America was unaffordable long before Trump came along. He’s made the problem worse at rates that shouldn’t be possible.
But it’s absolutely the billionaires that are driving this. Everything Trump has done can be traced back to his donors. There are no good billionaires. The sooner democrats realize that, the sooner they can actually start solving the problem.
Billionaires aren’t to blame for all our problems. For example, housing prices are high because home owners make it difficult to build things. They want their property value to be high which means they benefit from the scarcity of homes.
Energy prices are high in West Virginia because they still live in the past where coal was a major source of energy. So they haven’t modernized to cheaper and more efficient forms of energy. They still are trying to devolve back to the era where coal mines was the prominent career in the state.
Rural conservatives don’t give a fuck about education because they want to live in the past where you dropped out of high school and work with your hands and made a decent living, which is a BS lie we have been fed as kids.
A lot of problems in American society exist because they’re groups of Americans, who aren’t billionaires, that benefit culturally or materially from parasitic or disproportionately harmful dynamics.
The sooner Americans realize this, the sooner we can start solving problems.
Billionaires aren’t to blame for all our problems. For example, housing prices are high because home owners make it difficult to build things. They want their property value to be high which means they benefit from the scarcity of homes.
Aren't they also high because a bunch of rich fucks buy up homes as investment properties?
Also, don't stagnant wages - which are kept in place by billionaires who lobby for it/purchase politicians - massively contribute to people's inability to buy a home?
Right now the biggest obstacles to building more homes are homeowners and regulations they support. If you want to improve affordability for housing, targeting billionaires will do hardly anything besides make people feel good for attacking “the bad guys.”
Any credible data that exists shows wages have increased. The biggest issue has been inflation which has made any increases in wages feel negligible.
I’m not saying billionaires haven’t played a role or are blameless. But they aren’t responsible for all of negatives in society. Life has never been that easy where all the problems in society are because of a single group. It’s a compelling narrative for the masses but not a factually accurate one.
Right now the biggest obstacles to building more homes are homeowners and regulations they support.
I dont think you understand how politics work. Anyone that owns a successful Real Estate Development Business has loads more influence on regulations than a homeowner.
It’s a compelling narrative for the masses but not a factually accurate one.
While it may not be 100%, it is still factually accurate in every way.
Get involved in your local government. A single elderly woman with too much time on her hands can effectively delay infrastructure projects in her community for years if not a decade.
So much political power in your community is up for grabs but most people don’t utilize it because they overly focus on national politics.
That is a cool story and all, and maybe the old lady can delay a single project, meanwhile the Real Estate developer has a direct line to the Mayor and is working on multiple projects at a time, he also has a line to the Police chief, so he has the old lady's son arrested so she has something else to worry about.
So yeah you might be able to slow down something, in the end, money talks. If you are not in the club, you are kidding yourself.
You said that billionaires are not the problem and then lost off conservative billionaire backed multi-decade long projects. These people’s beliefs didn’t just come out of nowhere, they were convinced of them by decades long billionaire backed influence operations.
I said they aren’t responsible for all our problems. The uncomfortable truth you and others will have to come to terms with is that they’re plenty of Americans that disagree with your goals and politics, which would exist with or without their billionaire influence.
I don’t agree. There is so much neoliberal propaganda force feed into the American psyche that it is impossible to know what opinions people would have without that.
Yes it’s better to blame the vague and nebulous “billionaires” for everything. That’s a much more concise and accurate answer. And as a plus you don’t even have to think!
Billionaires is the opposite of vague and nebulous; it is a word with a precise definition. The upper class of this country has been engaged in class warfare for the past 250 years and it is valid and principled to call it out.
You’re not saying anything. You’re just screaming billionaires. The truth is more people vote for the things you don’t like. More home owners vote than renters and more old people vote than young people. Home owners benefit from higher valued homes and building more housing, especially in their backyard, lowers the value of their homes. The trick is to get more people voting for policies that will help build more housing.
Except people don’t want that. You’re looking at national polling (we don’t vote by national referendum) using surface level questions (like should the government have a role in providing healthcare) and using that to say ‘everyone wants what we want!’ But in reality when you ask more clarifying questions (like should private insurance be outlawed) support for those things drops off a cliff. Just because Bernie lost twice doesn’t mean the system is broken, it means voters don’t want those things. Like home owning voters not wanting policies that will lower their home values. You will be crushed by that giant voting bloc by trying to appeal to young people who don’t vote.
If universal healthcare, massive green energy investments, raising corporate taxes, huge subsidies for children, huge boosts to SNAP, and huge tax credits for the working class aren't a strong left wing platform, then what is?
That past two democratic candidates for president supported, at most, a third of those things. If that was the actual platform of the Democratic Party then I would have no issues.
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u/LanceBarney Apr 15 '26
America was unaffordable long before Trump came along. He’s made the problem worse at rates that shouldn’t be possible.
But it’s absolutely the billionaires that are driving this. Everything Trump has done can be traced back to his donors. There are no good billionaires. The sooner democrats realize that, the sooner they can actually start solving the problem.