Context:

I’m too lazy to make one, but this really needs to be the subject of the hardest “Who Must Go?” meme of all time.

Theoretically yes, but all of the programs for doing so are under-funded and means-tested and circumscribed into near-meaninglessness. They’re basically systems designed to kick as many people as possible off of their benefits, while still keeping up the pretense of having a social-welfare system.

The extra kick in the gut is, all of the bureaucracy and regulatory enforcement agencies needed to enforce these Byzantine systems are still expensive as hell to operate in a country this big, so in the end we spend a ton of money trying to offer people as little help as humanly possible.

China has billionaires too, and their pockets are getting lined off China’s growth as well.

Your take is skewing just a bit close to the Peter Singer/Malcolm Gladwell bit of “we’ve seen a huge reduction in global poverty in the last century, therefore capitalism is fundamentally fine,” just with the state taking the place of shareholders. You even talk about “pragmatism” the same way they do.

One of the chief problems with capitalism is the exploitation of the working class, and if you don’t think that’s a central feature of state capitalism too, you really need to examine things a bit closer.

I mean, those folks are also dumb as rocks, so I wouldn’t be half shocked to see one shoot up a cell phone store in the name of saving us from 5G Chinese/Jewish mind control.

And all his good deeds, since they include Nazis killed by the Red Army in the Victims of Communism figures too.

Making consumption your primary mode of political expression and/or praxis is a twelfth type of liberalism.

Even in the first movie when they’re mostly just robbing Kevin’s rich neighbors, their calling card is flooding people’s homes. That isn’t redistributive at all, they’re just doing it to hurt people because they can. The Wet Bandits are sadists.

National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation:

Your boss can’t cut your wages if you know where they live and don’t mind sending your redneck cousin over with an RV full of [CHRISTMAS CHEER] to [INVITE THEM TO YOUR PARTY].

Some people are dicks though. The nice thing about “going into the subway” is that it gives you a firm boundary that they can’t possibly object to.

Counterpoint: lack of cell service in subway tunnels is actually good because it creates one of the few increasingly rare spaces in modern society in which you cannot possibly be expected to always be available, whether socially or to your boss.