Bernie is asking you. That's all hes got. Sorry guys, no one else can do it.

I am also weary of Bernie's endless calls to do this or that while not specifying any way of doing it. I certainly don't expect him to do anything more, he's already made a much larger impact than most individuals ever can or will. But that entire tour with AoC kind of felt like only half of a useful thing. We all know it's a problem. We all want to put a stop to it. But nobody knows how, that's what's missing. What do you want us to do, Bernie?!? Vote in the primaries, I guess? Would be nice if the next steps were included in the message to take action. Like an instant macaroni box whose instructions just say "You must make the macaroni!", it feels a bit silly.

I get this feeling when I watch Jon Oliver. Jon's really good at identifying the problem, demonstrating why its a problem, and making you kind of upset about it.
God forbid you ever watched Jon Oliver back to back because you'd go mad with the immediate understanding that you live in bizzaro world.
So, it would be nice if HBO had a second show which was more like myth busters where people championed each of the problems Jon pointed out and left the viewer with a clear understanding what they can do or at the least, what can be done.
- He does try to give a solution. It's just that there is little to nothing the average viewer can do to make it happen. Sadly, that is just the way it is. Same with Bernie. We actually can't make the solutions happen. But both are raising public awareness, which "can" impact policy. So I guess watching and listening is what we can do.
- Grow your own food, make your own things, slash your expenses. If everyone does this, the enemy loses most of their power
- I feel like Jordan Klepper would be perfect for that, he does great on the street engaging with folks and trying to explain their ignorance slowly
  (FYI Jon is the frazzled old mensch, John is the increasingly frustrated Brit)
- I do think that "the system" (not any particular person or group of people, but the more abstract social meta-organism) is evolved, all systems are, to integrate and channel possible destabilizing forces into neutralized or even system-reaffirming forces. The system does not "platform" people who would legitimately threaten the system as a general rule. Jon Oliver is a pressure release valve, if he was to propose solutions that threatened to alter the system too much (systems see significant alterations as akin to death), he would be deplatformed organically. Again, I must stress that it is not an actual person or organization explicitly setting out to do this, like some sort of shady Comedy Central Illuminati. It's just the same as how our body has a bunch of independent organs and cells that all work together without exactly trying to or knowing that they're doing so.
  Unfortunately Bernie is largely the same sort of thing. We can be assured of this by the fact that he is influential. Almost without exception, the more influential someone wants to be, the more pro-systemic they must be. In Bernie's case he may not even realize how pro-systemic he is, he likely sees himself as more anti-systemic. But he is anti-systemic in the same way as a white blood cell is anti-systemic - that is, not at all, and only in appearance without inspection of the bigger picture. I suspect this is why he ends up not proposing any clear course of action. His role, although again I think he is unaware of this, is to create the sense that establishment dissent exists and is possible, that change and reform is possible. I say this without taking a stance on whether it is actually possible or not. Both in a system where it is possible and in a system where it is not possible, there would still be a flag bearer for that possibility regardless of its actual existence.
  What I mean to say is that the system self-selects for the type of people who acknowledge problems but not the type of people who make proposals to fix them. It wants to appear to be investigating the desires of its constituents while not actually doing so - the system only cares about its constituents in so far as its constituents lead to the system's well-being as a whole. The system does not intrinsically care for its constituents well-being. So while systems do indeed evolve and legitimately investigate ways to improve their own well-being, they will only appear to investigate ways to approve the well-being of their constituents, if they can help it.
  All just my impressions of course, I hate talking in an authoritative voice about my ideas, but it's better than prefacing every sentence with "I think", "it seems like", etc.
- I don’t know how anyone can watch John Oliver for over 5 minutes. I like his points but man is he irritating. He sounds like a turkey when he gets excited
If he said what needs to be done, he'd be imprisoned immediately for inciting violence against the president, and for planning a coup. Until he has troops on his side, he can not tell you what actually has to happen.
- Someone with power has to say it or nothing will happen.
We already know what needs to be done, we just aren't allowed to talk about it.
The Tree of Liberty is thirsty.
Hear hear. When I look at the state of American democracy from outside, what I find really distressing is that it's not just Bernie; no mainstream person or organization with national reach is giving concrete advice and/or instructions on how to depose the oligarchy, so you have people's energy going to angry tweets and meaningless parades.
- what I find really distressing is that it’s not just Bernie; no mainstream person or organization with national reach is giving concrete advice and/or instructions on how to depose the oligarchy
  What instructions are you looking for, exactly? Like, what are the instructions that 'should' be handed out at this point?
  There's no simple, easy, or quick solution to this, and since the election, things have gotten considerably worse on the 'possible solutions' front. Calls to organize and seek alternatives to oligarch-controlled resources are the groundwork which orgs constantly call for but no one fucking heeds. So what're the instructions that will provide the solution that those calls haven't?
- But how would they go about it? The system is so entrenched. Anything socialist is considered 'commie' and anti-american, a sentiment carefully cultivated since WWII. The two party system that relies on huge donations means the oligarchy has a huge input in politics no matter which party wins. The only thing that's being decided is which oligarchs will rule.
  There's just no way to turn this around until things get bad enough that they can't hold the floodgates anymore. America is (fortunately for the little man who would suffer the most) still far from that.
Damn it, now I am going to put on a Bernie voice and shout “you must make the macaroni!” next time I’m making some mac and cheese.
That’s always been my issue with sanders. Also as much as people hate to hear it, he couldn’t even win the support of the Democrats, there’s just no way he would win a general election.
Another thing, im tired of hearing leftists say “we want old white men out of politics” while asking for Bernie. He should be an advisor to a younger candidate, not the candidate himself
Edit: Lemmy is wild, you could give the most inoffensive criticism or point about Bernie sanders and you get downvoted. There is zero tolerance for dissenting views when it comes to Bernie, he’s become a god to some people, like the opposite end of the cult of Trump
- You're getting downvoted for this bullshit misinformation:
  Also as much as people hate to hear it, he couldn’t even win the support of the Democrats, there’s just no way he would win a general election.
  That's pushing the fallacy that partisan primaries are somehow necessarily picking the candidate most likely to win in the general election, but they're not. And the assumption breaks down particularly hard in Bernie's case, because a huge part of his path to victory would've been his ability to transcend American political parties and draw a lot of support from exactly the people who ended up voting for Trump because they wanted to burn down the political establishment at all costs. He, uniquely among Democratic candidates, could've beaten Trump at his own game.
  But that would've required neoliberals to "vote blue no matter who," so we got fascism instead.
- Who would be a suitable younger Bernie replacement?

Even he knows this won't be fixed by political discourse.

Can the "leftists" in the room start pushing actionable rhetoric?

I agree that we should do something about the oligarchy too.

Maybe the liberal leaders that keep hogging the mic every local protest should give directions to the largest group of protesters in American history.

I dont know, I think there is nothing but dead air from the liberal side. Its gross. More messaging for the DNC comes from nobodies like me then from the party itself. Sure I might be more authentic but ffs Im just one dude.
I watch the news cycle and you can basically tell when the GOP are gearing up because its just dead silence on the platforms I visit. Now, not "dead silence". There are your typical memes, news articles, and reposts but never anything from the dnc itself. No top down messaging; no platforming small creators; no baiting of the right. What the DNC has done is made these strile online environments where the right can constantly come in and, basically, disturb the peace.
It has become so insane that now the far left is doing it too. Show me one leftist who will get in the same beat down brawls they do on this site, do that on Facebook, Twitter, or Truth. They cant because they've been expelled from those places.
Im ranting too much and getting to in my own head. This is just what I see.
The DNC is rudderless and has no media strategy. Their only media guys think they need to turn right wingers into left wingers and it just doesn't work. If trump didnt flip you, youre never leaving the right.
- We need to take the DNC over from the inside. We need to primary all of them.
  Primary elections in general have a ridiculously low turnout rate, and that's the first place the battle must be waged.
National wealth cap set at 1000x the median household income. Anything over this is taxed at 100%. This would be about $80 million today.
But for people who cheat on their taxes or try to amass a secret fortune well beyond the cap? Secretly amassing a fortune over $1 billion will be a felony with a mandatory minimum 20 year prison sentence.

Even if we tax Jeff bezos 30% realistically it won't make any difference because Trump and his cronies will just blow it on an even more ridiculous ICE budget or build more concentration camps or bomb Iran again.

That's why we need a national wealth cap. Forget the tax. We need a maximum wealth. You simply are not allowed to have more than a certain amount of money. We need bounded capitalism. Capitalism can be a very useful system. It has a lot of merits over central planning. But in any kind of machine or system that humans devise, when is it ever beneficial to let any parameter increase to infinity? Let an engine spin too fast, and it will tear itself to pieces. Build an irrigation system that delivers an unbounded amount of water, and your crops drown. A well insulated house heated by a powerful furnace can bring comfort. Let it burn an arbitrarily large amount of fuel, and you will be cooked alive in your own bed. No system that humans design for our needs and comforts works when one of its core values is allowed to increase without bound. Inevitably this throws the whole system out of balance and leads to disaster.
And what is our economy and society if not an elaborate machine? A way of distributing resources, assigning work, etc? Allowing people to earn different amounts of money is a very useful thing. It encourages people to produce useful goods and services. It encourages innovation. It incentivizes getting an education and contributing to society. We're not perfect at any of these. Market mechanisms have many flaws. But our system does have a lot of merit over simply assigning everyone the same flat wage for all work done. It is useful to allow people to accrue modest fortunes. But that useful mechanism, completely unbounded? It unbalances society and tears us apart.
1000x the median household income. We set that as the maximum allowable fortune. 1000 times the average family wage. That I believe is the place to set such a cap. This would be approximately $80 million. This is so much money, that even the highest paid wage workers - people like brain surgeons - if they work a long career, choose to live in a literal cardboard box on the sidewalk, and invest every penny they make? They would struggle to reach that cap before they die of old age, even if they live very long lives. The only way to earn more money than this is to earn your wealth primarily by taking advantage of the labor of others.
Any money earned beyond this? Taxed at 100%. And at some point above this cap? Simply having that amount of money becomes a criminal offense. I want to make it a felony for someone to have a fortune over $1 billion. Mandatory minimum 20 year sentence for secretly amassing a fortune over $1 billion. Make Bezos and Musk give all their money away, flee the country, or blow their fortunes on the single greatest party in the history of the human race. Frankly I would be OK with any of these outcomes. But they cannot be allowed to retain these strategically dangerous fortunes. They have declared war on the rest of us. And it's time we started responding in kind. We must wipe out the billionaires as an economic class entirely.
"There should be no billionaires" is not just a slogan. It is a concrete policy we could choose to enact.
The Big Beautiful Bill isn’t really a tax cut. It is mostly comprised of deferred taxes. They only slashed a trillion from the budget. The rest is financed through increased debt.
The BBB will add over 3 trillion to the deficit which the public will pay one way or another.
Either higher taxes down the road, increased inflation or through higher interest rates… Most likely a combination of all three. But it will be paid.
- The tax cuts for the 1% are real; it's just the ones for everybody else that are fake.
true, plus he would still cut programs just to give himself, or the defense budget more money, and his personal SS force.

BuT hE's A sElF mAdE mAn !

Then it's time to unmake the man.

THIS IS SPARTA!!!!

im surprised he dint go there in his super yacht which was around 750million-1billion.

If he doesn't plan to create a new party he better be silent. Democrat made it clear what they stand for, and their voter also happy with it. So unless he create a new party then nothing will change.

New parties are useless at the federal level so long as elections are First-Past-The-Post. Even the Ross Perot's Reform Party in 1992 and 1996 only served as a spoiler for the Republican party, and his was an immensely strong attempt at forming a new party, featuring a reasoned platform which Perot showcased with charts every night on television.
This is why Musk's America party is laughable, even if he really, really meant it, and offered a platform of sound governance.
While Sanders caucuses with the Democratic party, and they make him sit at the kids' table with AOC and the other Socialist Democrats, he has been able to get a lot of legislation in or blocked with skilled use of Senate procedure.
But the current situation is well beyond even his powers of procedural mischief. We can't rely on officials or left-wing news media to save the US from oligarchy and eventually monarchy.
Violent or non-violent, we'll have to do it ourselves, and it's almost certain that if we pressure them nonviolently (say with massive demonstrations or with a general strike), then Trump will try to do January 6th once again, probably with more guns and explosives. He'll certainly bring out his ICE Stormtroopers (now in fancy armor) and try to invoke the military.
So we need to expect a fight, and preferably do what the lords did with John of England, make it super clear that he is out-manned and out-armed and will be given no quarter, if it comes down to violence. (Even the Magna Carta took a few tries)
27+ dead little girls at Camp Mystic has shown us it's ugly already, but non-violence makes it more difficult for bystanders to dismiss the resistance as terrorists. (FOX News, etc. will paint us as terrorists anyway.)
I don't know how we get to an organized general strike at speed (usually it takes years, and we don't have years), and there are groups like indivisible that are trying. I don't know if it's enough, especially once ICE gets its massive infusion of equipment, manpower and fancy trenchcoats.
Democrat made it clear what they stand for
Their meltdown over Mamdani is pretty damning

Bernie is controlled opposition. He is a grifter that is just there to push revolutionary energy back to the democratic party to prevent people from joining an actual communist party.

Boo! This is such a purity-test. An imperfect ally is still an ally. If you're angry that the establishment actively shoots down communist parties, that's valid, but don't blame it on Sanders.
That's a take
Friendly reminder that bernie is, in fact, not a democrat.

The thought of running around with a 5 million dollar ring gives me heart palpitations.

You should have never trusted them, the country.
The fact that a ring can be worth more then it would cost to provide financial independence for hunderds of people, is kinda jarring.
I know, I know, pretty rock and metal worth paper value notes.
- So really that ring is pure loss.
  No one owned that gem when it was just sitting in the ground. It took millions of years to create.
  Some capitalism claimed it when one of his workers mined it. Calculated how much energy and labor it has costs to obtain it.
  Then sold it for a massive markup compared to their own costs.
  The machines have spend energy to get it (loss)
  The workers spend life time and life energy to get it (loss)
  Bezos his works spend their life time and energy to make him the money he now loses on this ring. (Loss)
  The planet lost one of its rare gems. (Loss)
  No lives are going to be saved using that rock, its not going to be used for breakthrough science, its not in a museum where we the people can admire our planet and learn from the its amazing processes. (No profit)
  Instead its to decorate a hand so one person can be perceived as having value. Ironic.
- Hundreds?
  That's enough for like 1.5 households to retire on. That's it. A million is not as much as it used to be.
That's enough budget for a whole ass R&D project and team. Can this ring shoot lasers or steer a helicopter or something?
- No, but it can checks notes impress other rich people.

Bernie needs to set up an alt account on Twitter where he pretends to be a Republican but reposts all these same messages.

The issue is left wing agenda gets de-prioritized (buried) or outright blocked since all social media is owned by billionaires and they want to maintain the current status quo.
We need to set up an indefatigable bot army to do all that and similar...
Bets on how likely that is? We haven't even shown the ability to start anything simpler, so far...
- I genuinely don't understand how the ass backwards, Nazi right has random ass politicians with bot armies and the tech edge left can't be bothered to actually talk to other people. Bot army should be our bread and butter!

So he only spends 0,0087 % of his wealth for the wedding? Sounds pathetic. Most normal people even go in debt for it.

I like this comment even though I can’t actually confirm it’s sarcasm. I think it’s be great if we all spent 0,0087% of our wealth on engagement rings.
- I could afford the finest plastic ring in all of Poundland. It's a shame the founders didn't opt to name their venture Poundtown, though.
Weddings are overrated anyway. I'm happy to be poly 😁

That chick should be mad. 3-months salary for him would be like $27 billion.

If you assume 7% annual rate of return on that $230 billion, then 3 months "salary" would be a little over $4 billion.
That being said, as others have pointed out, the "3 months salary" guideline is just propaganda from DeBeers and no one in their right mind should ever spend that type of money on a piece of jewelry.
That's a DeBeers diamond cartel propaganda rule of thumb.
He should've used antimatter as a ring
Not to defend this thug or any other billionaire, but it isn't about salaries but fortune.

"Damn, why isn't Bernie ramboing his way through the billionaires on his own??? Doesn't he know that all of us bitching about him are too lazy to do it ourselves???"

5 million dollar ring for that wife?

Sir Mix Alot would be ashamed. Silicone parts are made for toys

This roast is criminally underrated.

Good thing they implemented even more tax cuts for the rich, coming soon™...

But obviously not too soon, otherwise they can't blame the dems for it.

They don't need to blame the dems anymore

All I ever get asked for by the politicians I vote for (the Democrats) is money.

Maybe I’m subscribed to the wrong things.

So, while I agree with the "vote away Fascism" being bull shit I do still think that working class momentum can be built through wins like Mamdani.

I see so many comments saying "voting won't work", "protesting won't work" etc. Anything that has any visible result, works. Because the majority of people follow the herd to a greater or lesser extent. You need to mobilise that majority in order to make a difference. The more you have a movement, the bigger, louder and more visible that is, the more people will join you. People need to feel which way the wind is blowing.
- "that doesn't work" people are just better educated versions of the my-anecdote-disproves-science types. Those people usually need more local engagement because of fuckin-course you can't tell if voting is working when the gap between the individual voter and federal level reps is so huge. Anyone who's paying attention to their local elections knows votes matter.

I'm sorry 5 million? For a ring? I'd feel insane amounts of guilt wearing a ring that cost that much

That's difference
They don't have guilt
For me I think the guilt would be overshadowed by fear. Fear that somebody might shoot me in the face for that ring.
I imagine if these people were capable of feeling guilt, much of their behavior would be different
The richest people in world don't feel guilt.

I hope we end it with violence.

Newsflash: it already is ending with violence.
We're losing. Handily.
- This is the part so few people understand.
There's very little chance it ends otherwise to be fair. Talking and negotiation didn't work, peaceful protest didn't work.
Apathy prevents violence, and will continue to do so until the vast majority of people are in constant pain and fear with absolutely no alternative. When the people have nothing to lose they will act.
Even the most politically aware and ethically minded among us can't drop their daily lives in favor of standing up for the oppressed when standing on the razor edge of working every day to avoid homelessness.
Those who are not on the razor edge have "more to lose" by toppling the system
Checks com instance
Ideally the kind that doesn't first have like death camps for the "undesirables", famine, and disease. But given how many maga-hats are cheering for ICE even as their spouses get disappeared, I don't know how things are going to go.
Also some lemmy moderators are such pearl clutchers they'll take action about the slightest hint of violence, no matter how justified.

Let's vote for....it.

Well this is awkward

AFAIK in comparison to the median income the wedding only cost him 18,50$ relatively

And when its ended, take ALL the money back that they stole in various inventive ways

Yeah, these figures are bullshit manipulation. The 1% "real tax rate" figure specifically comes from a fantasy where we imagine that Jeff Bezos's net worth is his income.

I still hope Bernie Sanders is better than this, but it doesn't look good.

As a concrete example of why this is wrong thinking, let's consider that you buy a very nice house with a lake from a small secluded neighborhood that seems to be dying for $500K. Then let's further imagine that you got so lucky that the house you bought was in the center of a new town that for some reason grows magnificently over the next ten years. Things like that happened all the time in the 1900s.

Your house now in worth $20M. Should you pay income tax for $19.5M even if you don't sell the house?

Counting your primary residence and your ownership of a multi trillion dollar international corporation are different things entirely.
Why not tax purchases above a certain dollar amount at a higher rate then? E.g any purchase over 50M has an additional sales tax of 50%, so 75M total. Then you can't really argue that it being their real liquid assets vs more ethereal assets like homes or in Bezos's case stocks makes a difference. If you're buying something that costs $50,000,000, then you definitely have quite a lot of REAL purchasing power and money to spend, regardless of how or where you store it.
Being able to hide it in net worth is the bullshit loophole, regardless of it being straight income or not having that net worth affords him the ability to get monstrously expensive things no other person could ever even dream of and he's enjoying that life and everything in it while paying basically nothing in taxes
- There probably should be an international wealth tax that's completely unavoidable. Perhaps. Economists seem to disagree on this, but to me it would feel like a correct thing to do.
  But saying that Bezos's "real tax rate" is 1% is just manipulative lying.
Bernie: uses bullshit numbers that only applies to the incredibly wealthy
You: uses bullshit numbers that apply to nobody Bernie mentioned
Nobody is buying 500k houses and cashing in on 20m of gains in 10 years. Even if it was, you'd need to do that a few hundred times to be on Bernie's radar.
Effectively, your message is we can't tax only the wealthy because if they did it, everyone else would be destute.
Weird how not taxing the wealthy hasn't made everyone rich.
I assumed this was based on his income, which is probably protected using some borrowing scheme. And for the rest, capital gains taxes are lower than other income taxes.
What's the real tax rate for the "have nots"? Is Jeff not the 1%. It's weird to argue he isn't, and given that he is Bernie's statement is true.
You complain about bullshit manipulation, then spread your own blatant disinformation to try support the billionaires??
The "real tax rate" isnt based on a stable net worth, it is based on the increase in net worth over X years (ie. Income), compared against the amount of tax paid over the X years.
If someones house increased in value at a rate of $1M per year, then they absolutely should be paying income tax on that $1M every year. Once it stops increasing in value, then it would no longer be contributing to income, and therefore would not be subject to income tax. It is pretty simple.
- That would be a pretty messed up way to tax people. Like, a place becomes more desirable and suddenly all original inhabitants have to leave because they can't afford to pay their "income" taxes? What?