Quote from: K-Dog on Jun 02, 2025, 03:36 PMThe American working class is not prosperous, the American working class survives at subsistence levels, unable to afford healthcare, housing, or dignified retirements without crushing debt.

Again, chock full of relative terms. How much of what is "properous"? Am I the only one here who may have grown up at the "subsistence level"? Partially correct, your estimate of it, no healthcare, had a trailer but no running water in the winter and ran a kerosene heater to keep the place above 50F inside (no NG hookup available), and WHAT dignitifed retirement? Grandpap went into the county home. Grandma went into the local church hospice.

That was in the last century. So this is still around? Okay. You focus on it like it is todays news, as opposed to family history for quite a few Americans from deep into the last century.

Quote from: K-Dog

Quote from: TDoSThis person figures out that while their ability at hoisting weight is substantial.....I really don't want to.....so I fuck off and occasionally hoist a flour bag and guess what? I get the same state supplied apartment as the schmuck who DOES load the flour as an honest worker. 

The claim that social welfare rewards laziness is a deliberate fraud.  One designed to pit workers against each other while the rich steal the actual value of their labor. The reality? Capitalism already rewards idleness.  The idle rich. Stock parasites who inherit fortunes, do no work, yet extract wealth from millions. The landlord hoarding housing contributes nothing.  Yet landlords bleeds tenants dry. The CEO who fires workers to boost share prices gets a golden parachute, and his ass kissed.

You are a fraudster TDOS.

My point in laziness was SPECIFIC. And PERSONAL. I grew up in the place and with the people where getting the union job holding a stop/start sign was nirvana. They weighed 300# being on the dole by the time they were 18. You can't call it a fraud when it was a reality I grew up in. You can disparage the idea that is commonplace, which might be true, but you can't alter the reality of my hometown.

Are the rich stealing stuff? Sure. Like there weren't robber barons doing the same thing more than a century go? History agrees with you about the rich stealing what they can, and people being poor down through the generations, and NONE of this is new.

Your indignation over American rich screwing over the poor is something you've known since when? We were taught about robber barons in the 3rd grade American history in the old church converted into a little coal towns 3rd-4th grade school house.

And because I knew what you are saying about these rich folks since I was taught it at age 8 or 9, this makes ME a fraud? What did I ever say that forced you to the conclusion I was uninformed about basic American history? Or my opinion on rich folk...in the early 20th century or the 21st?

You do this thing....plug in my username as a target and assign all your anti-capitalist irritation to it.

I get your enthusiasm already for anti most everything money or capitalist or whatever.

What I don't get, is where and when it formed? Did you learn about the rich robber barons and union organizers and how that conflict played out over half a century before it sort of worked itself out? Or was this a political awakening later because of meeting a billionaire or something? Or has it been with you as a personal awakening when you went from the professional world to the working man world?