theInternetismyplayground
7358
561
3
Jun 16, 2026 4:21 PM
theInternetismyplayground
7358
561
3
FTUG
Fuck Ronald Reagan
VikingsAreNinjaPirates
Most profitable endeavors eventually draw the attention of useless rich people, who will offer a little bit of money now if all future profits start going to them. Oh, and those profits need to increase every quarter. Fire people, cut salaries, outsource, increase prices, reduce quality, whatever... just keep those profits going up infinitely. The final nail is usually talking out loans using the company as collateral ("vulture capitalism"), then they leave.
discorage
Corporate consolidation. For retirement homes/sister living, look no further than these fucks. I dunno, just feels like retirement/LTC homes should be owned by a corporation that pays their employees shit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartwell_Retirement_Residences
EggsaretheDevil
Capitalism is stealing from you and destroying our common goods.
Cloudypoona
But who will pay for the big man’s lap dances
Roqinn
My mom has dementia. She turns 80 on Sunday. It would cost me $90,000 a year to put her in care that works with people that have dementia/Alzheimer's. I make $40k a year. It's impossible.
Raikupath
Might be time to not vote for another run of capitalists. That would mean that the US will have to change their political system. Otherwise you won't ever get out of this. Capitalism is the cause. Not some bad apples at the top. Everyone at the top in a capitalist system is there because they exploit the working class. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
Frencheeseater
Welcome to the Capitalist dream / nightmare !
DiracsDelta
Is it that you don’t understand the economy, or don’t understand why we have embraced a system that objectively does not benefit the most people? For the former, every business is measured and valued in terms of its ability to return profit to the owners, not efficient operations, not happy employees, not even happy customers. Just profit, and capital allocation by how much profit is expected. The goods and services are irrelevant so long as you have revenue higher than operating costs.
FaecalJacksonPollock
Endgame capitalism. Historically, this sort of thing tends to have a very bloody ending.
TunnelRat13
Ooooo you are so close to getting it!
hotrodny
When will ppl in the US say "we've had enough!" and riot or smth? Or will they bend even more forward, spread their cheeks even more and remain quiet?
torokunai
https://imgur.com/264gWcI wages over GDP. Any questions?
DdCno1
I can see why so many people in the West are nostalgic for the '90s. Things were truly looking up.
lonelyrangerofthedreams
Yep. Working as intended.
Chaapai
Ronald(6) Wilson(6) Resgan(6) it's time to burn this country to the hod damn ground. Fox News, grocery stores, Walmarts, insurance agencies. Light it all the fuck up and dance in the light of the burning fascists.
or0b0ur0s
People think that Capitalism means "commerce" or "markets", but those things are quite independent of how it works. Capitalism simply means that, when faced with a binary choice of favoring Labor (people who work for income) vs. Capital (people who earn passively from assets they own, including companies as a whole), they choose Capital 100% of the time.
And this is how it must end, eventually. >
or0b0ur0s
It can't help but devalue every single kind of work, rendering income-generating assets (rent, stocks, licensing, the Means of Production, etc.) literally the only way to make any kind of profit whatsoever.
kjbopp
Pre-1970's America vs Post-1980's America. Two different places.
SavageDrums
Because the wealthy are parasites who cannot be satred and must therefore be purged.
FermentTheRich3000
It's basic capitalism. Too much wealth is never enough.
NaughtButOne
I call this Capitalism 2.0. There came a point where there wasn't as much room to innovate, cause disruption, or niches to fill, so what they started doing was finding ways to inject themselves into processes that already existed. Insert yourself in between the supplier and their customer, and charge a fee. Around this time also came, "create the problem and sell the solution".
Now even that field is full up, and we're on to Capitalism 3.0: Stripping the walls for copper.
MidnaDS
I work at a small hotel and booking.com makes more profit from each stay than we could ever hope. We got our own website and everything, but it gets excluded from price charting websites because they cannot charge us a commission that way.
And yes, price charting websites charge services like booking a commission for redirecting people to them. They take a commission out of the commission they got from us. The middlemen have middlemen now.
zOriginal
Freyja33
This is the inevitable end point of Capitalism
InfocalypseRising
mudgula
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
Temzilla
Why would someone not put even a singular hint of Reagan's face or name on this website instead of 100 graphs with red arrows? Like we get it, bad shit happened in 1971, maybe answer the question instead of the 100th picture of a graph.
HoldCanUpright
Here is a link to the Grand Bargain Project vision and call to action.
Review the slide deck, score each item in the proposal and forward the whole launchpad link to all!
Includes easy prompts to write to your representatives in the Senate and the House demanding action.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sol-erdman-841505b_the-grand-bargain-launchpad-activity-7470224101526278144-nKi1?utm_medium=ios_app&rcm=ACoAAAJeTOUBOXpiphGcBGvSyO78z1PunJeywoI&utm_source=social_share_send&utm_campaign=mail
thepicklebucket
Childfree orphans have it made.
Mortisian88
As a child free orphan... It ain't great either. Going through my parents estate sale now, and everything is being used to pay back medical bills to the nursing home. No inheritance for the working class.
FrankGrenadine
Some people have all the luck
TodayisaGoodDaytohaveaGoodDay
Especially if they couple up…. Stupid DINK s (dual income no kids)
PeteyVonWho
While I can't explain the others, I can actually explain the college one. It's because of sports. Your tuition is going to subsidize the athletic department, so that it can make the school popular. Your tuition is paying for athlete's scholarships. That and board of trustees that don't understand how anything works and think raising prices will fix the deficit caused by low enrollment (it doesn't).
Source: I was the accountant at a university for 9 years.
DdCno1
As a European, this unhealthy, hypercommercialized, absurdly over the top sports obsession is just bizarre to see in America. Not that this is the only thing that is bizarre, but still. Yes, we have our massive soccer stadiums, but not as part of educational institutions, not at all. Even sports universities have simple, cheap stadiums that Americans would have laughed at 100 years ago.
mygodhasabiggerdick
There is an exponential amount of evidence that can be traced back to this being Ronald Reagan's fucking fault.
thisiscatman
But the populace voted for him in a landslide, twice? How could he be wrong? /s
HashMaster9k
HandoB4Javert
SantaFeSuperChief
exactly as planned
hogeyegrex
Madalchemist2018
Madalchemist2018
Madalchemist2018
eion85
Honestly, at this point the first step in any economic, sociological, or political analysis in the world should be "Is this Ronald Reagan's fault?"
It would save a lot of work.
stayingalive4life
Sadly, the answer to that will be ‘yes’ for a lot of things. The thing is, it’ll never happen. Because to do so would mean people will have to face the reality of cause and effect thus fault. It also means pulling down a President that some people still hold in high regard and come face to face with all the problems he created.
zubb999
But why would that be so hard to do? Christopher Columbus "discovered America" and we have a whole damn holiday for the guy. But like, 5-10 years ago, I feel everyone just figured out he was a pillager and a mass murderer, and now very few people hold him in high regard and just straight up ignore the fact that there's still a holiday.
HashMaster9k
It only took 115 years for that to happen, so I’m sure Reagan will be properly vilified in the early 22nd century, if the USA is even still around then (doubtful, in its current form, at least).
Nengex
Don't discount Nixon either. The charts between productivity and wage growth were almost equal before he took office. Then the gap started there. He shares at least some of the blame.
But yeah. Most of it was Reagan's doing.
PennysWorthOfTea
Nixon walked so Reagan could run (run this country into the ground)
aslum
I'd half finished typing the same thing before I saw your comment.
LanceSackless
Straight up if nixon and Kissinger got hanged for treason like they were supposed to be, maybe things are a whole lot better rn
eion85
It makes sense if you imagine the economy is designed to benefit capital/private-property owners and not the workers creating the actual benefit to the consumer.
Crazy thought: maybe more control over the "means of production" should be vested in workers, not owners.
csullivan
theInternetismyplayground
Go on
eion85
https://media0.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1am1nZ2V3anZ1cjJycXkxOGxhMHJ0eXNjMGFwaDMydmU1Y3Qwa3Q1MCZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/ZAzUHJKNNVhktFDJYp/200w.webp
VulcanTourist
But-but-but that's SOCIALISM! *gasp*
HoldCanUpright
Amazing, right? We live in a SOCIETY. I know, Socialism is a spectrum of actions but we have no trouble with the Fire Department, clearly a societal good. And, somehow, the concept of a healthy, vibrant society OF CONSUMERS is a bad idea as they would be “getting” (read EARNING) more money and producing more themselves.
Selfishness, greed, narrow mindedness…how long can it continue to grow before there’s a revolt? Gross wealth inequality has always preceded societal downfall.
See next post.
crazyspelling
What's really gross to me: that's not even really how the economy is designed! These rich cunts are actually *throttling* the economy. The economy does great when people get paid. Lines go up, numbers go whoosh, the whole ball of wax gets bigger and stronger. But some economist cunt in the 90's figured out that you can give workers cheap credit instead of pay increases and they'll keep buying stuff as if they got a pay increase, and now here we are.
eion85
That IS how the economy as currently operating is designed.
May not be how it SHOULD be or originally WAS but it's how it's been made to operate by the people in control of it.
crazyspelling
These rich bastards are trying their best to return us to feudalism, seems to me. They read Neuromancer and watched Bladerunner and went "I want THAT!"
DdCno1
Yup. Look at Scandinavian countries. Very egalitarian, high taxes (although if you combine everything, not as high as Americans like to think), strict regulations and strong governments, yet they are the best examples of capitalism working well: Business of all sizes are thriving, there's tons of social mobility, consumers are consuming, exporters are exporting, there's innovation, startups, healthy competition, etc. Not that everything is perfect, but these countries should be the model.
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
Yeah and maybe we could "take control" by spending our money on signs. And then we can go to a sanctioned area that doesn't disrupt capital in any way and scream at the sky during our unpaid hours. Then we can pretend like we did something and act like we're activists and making a difference.
https://media3.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPWE1NzM3M2U1NmlzamNpM2R5cHF6a2NqbnRkb3FycHUxcjUzM2tsOGEyemtjMDRtNSZlcD12MV9naWZzX3NlYXJjaCZjdD1n/lSDFetrqeeY0rCi3Ss/200w.webp
CurbYourClassWar
This deserves way more upvotes. Should be pinned to the top of every “Resistance” post.
HashMaster9k
eion85
Those steps are certainly a starting point for some, and a useful component as part of an overall process to change things.
CurbYourClassWar
More harm than any good it does (which is zero).
eion85
Well, you're really helping out. All these actionable suggestions and organizing resources are just overkill. You really are going above and beyond helping people get involved.
CurbYourClassWar
Oh I’m sorry, you’re claiming actionable suggestions and organizing resources?? Was there some massive worker strike, boycott, or walkout I wasn’t aware of?? Y’know something that would ACTUALLY AFFECT their bottom line?? Hell you won’t even protest in front of their homes or somewhere they’d actually give a shit about. Don’t talk to be about AcTioNabLe SuGgesTionS. lol when your idea of protesting is to denounce everything except standing around in inflatable costumes with meme signs.