Equality is essential for sustainability. The science is clear — people in more-equal societies are more trusting and more likely to protect the environment than are those in unequal, consumer-driven ones.
These problems don’t just hit the poorest individuals, although the poorest are most badly affected. Even affluent people would enjoy a better quality of life if they lived in a country with a more equal distribution of wealth, similar to a Scandinavian nation. They might see improvements in their mental health and have a reduced chance of becoming victims of violence; their children might do better at school and be less likely to take dangerous drugs.
You see, “upper-middle class”, you can benefit too, stop voting against it!
This is a very interesting point and it makes perfect sense.
I’m already voting for it, for sure. I feel like many of us on Lemmy are likely upper middle and in favor of more equality.
I wasn’t yelling a lemmy upper middle class people, I was yelling at the shithead upper middle class people. I’m looking at you Florida!
No shit. We proved 20 years ago they were leeches on society and should be taxed back into reality. What did Congress do? Consistent blank checks to the wealthy, a weaker FCC, a weaker SEC, and a human trash billionaire scumbag who stole an election.
This isn’t new news. Wake up kids. VOTE for yourselves not for the wealthy.
As long as money infests politics, this problem will continue, regardless of how the public votes.
I feel like this is a tautological conclusion, but that’s just me trying to use a word I learned in the last few years.
Here’s an observation: a death in the family resulted in an inheritance. I was advised that I’d be subject to higher taxes in my state than family members in another state. Someone suggested that was bad. I countered that I was happy that my tax dollars would go to my state / community. They seemed surprised.
Our enemy is not just the rich. They are everyone who fails to see the problem.
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A. Rude B. Missed his point
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But I worked extra hard. If there isn’t a scale of shitty, how can I lord it over those that I perceive as not contributing as much me.
If making people miserable is what’s makes me happy, then making myself miserable in the process is clearly worth it. /s
Spite is the mind-killer. Spite is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
My personal view - I think closely related to your point - is that in-group out-group thinking is the root of most of our major issues
Completely agree, it unfortunately seems to be innate in so many people
My brothers and I got into an argument over student debt forgiveness, all 3 of us have paid ours off but the oldest brother was 100% against forgiveness. Him and I have not seen eye to eye on many things, he means well, and I think we all want the same thing, we just differ in how to get there. My younger brother and I were pro-forgiveness, he summed it up nicely imo,
paraphrasing
“if you agree that student loans are predatory, but since you paid yours off others should have to as well, that doesn’t change the root causes, it just reinforces it and youve become the thing now that youve hated then. I want the slate wiped clean even if I get nothing, because the best revenge, the best conclusion for me, is making it impossible to happen again. It sucked. I got thru it, we all got thru it, even tho we shouldn’t have had to go thru it at all, but I can at least help efforts that it not hurt any more people”
At some point we have to stop looking behind and become forward thinking. In life, that usually takes forgiveness, and whole careers and industries have been built trying to help people achieve that.
In short, if we, at the micro level, want a society full of well-meaning helping people who are intelligent, patient and empathetic then we, at the macro level, can’t fall short on those ideals, ever. The ideals have to be the baseline we do better FROM, not an ideation to reach for.
Then let’s start eating them, I just sharpened a bunch of knives too!
The article cites the richest 1% in the world. If you’d like to know which countries have the largest number of the richest, here’s a graphic.
I was thinking more of a dine and dash…
