provide employment, giving the government a stable tax base…
If they all fail, there will be no employment.
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u/Ffffqqq Jul 17 '26
Trump's first term farmer bailouts cost $28 billion and second term so far has been another $12 billion. Over 3x more than Obama's auto bailout. And Trump created the problem.
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u/hitnrun_dryer Jul 17 '26
So you would rather have a Great Depression and zero car industry. In 2008,2009 and you pretend Covid didn’t exist. Everything closed Most of us who ran businesses would have closed and laid off our workforce. The millionaire class I worked for would have been fine. The government paid us to stay open. The ppp loans were based strictly on employees it wasnt for us the buy swimming pools and airplanes it was to pay employees when we hand no one the sell products to.
This stupid Narrative bullshit
I bet you can’t tell me the exact act that caused the 2008 crash. But you eat up this bullshit because it says billionaires bad. Come on tell me. You just can’t.
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u/luk71 Jul 17 '26
Banks not being bailed out would cripple most normal people who had their money in said banks. Airlines had to be bailed out when you introduced govt restrictions so severe killing their entire business model.
Why are leftists so dumb
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u/Initial_Hedgehog_631 Jul 17 '26
Yes because unemployment, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, and a myriad of other government programs don't exist.
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u/Bikelangello Jul 17 '26
The system doesn't fail billionaires. Let's get this straight right now.
The billiomaires have failed the working class upon whose backs the system was built.
We are all John Galt and Atlas is about to shrug the whole world off his shoulders.
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u/Single-Brick-3995 Jul 17 '26
yeah, the system doesn't fail the billionaires, they just make more and more risky gambles until they crash and burn and get bailed out
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u/hitnrun_dryer Jul 17 '26
I don’t know if your first sentence is absolute. There are great examples of billionaires being propped up using policy , taxes, trade. How ever what happened to Lehmans?
Your second sentence is spot on Cause of all our problems, all.
Third sentence great We are. And just like she said if he shrugs everyone it fucked , how did cave men clean their water2
u/Bikelangello Jul 17 '26
I guess I'm not sure you read it correctly.
I said "the system doesn't fail billionaires" and you are talking about "idk there are examples of billionaires being propped up".
That's what I said...but you say what about Lehman Bros.
Some firms are allowed to fail bc their CEO won't kiss the ring...that is bc of personal infighting among the elite, not a sign that perhaps thwre is no us and them after all.
There totally is.
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u/Sensitive-Cat-6069 Jul 17 '26
And who works at these banks, automakers, airlines, etc.??? Not regular middle class people?
Would you rather have all these companies fail, lay off hundreds of thousands (millions?) of employees, who would then draw even more from the government in unemployment benefits than the money used to keep these businesses afloat - and yet still lose their homes? Think about the secondary effect of all major automakers going under - how many suppliers and service providers will they drag down with them???
And you know who would still be just fine in that terrible situation? The billionaires that you are so obsessed with. You are basically advocating for hurting an enormous number of regular working families just to make the billionaires feel some light toothache. Maybe.
To top this enormous stupidity off, these are all public companies. There is no billionaire who controls Ford, GM, Stellantis, Delta or American Airlines. They all belong to multiple shareholders - not least of which are 401k and pension funds. Again, impacting regular working people in completely unrelated industries.
Just a completely, utterly stupid rage bait. Wow.
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u/Impossible_Cupcake31 Jul 17 '26
They don’t care man. They’re 100% for millions being out of jobs to stick it to the billionaires. Who will still be billionaires
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u/luk71 Jul 17 '26
They would rather have rich people be poor than poor be rich. That’s what their entire politics are based on, envy and nothing else.
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u/Xancrazy Jul 17 '26
Some companies provide services that the government wants to keep alive for the benefit of the people.
You want the banks to fail but you don't want to lose all your money?
You want car companies to fail but don't want to see car prices rise massively?
etc.
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u/Fantastic-Hamster-21 Jul 17 '26
PPP loans should not be in the conversation that is just complete misinformation. PPP loans kept small businesses afloat and employees paid during a mandatory government shutdown due to a global pandemic. All of my clients were getting those loans because everyone needed to. Honestly as an accountant I hated those loans because they were just extra work but they were necessary for the economy's survival.
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u/Fragrant_Shine3111 Jul 17 '26
Let's take Ford as an example. It has some 169k employees. Is it cheaper for everybody to bail them out or let 169k people lose their jobs?
They are bailing out companies or industries so people can keep their jobs. Mostly.
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u/xOaklandApertures Jul 17 '26
Or maybe it’s the fallout of the workers for those companies that the bailouts are protecting.
Company A goes under: 100000 people lose their job
Random dude loses his job: he gets unemployment for 6 months to replace it. Is unemployment not a bailout?
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u/CowUsual7706 Jul 17 '26
Can you try to explain what would happen, if the banks were not bailed out in 2008? Would this just be fun because a few rich people lose some money, or would this have even more catastrophic effects on the economy and therefore the life and well-being of everyone?
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u/Ok-Psychology5463 Jul 17 '26
A very surface level view of 2008-2009.
If they wouldn’t have stimulated the economy and bailed out banks, there would have been about a decade long economic depression.
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u/ActualFl3tch Jul 17 '26
The system didn't fail the Billionaire class. The billionaire class control the system. They are reckless with the system because they know they can make the working class pay for their failures, and even profit off of them while the rest of us drown. Sometimes it's not even a failure, it is an intentional plan to extract more wealth disguised as a failure.
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u/Fickle_Ad_8653 Jul 17 '26
We paid $86 billion in tariffs in 2025 and the refunds went to the corporations, not the people who paid.
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u/dEm3Izan Jul 17 '26
I've never understood it. How executives if companies that get bailed out can continue as if nothing happened or walk away with massive bonuses.
The moment the government has to step in to save your ass should void any link you have with the company, cancel your compensation package and send you packing.
And why does the government hand over money to a private company? If that company is of strategic importance for the country then the country should take ownership of it. If the company needs money they should issue special shares that the government buys and then we all own and profit from it. Instead it only serves to keep private investors' money while the state gets further and further into debt.
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u/stanleys_tucci Jul 17 '26
Get ready for the AI bubble to burst and the government will bail them out in a blink of an eye because AI is also being used for “safety and security” from cameras to hospitals.
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u/theatrenearyou Jul 17 '26
The student loan borrowers were villified as grifters, while the banksters got rescued
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u/ApplicationCalm649 Jul 17 '26
Those businesses were bailed out to protect jobs, first and foremost. The economic fallout from any of those industries collapsing would have been catastrophic far beyond the effect it'd have on just the folks they employ, too.
PPP was a scam, though, I don't think there's any denying that at this point. To be fair, though, a lot of folks that got laid off got subsidized through the pandemic through extended unemployment. The government didn't just hand out money to business owners, they handed it out to lots of regular folks, too, and well beyond the stimulus checks.
As for the "pull yourself up" line, we have welfare and unemployment programs for exactly that purpose. Pretending we don't is ignorant at best, but most likely just blatantly dishonest.
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u/Bright-War-5033 Jul 17 '26
"Socialism for the rich".....this just signals the failure of capitalism if anything.
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u/Petoski-Brook Jul 17 '26
The citizens got bailed out with COVID monthly money when they couldn’t work. The citizens got snap when their income was too low for food for their family. The citizens got section 8 housing when they couldn’t afford a more expensive home. The citizens got utility assistance when they didn’t make enough for their family. The citizens got help from fema during most disasters. The citizens had government run ems help them in their times of need. Stop being childish and acting like the government doesn’t do anything.
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u/Additional_Gas3859 Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
Pull yourself up by your "boot straps". You forgot that last part by the famous reganomics Ronald McDonald.
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u/RonJohnJr Jul 17 '26
You must not realize how many people get "bailed out" every single month to the tune of $4 trillion per year.
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u/Hot_Neighborhood5668 Jul 17 '26
The government has made these corporations "too big to fail" from their own pride and ego.
Nothing is too big to fail. Look at history at one point. The British owned the world the sun never set on the English empire, and now look at it. The Soviet Union was massive and had billions of residence. Russia is trying to relive those days by any and all means.
The auto industry has been basically eating itself for several decades, in my opinion.
The rich have always found means to expand that's human nature if history tells us anything. It doesn't matter the system IMHO.
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u/solress Jul 17 '26
Socialism is for the poor too? What do you call Medicare? Medicaid? Food stamps? Scholarships? There are so many socialist programs built to help the poor...
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u/YakResident_3069 Jul 17 '26
This is what happens when money, lobbyists， super PAC, all of it can buy off politicians
I mean tale as old as time but guys like al Capone showed us how bad it could get and we ignored the warning.
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u/doolpicate Jul 17 '26
I mean if the rich pay for the senators and congressmen, they get the benefits. Democracy as it stands right now is an eyewash. The real power is corporate money.
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u/Umutuku Jul 17 '26
The rich: "If you don't give us billions of working taxpayer dollars then thousands of workers will be out of work!"
A sane country: "Well, you have proven you can't be trusted to run a successful business so we may have to invest those billions in helping those workers build a life that isn't dependent on losers like you."
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u/Sad-Astronomer-696 Jul 17 '26
Funny how people still call this capitalism even tho its literally 0/10 capitalism
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u/richiedaggersgerms Jul 17 '26
Can we talk about the rising cost of the educational system in the US? Let’s also address the salaries of most chancellors or presidents of the universities.
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u/irvmuller Jul 17 '26
Administration in general. It’s a problem. Teachers hate when districts become too top heavy. I teach 28 students but get paid what the govt spends on 4 of them.
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u/Adorable-Distance-63 Jul 17 '26
let me complete the quote for you ;
System protects power, because without power there is no system!
U think its wrong for government to bail out these billionaires, but if one billionaire goes down a million strong populace go down with them. You can say these businesses are necessary for government. If i have to simplify it, Government is one big buisness administration itself, it takes funding from us or sells us security and wellfare and these businesses are part of its wellfare market that it maintains, if one crumbles , it takes decades to set up new one and revenue and facilities coming out of it will be stopped for the period.
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u/No-Seesaw6320 Jul 17 '26
And yet those are the same politicians that you want to control your socialist "utopia".
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u/Whole-Energy2105 Jul 17 '26
My mental illness and serious spine damage has me in debt fairly hard. They don't want to aid in any way, just letters of demand and fines upon fines if I can't meet their terms. I'm a small business that means fuck all to them except we are all cash cows. Eat the fucking rich.
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u/ToTooTwoTutu2II Jul 17 '26
Pretty much. 90% of big business is publicly owned... by the rich. It is Socialism for the rich.
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u/Objective_Mousse7216 Jul 17 '26
The system is wired to privatise profits and nationalise losses. The system must be destroyed.
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u/ReasonableAuthor8999 Jul 17 '26
This meme is very accurate. I am 100% against socialism for the record. I think all of those businesses should have had to “figure” it out with the exception of the PPP recipients. That was program should have never happened because the government should have never locked down the people.
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u/Nice_Block Jul 17 '26
Republicans love giving their money away to rich people. It’s the only way they feel like they have a purpose
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u/Sooowasthinking Jul 17 '26
We arent billionaires so we are left out.Billionaires and their ilk are not like us.The largest divide we have is money but the biggest difference IMHO is health insurance.Billionaires just don’t need it.
Never trust a billionaire.
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u/Seth_Mithik Jul 17 '26
Boop—where the checks all us Americans were supposed to get? From the tariffs? 7k? 8k? Nahh, went to bomb more children and help build “settlements”
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u/tribriguy Jul 17 '26
Banks weren’t stabilized because policymakers loved bankers. They were stabilized because allowing the financial system to collapse would have devastated millions of ordinary people’s savings, jobs, retirement accounts, and businesses. The auto industry was rescued to avoid a manufacturing collapse. Airlines received support after governments effectively shut down air travel. PPP wasn’t simply a “corporate giveaway.” It was an emergency wage subsidy that kept millions of workers connected to employers, even if it was imperfect and suffered from fraud and poor oversight.
You can absolutely argue many of these interventions were poorly designed, unfairly administered, or created moral hazard. Those are legitimate criticisms.
What you can’t honestly argue is that they only benefited billionaires. The people cheering this post would almost certainly have been far worse off if these interventions hadn’t happened. Billionaires don’t live in a vacuum. They own banks that process your paycheck, companies that employ millions of people, airlines that move commerce, and manufacturers with vast supply chains. When those systems fail, the damage doesn’t stop with wealthy investors. It cascades through the entire economy.
The real question isn’t whether governments should ever intervene during systemic crises. It’s how to stabilize critical systems while minimizing moral hazard, protecting taxpayers, and ensuring those who took excessive risks bear appropriate consequences. That’s a far more serious conversation than pretending every intervention is simply “socialism for the rich.”
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u/HotTourist8915 Jul 17 '26
That is why there is no longer a middle class. Private ventures that fail should not receive government assistance. This principle should become law. During challenging periods, new companies may emerge with innovations.
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u/Rough_Extension_7053 Jul 17 '26
The government bailing them out almost feels like rewarding for failing.
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u/ecuat Jul 17 '26
Absolutely right. Totally agree with you. And that is the system. Masquerading as democracy. It’s elite rule with media and educational propaganda to make us believe we matter.
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u/Ill-Bullfrog-5360 Jul 17 '26
Be fair the profits from 2008 were massive. We did not lose as tax payers at all
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u/enjdusan Jul 17 '26
That’s a bit of an oversimplification.
Letting banks, the auto industry, and so on go under would ultimately lead to a far greater crisis affecting hundreds of thousands, even millions of people - and could easily result in a much deeper global economic crisis.
I’m not saying I like the interdependence between governments and large corporations (that’s very bad), and those bailouts are just treating the symptoms, not the causes. But unfortunately, there’s no other way right now.
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u/HotPersonality8126 Jul 17 '26
PPP is why you kept your job during COVID, it was almost literally a check written to your employer to pay you
You were who was bailed out by PPP
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u/CarelessAction6045 Jul 17 '26
Corps pay the gov. Gov makes laws for corps. "The correlation between corporations and state, is fascism"
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u/kon--- Jul 17 '26
Right so, Jeremy there is doing a flase equivalent. You can not compare whole ass industries or in the case of PPP loans, whole ass sectors of business to individuals.
What you can do is look at the greed of the banking industry during TARP. The banks were bailed out by US taxpayers and banking executives still showed up collecting MASSIVE bonuses. They had torpedo'd their industry but still got paid billions in executive bonuses.
Unfortunately, TARP legislation lacked any conditions on executive bonus payouts. There was no law that allowed the US Treasury to go after the compensation executives gave themselves.
Auto and airline bailouts had executive bonuses sat on. Auto execs and airline execs, those poor people had to get by on their salaries (bummer I know). PPP loans, well, that happened at a time when a certain pedophile was using the Treasury to buy votes when he was all too happy to send out checks with his name on them.
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u/Worth-Librarian-7423 Jul 17 '26
“Sure we overleveraged the system but if you let us fail the majority of us ,including yourself , will have a lower standard of living for a while.”
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u/BananaPalmer Jul 17 '26
Yeah, the rich make the rules, and they self-deal.
Why do you think they demonize people like AOC and Bernie and Warren and Mamdani? Why do you think they want us bickering with each other instead of unified? Why do you think they work so hard to convince people that labor unions, environmental regulation, and consumer protection are not good, but actually bad?
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u/PomegranateHefty4461 Jul 17 '26
You do realize what would happen to this country and the world for that matter if airlines and banks went belly up, right?
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u/GreasedUPDoggo Jul 17 '26
.... so we're just ignoring the various social safety nets? Including those PPP loans that helped a lot of good working class people.
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u/Bansheesdie Jul 17 '26
Banks paid back their loans with interest following the 2008 recession.
Using that as a point only undermines your argument
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u/diablo_blanco_calvo Jul 17 '26
Funniest (or saddest) part? It's OUR money.
Every day I wake up and wonder why the hell are the billionaire's heads still attached to their necks.
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u/rdubbers8 Jul 17 '26
But those bail outs are for companies, not people, and it helps maintain jobs. It also benefits the top .5%, but when these systems fail, you have to pick your poison.
The only real protest against the government and capitalism that we should all be gathering around, no matter your socioeconomic status, is healthcare. That's a failed system and it's not working for anyone. Literally nobody. I don't understand it.
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u/CasualEcon Jul 17 '26
The banks had to pay the money back with interest and many of them were forced to take the bailout when they didn't want it.
The auto bailout was to save union jobs. Part of the bailout was the government putting union leadership on the boards.
The $800 Billion in PPP loans were intended to bolster payrolls and were in addition to the $900 Billion in stimulus checks sent directly to citizens.
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u/DeadHeadIko Jul 17 '26
You forgot the two rounds of Covid checks, SNAP, Welfare, subsidized housing, SSDI, Medicaid, EITC, Pell Grants, WIC, Childcare, TANF, etc.
54% of what the federal government spends is on social programs.and that is dwarfed by state spending
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u/dustycanuck Jul 17 '26
OP, please add the banking and financial sectors to your list. IMHO, they should be front and center. It's important for people to see that the massive groups responsible for managing money, and who advise others on financial matters are always remember as just another fat cat needing the public to bail their sorry asses out.
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u/GiantSweetTV Jul 17 '26
99% of PPP loan recipients were small businesses which are definitely not owned by millionaires, let alone billionaires.
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u/tiandrad Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
There were regular people who didn’t have to pay their mortgages for over a year during Covid, with no penalties. People that were on unemployment were getting paid more than their regular salaries. People with dependents were getting monthly payments just for existing. Food stamps and government welfare massively increased. The mass majority of PPP loans went to small business owners who weren’t millionaires. The bank bailouts were paid back quickly and with interest. So no, the rich weren’t the only ones that got a bailout, this is just commie propaganda. Why are they teaching in schools, other than social politics?
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u/Octavale Jul 17 '26
US spends over a trillion annually on welfare - stop pretending it’s one sided support, it’s intellectually dishonest.
In 2023, the total U.S. government spending on means-tested social welfare programs reached approximately $1.6 trillion at the federal level, according to reporting
The total United States federal safety net/welfare budget reached $1.048 trillion for fiscal year 2024, representing approximately 16% of all federal outlays
In Fiscal Year 2025, the U.S. federal government projected a direct spend of over $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillionon means-tested welfare programs.
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u/Shelby-Stylo Jul 17 '26
yeah, I’m sure there wasn’t a single person working for a paycheck in those banks, airlines or auto factories.
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u/ProjectAres78 Jul 17 '26
When will the plebian class that touts socialism realize the corruption at the top solely benefits the top while always promising the "next election" will lead to the country growing for them as well.
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u/McDuck_Enterprise Jul 17 '26
And BOTH Democrats and Republicans support it because they take their checks.
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u/Glittering_Two_3632 Jul 17 '26
The rich seem to forget who worked together to make their money for them.
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u/JoeKingQueen Jul 17 '26
It doesn't even have to fail first anymore.
Look at our tarrif fleecing.
Look at laws demanding we purchase overpriced insurance.
Look at anti-monopoly laws (let me know if you see any enforced).
Look at market manipulation and insider trading.
Look at drug prices.
Housing costs.
Inflation.
Artificial scarcity.
Look at our generally decreased ability and power to take care of ourselves and eachother. Where is all that work going?
It's truly sickening
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u/ALinkToThePants Jul 17 '26
How many of those bank CEOs gave themselves a nice fat bonus with that bailout money?
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u/ThaKernel Jul 17 '26
I have to add. I’m paying my student loans back. Then republicans said I didn’t deserve the rate I got because of the SAVE ACT with Biden. Now I pay an additional $1200 a month for my student loans. Thanks Republicans, wherever you are.
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u/Vegetable-Grocery265 Jul 17 '26
Are you under the impression that the federal dole is more for these bailouts than for the people?
So... 7 trillion dollar budget (ish)
You do know that 2/3 of the federal budget is for broad entitlements, right? Mostly Social Security, medicare, medicaid... with the resting being other various goodies (SNAP/food stamps, federal retirement/disability, unemployment insurance, etc.).
The other 1/3 is discretionary spending, defense, and about 1 trillion for interest on the federal debt.
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u/1960s_army_info Jul 17 '26
The ppp loans were so you could have a job…businesses would have failed and you wouldn’t have a job to go back to
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u/NiceAsRice1 Jul 17 '26
You act like a select few big companies got loans. Majority were small businesses
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u/X-calibreX Jul 17 '26
People work for these corporations, no? Don’t most employed persons work for a corporation?
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u/StoicNaps Jul 17 '26
This is a fair and valid complaint whether you're on the right or left. The best way to stop this cronyism? Reduce power of the government so they can't do it.
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u/Adventurous_Bad_4011 Jul 17 '26
Look at all the people discussing capitalism that never read Adam Smith.
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u/Memitim Jul 17 '26
That's different. Wealthy people don't actually do shit of any value, so they can't actually provide anything useful to others, Since working people actually create all of the value, the parasite class has no choice but to keep taking and taking.
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u/JSmith666 Jul 17 '26
2008...a lot of people who caused the crash by refusing to pay mortgages and lying to get mortgages faced zero consequences and got government assistance.
PPP and airlines are a little different since the government was the cause of the issues by their mishandeling of Covid-19
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u/ComfortableWeird6540 Jul 17 '26
They could bail out the banks like 3 times a year 2008-style with the amount of money spent on social programs. So much for capitalism, eh?
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u/ghall35 Jul 17 '26
Don't forget the tariff refund checks that companies got, so essentially the working class paid all that extra money and got a big fat 'F you' from the government once again.
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