Democrats keep trying to increase minimum wage, read a fucking News source.
The problem is, we need caps on profit margins on necessities, and to stop the making of things we need for basic survival investment opportunities.
But that would be difficult to get done. So they go for the low hanging fruit of wages, which never permanently solve anything because they’ll just keep raising prices under this scamflation cycle we’ve been in since COVID.
Every service that is necessary for human survival should have a not-for-profit vendor.
Sure they do. Keep believing, any day now…
My home state of Oregon mandates a minimum wage of $13.20 in rural areas and $15.45 in the Portland metro area, and it adjusts to inflation. Oregon has been governed by Democrats for years. Thanks to these and other laws, I can go down to a McDonald’s and get a job that pays $16-17 an hour to start in my city. TriMet in Portland is always advertising a $28 starting wage for bus drivers (no CDL) up to $37 after three years. Rent in my city is $800-900 for a one-bedroom flat with excellent free public transit and fair bikeability. Fuel prices are reasonable. We have strong protections for tenants against abusive landlords. Strong anti-discrimination laws. Everyone has paid sick days. No regressive sales tax. Working-class people can afford a roof over their heads and decent food on the table.
Check out the neighbouring state minimum wages.
- Washington (Democratic government): $16.28
- California (Democratic government): $16.00
- Nevada (divided government): $12.00
- Idaho (Republican government): $7.25
But yeah, keep harping on about how both parties are the same and that Democrats don’t do more to help the working man.
My home state of Oregon mandates a minimum wage of $13.20 in rural areas and $15.45 in the Portland metro area, and it adjusts to inflation.
I was part of that! I was on a team that made a web site that visualized the effect on poverty levels on a county-by-county basis when the minimum wage was at different levels. It made the need for a split minimum wage obvious, since the minimum wage that is necessary for metro areas is inappropriate for rural areas. Rumor has it that the legislature used it in the decision making to some degree.
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I think that’s why it’s important to encourage participation in the primary process. There are the neoliberals mixed in with the social democrats and actual socialists. We should be voting for and supporting the latter in the primaries if we want to influence the party in a leftward direction.
That’s actually better than I thought. People in other states are so used to the dysfunction that they literally don’t believe these things are possible.
Good news doesn’t spread as quickly as bad news and rage bait. “McDonald’s Workers Can Afford Flat on 1/3 of Income” isn’t a good headline but “Families Increasingly Priced Out By Red-Hot Housing Market” does.
“Look at how well the democrats allow the capitalists to treat me as they ensure they can continue to exploit my labour for their own profit uninterrupted!!11”
(seriously - start by looking at those companies profit margins for a tip of the iceberg idea of just how much they are making off of your labour before you do a happy dance over a couple of dollars more they’re willing to throw your way to keep you from demanding actual freedom)
But yeah, keep harping on about how represented you are in the sham they call electoral politics…
I think OP is just saying that democrats are better than Republicans. We have multiple parties in my country but people vote for tree ones that support capitalism and rich people. We also have people that support a politician that was found guilty of fraud.
Rich people have power so they can do what they want.
OK so one of the slavers is nicer than the other… You’re still owned by slavers. Holy fuck, Liberals are just as fucking dumb as conservatives.
Funny meme, doesn’t make me wrong. The comic itself agrees with me.
Funny how people deny the truth when it’s not stated as a joke. Almost like you all aren’t actually processing the message. Democrats are liberals. Democrats are still allowing Republicans to keep your wages down.
Arguments against electoral democracy by so-called socialists always boil down to “it’s not perfect so why bother”.
Okay, so keep complaining. Your vision of a better tomorrow isn’t going to magically come true if you complain hard enough. You can help make it come true only by participating in the political system we have today. Even if you think it doesn’t work, you have no choice but to participate anyway and hope you are wrong.
This is how I got banned from Hexbear. I told someone “You can either participate in the current system or plot to overthrow it. Are you working with the next Lenin or Mao, or merely fantasizing about it?”
So what about you? What are you doing to build the future you want?
I’m not complaining to complain and I’m not saying don’t vote. What the flying fuck are all these assumptions coming from you?
What I’m saying is the two party system gives you a choice between two enemies. Yet you dumbasses CONSTANTLY pretend that Democrats good just because Republicans bad.
A vote doesn’t, and SHOULD NOT, come with an ass kissing.
Isn’t California full of homeless people?
Have you ever been to California actually? Yes the situation is bad but not everywhere is California is like that.
Yes, and that’s because the progressive and left-wing of the Democratic Party is losing a power struggle against the centrists and neoliberals. If you want to change that, be sure to vote in the party primary elections and to encourage everyone you know to do the same.
That’s waaaay more complicated than just minimum wage. $16 isn’t even a living wage here in L.A. where we’ve got lots of homelessness.
We ought to employ Land Value Taxation to fund the basic necessities for survival, and the remainder should go towards a UBI.
For what it’s worth, the minimum wage in LA will rise to $17.28 in July of this year. I get that’s still not very high by LA standards, but I stress that progress is better than stagnation.
California is full of … people.
None of these are living wages. You don’t get a cookie for doing the bare minimum of keeping people out of effective slavery. Give me a fucking break.
Your other comment says—
So pathetic how you claim to support democracy but shit on anyone who criticizes your precious political party and then make juvenile excuses for doing so.
I don’t. But it’s undeniably true that one party is much better, in my opinion, than the other. They aren’t a perfect party but to equate them with the Republican Party simply because they aren’t doing a perfect (or in many cases, even a good) job is stupid.
Right now, the choices are “bare minimum” or “nothing at all”. These choices are not the same. One is clearly better.
If you would like a more nuanced opinion then read carefully the rest of my comments in this thread. I’m not going to repeat my points for every person who comes along with the same retort and insult thinking they’ve “got” me.
There’s an $18 minimum wage in Denver, for instance. Republicans sure as hell didn’t vote for that.
- puts fingers in ears and starts screaming “lalalala…”
puts fingers in ears and starts screaming “lalalala…”
Lmfao, no you -
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/10/14/liberalism-and-fascism-partners-in-crime/
https://libcom.org/article/capitalist-democracy-illusion-choice
You’re correct, but Lemmy seems to be full of liberal morons who think they’re leftist simply because US conservatives are so far right.
They aren’t leftists. They’re moron incrementalist Liberals who don’t understand how CONSTANTLY capitulating to fascists is in fact NOT progressive. At all.
Having fun in fantasyland?
When all it takes to stop them is the nonbinding opinion of an unelected advisor, are they really trying, though?
Have you tried voting harder this midterm?
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Maybe if Democratic legislators vote harder, the Republicans won’t be able to stop them!
It should be like one of those buttons you hit with a hammer at a fair. Higher up it goes, the more your vote counts!
The parliamentarian’s word is law, baby.
If only people could eat Democrats’ excuses, no one would ever go hungry.
Or a single House speaker that refuses to even bring it up for a vote. Or or a dipshit that brings it up for vote, then filibusters their own bill (coughMcConnellCough)
The obvious fact that Republicans are much worse doesn’t make it ok for the Democrats to not fight for the things the overwhelming majority of their voters want.
They just repealed right to work in Michigan, and Meijer employees presumably used that leverage to significantly improve wages and benefits.
Right to work is another BS right wing policy that needs to die. I put in less than two weeks notice, I’m an asshole; company drops me in an instant, business as usual.
“Right to work” as the name of an anti-labor policy sure has a dystopic newspeak feel.
Minimum wage is not the same thing as a living wage. The minimum wage should be a living wage, but it isn’t.
See: NY. We just got our minimum wage increase and it’s 15-16/hr depending on where you are in NY… That’s what we were fighting for more than ten goddamn years ago. $15-$16/hr is an absolute joke on Long Island and NYC. I finally managed to claw my way up to 60k/year and as a single guy the thought of homeownership on long Island is as fantastical and far-fetched as a unicorn, forget about 15/hr… You can’t even rent most illegal apartments at that income alone.
The conversation needs to be about what constitutes a living wage and how to calculate it at a given time for each area not just blanket minimum wage increases to specific numbers that sound nice to chant like “fight for fifteen.”
Lol getting down voted out of pure tribalism. The complete unwillingness of their base to seriously criticize Democrats is such a massive fucking turn off to voting for them.
Achieving a living wage starts by raising the minimum wage.
Minimum wage and living wage are two very different things. Most Democrats absolutely do not support a living wage, and don’t try to lie to us about how they do.
*Pretending to try
Important distinction. Its an old tried and true election year chestnut they trot out every few years to hoodwink a few idiots. They refuse to use power when they have it, and cry about being unable to do anything when they dont.
inb4 - That they havent packed the court to unfuck Roe negates any point you may conceivably be contriving in the moment you read this. So save your breath.
Why are they trying, and not doing tho?
Republicans
Exactly. Two party system is a scam.
No, one of the two parties makes posts like this to make stupid people say “both sides” whilst said party passes laws to suppress black votes, discriminate against gay folk, and ban abortions.
Quit trying to “both sides”. It’s what stupid people say.
But I’m not saying that. I’m saying that a two-party system is stupid. And I’m saying that as a citizen of a country that has 9 political parties. edit: to make it clear, if I’d be an American, I’d definitely vote for Dems, no question about it.
Republicans aren’t stopping states like NY or CA from passing a living wage. Democrats are stopping that.
So sick of the straw men and blatant gaslighting coming from the democratic party. Anything to excuse why corporations keep getting their way with Dems. Meanwhile it takes 10 fucking years to increase the minimum wage in a blue state.
When will they finally increase it to something plausible, and then appoint some department to review and increase it in line with inflation every year according to XYZ rules.
Seems silly to need acts of congress to increase it every time.
Yeah, subby. We get it. “Both sides are bad.” But one side is boring corporatists who don’t give a crap and the other side is 100% concentrated evil fascists, authoritarians and religious nutjobs. And while that’s a choice between the lesser of two evils, it’s not a difficult one.
That may have been the point of the original comic, but given the caption, I think OP’s point wasn’t that both sides are bad, but was that a two party system is inherently biased towards corporate capture.
We do get it. It’s obvious. It’s so obvious that the only people still supporting FPTP are in favor of it; they don’t give a crap about selling us out to fascists.
And the “not fascists” angle worked a lot better when they weren’t aiding a genocide.
aiding a genocide
As opposed to the alternative who is in rabid support of multiple genocides…? You are SO smart and totally know what you are talking about.
Nobody here is disputing that the Republicans are fascists.
Corporations pay evil fascists to be evil fascist so you could choose “lesser evil”
Sounds in no way like qanon level dipshittery
Sounds like average election candidates in Russia.
- Stalinist
- Member of LDPR
- “Let’s calm down” member of United Russia
- Noname(if lucky)
UR always makes themselves to look like lesser evil. “Look at these clowns”, “old thief is fed up, new one will be hungry and steal more”, “look how experienced we are”. If they don’t have 1, 2 or 4th, they will make their own janitor to run against them, so they will look like “lesser evil”.
Btw janitor won.
That’s the problem with this “both sides” take. Yes, there is no true leftist party in the US. They’re both corporatists. The Republicans are undeniably much worse, though. Anti-union, anti other labor rights, oppose every kind of social safety net, want to privatize (loot) and profit from public assets, are thoroughly in favor of racist classist policies of every type imaginable. Some democrats are too, but ALL republicans are like that.
And while that’s a choice between the lesser of two evils, it’s not a difficult one.
There’s other choices. Moderates and Biden could choose to compromise with leftists and progressives any time. But all signs point to them preferring to lose to fascists a second time.
No, there are two choices. It sucks and nobody likes it but if you don’t vote for a Dem you are giving a vote to a Rep. Cut the crap.
nobody likes it
Moderates like it just fine. They’re happy continuing to elect awful pro-corporate, strike blocking, genocide supporting piece of shit candidates and then expecting leftists and progressives to support them in the general. If moderates didn’t like it they would have voted for one of the many alternatives in the 2020 primaries.
You need to cut the crap. Stop lecturing leftists and progressives and giving moderates a free pass. Moderates are the majority voting bloc for Democrats and thus they take the lions share of the responsibility. Spend your effort lecturing them.
I’m further left than you but anyone with a brain knows that it’s a two party system and any vote for any other party is just pissing in the ocean. Find change inside the party with progressives but at the end of the day you (unfortunately) either vote blue or red or you might as well not vote at all.
You can call yourself whatever you want but if at the end of the day you vote like a moderate your beliefs make no difference.
But if you vote for a fringe party your beliefs matter more?
No. I’m fine with voting 3rd party or writing in knowing they’ll likely not be elected. Are moderates fine with Biden losing to Trump? If not then they need to find some policy to compromise on in order to encourage progressives and leftists to vote for Biden again. We compromised in 2020 and voted for Joe Biden in the general. We’ve gotten fuck all for it. It’s time for a compromise in the other direction. There’s no point for us to stand around a table when moderates refuse to give us a seat.
Oh look, more both sides trash slapped on top of someone else’s work. Lazy fucks can’t even propagandize properly.
How about spending some of your time and energy telling moderates they can either compromise with leftists and progressives or lose to fascists a second time?
But if they compromise with leftists instead of telling them to suck an egg, they won’t have a scapegoat anymore to blame all their losses and woes on!
Sure, they might just win instead, but that’s like at best third on their list of priorities behind corporate donors and the status quo.
The dip shit fascist lost like a punk bitch even though they cheated like hell. He’s going to lose again.
…as long as we all do what we can to stop him.
You can’t just leave it as inevitable. We cannot afford ANYONE to become complacent!
Biden had a lot of help in the 2020 general election he won’t have this time around. I won’t be voting for him again. I’ll be voting 3rd party or write in.
All you said is that you’re voting trump. Lots of people said the same dumb shit last time and trump lost his ass. I’m not worried about folks like you. Plenty of you folks aren’t even real anyway. Lots of far right astroturfing.
I voted for Biden in the 2020 general election. That was before he decided to block the rail strike and support genocide.
I’m totally sure you did bud. Enjoy supporting fascism in the next election.
I’m not the one supporting fascism. Moderates are doing that in every single primary election.
block the rail strike
You are such an uninformed idiot. No wonder you have such bad takes… it’s on brand.
Biden called on congress to block the rail strike. He got 44 Democrat senators and 36 Republican senators to vote against American workers. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/biden-calls-on-congress-to-block-potential-railroad-strike
It’s not really propaganda when it’s true, at least not in the negative sense of “false manipulative information.” If it wasn’t true we’d already have it. Republicans don’t have complete control everywhere, and there are states where Democrats have complete control and they don’t do it because corporations have complete control over most Democrats.
“We” have like a handful of actual progressives in the entirety of our government, state or otherwise.
I’m just here to watch the complete and total dumpster fire in the comments.
Minimum wage works. Here is an article from the german newspaper FAZ (leans economically right) that presents a study that shows the low income sector has shrunk since the implementation of minimum wages.
Germany before had one of the biggest low income sectors in the western world.
And no, the unemployment rate did not skyrocket. In fact, Germany is as close to full employment as it gets.Germany is as close to full employment as it gets.
I wonder what they do in 21st century when everything is mechanized and automated like never before.
That’s literally the exact same thing they said about the 20th century.
UBI and nordic-level welfare should have been implemented in 20th century.
bOtH fUcKiNg SiDeS is an attitude that can suck my wang
🚫 Both sides are equally bad.
✔️ Both sides are bad, but not remotely equally so.
This is correct. Not everything has to be black and white
It’s more of a light grey vs dark grey.
I would say medium-light grey and the deepest black imaginable
“Blacker than the blackest black” black?
I’d say that’s more accurate.
Well yeah, if you’re going to actually describe reality instead of erasing it, I’m on board
When it comes to the Federal minimum wage, they are equally bad, as is the point of the comic.
Really? Are democrats opposed to changing that, or just not prioritizing it because it can get complicated and there are a million other concerns?
It’s the first part. The vast majority of Democrats are “moderate” and “corporate captured.”
It’s not a “both sides are equally bad in all respects.” It’s “both sides will not give us a change of law to enable a living wage be the standard.” It’s only speaking to that one aspect.
It might also be a complicated topic, but you don’t solve a complicated topic by never starting on it.
Are democrats opposed to changing that, or just not prioritizing it because it can get complicated and there are a million other concerns?
Are those “concerns” bigger than the concern of Trump winning the general election? Make a choice. Raising the federal minimum wage in order to avoid losing to Trump sounds like a bargain to me.
I’ve just started blocking these people
Then spend some of that energy telling moderates to start compromising with leftists and progressives if they don’t want to lose to fascists a second time.
Sadly, while we would value your support for stopping multiple genocides by voting against Trump, your numbers are far outweighed by that of moderates. I am sorry you can’t comprehend very basic cause and effect and if that costs us our country, I guess you can rest well being so stupid you won’t think you were part of the problem.
Well which is it? If our numbers are insignificant then we can’t be part of the problem because we have no effect. Pick a lane.
This is incorrect and lazy.
Let’s break that shit up!
Approval voting and proportional representation! So long as we have single-seat elections using choose-one voting, we’ll be stuck with two parties.
None of these things will pass so long as moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.
That’s why you gotta pass it using a referendum. Take it out of the hands of the legislators and into the hands of the people. Ohio just enshrined abortion protection into their constitution that way.
Odd that Democrat controlled states like California haven’t done the same thing.
I’m so glad to see more people around here realizing this.
Voting reform is absolutely the key… which is why neither entrenched party will do it, of course.
There are two sides, but you can alter that a bit if you get your asses to the primaries.
Lol, my primary choices 2024:
Biden
Democrats completely gave up on local elections in a purple county because it’s in a red state.
There are lots of things to vote for besides president. Frankly, if your political involvement is limited to caring only about the President once every 4 years, then you have no right to complain. The only way to change things is to get more involved, not less.
People are downvoting you but you’re absolutely right.
You chuckleheads don’t even know what the complaint was.
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Congress matters way more for minimum wage than president.
In Cali we can choose between Porter and Lee for (somewhat) pro-labor policies. Schiff is a standard Clinton OligoDem.
I prefer Lee’s policies, but am worried that she and Porter will split their votes and put Schiff through.
Meanwhile in California there are a ton of choices, but the party has already decided who’s gonna be the candidate in so many other states, that we don’t count.
Criticism of the comic aside, two party system is still definitely undesirable. I believe it is a side effect of first past the post voting. What we really should implement is ranked choice voting. It gets rid of the dumb “voting third party is voting for [opposite party]” argument by letting you vote for who you want guilt-free and falling back on your lower-ranked votes if #1 wasn’t popular enough.
But you know, this will always meet resistance because politicians would lose their jobs for implementing this.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_voting
STAR voting allows you to say “I refuse to vote for this candidate at all,” which certain implementations of RCV do not. It can and has ended up with candidates no one wanted winning in Australia, and other places that have implemented RCV
222 downvotes lol this really struck a nerve in liberals huh
It’s just shallow and disappointing.
Your idea of what politics is about has to be bigger than shitposting and trolling.
Sorry that you expected a 200 page analysis of politics from a meme
I love this, nobody can actually defend this as a healthy way of engaging with politics.
Sir, this is a c/memes
Oh phew, I was worried. Okay okay, what year is it? Do you have any plutonium? I need to get back to my dimension and you’ve been so helpful so far
2 party system is almost the same as 1 party dictatorship. You do need unlimited amount of parties to have any kind of democracy
We definitely don’t have a two party system. Trump came in and invented a whole new party just like that. We have republicans, democrats and trumpers.
Is it a LEGALLY different party though?
If you want to get pedantic then the US has MANY different legal parties. Functionally only three that matter.
Still I think people should pay more attention on smaller parties. But nice to see a third big party forming
Pro-Trump Republicans and anti-Trump Republicans are not at all separate parties, and 99% of anti-Trump Republicans still support him in practice when the alternative is working with Democrats.
Saying they’re separate is like saying AOC and Nancy Pelosi are in different parties.
The democrats have been trying to raise minimum wage for idk 15 years now, they just haven’t been given a functional enough majority to make it happen at the national level, though they have absolutely done so at the state level. I think your complaint might be misdirected, and could better apply to the fundamental structure of our bicameral legislature, and especially at the filibuster rule that is getting increasingly unpopular with senators themselves. When the filibuster is gone sometime in the next 6 years I expect, you will see a noticeably more functional senate.
I am thoroughly confused as to why this comment is getting downvotes. It corrects the misinterpretation of the poster in a polite and civilized manner, while bringing forth interesting discussion as to what the future may hold and possible solutions to our country’s predicament.
Unfortunately I think a lot of people find it easier to feel nihilistic than recognize that there is a path forward
Socialism 2024
Same comic, just change the little guy to “Socialism 2024” and the two big guys to “DNC & Biden”
You have the power to change the world brother.
No we don’t. Not so long as the moderates would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists and progressives.
That’s on them, then. I will vote with my conscience.
All you’ll be demonstrating to the DNC, establishment Democrat politicians and moderates is that you’ll vote blue no matter who so they’ll continue to slide to the right.
I definitely don’t, but together we have some semblance of power.
