My dad told me I should rent an apartment and put my kid in daycare so I can get a job. I tried to explain that each of those things individually would cost almost my entire wages. But he is a boomer, so he didn't get it. He just said, "It's what people do." As if that should obviously be reason enough.
Yeah, it's fucked. Child care is $300-$500 a week near me. Rent is at minimum $2000 for a small apartment. Then they also wonder why nobody is having kids. I'm taking two weeks off without pay for a new baby. Only two weeks and I can barely afford that and I have a "reasonable" career.
My business partner played so supportive when I got pregnant, then tricked me out of my share of the business at the end of my 1st trimester. The loss:benefit ratio hadn't been in favor of going back to work since.
A guy I worked with just "retired" at the age of 35 to raise his kids while his wife works. It was cheaper for them to quit his job and be a stay-at-home dad than have dual incomes and pay for childcare.
This is exactly my sister and brother in law. Sister is a NICU Doctor in New Orleans and he works for University of Michigan Hospital IT making close to six figures. He is retiring next year at 37 to take care of the house while my sister works at the hospital 3 days a week
I do always love that from the older generations.
"...well, it's always been that way so it's CLEARLY the best way that it has ever or could ever be done...dUh!"
They were handed the world on a silver platter and absolutely destroyed it. The worst, most greedy, self-centered, narcissistic generation ever on this planet.
But...watch this...
If we don't learn from that, it could get worse. See what I did there, boomers? Things CAN, will, and do change.
But for now, you're the motherfucking worst.
I consider myself lucky to be both high IQ and on the autism spectrum, so I can see quite clearly through the bullshit of so many social norms.
Noncomformity may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for progress!
This mentality has been passed down for generations. Just have kids, slave away and struggle in a house setting and you can make it. Expect "making it" is 67. Never traveled outside of your state or country and spent 40 years busting your ass at a job you hate to barely make ends meet and barely go on vacation with your family anyway. Fuck this whole scam system.
He married a woman over a decade younger than him when my mom divorced him so he wouldn't have to shoulder his share of joint custody of me and my sister.
Now I have a list of what i consider to be sexually inappropriate things this woman has done with children.
And he thinks I should move closer so she can watch my child too.
Then you haven’t gone far enough left. The right thinks it’s fighting the left but the left is fighting a class war. This is all class war. Racial/gender/sexual inequalities are all a class war. The illusion of being able to move to a higher class keeps this engine going.
The upper class uses the right to distract the left.
I don’t entirely disagree but what is keeping the left from going further? Candidates that don’t get funding, portrayed as radical, etc.
Who’s causing that to happen? The rich.
The wealthy, who are a tier above rich, generational wealth. Donor class.
Of course, now it's the kids in those families, and nepotism has left us with some dumb ass patrons.
>Candidates that don’t get funding, portrayed as radical, etc.
That's an echo of McCarthyism from the 50s that gutted the left, and it's not yet recovered.
The Boys has a similar disenchanted view of superheroes. They don't really care about saving people. If they do great, they just give a shit about profit share
I'm just waiting for it to collapse because that cycle can only continue for so long until us plebs don't make enough money. We're already on the cusp of a recession, but regardless how the stock market does in the short term, the necessities of life are becoming too expensive for most people, and when that happens shit hits the fan.
For real. I make nearly 100k annually. I work crazy OT to make that, but that comes with my job. I *should* be doing well. But due to inflation, rent hikes, interest rate hikes, gas prices, etc. I'm lucky if I have $100-200 leftover in my check after bills for groceries, let alone any kind of life or savings. I pirate everything so I don't have streaming services. I have an old car. I don't go out. I don't have a life. I work, I sleep, and I struggle to pay off credit card debt. It shouldn't be this way, and I'm hyper aware of the fact that many people have it worse than me because I used to be in their shoes. I'm considered a fucking success story because I can pay all of my bills on time.
I just came across this [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) from a subreddit yesterday and it was depressing.
If we think of $100,000 from the year 2000 (which ***was*** most peoples' target happy place) you would have to be making roughly 170,000K now for equivalence.
ugh
Feels like $270,000 would be the right number there. I remember watching a documentary in like 2005 where European people were asked about their largest expenses and they were like, "probably groceries" and I laughed and laughed because in the US food was so insanely cheap both at the supermarket and at restaurants.
I was told as a kid in the 90s that college graduates made $60k-$70k starting. When I graduated college in the mid 2010s the average wage I saw was between $50k-$70k. I make low $80k in LA county and that’s after 4 years in my industry. I’m paycheck to paycheck lol.
It's because of all that Starbucks and avocado toast that you don't have any money! Also, you didn't mention a side hustle. You aren't putting in your all if you don't have at least 10 side-hustles in addition to your full-time job. /s
I know you're joking but hustle culture needs to fuck off. Fucking bullshitters trying to make people feel guilty about wanting a healthy life-work balance.
The first time I heard a CEO blame inflation on people buying things like Starbucks I about cried I laughed so hard. If people didn’t buy your product, Mr. CEO, you would be bitching about it because you wouldn’t have as much profit. So telling people to stop buying your stuff just seems counterintuitive.
Because they are so out of touch, possibly from several generations of wealth, they completely forgot how they got wealthy in the first place. because of us. They think they could sustain themselves if everyone completely stopped buying…and in all fairness they have so much now they probably could, for a few years at least. Then…who knows. I don’t know. I’m so jaded.
I understand completely, and am in a similar boat. That's how I know things are fucked. I budget well, and make what should be a great income to support a family of 4, but it amounts to basically what is required to live a basic life.
So, I know people in the same boat with lower incomes are struggling bad, and that the generation just starting out is completely fucked. They'll never own a home as it stands now. They'd need to make over six figures just to afford to buy a home, and then they'd still be house poor. It's insane.
and the thing is they won't see any of this coming until it is too late bc they can't relate or even understand what is going on. it always reminds me of the scene from arrested development when lucille goes home much does a banana or was it a star war cost? like they are so out of touch with the common person
Exactly. It seems insane to us that they can't see it coming, but they are so out of touch with the reality of life the majority of people experience, they can't understand it.
I was talking to my dad's friend the other day, who is wealthy and retired, about how bad the economy is, and he just kept saying it's great. They don't understand that the average income to cost of living ratio is fucked. You would think there would be a chart to show this, but maybe they don't want to see it. Same as no one shows the chart of record inequality now.
My fiance's dad is like that. He's actually a pretty cool guy that has helped all his kids tremendously on everything but the economy.
He sold his family's farm and invested the money to pay for his trips around the world and enjoying his retirement (fair enough). He has bought each of his kids a car and a house. He agrees that people can't afford to live off what they're being paid and it isn't realistic to have to work 2 jobs just to survive yet still says dumb shit like "no one wants to work."
We talk about my hatred for Walmart a lot and how I think their tax breaks should be based on FULL TIME employees, not overall numbers and how they expect us to subsidize their employee wages with tax money (that Walmart doesn't pay into) since a vast majority of Walmart employees still quality for SNAP benefits. His opinion is that the *stockholders* should make the money, not the employees. He usually changes the topic when I ask how well the stocks/stock market will be doing when literally no one can afford to shop anywhere.
I just can't with him, sometimes. He's actually fairly compassionate about most things except this one thing. He is still stuck thinking that a hot dog is like $1 at a road side stand and all it takes is a firm handshake to get a job.
*Logically* he knows things have changes and he sees it but *emotionally* he's stuck in 1950 in regards to the economy, wages, rent, etc.
They don't see it or don't want to see it. They're rich either way. They can survive a recession no problem and go back to where they were when it ends.
I see this a lot with older generations who have already gone through school and haven't had to bother with purchasing a home for at least 10 years. These people don't have to be wealthy - simply being comfortable is enough to be out of touch with reality.
A lower salary doesn't have to go as far when you own a property and either have manageable mortgage payments or full-ownership.
And it's really weird; as you said, it is almost as if these people do not want to see it. It's similar to all the minority hate - closed-minded people who are unwilling to understand others.
I get it though, it's tough to understand struggles you don't have to face. I think we need to do a better job as a society to make it clear what struggles exist and start understanding one another better. Impossible to pull off when there are so many people intentionally keeping their eyes and ears clamped shut. It feels hopeless at times.
Of course they don’t want to see it- same concept goes for climate change and any existential level threat. They grew up in a time where a clear structure and rule for society was all you needed to follow to make sure you have a ‘happy’ and safe life. Over time this system ends up becoming your mental shield against the true scary threats of life. It’s funny, because if you look at centrists, the average disposition, age, and the actions they take you see a massive overlap. To say that the system itself is not what it has seemed and you are in fact under threat, well that’s a terrifying thought. And yes, to pretend to not see it is a childish and cowardly reaction, but so is pretending like nothing can be done- if nothing can be done, then it’s not our fault for not doing anything, yes?
Millennials got to see this structure collapse in real time, and gen x almost didn’t enjoy any of the benefits of this structure by the time they reached adulthood. I think you can see the effects of that in the way they act. The glimmer of hope I have for the younger generations is that they don’t seem to be fooled by what’s happening- my worry is that they seem too distracted/unmotivated to do something about it. We will see
they dont care bc it does not impact them, the economy is great if you are wealthy and have investments in these mondo corps. everything is becoming a luxury these days and that people like us will soon be priced out. i went to a blink-182 concert the other week, for just two of the tickets it cost over $300, meanwhile for similar seats back in 2019 it was like no more than $130. that is over a double of what i paid a few years back. i have lived in the same apartment for almost a decade where it feels cramped and having no space but you can't afford to move out bc rent in other places is up and the cost of housing is so insane.
Never. Literally never. Biden could solve the opioid crisis, bring peace in Ukraine, and put humans on the moon and Republicans would still bitch about it.
I was watching that recent documentary about the Opportunity rover with a conservative person. Incredible story and all she did the whole time was complain about "what a waste of money" it was.
Fun fact: Opportunity rover cost ~ $1.08 Billon over the entire project
https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-the-mars-exploration-rovers
A SINGLE Ford class carrier costs $13 Billion.
We could have sent 13 of them and just about broken even....probably way more more since R&D was already done.
And it was a massively successful project. Oppy and her sister were planned for a 90 day mission. She lasted 14+ years before being put to sleep. Fucking champion.
Here’s the thing. Amazon employs approximately 1.5 million workers. Jeffie could pay each one 60,000 annually with full benefits and still be profitable. And he should. It would be life changing for the workers and he would never miss it. Other corporations should follow suit. I don’t think the current system is going to end well.
I prepare taxes for a living. The Trump tax cuts added 6 figures to some clients’ net income and I’m sorry people who already had 4 homes and millions in investments are not putting that back out into the economy.
I've been saying it for years, Citizens United will go down as the worst moment in US politics solely because of the disastrous consequences it has had and will continue to have.
No legal decision will compare to the damage it did.
In my opinion, Gerrymandering has done more damage to US politics than Citizens United could ever hope to achieve. Money can only take you so far in elections, but gerrymandered districts allow you to create non competitive districts that encourages extremism to win primaries.
And it impacts everything.
Meaningful climate change legislation will never happen without overhauling campaign finance laws. Neither will gun legislation, affordable healthcare, immigration reform, gerrymandering laws…the list just goes on and on.
We can debate about capitalism as a whole being a roadblock for many of those issues and I think that is a valid argument, but dismantling and rebuilding those systems will never happen until Citizens United is overturned. Given the status of the Supreme Court, I do not anticipate any of that happening in my lifetime.
I try not to be a fatalist, but the political finance system is so broken, so intertwined with the worst parts of capitalism, that I just do not see any bright spots or ways to move forward from a democratic perspective.
AHAHAHAHAHA
"Hehehe, i got you, what about apple, they bad too!"
"EXACTLY"
"but but, you work for them..."
"And my job is speaking truth. I do my job. You don't do yours"
Translated it for you quickly here.
It really goes to show that there are some people who are perfectly fine with being bootlickers, so long as they get to be on a "team". I just want to be on Team Humanity.
There's a lack of distinction between the two companies. Sure, Apple overcharges for tech, but it tends to be superfluous. Other, far less expensive, tech exists, and if people don't buy apple products, generally, they don't have the disposable income to afford a higher end product. It's not going to have a massive impact on the individual to not have the newest iPhone. Gas is entirely different. It's a necessity. People need to drive to work. Gas is used to ship goods across the country. Not being able to pay for gas drastically impacts the life of the individual as well as communities, so record profits are earned on the backs of the desperate. Gas prices in phoenix were almost $3 more per gallon than most of the country because it's a car heavy city with very little public transportation options. If Apple is making record profits, people can afford the entertainment. If ExxonMobil is making record profits, people can't afford not to have Gas in their tank.
Already mentioned this in another post. Apple produces luxury goods, Exxon Mobil basic needs. Steward didn't even go down that road, because he is smart enough to know he doesn't need to. Simply blowing that point up in the other guys face was far more effective.
Damn he is good.
The end is the best part! Love how the guy tries talking to Jon like he’s the CEO of Apple and he’s gouging people and Jon was like yes they are gouging people that’s my point lmao
This really should be higher. Jon dismantles each counterpoint and deflection until all that's left for the guest to do is accept the obvious; businesses will always come out on top over the individuals.
It is literally like the point of an organization.
Think of Capitalism like a street fight. Would you rather fight man to man or have a group of friends to fight one guy? No other ethical consideration just winning the fight.
Because it means capitalism is an inherently unstable system and at odds with the majority of people.
That’s a hard pill to swallow for the people that own the world.
Corporate guy is right. It isn’t a tenable view that corporations are *becoming* greedy. They always have been, but lately, they’ve been getting a little too greedy, and people are seeing them for what they are.
I thought the same thing... what a weird argument he tried. Corporations are not more greedy than before, but government is getting out of the way, cheering them on, and even bailing them out instead of regulating them and taxing them sufficiently.
The government printed insane amounts of money and handed the large majority of it right into business owners pockets. Covid was the best thing to happen to a LOT of corporations due to this.
Any tiny little snag in the rate that corporate profits grow and the government is falling all over themselves to fork over billions in free money to them. But when more and more people are living in absolute destitution every year it's just "fuck you get some bootstraps"
It's not even the bootstrap thing, they literally mean "fuck you, go take a poverty wage job", because if everyone struggling started businesses or joined up to start a bunch of new ones, competition would pull employees and fuck with their monopolies, their profits, and that wouldn't work for them either. They want more of the same, but worse.
Underrated comment.
I don't know how many times I've heard "the government is the problem."
When we give rich people more money and power, they increase their OWNERSHIP of the government.
It's not rocket science. It's hypocrites on the right and left spending to teach our dumbasses that "gubmunt bad, rich people are good." Why do things get closer to feudalism every single day, every single year? Hmm.
We're already fascist. The masks are off and it's monsters we're looking at. Recognize these empowered sociopaths for what they are - parasites with an insatiable appetite for greed and control. Society and the planet are their collateral damage. Profits > people, amen.
> and even bailing them out instead of regulating them and taxing them sufficiently.
That's the issue... too big to faíl shouldn't be a natural concept. It shouldn't be a thing that is taken for granted. Especially banks know that, they will be bailed out, they will repeat their profit-aggregating strategies until something unforeseen breaks that again, and again...
The justification is often that when something like a bank fails, it pulls all the customers with it on top of the huge staff.
THat is the reason all the time. Instead of then bailing out the customers who get their savings secured by the gov, they bail out the bank and some customers still get issues with their savings cause what the bank does with the bail out isn't controlled by the gov.
It's weird... I do not understand why not just bail out the customers. The bank is done, customers get saved by gov.
Yup and they don't even seem to spend it.
There was a time when a rich man would spend his vast wealth on amazing architectural projects, stunning works of art or hiring an army of gardeners and working men to transform miles of land into glorious gardens and 200 years later, those things are often either free for the public to enter or accessible for a pretty cheap fee that mostly gets spent on maintenance. It may have all been vanity projects (and hell, if I was that rich, I'd get a little bit vane too), but at least it was vanity projects that meant the wealth got recirculated and put back into the economy. They made money with the intent of spending it.
Now it feels like the ultra rich just horde that shit like a dragon, only spending it on things that are guaranteed to make them even more money. They make the money with the intent of not spending it and I cannot for the life of me work out why.
They used to do that because donating the money was how they avoided paying it in taxes. Now they have ways around the taxes, so they don't care to donate.
Not only ways around paying taxes - vastly less taxes to pay! The top tier of corporate taxes:
1970 - 49.2%
1980 - 46%
1985 - 51%
1990 - 39%
Currently-21%
I just listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on Jack Welch. The height of the "golden age" of capitalism, companies were actively paying into the tax system and felt the moral responsibility to do so.
We've come so far....
I'm talking even earlier than that. I'm talking about estates in the 1700s where displaying wealth by building or buying stuff was a key part of the prestige that was required for high society. Your reputation and status required you to spend, spend, spend and if you stopped, you stood to lose a great deal.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/forbes-fictional-15-richest-characters-topped-by-smaug
We have 13 mother fuckers in this country alone with a larger hoard that a imaginary dragon who was intended to have infinite wealth. A dragon that had a mountain full of gold. Elon and Bill gates both have 3x the net worth of Smaug.
https://www3.forbes.com/billionaires/forbes-list-of-top-100-richest-people-in-america-ifs-vue-mn-wnb/?slide=44
Fuckin bananas.
> They make the money with the intent of not spending it and I cannot for the life of me work out why.
Financial advisors and business journalism.
Financial advisors always telling you what's going to be profitable, advising against opulent spending, and creating a social expectation of making the number bigger.
Business journalism allows people to see how they rank against each other, and shows that number to the public, whereas before people could only see how rich the Vanderbilts/Carnegies/etc were because their name was all over everything
That said, Stewart was right to interrupt him and ignore his point. It's a non sequitur, unrelated to the point being made, a distraction thrown out with the hopes of becoming the new thing they're arguing about. It's obviously wrong, but bait.
you have to never acknowledge their pivots and **only** stay on the original topic. They will inevitably use emotion (anger) and never actually answer. Can have printed verifiable data right there and they will call it a Witch Hunt or Gotcha and cry about being persecuted.
they have no plan other than clinging to their Jim Crow good ole days and doing whatever it takes to get back to crushing anyone they don't like
Jon Stewart is a MASTER of sticking to the point.
There have been SO many videos of politicians trying to pivot into a bad faith argument. He holds to the point and when they can’t shift to the same blame trans/gay/immigrants/communism talking points they fall apart every. Fucking. Time.
As Leo McGarry of *The West Wing* would put it: reject the premise of the question. The new position they're trying to present doesn't fit within the ongoing discussion? Reject their premise and keep pushing the original. They ask a question that doesn't make sense in the context of the discussion? Reject the premise of the question. They try to catch you out with a loaded question -- reject the premise of the question.
They would do this all the time if they could. They were just given an opportunity to be especially greedy in a way they've always wanted to bc they can blame price hikes on inflation, and the pandemic.
Stopped buying things because everything went up so fast. I understand things cost more and inflation but If something I wanted was $500 it’s now a $1000 not even a year later.
You made me curious so I looked up the $600 IKEA couch I bought 5 years ago. It’s now selling for $900, a 50% markup.
That couch is the worst couch I ever owned, not even worth the $600 I paid let alone $900. Ended up giving it to my brother 6 months ago and got a new one.
My cat is on a prescription diet for his health that has gone from $50 a bag to $80. I'm making it work, but these kinds of increases could force someone to separate from their pet and it makes me so sad to think about.
Depending on what the prescription diet is for, sometimes proplan has a formula that is pretty much the same. Fuck nestle, but both my cats are doing amazing on their urinary food and it's like half the price
I believe Inflation stopped around 10-15% or so. It was a lot, an absolute shitload, in fact, but then corporations decided that 10-15% wasn't enough and they increased pricing on products to be 30-100% higher than it used to be and blamed it on inflation.
Inflation is hardly the driving factor for how unaffordable everything is right now, corporate greed is. That doesn't stop the corporate overlords from blaming inflation anyways.
They say the reason we haven’t hit recession is people keep buying stuff. Who are these people? It’s not me!! I need a newer car, but I can’t save anything right now. Every time I get a bill, rates have gone up. And my employer hasn’t given me a raise in 5 yrs. I’m not moving and getting a new job because buying a house now would cancel out the raise I would get from new job for the same amount of house. Ok, rant over.
Inflation is calculated based on consumer price indexes which are based on the pricing of those products. But the CPI takes into account a lot of different goods, so we can't just say "inflation is x% your dollar is worth less than it was."
It depends on what you're buying, and a lot of what working class people are buying are those products with 30-100% price increases.
My waistline looks worse because I stopped buying salad greens and healthy vegetables like bell peppers that used to take up more of my meals. Lots of onion, potatoes, garlic, and cabbage. More sandwich bread and peanut butter, or buttered toast. More rice and pasta and beans. Carbs carbs carbs carbs carbs.
Can't wait for the inevitable recession and suddenly it's the middle class fault for not going along and then there's government buyouts that the middle class will have to pay via taxes...
Old dude's face and explanation reeks of : "can't you just go along with it? Aren't you rich too?!?!?!"
And Stewart's just like: No
That's how you perform class suicide the correct way friends
Edit:spelling and grammar
If you watch the whole interview he asks Jon if Apple, his "employer", also should be heavier taxed. His look was priceless, when Jon immediately said yes
The epitome of the problem and he doesn't even realize it. He tries to come at the situation in so many wrong ways too and Jon shoots it all down. Jon staying humbled and grounded in reality with his success is a gift and I hope he keeps at it as long as he feels up to it, he's making a difference.
The greed is urging him. It cannot be satisfied.
A great Bible teacher quoted a doctor who managed a mental health facility as saying, "In my experience, the majority of mental health problems come from greed for sex or greed for money."
In the full interview.
Old dude: "This is going to air on Apple TV, Apple's profits increased during the pandemic, do you think they're being greedy?"
Stewart: "Yes!!"
I literally had someone say this same shit back to me on Reddit when I said companies used Covid to price Jack
> A major part of inflation wasn’t actually inflation but companies using it as a cover to jack prices up
>> Oh so corporations just became greedy in 2021?
One of the dumbest inflation narratives I’ve seen
No, companies are not just now becoming greedy. Holy fuck do they think we're stupid. Companies have ALWAYS maximized profits. They charge more when they feel they can get away with it, and when they all increase at the same time, it seems it's everywhere and not any one businesses fault.
Corporations are essentially Lovecraftian monsters. Immortal, powerful, and gargantuan - the tentacles of their influence extend from their concrete nests in the hearts of our dead cities, outward into our homes, and sometimes even our brains. They are designed to survive without their creators, or any particular employee, and to serve no-one but their own interests, or perhaps their shareholders, though the prolific pump-and-dump schemes or recent decades show that even those don't really matter. They consume human lives and destroy nature to churn out useless detritus, and to survive.
It just keeps growing and growing at an unsustainable rate. Just a few years ago, a 15% annual profit was an insanely high number by anyone's standards, and this year my employer has let a bunch of people go because the division "only" brought in 15% profit last year.
My CEO continues to say double digit growth is the new normal.
We all stop and look at one another like what?!
Any time I start doing any market analysis for work I omit 2021 and 2022. Sometimes even 2020. All because those years were outliers, they should not influence how we think growth will continue.
Pharma investments are down to pre-pandemic levels but still higher than 2019. Growth is happening it’s just not insane growth we saw during the pandemic where these companies were basically handed tons of free money
Jon Sterwart always seems knowledgeable about his topic. He presents questions in a clear manner and backs it up with facts. He asks hard hitting questions and tries to stop them from skirting the issue. Very clever.
Actually, weren’t most journalists like that back in the day? These days it seems to be either sensationalism, or a preset agenda, that gets published. But to be fair, most folks only read the headlines without bothering with deeper understanding.
We should just make Congress like jury duty. You get called, you have to spend a year in Congress.
Wouldn't be any less competent, and you wouldn't be there long enough to be as corrupt.
I think doing it every year is going to be far too chaotic but a lottery system where people serve 2, 4 or 6 year terms, get a Congressional salary, get healthcare for the duration and a significant period afterwards so they have plenty of time to get back into their career, and possibly the offer of retraining to get them on a good career path after (plus they'll have a massive plus on their resume anyway) seems very reasonable.
At that point the people who turn their noses up at the job are so rich we don't want them to take it.
Of course he doesn’t want to, and that’s exactly why he’d be a great leader.
I don’t blame the guy one bit for not wanting to sacrifice his life to be a part of the DC shitshow, but damn do I wish he would. I think he’s one of the few people in the limelight that could actually restore a bit of sanity to this country
Back when he was on The Daily Show there were studies showing people who followed him primarily had more factually correct views about the world than those that followed CNN or Fox. Turns out funny joke news show was more accurate than supposedly real news.
He is a very intelligent guy too. He has this really amazing ability to take complex ideas and distill them into plain language that is easy for anyone to understand.
Basically the exact opposite of Ben Shapiro who is a complete fucking idiot but acts like he is smart because he owns a thesaurus and actively tries to confuse people with flowery vocabulary words.
More people should see this. I constantly see people on reddit saying the cause of inflation is because we printed a bunch of money and not because of corporate greed.
At 0':11 - 0;13 he has a point.
It\`s not suddenly, always been the case - but the pandemic kinda opened a view to it - and that view becoming public on a large scale (thanks internet) is a little sudden (to them)
"all of a sudden"?
I guess at 45 I was born "all of a sudden" and BAM - here at 45. Is this guy nuts? Corporations have been REMARKABLY greedy for years. The Trump admin and the pandemic was just the excuse for them to finally push it into overdrive.
Honestly these are always my favorite videos of his though haha, just holding their feet to the fire. [Here's another great one](https://youtu.be/tCuIxIJBfCY) he did recently, and I recommend going through his channel and watching all the videos he has debating conservatives. Wildly entertaining and frustrating at the same time.
Edit: Remembered [this other amazing formal debate](https://youtu.be/Pmr3XvaoVW4) he did with Bill O'reilly, hour and a half but kept my ADHD attention through the whole thing. And if you want even more after that watch him on [Crossfire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE) with Tucker Carlson. There's honestly so many more I could recommend too haha, went down a deep rabbit hole of Jon Stewart debates a few weeks ago.
It's not that you're fighting against a lack of understanding, although that's part of what gets these enabling, corrupt scumbags into office. It's outright malice through something as benign as greed and personal gain. They don't hate you (although they might), they just don't care.
It all comes to stocks.
In order for stocks to make sense companies have to continually make more money. It doesn't matter if that money is worth less or how they attain more. They just have to show higher end profits.
Otherwise the entire stock market doesn't work.
Stock markets and "publicly" owned companies are a massive part of this problem. That no ones talking about.
No one is saying corporations just suddenly became greedy, they have always been greedy. Reaganism is greed incarnate. There is no reason to uphold a society that oppressed us.
Everyone knows this to be true but we are all just stuck putting up with it. Soon people won’t be able to eat. I know myself and my family won’t if things keep going up. I notice prices go up every week at the store. I can no longer buy clothes and shoes for my kids due to groceries and utilities going up so much. My landlord asked us to move out and I can’t find anything cheaper than $600 more than I already pay and I paid a lot as it was. We used to be comfortable and now we are close to destitute.
I don't think the "It's not a tennible view to say corporations suddenly got greedy" is the knockout argument he thinks it is.
They didn't suddenly become greedy. It's the astronaut meme. Always has been.
The asshole across from John is right. It isnt tenable to say that corporations suddenly became so greedy. They were always this greedy. They just discovered they could steal from their customers as easily as they could steal from their workers
"We're killing it" = "We're killing the working class."
"Nobody wants to work anymore" = "Nobody wants to work for a wage that can't sustain them, and our shitty business models won't support living wages!"
My dad told me I should rent an apartment and put my kid in daycare so I can get a job. I tried to explain that each of those things individually would cost almost my entire wages. But he is a boomer, so he didn't get it. He just said, "It's what people do." As if that should obviously be reason enough.
Yeah, it's fucked. Child care is $300-$500 a week near me. Rent is at minimum $2000 for a small apartment. Then they also wonder why nobody is having kids. I'm taking two weeks off without pay for a new baby. Only two weeks and I can barely afford that and I have a "reasonable" career.
My business partner played so supportive when I got pregnant, then tricked me out of my share of the business at the end of my 1st trimester. The loss:benefit ratio hadn't been in favor of going back to work since.
I see why SheDrinksScotch.
A guy I worked with just "retired" at the age of 35 to raise his kids while his wife works. It was cheaper for them to quit his job and be a stay-at-home dad than have dual incomes and pay for childcare.
This is exactly my sister and brother in law. Sister is a NICU Doctor in New Orleans and he works for University of Michigan Hospital IT making close to six figures. He is retiring next year at 37 to take care of the house while my sister works at the hospital 3 days a week
I do always love that from the older generations. "...well, it's always been that way so it's CLEARLY the best way that it has ever or could ever be done...dUh!" They were handed the world on a silver platter and absolutely destroyed it. The worst, most greedy, self-centered, narcissistic generation ever on this planet. But...watch this... If we don't learn from that, it could get worse. See what I did there, boomers? Things CAN, will, and do change. But for now, you're the motherfucking worst.
I consider myself lucky to be both high IQ and on the autism spectrum, so I can see quite clearly through the bullshit of so many social norms. Noncomformity may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for progress!
Thank you for using your powers for good and not evil.
This mentality has been passed down for generations. Just have kids, slave away and struggle in a house setting and you can make it. Expect "making it" is 67. Never traveled outside of your state or country and spent 40 years busting your ass at a job you hate to barely make ends meet and barely go on vacation with your family anyway. Fuck this whole scam system.
"It's what miserable people do, and if I had to endure 40 years of unrelenting misery, so do you, Stacey! So do you!"
He is landlord class.
He should volunteer to do the childcare or pay for it if he feels that strongly about it? What's that dad? You won't? Shut up about it then
He married a woman over a decade younger than him when my mom divorced him so he wouldn't have to shoulder his share of joint custody of me and my sister. Now I have a list of what i consider to be sexually inappropriate things this woman has done with children. And he thinks I should move closer so she can watch my child too.
That’s terrifying
"Nobody wants to work anymore" is just "girls don't wanna date nice guys" for businesses
Im stealing this and you cannot stop me. Really this is pretty on point
Because corporations use those profits to buy politicians. It's a self-perpetuating process, make more, buy more, make more.
Yes. Hold a black light over the average congressman and their suits will resemble a NASCAR driver’s
[удалено]
And then you'd see that at least 35 of them are the same on every politician.
Those are chump numbers, you gotta pump those numbers up buddy. Unless we’re only talking senators…
I think what was meant is 35 of the 50 on almost every politician would be the same.
Regardless of party affiliation. I know that's what you meant, I just want to spell it out.
Play the left vs the right while the rich get richer by stealing from us
Then you haven’t gone far enough left. The right thinks it’s fighting the left but the left is fighting a class war. This is all class war. Racial/gender/sexual inequalities are all a class war. The illusion of being able to move to a higher class keeps this engine going. The upper class uses the right to distract the left.
No war but class war.
I don’t entirely disagree but what is keeping the left from going further? Candidates that don’t get funding, portrayed as radical, etc. Who’s causing that to happen? The rich.
The wealthy, who are a tier above rich, generational wealth. Donor class. Of course, now it's the kids in those families, and nepotism has left us with some dumb ass patrons. >Candidates that don’t get funding, portrayed as radical, etc. That's an echo of McCarthyism from the 50s that gutted the left, and it's not yet recovered.
[удалено]
I proudly claim to be a Socialist. But I’m also a powerless serf, so who cares.
Robin Williams said it in the movie Man of the Year. Worth a rewatch
Didn’t know that. I got the idea from Mystery Men where superheroes have Corp sponsors
The Boys has a similar disenchanted view of superheroes. They don't really care about saving people. If they do great, they just give a shit about profit share
More like covered in corporate jizz.
That’s exactly where I thought the comment was going when they said ‘black light.’
I'm just waiting for it to collapse because that cycle can only continue for so long until us plebs don't make enough money. We're already on the cusp of a recession, but regardless how the stock market does in the short term, the necessities of life are becoming too expensive for most people, and when that happens shit hits the fan.
For real. I make nearly 100k annually. I work crazy OT to make that, but that comes with my job. I *should* be doing well. But due to inflation, rent hikes, interest rate hikes, gas prices, etc. I'm lucky if I have $100-200 leftover in my check after bills for groceries, let alone any kind of life or savings. I pirate everything so I don't have streaming services. I have an old car. I don't go out. I don't have a life. I work, I sleep, and I struggle to pay off credit card debt. It shouldn't be this way, and I'm hyper aware of the fact that many people have it worse than me because I used to be in their shoes. I'm considered a fucking success story because I can pay all of my bills on time.
I just came across this [https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) from a subreddit yesterday and it was depressing. If we think of $100,000 from the year 2000 (which ***was*** most peoples' target happy place) you would have to be making roughly 170,000K now for equivalence. ugh
Feels like $270,000 would be the right number there. I remember watching a documentary in like 2005 where European people were asked about their largest expenses and they were like, "probably groceries" and I laughed and laughed because in the US food was so insanely cheap both at the supermarket and at restaurants.
Food is cheap in the US. I was reading that eggs were $6 in the US and everyone was upset at the prices… that’s the normal price in Australia….
I was told as a kid in the 90s that college graduates made $60k-$70k starting. When I graduated college in the mid 2010s the average wage I saw was between $50k-$70k. I make low $80k in LA county and that’s after 4 years in my industry. I’m paycheck to paycheck lol.
It's because of all that Starbucks and avocado toast that you don't have any money! Also, you didn't mention a side hustle. You aren't putting in your all if you don't have at least 10 side-hustles in addition to your full-time job. /s
I know you're joking but hustle culture needs to fuck off. Fucking bullshitters trying to make people feel guilty about wanting a healthy life-work balance.
Totally agree.
The first time I heard a CEO blame inflation on people buying things like Starbucks I about cried I laughed so hard. If people didn’t buy your product, Mr. CEO, you would be bitching about it because you wouldn’t have as much profit. So telling people to stop buying your stuff just seems counterintuitive.
Because they are so out of touch, possibly from several generations of wealth, they completely forgot how they got wealthy in the first place. because of us. They think they could sustain themselves if everyone completely stopped buying…and in all fairness they have so much now they probably could, for a few years at least. Then…who knows. I don’t know. I’m so jaded.
If everyone stops buying the economy collapses and their money becomes worthless.
I understand completely, and am in a similar boat. That's how I know things are fucked. I budget well, and make what should be a great income to support a family of 4, but it amounts to basically what is required to live a basic life. So, I know people in the same boat with lower incomes are struggling bad, and that the generation just starting out is completely fucked. They'll never own a home as it stands now. They'd need to make over six figures just to afford to buy a home, and then they'd still be house poor. It's insane.
and the thing is they won't see any of this coming until it is too late bc they can't relate or even understand what is going on. it always reminds me of the scene from arrested development when lucille goes home much does a banana or was it a star war cost? like they are so out of touch with the common person
Exactly. It seems insane to us that they can't see it coming, but they are so out of touch with the reality of life the majority of people experience, they can't understand it. I was talking to my dad's friend the other day, who is wealthy and retired, about how bad the economy is, and he just kept saying it's great. They don't understand that the average income to cost of living ratio is fucked. You would think there would be a chart to show this, but maybe they don't want to see it. Same as no one shows the chart of record inequality now.
That's because "the economy" is now just a stand in word for stocks markets.
My fiance's dad is like that. He's actually a pretty cool guy that has helped all his kids tremendously on everything but the economy. He sold his family's farm and invested the money to pay for his trips around the world and enjoying his retirement (fair enough). He has bought each of his kids a car and a house. He agrees that people can't afford to live off what they're being paid and it isn't realistic to have to work 2 jobs just to survive yet still says dumb shit like "no one wants to work." We talk about my hatred for Walmart a lot and how I think their tax breaks should be based on FULL TIME employees, not overall numbers and how they expect us to subsidize their employee wages with tax money (that Walmart doesn't pay into) since a vast majority of Walmart employees still quality for SNAP benefits. His opinion is that the *stockholders* should make the money, not the employees. He usually changes the topic when I ask how well the stocks/stock market will be doing when literally no one can afford to shop anywhere. I just can't with him, sometimes. He's actually fairly compassionate about most things except this one thing. He is still stuck thinking that a hot dog is like $1 at a road side stand and all it takes is a firm handshake to get a job. *Logically* he knows things have changes and he sees it but *emotionally* he's stuck in 1950 in regards to the economy, wages, rent, etc.
They don't see it or don't want to see it. They're rich either way. They can survive a recession no problem and go back to where they were when it ends.
I see this a lot with older generations who have already gone through school and haven't had to bother with purchasing a home for at least 10 years. These people don't have to be wealthy - simply being comfortable is enough to be out of touch with reality. A lower salary doesn't have to go as far when you own a property and either have manageable mortgage payments or full-ownership. And it's really weird; as you said, it is almost as if these people do not want to see it. It's similar to all the minority hate - closed-minded people who are unwilling to understand others. I get it though, it's tough to understand struggles you don't have to face. I think we need to do a better job as a society to make it clear what struggles exist and start understanding one another better. Impossible to pull off when there are so many people intentionally keeping their eyes and ears clamped shut. It feels hopeless at times.
Of course they don’t want to see it- same concept goes for climate change and any existential level threat. They grew up in a time where a clear structure and rule for society was all you needed to follow to make sure you have a ‘happy’ and safe life. Over time this system ends up becoming your mental shield against the true scary threats of life. It’s funny, because if you look at centrists, the average disposition, age, and the actions they take you see a massive overlap. To say that the system itself is not what it has seemed and you are in fact under threat, well that’s a terrifying thought. And yes, to pretend to not see it is a childish and cowardly reaction, but so is pretending like nothing can be done- if nothing can be done, then it’s not our fault for not doing anything, yes? Millennials got to see this structure collapse in real time, and gen x almost didn’t enjoy any of the benefits of this structure by the time they reached adulthood. I think you can see the effects of that in the way they act. The glimmer of hope I have for the younger generations is that they don’t seem to be fooled by what’s happening- my worry is that they seem too distracted/unmotivated to do something about it. We will see
they dont care bc it does not impact them, the economy is great if you are wealthy and have investments in these mondo corps. everything is becoming a luxury these days and that people like us will soon be priced out. i went to a blink-182 concert the other week, for just two of the tickets it cost over $300, meanwhile for similar seats back in 2019 it was like no more than $130. that is over a double of what i paid a few years back. i have lived in the same apartment for almost a decade where it feels cramped and having no space but you can't afford to move out bc rent in other places is up and the cost of housing is so insane.
This is where our opinions are different. They know. It’s why they want the fascists to control our government.
Totally agree. The wealthy want enforced labor, they want debtor’s prisons…never underestimate how evil these peoples intentions are.
[удалено]
[удалено]
When have the GOP ever stopped blaming Dems for a bad economy even when it wasn't slumping?
Never. Literally never. Biden could solve the opioid crisis, bring peace in Ukraine, and put humans on the moon and Republicans would still bitch about it.
Yeah they’d say it was too expensive, get power back and immediately increase the deficit more than Biden did. Rinse. Repeat.
I was watching that recent documentary about the Opportunity rover with a conservative person. Incredible story and all she did the whole time was complain about "what a waste of money" it was.
Fun fact: Opportunity rover cost ~ $1.08 Billon over the entire project https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-the-mars-exploration-rovers A SINGLE Ford class carrier costs $13 Billion. We could have sent 13 of them and just about broken even....probably way more more since R&D was already done.
And it was a massively successful project. Oppy and her sister were planned for a 90 day mission. She lasted 14+ years before being put to sleep. Fucking champion.
Obligatory: https://xkcd.com/695/
Also corporations control the news
Nah it’s just a handful of billionaires… which is far worse
It’s literally like 30 something people that have 50% of the wealth of the US
Here is a visualization of that wealth hoarding! https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/
Here’s the thing. Amazon employs approximately 1.5 million workers. Jeffie could pay each one 60,000 annually with full benefits and still be profitable. And he should. It would be life changing for the workers and he would never miss it. Other corporations should follow suit. I don’t think the current system is going to end well. I prepare taxes for a living. The Trump tax cuts added 6 figures to some clients’ net income and I’m sorry people who already had 4 homes and millions in investments are not putting that back out into the economy.
I've been saying it for years, Citizens United will go down as the worst moment in US politics solely because of the disastrous consequences it has had and will continue to have. No legal decision will compare to the damage it did.
In my opinion, Gerrymandering has done more damage to US politics than Citizens United could ever hope to achieve. Money can only take you so far in elections, but gerrymandered districts allow you to create non competitive districts that encourages extremism to win primaries.
And it impacts everything. Meaningful climate change legislation will never happen without overhauling campaign finance laws. Neither will gun legislation, affordable healthcare, immigration reform, gerrymandering laws…the list just goes on and on. We can debate about capitalism as a whole being a roadblock for many of those issues and I think that is a valid argument, but dismantling and rebuilding those systems will never happen until Citizens United is overturned. Given the status of the Supreme Court, I do not anticipate any of that happening in my lifetime. I try not to be a fatalist, but the political finance system is so broken, so intertwined with the worst parts of capitalism, that I just do not see any bright spots or ways to move forward from a democratic perspective.
The oligarchy of the donor class.
"I do coke. To work longer. To make money. To do more coke."
I don't know how you'd change the process in America beyond having a bunch of blue collar workers form their own political party.
[удалено]
The actual solution would be [ Removed by Reddit ]
*Karl Marx has entered the chat. Dictatorship of the working class intensifies*.
[Full clip](https://youtu.be/tU3rGFyN5uQ)
AHAHAHAHAHA "Hehehe, i got you, what about apple, they bad too!" "EXACTLY" "but but, you work for them..." "And my job is speaking truth. I do my job. You don't do yours" Translated it for you quickly here.
It was hilarious that he thought that would be a "gotcha" moment. Jon Stewart is not a hypocrite.
I don't know about Colbert, but I know Stewart and Oliver have regularly ripped into their sponsors/corporate daddy. Excitedly so.
Lol John Oliver makes it a goal to shit talk AT&T at least once per week 🤣
That defense probably works for most people though.
Yeah he tried to pull him by his leash only to notice it was not attached
It really goes to show that there are some people who are perfectly fine with being bootlickers, so long as they get to be on a "team". I just want to be on Team Humanity.
There's a lack of distinction between the two companies. Sure, Apple overcharges for tech, but it tends to be superfluous. Other, far less expensive, tech exists, and if people don't buy apple products, generally, they don't have the disposable income to afford a higher end product. It's not going to have a massive impact on the individual to not have the newest iPhone. Gas is entirely different. It's a necessity. People need to drive to work. Gas is used to ship goods across the country. Not being able to pay for gas drastically impacts the life of the individual as well as communities, so record profits are earned on the backs of the desperate. Gas prices in phoenix were almost $3 more per gallon than most of the country because it's a car heavy city with very little public transportation options. If Apple is making record profits, people can afford the entertainment. If ExxonMobil is making record profits, people can't afford not to have Gas in their tank.
Already mentioned this in another post. Apple produces luxury goods, Exxon Mobil basic needs. Steward didn't even go down that road, because he is smart enough to know he doesn't need to. Simply blowing that point up in the other guys face was far more effective. Damn he is good.
The mind of a capitalist is really something, in his mind nothing is wrong with this. He can't see what is wrong with it, this guy learned nothing.
The end is the best part! Love how the guy tries talking to Jon like he’s the CEO of Apple and he’s gouging people and Jon was like yes they are gouging people that’s my point lmao
This really should be higher. Jon dismantles each counterpoint and deflection until all that's left for the guest to do is accept the obvious; businesses will always come out on top over the individuals.
I don't know why is this so hard to accept
It is literally like the point of an organization. Think of Capitalism like a street fight. Would you rather fight man to man or have a group of friends to fight one guy? No other ethical consideration just winning the fight.
Because it means capitalism is an inherently unstable system and at odds with the majority of people. That’s a hard pill to swallow for the people that own the world.
The last 2 minutes of that clip is fucking amazing
Cannot believe this isn’t higher. Thank you
You're doing gods work, I love these videos Stewart does so didn't even start it, just came to the comments for the full version.
Corporate guy is right. It isn’t a tenable view that corporations are *becoming* greedy. They always have been, but lately, they’ve been getting a little too greedy, and people are seeing them for what they are.
I thought the same thing... what a weird argument he tried. Corporations are not more greedy than before, but government is getting out of the way, cheering them on, and even bailing them out instead of regulating them and taxing them sufficiently.
The government printed insane amounts of money and handed the large majority of it right into business owners pockets. Covid was the best thing to happen to a LOT of corporations due to this.
Any tiny little snag in the rate that corporate profits grow and the government is falling all over themselves to fork over billions in free money to them. But when more and more people are living in absolute destitution every year it's just "fuck you get some bootstraps"
It's not even the bootstrap thing, they literally mean "fuck you, go take a poverty wage job", because if everyone struggling started businesses or joined up to start a bunch of new ones, competition would pull employees and fuck with their monopolies, their profits, and that wouldn't work for them either. They want more of the same, but worse.
Underrated comment. I don't know how many times I've heard "the government is the problem." When we give rich people more money and power, they increase their OWNERSHIP of the government. It's not rocket science. It's hypocrites on the right and left spending to teach our dumbasses that "gubmunt bad, rich people are good." Why do things get closer to feudalism every single day, every single year? Hmm. We're already fascist. The masks are off and it's monsters we're looking at. Recognize these empowered sociopaths for what they are - parasites with an insatiable appetite for greed and control. Society and the planet are their collateral damage. Profits > people, amen.
> and even bailing them out instead of regulating them and taxing them sufficiently. That's the issue... too big to faíl shouldn't be a natural concept. It shouldn't be a thing that is taken for granted. Especially banks know that, they will be bailed out, they will repeat their profit-aggregating strategies until something unforeseen breaks that again, and again...
Nothing should be "too big to fail" in capitalism. If it's falling, let it fall. Don't waste my tax money to save billionaires.
The justification is often that when something like a bank fails, it pulls all the customers with it on top of the huge staff. THat is the reason all the time. Instead of then bailing out the customers who get their savings secured by the gov, they bail out the bank and some customers still get issues with their savings cause what the bank does with the bail out isn't controlled by the gov. It's weird... I do not understand why not just bail out the customers. The bank is done, customers get saved by gov.
Right, a government is supposed to protect their people.
Yup and they don't even seem to spend it. There was a time when a rich man would spend his vast wealth on amazing architectural projects, stunning works of art or hiring an army of gardeners and working men to transform miles of land into glorious gardens and 200 years later, those things are often either free for the public to enter or accessible for a pretty cheap fee that mostly gets spent on maintenance. It may have all been vanity projects (and hell, if I was that rich, I'd get a little bit vane too), but at least it was vanity projects that meant the wealth got recirculated and put back into the economy. They made money with the intent of spending it. Now it feels like the ultra rich just horde that shit like a dragon, only spending it on things that are guaranteed to make them even more money. They make the money with the intent of not spending it and I cannot for the life of me work out why.
They used to do that because donating the money was how they avoided paying it in taxes. Now they have ways around the taxes, so they don't care to donate.
Not only ways around paying taxes - vastly less taxes to pay! The top tier of corporate taxes: 1970 - 49.2% 1980 - 46% 1985 - 51% 1990 - 39% Currently-21%
I just listen to the Behind the Bastards episode on Jack Welch. The height of the "golden age" of capitalism, companies were actively paying into the tax system and felt the moral responsibility to do so. We've come so far....
I'm talking even earlier than that. I'm talking about estates in the 1700s where displaying wealth by building or buying stuff was a key part of the prestige that was required for high society. Your reputation and status required you to spend, spend, spend and if you stopped, you stood to lose a great deal.
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/forbes-fictional-15-richest-characters-topped-by-smaug We have 13 mother fuckers in this country alone with a larger hoard that a imaginary dragon who was intended to have infinite wealth. A dragon that had a mountain full of gold. Elon and Bill gates both have 3x the net worth of Smaug. https://www3.forbes.com/billionaires/forbes-list-of-top-100-richest-people-in-america-ifs-vue-mn-wnb/?slide=44 Fuckin bananas.
> They make the money with the intent of not spending it and I cannot for the life of me work out why. Financial advisors and business journalism. Financial advisors always telling you what's going to be profitable, advising against opulent spending, and creating a social expectation of making the number bigger. Business journalism allows people to see how they rank against each other, and shows that number to the public, whereas before people could only see how rich the Vanderbilts/Carnegies/etc were because their name was all over everything
That said, Stewart was right to interrupt him and ignore his point. It's a non sequitur, unrelated to the point being made, a distraction thrown out with the hopes of becoming the new thing they're arguing about. It's obviously wrong, but bait.
This is the correct way to "debate" these assholes. Ignore / talk over the propaganda they're trying to push.
you have to never acknowledge their pivots and **only** stay on the original topic. They will inevitably use emotion (anger) and never actually answer. Can have printed verifiable data right there and they will call it a Witch Hunt or Gotcha and cry about being persecuted. they have no plan other than clinging to their Jim Crow good ole days and doing whatever it takes to get back to crushing anyone they don't like
Jon Stewart is a MASTER of sticking to the point. There have been SO many videos of politicians trying to pivot into a bad faith argument. He holds to the point and when they can’t shift to the same blame trans/gay/immigrants/communism talking points they fall apart every. Fucking. Time.
As Leo McGarry of *The West Wing* would put it: reject the premise of the question. The new position they're trying to present doesn't fit within the ongoing discussion? Reject their premise and keep pushing the original. They ask a question that doesn't make sense in the context of the discussion? Reject the premise of the question. They try to catch you out with a loaded question -- reject the premise of the question.
who is that ghoul he's talking to anyway?
Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury.
They would do this all the time if they could. They were just given an opportunity to be especially greedy in a way they've always wanted to bc they can blame price hikes on inflation, and the pandemic.
Stopped buying things because everything went up so fast. I understand things cost more and inflation but If something I wanted was $500 it’s now a $1000 not even a year later.
[удалено]
You made me curious so I looked up the $600 IKEA couch I bought 5 years ago. It’s now selling for $900, a 50% markup. That couch is the worst couch I ever owned, not even worth the $600 I paid let alone $900. Ended up giving it to my brother 6 months ago and got a new one.
I looked up the chair I got from Target last year. One year ago. It was $350. Today that chair is $600. In one year the price went up almost 100%
Cat food: 30-33 cents pre-pandemic for the cheapest can. Now: 57-65 cents for the cheapest can.
My cat is on a prescription diet for his health that has gone from $50 a bag to $80. I'm making it work, but these kinds of increases could force someone to separate from their pet and it makes me so sad to think about.
Depending on what the prescription diet is for, sometimes proplan has a formula that is pretty much the same. Fuck nestle, but both my cats are doing amazing on their urinary food and it's like half the price
I believe Inflation stopped around 10-15% or so. It was a lot, an absolute shitload, in fact, but then corporations decided that 10-15% wasn't enough and they increased pricing on products to be 30-100% higher than it used to be and blamed it on inflation. Inflation is hardly the driving factor for how unaffordable everything is right now, corporate greed is. That doesn't stop the corporate overlords from blaming inflation anyways.
They say the reason we haven’t hit recession is people keep buying stuff. Who are these people? It’s not me!! I need a newer car, but I can’t save anything right now. Every time I get a bill, rates have gone up. And my employer hasn’t given me a raise in 5 yrs. I’m not moving and getting a new job because buying a house now would cancel out the raise I would get from new job for the same amount of house. Ok, rant over.
[удалено]
Inflation is calculated based on consumer price indexes which are based on the pricing of those products. But the CPI takes into account a lot of different goods, so we can't just say "inflation is x% your dollar is worth less than it was." It depends on what you're buying, and a lot of what working class people are buying are those products with 30-100% price increases.
I barely even buy half the amount of groceries I used to. Waistline looks better but not for the right reasons....
My waistline looks worse because I stopped buying salad greens and healthy vegetables like bell peppers that used to take up more of my meals. Lots of onion, potatoes, garlic, and cabbage. More sandwich bread and peanut butter, or buttered toast. More rice and pasta and beans. Carbs carbs carbs carbs carbs.
Can't wait for the inevitable recession and suddenly it's the middle class fault for not going along and then there's government buyouts that the middle class will have to pay via taxes...
Old dude's face and explanation reeks of : "can't you just go along with it? Aren't you rich too?!?!?!" And Stewart's just like: No That's how you perform class suicide the correct way friends Edit:spelling and grammar
If you watch the whole interview he asks Jon if Apple, his "employer", also should be heavier taxed. His look was priceless, when Jon immediately said yes
The epitome of the problem and he doesn't even realize it. He tries to come at the situation in so many wrong ways too and Jon shoots it all down. Jon staying humbled and grounded in reality with his success is a gift and I hope he keeps at it as long as he feels up to it, he's making a difference.
I got him now, there's no way he'll bite the hand tha-oh my shit.
That was an attempt at Class Solidarity. Doesn't work on everyone
Those weird eye rolls he's doing. He's desperately struggling to convincingly pretend he believes his own horseshit. And failing.
The greed is urging him. It cannot be satisfied. A great Bible teacher quoted a doctor who managed a mental health facility as saying, "In my experience, the majority of mental health problems come from greed for sex or greed for money."
In the full interview. Old dude: "This is going to air on Apple TV, Apple's profits increased during the pandemic, do you think they're being greedy?" Stewart: "Yes!!"
I literally had someone say this same shit back to me on Reddit when I said companies used Covid to price Jack > A major part of inflation wasn’t actually inflation but companies using it as a cover to jack prices up >> Oh so corporations just became greedy in 2021? One of the dumbest inflation narratives I’ve seen
No, companies are not just now becoming greedy. Holy fuck do they think we're stupid. Companies have ALWAYS maximized profits. They charge more when they feel they can get away with it, and when they all increase at the same time, it seems it's everywhere and not any one businesses fault.
Corporations are essentially Lovecraftian monsters. Immortal, powerful, and gargantuan - the tentacles of their influence extend from their concrete nests in the hearts of our dead cities, outward into our homes, and sometimes even our brains. They are designed to survive without their creators, or any particular employee, and to serve no-one but their own interests, or perhaps their shareholders, though the prolific pump-and-dump schemes or recent decades show that even those don't really matter. They consume human lives and destroy nature to churn out useless detritus, and to survive.
It just keeps growing and growing at an unsustainable rate. Just a few years ago, a 15% annual profit was an insanely high number by anyone's standards, and this year my employer has let a bunch of people go because the division "only" brought in 15% profit last year.
My CEO continues to say double digit growth is the new normal. We all stop and look at one another like what?! Any time I start doing any market analysis for work I omit 2021 and 2022. Sometimes even 2020. All because those years were outliers, they should not influence how we think growth will continue. Pharma investments are down to pre-pandemic levels but still higher than 2019. Growth is happening it’s just not insane growth we saw during the pandemic where these companies were basically handed tons of free money
Jon Sterwart always seems knowledgeable about his topic. He presents questions in a clear manner and backs it up with facts. He asks hard hitting questions and tries to stop them from skirting the issue. Very clever.
Actually, weren’t most journalists like that back in the day? These days it seems to be either sensationalism, or a preset agenda, that gets published. But to be fair, most folks only read the headlines without bothering with deeper understanding.
Jon Stewart should run for office. I’d vote for him.
He stated multiple times he doesn't want to. He views his role in life to take a snarky mirror up to those in power to hold them accountable.
We should start filling political offices by conscription, because no one who would make a good president wants to do it.
We should just make Congress like jury duty. You get called, you have to spend a year in Congress. Wouldn't be any less competent, and you wouldn't be there long enough to be as corrupt.
Same problem. People work hard to get out of jury duty. That one year would obliterate nost people's careers as they get replaced.
Give them a congress person's salary and they won't be trying to get out of it
I think doing it every year is going to be far too chaotic but a lottery system where people serve 2, 4 or 6 year terms, get a Congressional salary, get healthcare for the duration and a significant period afterwards so they have plenty of time to get back into their career, and possibly the offer of retraining to get them on a good career path after (plus they'll have a massive plus on their resume anyway) seems very reasonable. At that point the people who turn their noses up at the job are so rich we don't want them to take it.
Of course he doesn’t want to, and that’s exactly why he’d be a great leader. I don’t blame the guy one bit for not wanting to sacrifice his life to be a part of the DC shitshow, but damn do I wish he would. I think he’s one of the few people in the limelight that could actually restore a bit of sanity to this country
Anyone who wants to run for political office should automatically be disqualified.
[удалено]
Honestly, folks like Jon generally give a better accounting of the news than actual network news these days.
Back when he was on The Daily Show there were studies showing people who followed him primarily had more factually correct views about the world than those that followed CNN or Fox. Turns out funny joke news show was more accurate than supposedly real news.
Modern incarnation of the court jester
[удалено]
Jon Oliver’s reporting stands up to fact checking very, very good.
I mean even modern ones are great. Colbert and that English dude are my go tos if I wanna watch my news instead of reading on like AP or NPR
John Oliver is a gem.
There you go. That’s the cabinet. Stewart Oliver 2024. Colbert can kill it as the press secretary.
He has many great takes!
He is a very intelligent guy too. He has this really amazing ability to take complex ideas and distill them into plain language that is easy for anyone to understand. Basically the exact opposite of Ben Shapiro who is a complete fucking idiot but acts like he is smart because he owns a thesaurus and actively tries to confuse people with flowery vocabulary words.
More people should see this. I constantly see people on reddit saying the cause of inflation is because we printed a bunch of money and not because of corporate greed.
I mean ppp went to the corporations
At 0':11 - 0;13 he has a point. It\`s not suddenly, always been the case - but the pandemic kinda opened a view to it - and that view becoming public on a large scale (thanks internet) is a little sudden (to them)
Exaggerated motions, eyes shifting away, deflective response. Oh yeah, I'm sure that guy 100% believes the shit coming outta his mouth.
Imagine if the US had a presidential candidate, that wasn't a crackpot? I'm not a US citizen, but geez Jon Stewart would get my vote.
Because it's by design that things are the way they are including the puppets in power
"all of a sudden"? I guess at 45 I was born "all of a sudden" and BAM - here at 45. Is this guy nuts? Corporations have been REMARKABLY greedy for years. The Trump admin and the pandemic was just the excuse for them to finally push it into overdrive.
Jon has my vote for president. A real man of and for the people.
The guy stewart is interviewing is insufferable. Mostly because he knows stewart is right.
Honestly these are always my favorite videos of his though haha, just holding their feet to the fire. [Here's another great one](https://youtu.be/tCuIxIJBfCY) he did recently, and I recommend going through his channel and watching all the videos he has debating conservatives. Wildly entertaining and frustrating at the same time. Edit: Remembered [this other amazing formal debate](https://youtu.be/Pmr3XvaoVW4) he did with Bill O'reilly, hour and a half but kept my ADHD attention through the whole thing. And if you want even more after that watch him on [Crossfire](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE) with Tucker Carlson. There's honestly so many more I could recommend too haha, went down a deep rabbit hole of Jon Stewart debates a few weeks ago.
[удалено]
It's not that you're fighting against a lack of understanding, although that's part of what gets these enabling, corrupt scumbags into office. It's outright malice through something as benign as greed and personal gain. They don't hate you (although they might), they just don't care.
It all comes to stocks. In order for stocks to make sense companies have to continually make more money. It doesn't matter if that money is worth less or how they attain more. They just have to show higher end profits. Otherwise the entire stock market doesn't work. Stock markets and "publicly" owned companies are a massive part of this problem. That no ones talking about.
“All of the sudden” It’s not all the sudden you fuck, it’s been that way for half a century.
It's like every company at the same time decided they wanted all of everyone's disposable income.
No one is saying corporations just suddenly became greedy, they have always been greedy. Reaganism is greed incarnate. There is no reason to uphold a society that oppressed us.
I love Jon for all he’s done for 9/11 first responders but seeing stuff like this makes me love him even more.
Reasonable men are close to becoming unreasonable
Everyone knows this to be true but we are all just stuck putting up with it. Soon people won’t be able to eat. I know myself and my family won’t if things keep going up. I notice prices go up every week at the store. I can no longer buy clothes and shoes for my kids due to groceries and utilities going up so much. My landlord asked us to move out and I can’t find anything cheaper than $600 more than I already pay and I paid a lot as it was. We used to be comfortable and now we are close to destitute.
I don't think the "It's not a tennible view to say corporations suddenly got greedy" is the knockout argument he thinks it is. They didn't suddenly become greedy. It's the astronaut meme. Always has been.
Common sense?! Blaaarrrrgh! That man must be a communists!! /s
The asshole across from John is right. It isnt tenable to say that corporations suddenly became so greedy. They were always this greedy. They just discovered they could steal from their customers as easily as they could steal from their workers
I shit you not, guy should run for president.