Derp, thanks! Not sure if that was autocorrect or just me being a bad speller.

It seems like you think that all of America is similar to NYC, during a mayoral race against a famously shitty incumbent. Otherwise, idk why you would post that image.

If you ran a candidate for the Democratic Socialist party in every mayoral race in America, I would bet hard cash that better than 90% of them would lose. They wouldn’t lose because of their ideas or policies, they’d lose because they picked a party name that will terminate thought for >60% of the voting population.

Maybe after another 2 decades of slowly getting Democratic Socialists into office you could move that needle. In that time, the facists are going to burn all of this down, so I really don’t see any** advantage in sticking with the name. We need these policies now and idc how we get them.

You’re giving way too much credit to like, 60% of the country. A wide majority of voters do not respond logically, they respond emotionally. NYC is a tiny fraction of the voting population, and assuming that the messaging used there will work in most of the rest of the country is silly.

Gotta meet people where they are man, and purity doesn’t sell as well as familiarity. Disregarding reality handicaps a movement.

It’s really not, and you can look at Trump as the perfect example. He came out and said all the awful shit that Nazis and Klan members believed but rebranded it as MAGA. Socialists could do the same thing, so easily. Just pick a new phrase/word and keep almost everything other tenet the same. Call it “Liberty Forever” and talk about how mandatory profit sharing “guarantees your right to work and access to a free market.” It would be so fucking effective.

Messaging is important.

That’s a nice sentiment, but it would have to overcome 100+ years of indoctrination that socialism==bad on top of the avalanche of attacks from the powers that be. Those attacks are going to come regardless, so insisting on playing hard mode by using the word socialist isn’t likely to result in good outcomes.

I’d rather see the tenets of socialism win by another name, frankly. The outcome is a lot more important than the word.

No argument there, but messaging is important to be effective. Most US voters are going to reflexively balk at the word “socialist” and will stop listening to anything else being said. It’s unfortunate, but it’s reality.

I think they’d actually agree with the tenets of socialism if they could get past the reflex though. For example, if “owning the means of production” were packaged as, “a fair share” they’d be more likely to listen. Silly, but you have to meet people where they are to be effective.

Mamdani talking about issues everyone but the rich would agree with is great, and I’m happy to see the upswell of support for it. I still think he’d lose in most other places in the US though, the word “socialist” just carries too much of a stigma outside the major metro areas.

Very true. Most Americans don’t know actually what socialism is, it’s just a synonym for “bad.” I don’t think anyone that describes themselves as one is going to do well with most US electorates, even though the tenets of socialism line up pretty well with their actual beliefs.

The DNC is corrupt and sucks, but they’re right to fear this association. If they embraced the socialist messaging today at the party level, they’d likely lose every election outside of the major metro areas and become even more irrelevant than they already are.

This does not appear to be true. There was a bit of budget fuckery, and the state was certainly impacted by tariffs/deportation/bullshit caused by Trump, but there doesn’t appear to be anything to back up this tweet.

Not a mod, but this violates rule #3 and should probably be removed:

Posts should use high-quality sources, and posts about an article should have the same headline as that article. You may edit your post if the source changes the headline.

There’s a jillion real things to post about here. No need to spread misinformation just because it sounds like something you’d want to be true.

I missed a zero and thought it was 142k at first. Even still, it feels like $100mil should help more people than that. Kinda wild how expensive healthcare is :(

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Employees have to pay for basically everything in the US, so salaries have to be a lot higher here. School, childcare, healthcare, retirement, you name it. Also, all those things are more expensive here because they’re provided by companies that need to make a profit. It sucks.

Listed salaries are almost always what the employee pays, not what it costs the company. In the US, this includes the payroll tax, and cost of “benefits,” like healthcare and unemployment insurance, and is referred to as the burdened rate. This is separate from the income tax the employee has to pay to the government, mind you.

The burdened rate for most employees at the companies I’ve worked for in the US is like 20-50% higher than the salary paid. Not sure exactly how it works in France, but I do know there’s a pretty complex payroll tax companies have to pay. I think it’s something like 40% at the salary you quoted.

I’ll stop here because your position is incredibly privileged and you refuse to see that. The minimum wage is too low, that’s not the point though. 70k a year is absolutely a comfortable wage for a single person to live on in almost every place in the US, except the biggest of the major cities.

You may not get everything you want but you should be able to cover everything you need, including an emergency fund, and still have enough to put aside a 5-10% for savings most years on 70k. If you really don’t believe that, you live in a bubble.

You’re not going to get any argument from me that shit is fucked. Everyone should have guaranteed access to housing, food, and healthcare, and we don’t. A lot of kids were set up for failure by their parents insisting they take out college loans. But your standard for a minimum cost of living is basically the minimum to live like a boomer in the 70s.

The average white male boomer in the US lived like a king compared to everyone else around them, even at the time. The descendants of those people tend to think that the fact that their parents or grandparents had this means they should too. In reality, those boomers were incredibly lucky to be born into a privileged class during an economic golden age.

We don’t get that, we get the world they fucked up. Rich dickheads hogging all the wealth and stealing wages is nothing new, it’s been the standard for all of human history. What is new is that you can see clearly how well the privileged live compared to you. Maybe that will cause things to change, idk.

In the meantime, we need to make do. An emergency fund is intended to be used for emergencies, which are things that threaten your ability to acquire basic needs (food, housing, health). You keep it funded at 6 months of expenses (e.g., the minimum you need to meet your financial obligations plus food+rent). When it’s full, you don’t keep adding to it. When you use money from the fund, you replenish it as quickly as you can. Everyone should have one.

You shouldn’t be having an emergency every single year though. If you are, it’s not an emergency, it’s an extra expense you need to plan for. If you are spending double-digit percentages of your income on debt (car loans, credit cards, etc), you need to stop spending money on anything else but basic needs until you pay it off. Or start a revolution, but we’re arguing on the Internet so I don’t think the odds of that happening are high.

The world sucks. It’s not fair. You can still live a good life in it though, even if it’s not as good as it used to be.

Saving 20% of your income is way beyond emergency funds and what is needed for retirement. Typical guidelines for emergency funds are to set aside at least 6 months worth of living expenses, you don’t need to save 20% forever. If you saved even 10-15% of your income for retirement your entire life, you’d have a very comfortable retirement (assuming the world doesn’t burn down before then).

SmartAsset is a financial advisor service, and these numbers seem to be guidelines for middle-class earners. That’s pretty far beyond a minimum cost of living, so I’d say this title is misleading at best.

I don’t think everyone is entitled to wealth accumulation. Housing/health/food security, absolutely, but being able to build wealth by making enough to save 20% of your earnings is beyond a basic entitlement. I doubt most people would agree with you on that.

You could more accurately title this as “Minimum wage needed to live like an average boomer in 1975”. Still fucked up, and not misleading.

Edit: you added a bunch to your reply. I think the framing of this is just wrong, frankly. Wages absolutely have not kept up with the cost of living, but you’re going beyond that and saying everyone is entitled to the financial security of a middle-class earner. It’s a good goal, but not an entitlement, and no reasonable person would frame that as a minimum cost of living.

Can’t speak for all states but I have a really hard time believing this map based on the numbers for NC. The minimum wage needed for what any reasonable single person would consider the cost of living is not >$80k per year, even in the cities. You’d be relatively comfortable making that much here, even be able to save for a down payment on a house if you didn’t choose to live in an expensive area.

Where are you getting these numbers?

This is not snark, it’s genuine concern: are you doing research by asking AI bots questions? If so, for the love of God please stop, you’re ruining your brain. This information is freely available from any search engine if you use the date feature. I used Kagi to find these in like, 5 minutes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2024/10/02/iranian-media-claims-israeli-f-35-fighters-destroyed-in-missile-strike/

https://www.tehrantimes.com/news/504777/Nearly-20-Israeli-fighter-jets-destroyed-during-Iran-s-October

Not sure that’s a credible source. Didn’t Iranian media claim they destroyed dozens of F-35s in missile strikes of Israeli airfields last October and then it turned out to be completely fake?

If you’d celebrate the real killer, then arguing that Luigi didn’t do it seems secondary to the fact that it wasn’t a crime anyone should be punished for. It’s a weird kind of mental backflip to stay within the lines of the current system while supporting actions that are outside the system.

Personally, I’ve had to pay UHC tens of thousands of dollars in premiums and additional tens of thousands every time I’ve gotten hurt/sick because UHC covers basically nothing. They billed me $800 the last time I got a tetanus shot. It would have been $150 if I had claimed to be uninsured so it is literally cheaper for me not to tell providers I have insurance.

If shooting a mugger for stealing your wallet is justified homicide, then so was shooting this asshole. I have no issue saying, “I think Luigi did it and he should be free.”