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  • Wow, that video is full of scare tactics and misleading information. Sources are few, and the ones that exist are misleading at best. I'm not going to go through and rebut everything, but I'll pick out a few parts I think are particularly misleading to make my point.

    I put parts into spoiler tags because this got really long. I hope this helps make the post feel less imposing.

    Nobody can afford houses

    Looking at the home ownership rate, it looks like things are generally getting better. About 2/3 of households own the house they're living in.

    Things have been spiraling since Reagan

    Let's look at real wages, which are about where they were 40 years ago. That means wages have roughly kept up with inflation. That's a good thing, and it looks like we're on a slow increase.

    What this shows is that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor are getting richer, but everyone is at least staying consistently rich, if not increasing.

    conclusion: help each other out

    I 100% agree with this. The important thing is to focus on what you can control, and for most people, helping out their neighbors is absolutely in their control.

    Also, contact your representatives and tell them what's important to you. You probably won't get it, but if enough people reach out, they'll be motivated to act on it to keep their constituents voting for them.

    I'm happy to discuss any part of this with anyone who is interested, I just ask to keep things positive. I like talking about solutions, not complaining about things out of our control.

    If there's something I failed to provide a source for, or you'd just like more information, please mention it and I'll do my best.

    • you can buy a house even on a median salary or lower.

      I think think this very regionally dependant. Median household income and house cost in Austin, for example, is ~$70k and ~$650k, respectively. I grew up in a very small rural town, very far from any cities, and even though houses were much cheaper, they were still unaffordable to most people unless they could land one of the few available union jobs (most jobs available were in manufacturing and paid near minimum wage).

      Things may be getting better, slightly, for the median person, but inequality is soaring, and a more dangerous problem IMO. Money is power, so inequality is a direct threat to democracy. It's also inequality, not poverty, that has the largest effect on crime rates, and social decohesion in general.

    • 🤡

    • I almost up voted you reflexively because Second Thought often trends towards Marxist Leninist propaganda. But I didn't have to read far before the ignorance started to gleam through.

      In fact, fascism is anti-capitalist

      That's false on the face of it. Fascism is definitionally capitalist. Go check Wikipedia or an encyclopedia of your choice. Any reputable one will tell you that. If you don't understand that, it's likely you don't actually understand what capitalism is. Which would be very on brand for most people educated in America. The indoctrination and propaganda has been very heavy here.

      The rest of your "critique" could best be described as disingenuous misrepresentation or flat out misunderstanding if one was generous. I'm not going to rebut it line by line as I generally have no desire to defend Second Thought. But despite them often being misleading and even propagandic. They get far more correct than this critique.

      • Fascism is definitionally capitalist

        That really depends on how you define fascist and capitalist I guess.

        Here's a definition of facism from Webster:

        severe economic and social regimentation

        And Cambridge dictionary:

        state control of social and economic life

        And the definition of capitalism in those same dictionaries. Webster:

        an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market

        And Cambridge:

        an economic and political system in which property, business, and industry are controlled by private owners rather than by the state, with the purpose of making a profit

        Both definitions of facism say it involves strict, top-down control of the economy, and both definitions of capitalism say it involves private (non-government) control. When you get too much government control, it stops being capitalism and starts being mercantilism:

        Fascism and totalitarianism adopted mercantilism in the 1930s and 1940s. After the stock market crash of 1929, many nations turned toward trade protectionism to save industry and jobs. They responded to the Great Depression with tariffs and trade restrictions.

        In fact:

        Both Russia and China continue to promote a form of mercantilism.

        The article goes on to say:

        In response, leaders like U.S. President Donald Trump advocated expansionary fiscal policies, such as tax cuts, to help businesses. He also argued for bilateral trade agreements between two countries, rather than multilateral agreements between many countries. Mercantilism opposes immigration because it takes jobs away from domestic workers. Trump's immigration policies followed this mindset.

        And just not just Trump, look at Biden's tariffs against China, those have the goal of increasing domestic production of EVs in a protectionist move, which is very much mercantilist.

        When people say "capitalism is the problem" or "capitalism leads to fascism," what they are usually talking about is mercantilism. That's the marriage of government and capital, where government interests are served by steering the economy in a certain way, and capital benefits from the strong arm of the government protecting their profits.

        So the problem here isn't capitalism, it's government control over the economy. Governments should largely restrict themselves to welfare, consumer protection, etc. The more regulations and whatnot start to look like mercantilism, the easier it will be for a strong individual to steer the country toward facism.

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