Free speech in Germany is dead.
That said, if I were in Germany, I would use a different phrase. Maybe "stop the genocide in Gaza, ceasefire now".
That would just be way more effective in actually rallying support.
But I'm not in Germany, so Free Palestine, from the river to the sea.
Look at it this way: if it was the intention all along, how else would you convincingly play it?
The goal is to get the Republicans locked on Trump and save the Democrats from the infighting that cost them 2016.
I couldn't come up with a better plan if I tried.
Yep, but nowadays they are losing popularity. I don't even know if you can still find them.
In all honesty, I think Biden gets the credit.
2016 was a shit show and both RNC and DNC fucked it up.
Biden stepped in in 2020 to defeat Trump.
He chose Harris and hinted that he would do one term.
He made good on that and here we are.
That man is a strategist.
Then you'll need to educate yourself beyond what the government tells you.
Look up the ProPublica leaks. Someone is serving a very long jail time for leaking that out. It clearly shows how billionaires have very low taxable income, probably lower than yours.
To then say that you are upper class and Jeff Bezos is middle class is... Absurd.
The top 10% of income is not upper class. The error that people make, including you, is to focus on income.
People like Elon Musk have incomes smaller than $100K.
Upper class are the people who do not need to work and who live off of capital.
We need to shift our focus on wealth equality.
Look, the economy needs capital. If we want to be less dependent on the capital of rich people, then middle class people need to take over that role.
The people making $100-300K per year are key, because they can provide an alternative source of capital if their tax burden is lowered.
The people making $50K will not be able to provide large amounts of capital.
Yes, I fully agree.
So we need to find the right messaging.
I don't know about Germany, but here in the Netherlands most people identify as middle class.
So "stop taxing the middle class" and "let the billionaires pay more" is a message that should resonate.
I'm optimistic and I believe we will get there. The level of equality we have today would be unfathomable for somebody living before 1945.
Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.
The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don't always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.
Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.
Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.
Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it's about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.
Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.
And then progressively tax everything above that.
And even if they didn't care about Gaza, do Americans really want a foreign country to have so much influence on their elections and politicians?
Americans who care about America should want to get rid of AIPAC.
You have to look at the bigger picture, not the short term issue.
If progressives want to be taken seriously, and if Americans want AIPAC out of politics, then there have to be consequences.
If Latimer and Bell hold on to the seat, corporate and AIPAC Democrats only learn that they can take progressives for granted.
If they lose their seat, they learn that they need progressive support to win.
Yeah, two years of a republican rep will suck. But it's only two years.