scioscribe

The Jacobin is a democratic socialist website, so it's generally classified as "far left". It is also classified as "high reliability" with factual sourcing of its statements, which is what makes it a trustworthy source of information. They recently published this article with some eyebrow-raising details. I'll quote just two of them here.

• "... the top 10 percent of American earners were responsible for almost half of consumer spending in the second quarter."
• "While the wealthiest tenth of Americans owns nearly two-thirds of all assets, the bottom half of households, representing over 160 million Americans, hold just over 5 percent of total wealth." (emphasis mine)

The USA is facing a potential government shutdown. Again. Of course we all expect the Democrats to capitulate completely to Republican demands. Again. Neither party will do anything to damage the plutocratic system that they enjoy, which is exactly what must happen for the rest of us to get anything like normalcy in common life again someday. We've tried everything except taxing the rich, and we're all out of ideas. A similar shutdown happened in 2011 here in Minnesota state government. I wrote this about it:

Suppose a government needed to acquire 20% of all money circulating in its economy to keep its civilization content. If you can't collect any more money from the poor ("squeeze blood from a turnip" is a phrase that comes to mind) then you have to tax the rich since they have the majority of the money anyway. Republicans seem hellbent on protecting the rich on both the national and state levels, however, so now we get to see what it's like to do without much of the government. They couldn't legislate their way to smaller government, so I guess they intend to starve it instead. They're having much more success with that method.

It's now 14 years later, and it's still true. I stand by every word. Why can't we just tax the people who have basically all of the money to keep society running?

Bonus! In addition to continuously over-taxing the wrong people while protecting the plutocracy, we get fascism too. The MAGA doom has literally brought a president's accountable-only-to-him, masked, armed fighting force to grab helpless families on the streets of the USA. Where are all of those "Don't tread on me" people now? Henceforth, they shall be known as the "Tread on them, but not me" people.

Trump even authorized use of "full force" (suggesting military warfare to kill opponents) while sending troops to Oregon. What lawlessness is happening in Oregon that threatens the ICE facility there? What did Trump claim as the justification for this implausible order? He sure didn't say it's because a Portland police officer testified in court that ICE is "instigating" clashes with protesters. Yes, the local authorities testified in court that Trump's ICE is causing problems for the city. People who grew up under dictators and escaped to the USA are speaking out about what we all see is happening.