The wealthy overlords require a multitude of cheap labor to retain their wealth. That's why they are so concerned about falling birth rates - listen to any of them talk about it, it has nothing to do with concern for the planet like any of the rest of us (less demand on resources that we are already depleting, etc), they are concerned about maintaining the current rates of production and labor if the next generations are smaller and smaller. Sure, Vance is talking about it from a "family values" perspective, because that's a cloak he thinks his base will listen to, but listen to Musk talk about it, or any of the "pro-natalist" movement.
But there will be fewer of us to collect, process, and deliver those resources. This means that those of us who are left will be able to command higher wages and better working conditions. (Not high or better enough, mind you, but higher and better.)
Pockets of humanity will endure this at least as well as they endured the Ice Age or the Toba Explosion. But there's around 8 billion of us bouncing around today. The transition down to something like even just 1 billion would be nightmarish to live through.
This isn't a question of humanity hitting the "off" switch nearly so much as it is asking ourselves how we want our grandchildren to live a century from now.
Why does it surprise you that democrats are voting for Trump picks? The democrats are barely to the left of republicans. You people need to stop seeing them as an opposition party, because they've literally come out and said they don't want to be that.
You people need to stop seeing them as an opposition party, because they’ve literally come out and said they don’t want to be that.
Democrats in 2024: "We are the last defense you have against totalitarian fascism! We are the thin line between democracy and dictatorship! You want us on that wall! You need us on that wall!"
American voters: "After all the gerrymandering and disenfranchisement and other dirty tricks, we only gave the Republicans a three vote margin in the House and the Senate. See what you can do with that."
Democrats in 2025: "Rubber stamping everything the GOP throws across our desk. Resistance is futile. The best thing we can do is see how much money we can bilk from donors before 2026."
we only gave the Republicans a three vote margin in the House and the Senate
Many USA states have the vote counting operated by oligarchs with no oversight, using tools that have no transparency or double checking, and the results fail exit polls.
This has been talked about for decades except not by the liberals in the USA. The Democratic Party has sidelined paper ballot progress, stomping down on criticisms of unfair ballot counts, while losing influence in large areas due to ballot manipulation.
The result after 30 years of this is that most American liberals scoff at human witnessed ballot counting, resist talking about it, and have no clue .
Nobody competent can cite voting results across all 50 states without using air quotes or cracking a joke
Kinda sorta. It took about two weeks of constituent pressure to get the Democrats to start behaving like an opposition party. So the early nominees got a lot of Democrats voting for them.
So there were a lot of votes like this in the first week of February. At this point, the only Senate Democrat pulling this kind of stunt is Fetterman
Every US citizen needs to grab the free app 5 Calls. It will remind you weekly to call your representatives and senators. It provides you with a short script that you can use to express your displeasure, about an absolute myriad of issues. It also hands you the appropriate senators and representatives that are going to listen to you, because you are one of their constituents, and they can actually do something about it.
I've been doing it for three weeks now, and clearly it's barely working. If they wanted an engaged and enraged constituency, they may just get it.
Its the big reset. All those who voted Republican just waiting to be able to afford a house...meanwhile getting layer off. They don't realize that if there are 5 people an 4 houses then 1 goes without a house no matter what. The solution is not to burn down the other 4 houses or to layoff the other 4 people so they call all fight to stay in their home. The solution is to build more homes! Plain and simple. And migrants can help!
There are currently more empty homes in the US than there are homeless people. There are roughly 30 empty units for each homeless person.
There are plenty of entire ghost towns they can move into for free right now, but nobody will because the housing needs to be near the jobs.
Some of those units are being renovated, some are in the process of being sold or leased, some are being lived in but the owners are on vacation. The latter is especially true for summer homes, which are empty most of the year but wouldn't be useful to homeless people because they're nowhere near the jobs - that's the point of a holiday home!
Seriously, if it were just homes then you can get something really basic for $20k. The real problem is the land and the permission to build.
The richest man in Rome lived miserably compared to the average retired Wisconsin suburbanite.
How long that lasts remains to be seen. What makes living in this country luxurious is the enormous development of industrial infrastructure and professional services. Gut Medicare, knock out air traffick control, and allow bird flu to decimate the agricultural sector. In time, the nicest thing a dollar will buy you is a ticket abroad.
That's not really a fair characterization of the situation.
All but seven Democrats did the right thing here by voting against the nominee. The vote also took place at the beginning of February, before the scale and scope of public anger over Trump's seizure of power became apparent.