More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023 — more than any year on record
More than 50,000 Americans died by suicide in 2023 — more than any year on record
the “defining health crisis of our time.”
Wow, I can't wait to see how libs try to fix it.
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I have to stop making such dem jokes. But they are nearly always topical and I just can't resist.
Now I’m genuinely curious: are there any problems that have been solved by neoliberalism?
There was a problem of the poor having too much money and the rich not having all the money, they solved that one.
Creating jobs for middle managers
the existence of a biosphere
How many 9/11s is that, twenty? If only there was another country to blame it on then something could be done about it.
If only there was another country to blame it on
Russian disinformation and meddling is driving innocent Americans to suicide.
Passing a law that you can be charged with manslaughter for talking badly about the economy because that data bares out that it's doing well.
For comparison, I remember reading before the pandemic that the yearly number of deaths in America from lack of healthcare is almost 70,000
So...fuck. Almost as many suicides as that.
Ok so every couple of years this same headline comes out.
But there is never a % or per-capita number for suicides. Of course there’s going to be more suicides when there’s more and more people. What has the suicide rate per capita been? How much has that gone up?
They do the same thing with overdose deaths. Never give a per capita rate.
Not that i don’t see suicides and overdoses as a problem caused by capitalism. Of course they are. An honest conversation is important though.
Edit: here is more data that makes the picture much more clear than the media sensationalism which is all we ever get: https://sprc.org/about-suicide/scope-of-the-problem/suicide-deaths-in-the-united-states/
This is some dark shit...it reminds me of an old onion news video without a punchline. Just a failed, miserable state with an evil propaganda mouthpiece to go "HEY WHA HAPPEN?"
We The People have the power to criminalize the ownership of more than $1 billion dollars of wealth.
We have the power to re-establish punitively high, confiscatory top-tier tax rates on income, forcing the highest earners to spend their earnings, or lose them.
We have the power to create, and phase in a progressive tax on SEC registered securities. A wealth tax. We can confiscate the shares of publicly traded companies held by individuals, and turn them over to IRS liquidators. They can dispose of those shares by selling them on the open market in small lots, no more than 5% of the total traded volume.
We have the power to drive the wealth of the richest among us out of the market, making room for the rest of us to invest our own capital, and more equitably share our societal gains.
The cure for mass suicide is the same as it is for most of today's problems: A new French Revolution, where we strip the first and second estates of their power to continue fucking us over and making us want to kill ourselves.
We the people have the power to establish a student loan debt forgiveness program for Pell Grant recipients who start a business that operates for three years in disadvantaged communities.
I am totally with you in the broad sentiment you're expressing, but almost everything you said is ultimately just bandaids that still don't address the real deep, systemic problem, and this mode of production that will always reward greed. You were most onto something towards the end. But rather than a new French Revolution, which just sets things up for this to happen all over again, how about a new Bolshevik Revolution that aims not just to try to do capitalism more fairly, but reorganizes society in such a way as to eliminate poverty and all need in what is already a post-scarcity human epoch.
We the people have the power to seize the means of production. We the people can set society on the road to the complete abolition of class.
But rather than a new French Revolution, which just sets things up for this to happen all over again, how about a new Bolshevik Revolution that aims not just to try to do capitalism more fairly, but reorganizes society in such a way as to eliminate poverty and all need in what is already a post-scarcity human epoch.
Basically, because socialism fundamentally requires centralized control, and I don't trust centralized control. I fully expect corruption and greed to exist, and to gravitate toward power.
I don't trust society not to deliberately appoint a tyrannical megalomaniac: I've seen them do it entirely too often.
The billionaires won't let you tax them out of existence.
making room for the rest of us to invest our own capital
This is absolutely not the solution either.
The choice is theirs: they can give up their ill-gotten wealth directly (philanthropically), or they can be taxed out of existence (peacefully), or they can be fined out of existence (criminally), or they can be guillotined out of existence (violently). What they can't do is continue to exploit and devastate all of society for their personal benefit.
If they make the first three options impossible, they make the fourth option inevitable.
This is absolutely not the solution either.
This is how the means of production is owned in modern society. Shares. The problem isn't the idea that corporations look after shareholders. The problem is that the workers aren't shareholders. Workers are compensated primarily with dollars; executive-level management is compensated primarily with shares. When the worker starts receiving shares of future profits along with their hourly pay, the major problems are solved.
We also have the power to separate the heads of capital from their heads.
hilarious post
We have the power to create, and phase in a progressive tax on SEC registered securities
new French Revolution
read a book. during the french revolution they didn't phase in shit, they cut peoples heads off
we don't have the power to do anything, not even the lib-brained respectability-pilled watered down shit you listed. we won't have any power until we seize it violently
Death to America
holy fuuuuuk, that very last sentence
She's a Sunday morning tv ghoul. She's a ghoul's ghoul - as they all are.
"Yeah we could save the planet, preventing a coming decline and potential extinction event, but at what cost"
These are the questions they have students answer in business school.
Or
WWYD
It’s basically a time value of money problem. That’s the genius of the free market.