They're alowly rolling back all the freedoms we gained in the last 100 years.
Sometimes I wonder if the threat of communism was the only thing keeping us safe
I'm convinced that it was. The USSR wasn't even fully in the grave yet when the NeoCons showed up to start dancing on Communism's grave with shit like stock buybacks and deep social spending cuts.
"[The Share Our Wealth Program] is the only defense this country's got against communism!" - Huey Long
You can stop wondering, dear, they said it themselves.
Also notably, many of the European social programs that American politicians love to screech about were actually promoted by European (and as late as Eisenhower, American) conservatives as a way to keep a lid on communist sentiment. Basically, the idea was that the wealthy could give up a little and in exchange, these programs would keep people happy enough that they wouldn't go and start the revolution. Which, as far as I can tell, actually has worked pretty good so far. I think the US gave up on that because they figured out that using their propaganda machine was a lot cheaper for the wealthy.
But investors are desperate to scuttle those european programs and get those sweet sweet privatization dollars, and I don't think the propaganda machine is quite as powerful there. It would be really funny if the attempts to speedrun removal of social safety nets and implement privatization blew up in their face and led to a brand new revolution.
It definitely was. I wonder when the next "decades within weeks" moment will happen and finally bring about a paradigm shift for the better. The imperial core is deindustrializing and steadily rolling back so many of the guardrails meant to keep capitalism from imploding one wonders if the theoretical endpoint in a couple centuries is some form of neo-serfdom and subsequently the modern reenactment of the fate of the Romanov dynasty.
The end goal is absolutely going back to serfdom. Keep cranking up rent prices until people agree to work for less than minimum wage but they get housing. This sure seems like a good way tonget the ball rolling by making sure people are already locked into poverty wages with no education at the age of 14.
Field work for the children of American citizens, under the table slaughterhouse and meatpacking work for the children of immigrants.
'sustainably farmed greens' but its harvested by child slaves
My grandfather was one of the most intelligent people I ever met, he was eloquent and very well read. He did well enough in his O-levels that his school strongly recommended he proceed to higher education. Unfortunately for him, he lived on a farm in rural Wales with seven siblings, and was forced by his parents to drop out of school at sixteen.
He spent the rest of his life as a agricultural worker, which, don't get me wrong, is an important and perfectly fine career, but it always struck me as a waste of potential.
The decision here to effectively deny education to certain children is criminal.
The world is full of intelligent and skilled people that capitalism grinds down to nubs to serve the Market Gods. You are right to mourne this wasted potential. It's quite tragic, really.
Kind of like my mother in law. She grew up in a poor rural working class family and did well at school. She could have gone to high school and beyond but she didn't as her family told her that doing so meant that she could become a cashier at the local bank, that was the extent of what they imagined someone from their social class was able to do.
Since my uncles had to get up early and milk cows before going to school and then do various chores after school, I want to see some conservative oppose this on the basis of making the children too soft. "Back in my day we did farm labor, walked up hill both ways, and then also had to go to school. You kids just doing farm labor have it too easy."
Even better, LARP as a business owner angry at how easy corporations have it these days.
"Back in my day, you actually had to work hard to keep a business, now thanks to Reagan my fellow capitalists have gotten soft. We need to bring back regulations to toughen 'em up!"
Oh that's going to put rural areas back at 1930's ass schooling levels real fucking quick. Worse even. Kids in rural high schools in Indiana are already getting very agriculturally focused education largely, and this will just make the poor ones less able to advance in the long run. Presumably only the poorest would drop out to work when better jobs would be related to more education on agriculture. Indiana will easily sail to the bottom of adult education levels if they get that through, I would think.
Yea going to go ahead and assume they aren't going to pay those 14 year olds what anybody would even put in the same discussion as a living wage.
This will just make sure these kids never advance past what should have been a summer job for a couple years.
This is like if you asked somebody to come up with a way to increase generational poverty as much as possible, especially if it's only for "corporate farms"
Yeah they're going to feel it in a decade when all those kids are in their mid 20s and they haven't reached their full education potential and then people wonder why there's a shortage of rural medical workers. Some big disaster rolls through and the wafer-thin margins will get shredded and the disaster response will compound on the original disaster and create a royally fucked situation for all kinds of folk. See: Texas during the winter storm a couple years ago. "Where are all the linemen?" They're baling alfalfa you dipshits.
Even I didn't expect them to be nearly so honest on the question of what they're going to do once they prevent enough immigrants from coming here to do agricultural work. Did not see them just standing up and proudly going "child labor, duh."
Pretty sure that dials already cranked up about as far as it will go.
Plus I think it's a lot less convenient to have your literal slaves working out in the fields, people might start drawing connections.
Better to keep them in a giant windowless manufacturing plant.
They could repeal the 13th amendment and half the country would celebrate, the other half would mostly stand around waving signs for a few weeks before going home, and those that riot would be summarily executed.
Fortunately for them charging people with crimes they didn't commit is always a reliable option.
I thought agricultural labor was what the prison slaves were (mostly) already doing
I can see abusive parents forcibly removing their 14+ year old children from school and using them as cash cows. Including parents that are already well off. The rich are often the most likely to throw other lives into the grinder as long as they gain money, and many don't plan to exclude their own children from their plans to do so.
Mandatory public school attendance is sometimes the only protection some kids have from an abusive home life.
Lowering the working age and life expectancy... Gotta get that 19th century absolute surplus value back. 🤑🤑🤑
Once again, WASPs act out every antisemitic stereotype they claim that Jews are guilty of.
Mexico probably has more upward potential than the United States right now.
Imagining kids driving combines ala short round from indiana jones, with wood strapped to their shoes.
To be clear, if you grow up on a farm this isn't too far from the truth. Lots of middle schoolers operating tractors and trucks.
"B- but I wanted to start a business and become rich"
"Start farming!!"
It's like the meme but true lol.
Every day it becomes more plausible that the current republican party is actually a wierd Blanquist cult doing left accelerationism.
If they were blanquist they would do more terrorism of capitalists and they're not
