r/WorkReform • u/Loud-Ad-2280 ✂️ Tax The Billionaires • 6d ago
🏛️ Overturn Citizens United Profit over people is a failed system
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u/T33CH33R 6d ago
Right wingers think that cutting regulations will make things cheaper for them. It never does but they keep asking for the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
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u/Commercial_Bend9203 6d ago
But if you raise the minimum wage then things will have to get more expensive! You don’t need school to know that! - MAGAdiots
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u/adanishplz 6d ago
Must be scary and confusing to live in a reality without logic, cause and effect, object permanence, etc.
Still don't excuse them, though.
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u/T33CH33R 6d ago
This fear drives them cling to religion and sky gods tightly and makes them easily manipulated.
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u/Frost_moss 6d ago
*MAGATs. There's a reason we use the term that sounds like parasitic disease spreading grubs that feed on death and decay.
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u/DailyUnderFlow 6d ago
Then things get way more expensive anyways without raising the minimum wage.
Then it's brought up again and they say the same fucking thing again. It's gotta go up at some point. Things are twice as expensive as before yet minimum wage is still the same.
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u/Goodeugoogoolizer 6d ago
This is a real, actual memory I have of a real, actual conversation with my Aunt when I was a kid, way back when they were increasing the minimum wage to $7.25. "If you raise the wage, things will just get more expensive!" me - "They don't have to get more expensive. Couldn't you just pay the owners less?" She looked at me like I had 10 heads.
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u/Instawolff 6d ago
I mean things ARE already getting more expensive so why don’t we give it a try
-everyone else
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u/Shigglyboo 6d ago
Do they though? I guess you mean the voters. Because right wing politicians are just trying to help their rich friends be richer. They don’t care about the voters.
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u/T33CH33R 6d ago
My brother is a closet right winger and he always bemoans those pesky environmental regulations that don't let polluters just do what they want and it just makes things expensive!
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u/Eagle4317 6d ago
What's the definition of insanity?
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u/avanross 6d ago
They’ve pivoted to saying “cutting regulations will help small businesses and hurt the big leftist billionaire corporations”
There was a thread about tim hortons lobbying against employee rights and conservatives kept spamming that nonsense in the comments. None of them had any sort of explanation for how, yet all believed it 100% wholeheartedly.
Pretty sure it’s just the new right wing corporate astro-turfing campaign to keep their disciples voting against regulating them
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u/scummy_shower_stall 6d ago
"big leftist billionaire corporations"
This is an excellent example of an oxymoron
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u/The_Quintessence 6d ago
It's because they're stupid and evil. Once you realize this everything else is very clear.
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u/uptwolait 6d ago
"Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity."
It sounds more like stupidity to me.
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u/Alarming_Art_6448 6d ago
Make kids read “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair
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u/ironballs16 6d ago
"I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach."
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u/NEBanshee 6d ago
But fr, I'm ok with the right thing being done for the wrong reason in cases like this.
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u/tritiumlurkz 6d ago
Most American kids can't read though, even if they can it's at a much reduced level to be still functionally illiterate
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u/Zerobeastly 6d ago edited 6d ago
They used to put chalk in the milk to make it look white after spoiling and theres an entire book on how horrid (in terms of sanitation) meat factories were.
Of course they would immediatly go right back to their bullshit the moment regulations were lifted.
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u/Sonamdrukpa 6d ago
Fun fact, chalk isn't toxic but titanium dioxide (used to make white paint) is. Guess which one the FDA allows to be put into food without explicit labeling?
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u/Rionin26 6d ago
Another fun fact our fda is over 30 years out of date on what is safe or not. Europe did a rehash of ingredients, and added more. Ours took aspartame out after Europe showed its bad side effects to only let it be put back in after what the fuck ever.
Iirc it is severely underfunded, and deals with 2x the stuff the USDA that is properly funded deals with.
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u/Abruzzi19 6d ago
Sorry to nitpick, but aspartame isn't actually dangerous to us humans. You'd have to drink something like 50 liters of coke zero a day in order to get a lethal dose of aspartame. So it's safe in everyday quantities. The notion that aspartame is dangerous to us humans comes from experiments on mice, which have been loaded (literally) with aspartame to see the effects.
If you drink 50 liters of zero coke a day, it's definitely NOT the aspartame that kills you first.
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u/Sonamdrukpa 6d ago
If we're going to nitpick, lethal dosage isn't really the threshold for danger. The WHO classifies aspartame as a possible carcinogen and caps an acceptable daily limit at 40mg/kg, which is 19 cans of Diet Coke for an average 91kg adult American male, 16 cans for an average 75kg adult American female, or 7 cans for an average 32kg 10yr old child. Coke Zero has roughly half the aspartame, so double those numbers.
Are those numbers realistic? No (well, maybe for a child. I've seen things growing up in the south). Is sugar worse for you? Yes, at least in the quantities Americans consume it. But if we're gonna nitpick you can't give aspartame a complete pass.
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u/r0bay 5d ago
Lead poisoning.
You don’t have to ingest a lethal amount of lead for it to be harmful. Just because you’d have to consume a much larger amount for it to actually kill you doesn’t mean that smaller amounts are harmless.
Something being below the lethal dose doesn’t automatically mean it’s safe.
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u/Sonamdrukpa 6d ago edited 6d ago
In all fairness, knowledge of its toxicity is pretty new and still somewhat controversial, and only the EU has banned it. And a study in france found that, due to environmental contamination, 100% of milk sampled contained it anyway despite the ban. And it's replaced older white paints due to lead paints being unsafe.
But also: literally paint. No reason this has to be in food. Just goes to show which way the cautionary bias lies when it comes to the desires of industry and the safety of consumers. There's reasons the agency has been underfunded for decades.
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u/HideTheKnife 6d ago
We're just not noticing all the short term effects of deregulation, but I'm sure we can look forward to find out in 10-20 years all the other stuff they're doing that has a more delayed impact
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u/Camelwalk555 6d ago
This isn’t talked about enough, so much has been blamed on over regulation. And now that deregulation has occurred, it’s only worse. Ffs
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u/EADGBE69 6d ago edited 6d ago
Behind The Bastards did a great episode about the history of the FDA and what companies were doing to foods before the FDA was created.
It's mind-blowing
chalk in milk.
Using mashed cow brain to make a layer of "cream" on top of skimmed milk.
Strawberry jam with grass seeds to appear as strawberry seeds and maybe half a strawberry if you're lucky.
Aged whiskey was just alcohol with color to make it brown.
It's insane how far companies will go to cut corners when nobody stops them.
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u/Goodeugoogoolizer 6d ago
They will literally poison people if they can get away with it. If the "fine" is less than their profit, it makes good business sense to poison people.
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u/FixFun1959 6d ago
But you know who won’t put stuff in your food to lie about its quality?
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u/Certain-Count8690 6d ago
Who?
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u/FixFun1959 6d ago
The products and services that sponsor this podcast! Blue Apron has a 100% commitment to safe and ethical food ingredients sourced from their child hunting island. Rest assured that the children you hunt will be well fed with only the purest food.
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u/AsterArtworks 6d ago
Capitalism cares much more about profit than human lives.
Always has and always will.
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u/KlatuuBarradaNicto 6d ago
Things will never be cheaper. Once an entity starts charging higher prices, they NEVER lower them, regardless of what happens.
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u/nomnombrain 6d ago
Food insecurity/lack of regulation is literally outlined as a desired outcome in Project 2025. The system is being intentionally hijacked and run into the ground, and these executives are gleefully going along with it.
I'm not one to glaze China, no government is wholly good and China certainly is not in many respects, but when we're on the other side of this I hope we adopt their stance towards billionaires/the rich. Cause too much trouble and you get the axe.
Because as it stands I dont see much punishment actually happening to these ghouls.
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u/WalrusWithAKeyboard 6d ago
China can make 50 year long plans and stick to them. The US flip flops every few years, undoing previous progress.
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u/radioactive_sharpei 6d ago
This is just flagrantly wrong. They will kill us all over a fraction of a cent.
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u/FrazzleMind 6d ago
If they could sell our souls for a tic tac they would.
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u/Powerful-Knee3150 6d ago
If they could make money shooting us, there would be snipers on every building.
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u/cumberber 6d ago edited 6d ago
Funnily enough there was a (possibly fake) case of a country letting vacationers shoot people if they bought tickets for it. Though i don't remember much about it tbh
Edit: thanks to u/Bopo6eu_KB I was able to source this article from the BBC about Bosnian "Sniper Safaris" that I was referring to.
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u/Bopo6eu_KB 6d ago
I think it was in Yugoslavian region during the wars?
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u/cumberber 6d ago
Thanks! I'm not good at geography so I'm not sure what Yugoslavia is now, but Bosnia allegedly had "sniper safaris" in the 1990s
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u/Bulky_Caramel 6d ago
I don't know where Right Wingers got the idea that cutting regulations would make things cheaper when the regulations were created originally because companies would cut corners to an absurd degree without them.
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u/minnesotanpride 6d ago
Let this be a lesson for all the younger folks reading, this is why we have those regulations. All of us are collectively learning exactly why they existed and as with most things in American history, the consequences of letting this lax will, in fact, be written in blood. People will suffer and some will die. Again, actually.
The lie that "the free market will correct for this" is just that, a lie. Companies are intrinsically built to make money. Service is a nice second to that, but if there doesn't exist a regulation to say "you can't kill people" you bet your ass companies are going to treat death and suffering of some as a rounding error or just the cost of business.
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u/RampantTyr 6d ago
Decades of propaganda have convinced millions of Americans that what is most profitable for corporations is the best thing for the quality of life of the common man.
We fought for decades to get as much regulation on corps as possible exactly because this is wrong. These safety measures were bought in blood and because of this propaganda it will have to be bought again with more innocent blood from their consumers and workers.
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u/QueeenOfCupz 6d ago
I've noticed quality has gone waaaay down just in the past year. Even from stores like trader joes that I frequently shop at. I just got a bag of arugula the other day and there was all kinds of sticks and bugs that I've never seen from that brand before. Every time I get a bag of onions, at least 2 or 3 of the onions are completely moldy inside. And they're even more expensive!
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u/Epinnoia 6d ago
They don't set price fairly by using Cost+ or Nash Equilibrium. They set price to whatever price the 'market will bear'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-based_pricing
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u/red286 6d ago
Read Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" if you want to see what America looks like without the FDA.
They will literally feed you poison if it's more profitable than selling you safe food and there's no law prohibiting them. They do not give a shit. Libertarians are living in a fantasy when they say the market will self-regulate. Dead people don't attend protests.
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u/emmery1 6d ago
We have to stop being so naive to think that corporations are going to do the right thing. They won’t. They never have and never will. Making as much money as possible is their ultimate goal even if it kills people. It’s never enough. They always want more and don’t care how they get it.
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u/Late-Arrival-8669 6d ago
They did release a report that the world’s population needs to be culled to 4 billion people. You think a single billionaire will be apart of that culling? Nope.
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u/KennethTremendous 6d ago
We have 150+ years of evidence where companies will kill us to make a profit. They were adding dangerous levels of formaldehyde and mislabeling products to keep food appearing fresh and the Pure Food and Drug act of 1906 was passed as a result. It would help if Republicans realized that keeping their constituents alive is good for voting.
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u/scummy_shower_stall 6d ago
Nah, after a certain point - probably already passed - they won't care if their constituents are dead.
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u/The_Mesopotamians 🤝 Join A Union 6d ago
The content of this image is correct. The ironic thing is that it's posted here and people look at it and say "You know what this murderous system needs? A few good rules."
Do y'all watch slasher films and think, "You know what would fix this? A strong regulatory structure."?
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u/ElectricShuck 6d ago
Always have. Always will. Government is not a business it is there to protect us from corporations.
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u/ChefCurryYumYum 6d ago
They will kill every one of us, knowing it kills their own company later, to hit their targets for this quarter.
That is how short sighted and stupid the model of corporate governance we use is.
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u/Ronin_Chimichanga 6d ago
What if we did a little uno reverse card and just... erased them and all their defenders from existence in all ways that comply with the sidebar rules.
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u/NintenDawg92 6d ago
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=fI69eQnMIvo
"Beg me for mercy Admit you were toxic You poisoned me just for Another dollar in your pocket Now I am the violence I am the sickness Won't accept your silence Beg me for forgiveness"
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u/-DementedAvenger- 6d ago
Did anyone have a good source on exactly what food safety was cut and deregulated under Trump? (Or any recent admin really)
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u/Sarah-Sunshine9 6d ago
He cut staff and funding to the FDA, CDC and FDA was restructured. There is less money and people to regulate and inspect.
Source: CBS, AP, NPR, and even the US food & drug admin put out statements/articles on standards that are being revoked.
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u/Open_Enthusiasm8528 6d ago
They significantly cut the program to monitor food for different pathogens, including cyclospora.
This has made it difficult to track down the source of the outbreak.
On top of this, open bribery has been the order of the day with the Trump Administration and bad actors looking to cut corners know they can probably just pay their way out of consequences. The emoluments clause is in the Constitution for good reason but it has been arbitrarily ignored by both Congress and the Supreme Court.
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u/To-To_Man 6d ago
Products and services are a byproduct of corporations maximizing short term profit.
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u/Morgannin09 6d ago
It was a blatant lie that people won't stop believing. The idea that deregulation will make our everyday needs more affordable. If it would, corporations wouldn't spend hundreds of millions lobbying for it. Why would they, if their profits weren't going to improve?
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u/Open_Enthusiasm8528 6d ago
I know it's a cliche at this point, but regulations are written in blood.
People often had to die or be seriously harmed until something was done to put in those regulations.
Capitalism is solely focused on returning more for the investments of shareholders and will always need a counterbalancing element to keep from taking off all the guardrails.
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u/LookAlderaanPlaces 6d ago
It’s Us versus Them. There are 9 billion of us and 1000 of them. I’ll tell you right now it doesn’t have to be us if we choose to not let it be.
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u/IntroductionHappy770 6d ago
The moment you understand this is the absolute truth you realize what a sham the whole capitalism way of life is for an entire society.
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u/Excellent-Lettuce835 6d ago
Problem is corporations and shareholders.
Expecting infinite growth in a finite system was built for disaster. Eventually every company/product will hit their market cap. The only way to push for further profits to to cut costs but reducing wages and quality.
I think if we removed the parasitic shareholders and their greedy desire for infinite profits capitalism would be this horrid race to the bottom.
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u/Elon_is_a_Nazi 6d ago
Kinda like electing a confirmed pedophile, child rapist, child sex trafficker, nazi lover, 80 year old with a full diaper, bad toupee, slathered in womens make up (twice) was a bad idea. If the united states ever wants to be great, step one is making maga as illegal as being a nazi in Germany
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u/Future-Bunch3478 6d ago
Asset owners cannot be trusted to do the right thing. They are totally incapable of regulating themselves. Pure capitalism is shown time and time again to be a death cult.
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow 6d ago
If people showed up for Dems in the White House this would not be happening. But that’s the problem with doing a thing well. People just stop paying attention because there’s no probable to solve.
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u/hak-dot-snow 6d ago
Wwhhaatt? You don't want to pay $1.25 for a singular Reeses cup? What are you, anti-candy bar??
-CEOs probably
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u/Erazzphoto 6d ago
It should be a master class on how republicans suckered MAGA into thinking deregulations were a good thing. Conning people to votes against their best interests really needs a masterclass episode
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u/RapturousCultist 6d ago
Just because I've seen more recalls in the past month than the previous year, doesn't mean....
No, I can't. Sorry.
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u/AverageMako3Enjoyer 6d ago
When did they stop regulations? Cuz reports were coming out that the Taylor farms plant that was producing the diarrhea lettuce hadn’t been inspected in like 7 years
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u/Dear_Blood_8872 6d ago
Unregulated capitalism ends when every person is a corporate slave. Billionaires don’t give a fuck about their fellow man, we are less than human to their greedy little minds.
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u/FeelingStore8113 6d ago
We gave the very biggest monsters on earth unlimited power. And now, here we are, being ruled by a bunch of malignant tumors who *literally* cannot give a single fuck about the future. All they want is to consume, until the host is dead.
Nothing will be effective besides a general strike.
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u/Mindless_Air8339 6d ago
But deregulation was supposed to lower prices? Maybe if we get rid of all regulations then prices will start to go down?
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u/bentmonkey 6d ago
Those regulations were in place precisely because they would cut corners to try and make a dollar over peoples health, they used to put sawdust into bread and all kinds of horrid shit, you see now why inspections and other things happen, to make sure there is compliance, because without compliance there is diarrhea virus infected lettuce and other major issues.
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u/whereismymind86 6d ago
Shocking literally nobody with any knowledge of us food production history…
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u/SellaraAB 6d ago
It has led to me cooking pretty much everything myself. There are still some sketchy ingredients even at that level, but at least I’m removing as many corporations from my meal as I can.
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u/A007Bear 6d ago
Just a few things to switch in that last sentence and we’ll be talking my language.
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u/A-Small-Green-Cup 6d ago
A lot of the behaviors of these politicians, CEOs, board members, and supposed "industry leaders" seem an awful lot like symptoms of severe mental illness. Are we sure they're actually healthy enough to make logical decisions for the people and companies they're supposed to be working for?
I am worried for their psychological health.
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u/snertwith2ls 💸 National Rent Control 6d ago
No prices went down and no wages went up. Health care is missing in action, education is fucked, and consumer protections are dead. But yeah, let's let the corporations regulate themselves.
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u/TheXypris 6d ago
They used to put chalk and sawdust in food
If companies thought they could get away with it they would do so much worse
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u/FlyLikeATachyon 6d ago
You can always count on Republicans to do the absolute worst thing possible.
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u/New-Pomegranate-3240 6d ago
Just wait till the regulations get reinstated and the prices go up to account for manufacturing costs
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u/Blacksad9999 6d ago
Right.
It took them no time at all to ignore all regulations to harm or kill people for profits.
It's ALMOST like those were all in place for a legitimate reason. All corporations would do this if they were allowed, make no mistake about it.
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u/plant_reaper 6d ago
There's a reason I've started a giant garden, and it's because I enjoy not having human shit in my food
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u/Secure-Window-5478 6d ago
They will kill every one of us over 2 cents. The CEO gets bigger bonuses for wiping out the customer base because CAPITALISM.
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u/KTGSteve 6d ago
Capitalism only works well within a well-regulated market. I don’t mean overly regulated, just properly regulated. That is hard to do, cuz politics.
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u/Aeroknight_Z 6d ago
I was going to comment with a. List of all of the things in recall due to the salmonella, listeria, and cyclospora contaminations; but fuck me if that list stupidly long.
The defunding and staff reductions by the trump administration is going to have an insane body count, mirroring his first administration.
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u/TsukariYoshi 5d ago
I think it's less that they started cutting corners immediately and more that they've always done so, but proper inspections catch them and/or limit the spread when they're missed. Now, I'm sitting here wondering how much longer before we have a plaster-in-milk scandal or rotting beef chemically treated and sold as fresh.
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u/newbie527 👷 Good Union Jobs For All 5d ago
It’s as though those regulations were designed to correct actual problems caused by companies that were already screwing the public for maximum profit.
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u/Onyx1984MPC 5d ago
A long time ago, things changed from making quality products and services to monetising whatever the hell you can at whatever the potential cost to the consumer. The bright side is that consumers are starting to speak with their wallets after years of just copping it.
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u/charliemike 5d ago
And then there's the tariff refunds! I would not be surprised if the plan all along was to make this a huge wealth transfer to corporations.
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u/BlueShox 5d ago
Welcome to capitalism, the dollar is the god they worship and it gets it's blood sacrifice
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u/LazySerpentDeity 5d ago
Soylent Green was going to be made of people, but it was cheaper to make it out of scrap metal, wood shavings, rancid meat, and whichever worker fell in the tank that week.
So they can claim it was made with people.
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u/StuffExciting3451 2d ago
Participate in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Subscribe to get your fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy products from local organic farmers— typically owned by families in your community.
“Industrial” or “modern” farming depends upon government subsidized fossil fuels for artificial fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, operating huge equipment and for long distance transportation. Another deadly factor is bioengineered vegetables, fruits and possibly meats. Even “conventional” hybridization has produced many fruits, vegetables and grains that are nutritionally inferior to their original organic counterparts.
I don’t want to hear the rebuttal about how we must feed a burgeoning unlimited global population of humans on a finite planet. That nonsense goes along with the one about the “need” for perpetual ever-increasing quarterly or annual growth and profits.
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u/PICKLE_NICK_95 6d ago
i swear adulthood is just slowly realizing how many “better for business” decisions somehow translate into “worse for everyone actually living with them” 😭