We live in a capitalist dystopia

[Steevy Maximus]

Interesting. I didn't know Apple was getting into the AI thing. I mean I guess I'm not surprised, but they haven't been plastering ads for it all of their computer screens like Microsoft does.

Apple has been doing things that fall into that category for years, be it Siri or image enhancement, among other features.

Back then, they just called it "machine learning" instead of adopting the current "hot tech buzz word" of AI

 

[Paladin]

Americans are spending the biggest share of their income on food in 3 decades

The high cost of food both at home and in restaurants continues to be a sore spot for millions of U.S. households.

www.cbsnews.com

but all the graphs say the economy is fine.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

If billionaires were using their money to create jobs, they wouldn't complain so much about taxes. Employee salaries are 100% tax deductible. Any billionaire could easily reduce his tax burden to zero without any special loopholes or tax shelters, by simply paying his profits to his employees.

But that's not what they do. Instead, they try to pay their employees the absolute minimum they can get away with, so that they can pocket as much profit as they can get away with.

 

[wonko the sane?]

And it's so much worse than you think, because the rich then use that money they stole from the workers to buy politicians and propaganda to drive down wages, safety requirements, and oversight. Make no mistake: they would own you as slaves if they could get away with it.

 

[Pale Rider]

But that just upsets me more!

 

[wonko the sane?]

It's supposed to.

 

[Pale Rider]

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

"You should not resent the gains of the wealthy because capitalism is not a zero-sum game. A rising tide lifts all boats."

This argument relies on metaphor rather than math for a reason: the math sucks. Let's look at it objectively: according to Business Insider, as of March 2024, the wealthiest 1% of Americans have seen their wealth increase by 49% since 2020.

Based on GDP, the size of the American economy has increased by 28% over that same time. Therefore, while the economy is not a zero-sum game, it is not growing quickly enough to explain the spectacular wealth gains of the top 1%. Clearly, much of their gains have come at the expense of everyone else. That's just math.

This is why math is better than metaphor. But if we're going to stick with that damned rising-tide metaphor, then consider this: if your boat is rising much faster than the tide while someone else's boat is rising much slower than the tide, then something weird is going on, and you are LYING when you say it's just the tide.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Why can't you deduct the depreciation on your car, since businesses can deduct the depreciation on company cars?

F**k you, that's why.

Why can't you deduct the insurance on your car and home, since businesses can deduct their auto/premises insurance?

F**k you, that's why.

Why can't you deduct fuel and maintenance costs on your car, since businesses can deduct both of those things on company cars, trucks, even private jets?

F**k you, that's why.

Why can't you deduct upkeep and maintenance costs on your home, since businesses can deduct both of those things for their premises?

F**k you, that's why.

When people say that the tax code is unfair to "small and medium-sized businesses", just know that they are absolutely positively full of jive. The tax code is unfair to working people.

PS. When they say "small and medium-sized business", they mean "any business with up to 500 employees".

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

Economists (real ones, not the guys on FOX Business News) keep saying that it's better to give money to poor people than rich people because poor people consume while rich people hoard. But the Internet's proud defenders of rich people will retort that rich people don't hoard: they invest, which spurs innovation and job creation blah blah blah.

Here's the thing though: if you bought shares in a publicly traded company, your investment only goes to that company if it's a virgin share, ie- a share being offered to the public by the company, which is the FIRST time it was ever traded. From that point on, the share is being passed around between Wall Street investors. If a company went public in 1990 and sold shares for $10 and they're now worth $800, the company didn't see any of that $790 gain. It only got the $10 per share, 34 years ago.

The vast majority of stock market investing is not investors buying shares from companies: it's investors buying shares from each other. That vast flood of trading money isn't being used by companies for "innovation and job creation": it's being used as chips in a giant casino.

 

[Pale Rider]

 

[Ironbite4]

We might live in a capitalist dystopia but there is.....hope.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1787331667616829929

Ironbite-Democracy prevailed.

 

[Pocket]

Well, "Democracy" and also Valve straight up banning the game from Steam over it, from what I hear. I wonder what made them decide to do that this time and not the dozens of other times games have released surprise updates that suddenly required signing up for some service. Was this one actually going to require a paid PSN service, instead of the free registration all the others did?

 

[The Mighty Mollusk]

They were also getting review bombed straight to hell over it, which hurts sales. Let's not pretend this had to do with anything but money.

 

[Pocket]

I mean I wonder what made Valve decide to ban the game.

 

[Ironbite4]

....Valve didn't ban the game. They opened it up to refunds outside of their usual 2 hour window.

Ironbite-that's what was hurting them.

 

[Pocket]

Wow. I super-misinterpreted the headlines. The game was "delisted in 177 countries" which I assumed meant all of them. Because how many countries can there be, right? Or at least, how many countries can there be where Steam is officially available?

The answer is 177 more than PSN. Sony, one of the biggest electronics companies on the planet and one of the big three game platforms, only makes its games available in 69 countries compared to the 246 that Valve does. The delisting was something Sony did themselves to stop people from buying the game only to find they wouldn't actually be able to play it.

I'm guessing a big part of that is because companies like Sony don't bother acknowledging the existence of poorer countries because they assume everyone's just going to pirate their games instead. Valve doesn't care. If you're living in a third world country but you can afford an expensive hobby because you're one of that country's one-percenters who own all the diamond mines or whatever, they'll gladly take your money.

 

[Pale Rider]

FB friend:

It drives me crazy that conservatives are using the housing affordability crisis to score political points. For years, they told us that wealth inequality doesn't hurt anyone. When we said that wealth inequality would eventually distort the economy and drive up costs for working people, they scoffed and said that we don't understand economics. But that's exactly what's happening. Our predictions were right, their predictions were wrong, and somehow they're the ones scoring political capital out of this.

In a free market, housing costs are like any other commodity cost: they are ruled by supply and demand. But demand is not measured by how much people want something. It's measured by how much money they're willing to spend on it. When they're willing to spend more, market demand goes up. When market demand goes up, the price of everything goes up.

They understand this perfectly well when they're pretending that Covid subsidies for working people flooded the economy with cash. When the subject is the wisdom of handing out cash to people who were out of work, they can go on and on about the dangers of excess money supply. But when you mention that the world's richest 1% have gained THIRTY TRILLION DOLLARS since the start of the pandemic, all of a sudden they never heard of the concept. Apparently, excess money is dangerous in the hands of regular people, but perfectly fine in the hands of the 1%.

 

[KidTDragon]

Well, sure. Regular people aren't going to give nearly as much of their money to conservatives to enact laws that benefit them as the 1% are.

 

[NovaSaber]

I think this is probably illegal. If not, it should be.

Samsung Requires Independent Repair Shops to Share Customer Data, Snitch on People Who Use Aftermarket Parts, Leaked Contract Shows

The contract requires repair shops to "immediately disassemble" devices that have parts "not purchased from Samsung."

www.404media.co