• Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        41
        ·
        3 months ago

        “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare. Anybody help me out? No. No.”

        Actor Craig T Nelson on how the government never helped him.

        • GraniteM@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          13
          ·
          3 months ago

          So help me there was some big deal right wing personality who talked about how the government shouldn’t subsidize education by saying that when he was a kid he wanted an education so he… went down to the public library and read books there. Not a hint of irony. Can’t remember exactly who it was, but the dissonance stuck with me.

            • GraniteM@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              3 months ago

              The difficulty in locating the original is that Republicans are ALWAYS trying to destroy public education and public libraries, so it’s kind of like trying to Google John Smith.

          • the post of tom joad@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Hmm, while it’s widely quoted i dunno if there is audio/video to find

            give me a bit to see if i can dig that up. If anyone wants to try as well it was in Simpsonville, South Carolina, by an unidentified person to congressman Bob Inglis.

            Edit: it was reported by the Washington Post as happening on July 28 2009. While the Simpsonville town hall website keeps audio and transcriptions of its meetings, it seems to have purged all meeting records before 2015. Anyone else wanna take a crack at it?

    • MrVilliam@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      3 months ago

      I literally knew a girl who said this. She truly had no idea that they were the same thing, but rattled on about wanting it gone while benefiting from it.

      I also knew an older woman who hated Obama and said “he’s arrogant for naming that after himself.” She didn’t believe me that her favorite channel was the one who named it after him unofficially and that its official name was ACA.

      They truly just repeat bullshit until it sticks, and it usually works on the people who don’t bother to diversify their information sources. It’s so goddamn frustrating.

  • dudinax@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    55
    ·
    3 months ago

    “Social Security’s great for the old folks, but there’s no way it’ll be around when we’re old”

    Votes for the guy trying to destroy social security.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      3 months ago

      I mean, technically that’s correct, if they keep voting for the guy trying to destroy social security lol

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        3 months ago

        Ronald Reagan was cutting advertising telling people that Social Security was going to go bankrupt in a generation back in 1961.

        Then he took office in 1980 (after he’d predicted bankruptcy) on the position and “fixed” SS by raising taxes on low income Americans and gutting their benefits. But the subsequent multi-trillion dollar trust fund didn’t satisfy SS scalds. They still insisted it was going bankrupt, so Republicans raised taxes and gutted benefits again under Clinton and Gingrich, while introducing alternative privatized savings programs (401k, IRA, etc).

        But that still didn’t satisfy scalds. They tried to privatize the program in 2005 under Bush Jr. That failed, but we still got an earful about how SS was going to fail in the next 20 years if we didn’t do something. So then Obama tried to pass another round of cuts and tax hikes in 2013, but Republicans killed that too. So then Trump claimed we were headed to a Fiscal Cliff in 2017, and tried to privatize SS, but Republicans refused to pass that either.

        At this point, we’ve passed repeated deadlines under which SS was supposedly going to fail. The 1970s, the 1980s, the 2000s, the 2020s… We’re still waiting on the Big Cliff in 2037, but since COVID killed several million people far sooner than expected, that’s thrown the math of significantly.

        I anticipate we will continue to hear people predicting the end of SS until Congress finally finds the majority they need to kill it.

    • jaybone@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      See here’s what I’m wondering, if they are so easy to manipulate, why can’t the left just manipulate them into voting democrat?

      • BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        3 months ago

        They’re easy to manipulate if you play off their basic tribal fears and religious bigotry. The Democrats are far from a perfect party but they at the very least aren’t openly bigots.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Because honesty and integrity matter for society. We’re trying to create a better world, not replace the Republicans with Democrats who behave just as badly but have a different name.

  • TriflingToad@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    44
    ·
    3 months ago

    The amount of people I see being payed minimum wage but dont want a living wage is insane. I don’t get it

    • Fillicia@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      3 months ago

      Same vibe as:

      “I won’t work overtime because I end up losing money on taxes”

      That’s not how tax brackets work!

      • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        That’s not how tax brackets should work. But sadly for last year’s state tax I came across it. [Example numbers] Previously I had 24,200 annual salary but zero tax as it was below 25,000. Even though personal deductions are 10,000, below 25 was considered too low to tax. This year, due to a mistake from employers I was paid for two weeks retroactively, now I have 25,300. Instead of taxing 300 above 25,000 the tax was for 15,300 after deduction. So I had to pay taxes which decreased the money below 25,000 which should not happen if income below 25,000 pays no tax.

        And considering there might be things like not qualifying for financial assistance and other things when you cross 25,000 (again example numbers), the actual benefit of making slightly below that, is higher than making slightly above that…

        So the system is putting a resistance to overcome poverty. Either you start making double of what you are making, or stay on your lane. Because trying to improve your situation by only a little is harmful.

          • thevoidzero@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            3 months ago

            I know it’s an edge case. But the edge case of having to pay more on taxes on increasing income existing for incomes close to poverty line seems counterproductive, doesn’t it?

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      3 months ago

      Lots of people working the service sector are trained to hate one another. The assumption is always that the other guy isn’t pulling their weight, never that the establishment is understaffed or the staff undertrained and overworked.

  • Kalkaline @leminal.space
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    ·
    3 months ago

    What they (Republicans, conservatives, libertarians, centrists) really want is emergency departments over run with patients who can’t get care for chronic conditions and then they have an excuse to repeal EMTALA. At that point they’ll be able to sink people deep into medical debt and when social security and Medicare/Medicaid fails to cover the costs then we can force medically disabled people into low wage jobs and take their assets to sell at pennies on the dollar to mega corps and further consolidate wealth in this country.

    We should instead create a pipeline for that wealth to flow through the lower and middle class on it’s way up to the top bringing the floor up and making sure basic infrastructure like medical care has the funding it needs.

  • Michal@programming.dev
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    3 months ago

    To be fair it’s not hypocritical to use service you’re entitled to and still be against it. After all, you paid for it with your taxes.

    • Tyler@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      3 months ago

      But voting against it to remove its benefit to others is the hypocrisy. For instance, a cousin of mine was on her parents’ insurance until the cutoff of 26 because of Obamacare and was all about getting rid of it. I would point out how she was only insured because of it (this was before her being 26 and booted off) and asked her what her next plan for being insured would be. Of course she didn’t think that far ahead and just said she would be 26 by the time anything changed so it wouldn’t matter.

      The party of grifters is aptly put.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      That’s a straw man here. The ACA didn’t require individuals to buy insurance. They’re getting it because they value it, not because their money was already taken.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    3 months ago

    I’m not American, but this happens a lot more than you’d think.

    I live in Canada.

    A relative of a friend actually voted for a party called “the People’s party of Canada”, and one of their goals as a party was to eliminate subsidized housing. That relative of my friend… lived in subsidized housing and was not able to afford to have a home if not subsidized.

    They literally voted for a party that, if they had won, would have made them homeless.

    I don’t think that the PPC won a single district (giving them no seats in government); much to their benefit and their disappointment.

    Schools really need to teach critical thinking.

    • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      3 months ago

      Nah. Relying on the ACA, and voting for people who want to abolish it is a leopards eating faces situation.

      The guy in this meme is wrong because he’s not paying attention to the wider pressures of society, and the needs of the people he’s talking to, when those people just want a better system.

      He disagrees with the woman demanding better ethical practices from Apple because she uses an Apple product, but the reality is that it is difficult to navigate modern society without a smartphone, and there’s pretty much no brand that doesn’t have some ethical failings in their supply chain. It’s not hypocrisy to point out a systemic issue, and want to see it resolved, if your participation is unavoidable.

      He disagrees with the man wanting seatbelts for his car, because he bought a car without them. Wanting greater safety features for the machinery you regularly operate is pragmatic, not hypocritical. Seeing a problem and offering a solution is a productive thing to do.

      But relying on the ACA for access to healthcare, and then voting to have the ACA dismantled with absolutely no plan on how to replace it, essentially denying millions of Americans, including themselves, access to healthcare? That’s just fucking insane. There’s no call for a better system. There’s no suggestion for how to do things differently. Just a call to tear down a system that people rely on for their health.

      If you think that we ought to hear the Republicans out on their anti-Healthcare agenda, or that people who rely on the ACA aren’t voting against their own interests when they vote Republican, you’re not paying attention to what’s at stake.

      • petrol_sniff_king
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        3 months ago

        Wow. I’m so used to this comic being presented from a left perspective that I completely missed what explodicle was actually saying.

  • Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    3 months ago

    In Kansas it’s a hot issue to expand ACA benefits and has widely popular support. Yet we for some reason keep on voting in Republicans whose major issues are just removing tax brackets.