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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13119 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026

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I've been having some thoughts recently about the billionaires among us, some opinions, some takes even. My politics on this has evolved over time; at one point they were admirable titans of industry, then they were capitalist parasitic ticks, then they were a necessary part of the incentive structure that drives to economy, and now they are a bloated level of inefficiency preventing the market from functioning efficiently.

But over all this time, I've kinda synthesized a superstructure that I don't think is gonna change, that I think is not on the left right axis, but on another mysterious plane: I'm jealous of china. I think we're gonna have to steven universe meme one of these guys. I don't even really care who, and I don't care who does it. It could be Il Duce Trump, it could be General Secretary Mamdani, it could be some boring centrist whose name we don't know.

Anyone who imposes consequences on or limits the behaviors of the managing class would win my instant approval. This could just be because of my space autism getting triggered unimaginably by space-x getting fucking shackled to a corpse right before IPO/ Artemis being a big fucking waste of time and money* / Boeing doing boeing stuff, it could be the long 2008 hangover, it could be a thousand things.

I guess I'm just kinda over us deciding that once you reach a certain net worth, you are some sort of luminous being. You can go to pedo island and it's fine, you can do drugs that normies go to prison for an it's fine, you can fuck up critical national infrastructure and it's fine, you have infinite money when it's time to do what you want but somehow you have no money (or negative money!) when it's time to contribute to the public good.

I recall Luigi, and I recall the polling: people old enough to have been adults when a the post FDR wealth redistribution program was still around were very unfavorable; people who came into consciousness as the program was being fully unwound in the late 80s and 90s were split 50/50, and people who never experienced that social milieu were yelling "BASED BASED BASED!"

I really think that unless the uniparty plays it's cards right, the next realignment is not gonna be pretty for anyone. We need another FDR type to head that shit off like it's vanguardist communism in the 1930s, and at this point I don't think I care if they are left or right, they just need to be for the bottom and middle and even most of the top, and against the peak.

*Yes I know about pork. Pork can at least do something! highways can get build, parks are nice, and if we need to build bombs somewhere to it might as well be in bumfuck nowhere to give the nowhereians something to do other than meth.

I recall Luigi, and I recall the polling: people old enough to have been adults when a the post FDR wealth redistribution program was still around were very unfavorable; people who came into consciousness as the program was being fully unwound in the late 80s and 90s were split 50/50, and people who never experienced that social milieu were yelling "BASED BASED BASED!"

Am I crazy for thinking that our welfare state is probably the most generous it's been in our history? We surely are a lot richer and have a lot more programs than FDR did. FDR had make work programs, we hand out cash. Propaganda is a hell of a drug, I guess.

Pre FDR there was essentially no federal welfare of any kind, just local poorhouses and a single mothers/elderly pension at the state level. Then you had social security/welfare with FDR, medicare/medicaid/food stamps with LBJ, clinton's overhaul, and ACA medicaid expansion, to name a few.

The uniquely American aspect of spirit that prevented socialism from ever getting a serious grip appears to have washed away somewhat. Now people look to European countries that spend 2-3x federally on welfare.

There aren't "countries" in Europe that do any spending on the "federal" level because there is only one country in Europe with a federal level at all (unless you count Russia as European).

I guess "federal" is simply intended to mean "national" here?

Yeah, probably, but I will always jump on the opportunity to point out to Americans that other countries do, in fact, exist.

Fair.

Also, is Germany really the only country organized along federal lines, in Europe? I never realized.

Also, just as im America, modern ideologues hate federalism and want the central government to concentrate as much power as possible.

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