Political parties that have arrested opposition leaders

Coincidentally all four parties have the same core ideology.

Democrats core ideology is actually closer to Republican. You're thinking of leftists.

Yeah. The same.

Not true. Look it up. Hitler wanted "free" healthcare, "free" college and a whole lot more stuff that the Democrats are fighting for right now. Leftists are identical to Nazis, communists, socialists and/or fascists. Democrats are just on the road to Nazism, communism, socialism and/or fascism. Biden is a full on fascist. Every time you hear him talk about "public/private partnerships", that's fascism. He (or rather those who control him because he's useless right now) are using private corporations to circumvent the Constitution. Private businesses, acting in accord or under orders of the government, can do things to their customers that the Constitution prevents the government from doing. That's why Facebook turned full on Nazi against conservatives and Christians.

When you hear Biden or some other Democrat talk about controlling misinformation and disinformation the only thing they mean by that is to control the narrative. They cannot allow conservatives to exercise their right to free speech. They do this by under the false premise that only liberal/leftist speech is correct, everything else is a lie.

Yeah. I totally agree. The problem is, Democrats aren't leftists. They're less conservative republicans. Joe Biden is literally just your average politician. Old, a puppet, stupid, and paid off. That's all politicians are today.

Aside from the Republicans constantly trying to play catch up to the Democrats on their march leftward, Democrats have nothing in common with the conservatives. I have to qualify that with the word conservative because Republican does not mean conservative. The majority of Republican voters are conservative but only a small handful of Republican politicians are conservative.

Back before Biden went senile he was always left of center and not by a little bit. But he's not running the country. Those who are actually running the country are leftists. Those who Biden pledged is full support to are the World Economic Forum. Their goal and objective is the destruction of capitalism. They want to do this with what they call the great reset. When they announced the great reset they also had a slogan to go with it, "build back better". The same slogan that Biden used as his campaign slogan. Because you cannot "build back" unless you first destroy. Global inflation and then hyper-inflation is one of the tools they are using to first destroy.

BTW I'm not a tin foil hat guy. I'm just watching it happen right before our eyes. I see what the WEF says they want to do and I am watching it unfold. It is the reason why Biden was installed, not elected, president. He is their puppet. They don't want someone with a functioning brain and that is why Biden is in office.

The Democrat party is NOT conservative. They're not even less conservative. They have zero interest in preserving the Constitution and our inalienable rights like conservatives do.

I wonder what your basis of comparison is. Democrats are not full on Marxist but they are the Marxist's best friend. Conservatives want nothing to do with Marx or any other form of socialism, collectivism or statism. We want the freedoms that is protected by the Constitution back. We want the government given to us by our founding fathers back. The only thing we do NOT want back from that era is slavery. We want the blessings of liberty for all regardless of race, ethnicity, creed, whatever. We want a very small, virtually powerless Federal government. We want all political power to be in the hands of the individual, not a collective. And we will allow city, county, state and federal government to have a very small and limited amount of that power just to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty".

I wish. :( It's really just corporations. We don't have the money to bribe politicians. Which is actually legal through a loophole.

The right to petition the government is not a loophole. What needs to be done is to repeal the 17th amendment. I don't know if that will help or not but requiring senators to be elected by the state governments might put an end to lobbyists paying off senators.

Then we need to get right of the the Woodrow Wilson era law that limits the size of the House of Representatives to 435.

Constitutionally it is supposed to be 1 Representative per 30,000 people. That way the people can be better represented and they can have a stronger voice. It also increases the number of House members which makes it harder on businesses to lobby for special favors.

You can't fit that many into a building any more but everything can be handled remotely and electronically.

There are businesses in America that the government has so over regulated that they are forced to hire teams of lobbyists just to run the business. That is evil.

Corporations by themselves are not evil. Most of them still just want to make a product that benefits people at a reasonable price with reasonably good quality. That doesn't excuse all corporations but they are no more or no less evil than the people of this country.

The farther away we push the morality that this nation was built on the more corrupt we become and the sooner our demise as a nation.

Ah.. ok that explains it. Back in your day, minimum wage was livable.

No it wasn't. $2.00/hr was not a living wage? Yeah things cost about a quarter of what they cost today but still, there was no way you could pay rent on $2.00/hr. It was raised eventually up to $3.75/hr before I started earning more than minimum wage but I was in high school and then college. After I started earning more than minimum wage I no longer paid any attention to what it was until recently when people started screaming about $15.00/hr. My jaw hit the floor. I remember when I was earning minimum wage, I thought that if I could earn $10.00/hr I would be set. When I started earning $10/hr I wondered what I was thinking. Not even $20/hr in the late 80's and early 90's wasn't very good to live on. You could pay rent in a crappy part of town (which is what I had to do back then) but it didn't leave room for much else.

However, I lived in So. California and the cost of living has always been higher in California. Perhaps if I lived in Mississippi or Alabama $20/hr would work.

But as long as we put lackies of the World Economic Forum in office (i.e. Democrats) they are going to do everything in their power to devalue our currency. No amount of minimum wage increases can keep up with how fast they have devalued our dollar.

And every minimum wage increase causes much more harm than good. McDonalds is pretty much all kiosk operated and in a few years they will be automating the entire operations. It won't be too long before all of them do that just to stay in business. Because the will not be able to afford to pay anyone to work at their restaurants.

The little guys, the mom and pop fast food restaurants will all just disappear and so will most of the regular sit down restaurants.

What no one who promotes minimum wage increase never ever take into consideration is the effects that it has. All they can think of is that no one can live on a minimum wage. You just gotta know that for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. When you raise the minimum wage it causes an opposite reaction. Prices go up and that wage increase gets eaten up by price increases.

So 12 years ago minimum wage was $7. According to your story, your house's value doubled. So the minimum wage should be $14.

Minimum wage is an abomination and should be done away with. It causes unemployment.

The way everything has worked out these days we have President Inflation in the White House and we have Obama who by taking over student loans caused tuitions to skyrocket. The result is that the poor get poorer and it becomes much harder to get out of that poverty.

People on the left can only see two inches in front of them so they demand minimum wage increases with knowing or caring about what that does. Now it is even harder for the poor because jobs are disappearing. Every time it increases more jobs are lost.

The minimum wage can never be tied to housing costs because, like I said, it was never a living wage. You were never able to afford a house living on minimum wage. Renting has always been barely live-able on minimum wage.

If people want a live-able wage then it is up to them to get the education and skills to make their work more valuable to an employer. That is how you get a living wage, not running to the federal government for every little thing.

Like Reagan said, "The government is not the solution to your problems, the government is the problem". So stop demanding minimum wage increases because you're shooting everyone in the foot by doing so.

Minimum wage stopped company stores. Do you remember those?

You'll need to explain that to me. Because it stopped a whole lot of stores, specifically little mom and pop stores, not just company stores. But if you're saying it was only company stores then I'll need an explanation of that.

Company stores as in back in the industrial revolution, company owners wouldn't pay workers, they'd give them store credits. Cuz there was no minimum wage, and ppl took it cuz they still had to eat.

But the company stores ended long before the minimum wage laws. What businesses relied on with people's loyalty to the company. It was ingrained into society and was a hold over from the European business models.

Most people at that time were still farmers but those who worked in the city were under the delusion that once you got the job you stayed their until you died. Retirement is a fairly new concept in the history of mankind. It was something only the rich could do.

Over the years the people started to realize that working at another company might be better for them than staying at the same job the rest of their lives. More and more people begin to do this and became more mobile. Businesses had to do something quick because they were losing employees so they stopped they company store nonsense and started offering reasons to stay. Henry Ford, told his employees that they only were going to work 8 hours per day while everyone else required many more hours. Eventually the unions came in and through collective barganing they started getting benefits that non union members didn't get. Then the non union workers through direct, singular bargaining demanded those benefits also.

It took decades and even in my time employers looked negative if you had too many jobs on your resume but that seems to have changed a little. The last time I had to look for a job tons changed. I'm a software developer, and it turns out that I've become a bit of a dinosaur because the industry changed so much. But the biggest shock is that I could apply for a job anywhere in the world and never have to move. I can telecommute, which is something software developers have been wanting ever since the internet was widely available because all we need is electricity, the internet and a computer (and it doesn't even have to be a laptop). Of all the bad that COVID-19 did there was one good thing that came out of it. It forced employers to allow their employees who could to telecommute. Managers had a wake up call when they saw productivity either remain the same or increase when they thought it would decrease.

Right now is the best time to be an employee but the worst time for anyone to be in and especially start a business. Pretty much it just plain sucks to be alive today. And the sad thing is Trump might fix it a little bit but not back to where we need to be and Biden is just going to make life more miserable for everyone, especially the poor.

That's because houses sold for 10k. Houses now go for 100k so the minimum wage should be $20 an hr.

When I bought my house 12 years ago it cost $220,000. It's now appraised at around $550,000. And the scary thing is I can't sell my house and collect all of that equity, then go buy another house because they all cost that much or more. Unless I move to you're state where houses sell for $100,000.

The best thing we can do to help the low income earners is 1st and foremost get rid of the Democrat Party. 2nd get rid of most if the Republicans. 3rd pay down the national debt and balance the budget. 4th fire 95% of all government employees. 5th Repeal the 16th amendment and eliminate the IRS completely. 6th repeal all laws that created social safety nets. 7th repeal the minimum wage law.

To a Democrat this sounds like the end of civilization but it is not. It's how we rebuild it after the Democrats destroyed civilization.

It is how the nation was formed. This way no one works part of the year for the government, they work for themselves. They work for their families, their communities and whomever else they CHOOSE to give any of their earnings to.

Then as the cost of EVERYTHING plummets we restore the gold standard that our money used to be based on.

The won't eliminate the poor, there will always be poor people in a free nation. However, history has shown that in a micromanaged socialist, communist, fascist, Nazi nation everyone is poor and much worse off that what we've ever had in America. And I know of that. My dad was born in a log cabin with dirt floors. I'm not making that up. He was born in 1917 in the hills of Alabama.

But in a truly free nation there is nothing standing in the way of improving your living situation. No government imposed burdens and regulations. This is not available in socialism, in fact trying to improve your life is punished. This is why we are far more socialistic than you think.

No, they fixed that with tech too. The new checkout lanes use AI to catch ppl now.

Maybe. AI is certainly an emerging tech but it is still in its infancy. But everyone is jumping on the bandwagon now that ChatGPT released their AI website. But ChatGPT can also make mistakes.

As a software developer I have asked it questions about code and is has given me example code that was broken. Although that there has been a huge improvement on that end in the last 6 months.

Eventually AI will take over my job but that's okay with me. I'll just retire.

So some of the really big stores might be using AI to catch thieves but that does not account for the smaller stores. But even so, the biggest brick and mortar retailer, Walmart, still (after all these years) does not have check outs that read the chip on your card. You have to insert the card or swipe it, but you can't wave it over the chip reader.

So not every one will be adopting to AI just yet. They have to make sure that it can recognize the difference between someone shoplifting and something like a woman putting something she legitimately owns in her purse at the checkout line. Or if a person bought a shirt at a clothing store and then returned to buy something else while wearing that shirt it needs to know the difference.

Yeah, cuz jobs don't want to hire more ppl. they save money the less ppl they hire. No business is going to throw money into an unnecessary part of their business.

All businesses are interested in automation of as many jobs as possible. With extra money, they're going to invest in things like self checkout renovations, so they can serve twice the amount of ppl with half of the staff.

"No business is going to throw money into an unnecessary part of their business."

Do you mean like research and development? What about when the economy picks up and they need more people to get more product out the door? Or what about when the business decided to create a new product and they need a new team to work that product?

No. None of that stuff ever happens at all. Nope. Businesses would much rather collapse to the ground then grow.

"All businesses are interested in automation of as many jobs as possible. With extra money, they're going to invest in things like self checkout renovations, so they can serve twice the amount of ppl with half of the staff."

All? Are you sure about that? All businesses have self checkouts? I haven't seen any at my job.

Self checkouts are actually one their way out. A lot of retailers are seeing that it is not the convenience they once thought for people and shoplifting has increased because of them. They are slowly phasing them out. There probably will always be one or two self checkout areas for people who are only buying 1 or 2 things but you're going to start seeing regular checkout lines coming back.

Eventually AI will become sophisticated enough where 75% or more of the current jobs will be done by AI. For some it will be a combination of AI and robotics (I don't mean robots like in Sci Fi books and movies, I mean like robotic arms or machines that perform specific tasks in production).

For software developers, we're going to have to find some other profession because I can already see just how much AI has encroached into my job. I use it quite a bit to ask for example code to use. One day it will write the software. There will always need to be someone to tell AI exactly what it is they need but they most likely won't need to know how to write software.

AI will seem like a panacea to a lot of businesses at first and a ton of jobs will just disappear but I don't think that business model is sustainable and eventually those jobs will start coming back. Especially when you consider the fact that if AI can write complicated software it can also make business decisions and follow market trends, making CEO's obsolete also.

No. Job competition was too high. Ppl got more rights cuz they protested.

Job competition is only high when the Democrats are in the White House and in charge of Congress. There becomes too many people looking to fill not enough jobs. That all changes when the Republicans are in control of the government.

Benefits are not right. They never were rights. They are benefits.

A right is a freedom that does not infringe on someone else's freedom. That is all a right ever was and ever is. Getting health insurance at a discounted rate is not a right. Health care is not a right. Neither of them can ever be rights because in order for you to have them you have to infringe on someone else's freedom.

The only reason I am explaining what a right is because the left seems to think a right is anything they want it to be. But it is not. It has a specific definition. Anything that infringes on someone else's freedom is called a privilege.

So if an employer offers to pay part of your health insurance, that is a voluntary gift by the employer to try to incentivize you to continue working for them. We tend to take that for granted but it is a privilege because it infringes on the rights of the business to give you something that you did not work for. It is also a benefit because your employer gives that to you voluntarily.

That's not how job competition works. Supply and demand only changes when less or more ppl get a certain type of job education or the population increases and decreases.

So if a business decides to invest into itself and hire more people that has no affect on the job supply? So when Democrats are in power and businesses sit tight on their money trying to wait the Dems out, that has no effect on the job supply.

It was more than obvious what happened in November of 2016. I saw it. It was amazing. Hillary lost and overnight the ecnomy turned around because all of those businesses that were just trying to hold together through the Obama years breathed a massive sigh of relief that Hillary lost. It had absolutely nothing to do with Trump winning and everything to do with Hillary losing. Well maybe a little bit to do with Trump. He came from the business world so most businesses figured he knew how businesses operate and taxing and regulating them to death is no good for anyone (and I mean anyone, not just the business owners).

It is all about supply and demand but what causes the supply and the demand has a whole lot to do with government policy not just consumer demand. If the government policy was to stay completely out of the way this entire country would benefit. The amount of prosperity would be something never seen before in this country so far. It would be the polar opposite of the Great Depression. We saw bits and pieces of that under Calvin Coolidge and Ronald Reagan and no one else.

so the Walmart where I live has actually renovated to have all self checkouts and so have all the other stores in my city. Maybe in smaller cities the smaller businesses have different priorities. I'm all for small businesses. But on a global corporation scale, I know that priorities are automation.

It was an article I read. The trend is to go back to cashiers because self-checkouts are costing them a lot more in stolen merchandise. I haven't seen that happen where I live either. Our Walmart just reorganized all of their checkouts. It is no longer the traditional approach where check outs are all in a row. You enter the check out area one at a time. If all checkouts are full then you wait at the entrance. One one side are the self-checkouts and on the other side are a handful of checkouts with cashiers.

Personally I don't think self-checkouts will completely disappear. A lot of people like them and even more don't. Minimum wage increases, crime and consumer demand will ultimately drive the future of self-checkouts. If the store is in a safer area they might end up keeping the self-checkouts but in crime ridden areas the self-checkout will most likely disappear. And in California where it is now somewhat legal to shoplift under a $1,000 worth of merchandise, businesses are just closing down stores instead.

Stores that are barely turning a profit cannot withstand minimum wage increases and the more the left pushes for that the more everything becomes self-serve.

Every time there is a minimum wage increase to make it easier to live, the cost of living and unemployment goes up. It is a paradox that cannot be solved. You cannot raise the minimum wage without the cost of living going up to eat up the increase in wages. It is a death spiral that affects everyone, not just the poor.

I don't think you've worked retail.

What does working retail have to do with anything? And yes, I have worked retail.

Companies put up little propaganda everywhere. I've never seen a chain company without it.

Do you mean ads to sell more products? Do you have some sort of problem with that?

The entire reason why anyone starts a business or gets a job is to earn money so they have a much better standard of living than if they spent all of their time making the things they need all by themselves.

Money is not the problem, it never was. The problem is narcissistic people with no morals. They only live and work for themselves in the short term. They never think about the long term. If they did they would do things like put up ads in their store to try to sell more products so that they can pay their employees, their suppliers, their creditors, the government and then themselves with what's left over. If they are successful then what is left over is enough for them to live better.

Short term narcissistic thinkers only look at other people as obstacles they need to overcome to get their money. They usually have to do this their entire lives and they never get rich. Occasionally you find someone who struck it rich this way but they typically lose all of their money because cheating people is not sustainable.

One of the biggest problems with socialists is they can't tell the difference between the schyster and the honest business owner. They they are all the same and they're not. No two people are the same and, therefore, no two businesses are the same.

Which is another reason why socialism can never work in the long term. It looks at everyone as identical. It's a one-size-fits-all type of government. It rewards failure and punishes success.

That's not how the job market works. Jobs are filled on the basis of supply and demand. Minimum wage isn't enough for an adult to raise a family on so any minimum wage employee is probably a kid, and old person, mother, or a homeless person.

I never said jobs were not filled based on supply and demand. If a business has a low supply of employees and a higher demand for their product then they will need to hire people. That is how it has always been. What I was talking about was the business relationship between the employee and employer. If a businesses sales are down they have to cut back. Employees are NOT the first to go in most businesses. Many times they will decrease the pay of upper management, then pay cuts for middle management. The pay cuts for everyone and then finally they will start lay offs.

It's supply and demand. But that does not change the business relationship between you and your employer. You provide a service and your employer pays you money for your service. If you cannot provide the service at the level the employer demands then the employer has the option of trying to help you or after a period of time they will let you go. Most employers do not want to lose employees, despite what popular opinion is right now. It costs the business more money to train the new guy then to fire a guy who knows how to perform the job.


At no point in my entire 66 years of life did I ever think that the minimum wage was meant to be a living wage. I never even heard of that until about 15 or 20 years ago. Someone started telling people that the minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage.

That is just wrong on so many levels. And what makes it worse is it teaches people that they should be able to support a family on it.

The left is always so pious about helping the poor. When they get that increase, prices go up and some of those wage earners lose their jobs. So they demand for it to go higher which, in turn, prices go up again and more people lose their jobs. It happens every time there is a minimum wage increase.

The only ones who benefit from this are the unions. Their salaries are tied to the minimum wage. When it goes up, union workers salaries go up. And because unions will threaten a business, businesses usually capitulate to the unions rather than laying off union members. Union members see this as a win but it has an overall negative effect on the economy. Their salaries are already artificially high which affects the price of union made products.

Love... That's propaganda. I love you so much, but companies only have 1 reason to increase wages and it's not how successful they are, it's to keep job retention high. Any minimum wage job is not going to care about it at all.

This is where you are not accurate. There are lots of businesses that don't seem to give a flying crap about their employees but there are also a whole lot more who actually do care. And the care is not feigned for employee retention.

In minimum wage jobs it's not easy finding that kind of care but it happens. It depends on the employee and the employer. But so manu business managers and owner are very leery of minimum wage employees. That's because they get burned repeatedly by bad employees.

I've worked for several companies where there was a real family kind of atmosphere and I worked for cold "couldn't care less" companies.

The companies that do profit sharing, bonuses and/or give raises are trying to retain good employees. There is nothing wrong with that. That's really the only way they can show they want you and more importantly need you so that the business is successful.

But you see it is the relationship between you and your employer is what makes the difference. It's a two way street. You have to give as much as you get.

If you go about thinking they are only out to screw you then that is all you're going see, ever. It is not their responsibility to provide you with a job. You are free to leave anytime you want. If you really want to work for that company then you need to do whatever it takes to make that company successful. It's a mutual contract. You told them when they hired you that you have the qualifications to perform the work they need to get done. They told you that they will pay you for your ability to get that work done. It's a mutual contract and relationship. It's really no different then when you buy groceries. The store promises to have what need and you promise to pay them. It's the same arrangement. You essentially are hiring the store to perform they're job and in return you promise them a paycheck.

No I mean like in the break room they'll say things like... We're a family! But they do that to manipulate ppl to get them to do better output.

Is there a problem with that? Don't the people being "manipulated" benefit from that? If they all work together towards a common objective then they all stand a better chance of keeping their jobs by keeping the business successful.

Thanks. I'll make sure to take your advice.

(when hell freezes over)

"At no point in my entire 66 years of life did I ever think that the minimum wage was meant to be a living wage. I never even heard of that until about 15 or 20 years ago. Someone started telling people that the minimum wage is supposed to be a living wage."

False.
FDR, remember? Communism, remember?
You very well know that he intended minimum wage to be a living wage. That's kind of the point - minimum, get it? It doesn't mean just enough to buy a loaf of bread on the way home from work on payday.

"False." ?????

So then are you telling me that there was one or more points in my life where I did think that the minimum wage was a living wage?????

So let me get this straight. You keep a profile on everyone here. You make copies of everything I say. I'm not sure about others because I either haven't seen you repost their image of past comments. So I at least know that you have targeted me and I don't know why I am so special. Surely you must keep other people's comments as well.

Now you are telling me what I have thought over the course of my life?

Who are you? You're not my mother because she passed away. And my dad died years before she did. You're not my brother because he died also.

What covert branch of the government do you work for? And why target me? I'm a nobody. It must have been an extremely boring assignment.

FDR wasn't a communist, Eleanor was but not FDR. FDR leaned socialist but not very much. Also, and you should know this because you have been keeping track of me my entire life, FDR died before I was born. So, no. I don't remember FDR.

I knew that FDR instituted the minimum wage but even when he did it was never a living wage. If he ever said it was (which he could have because I never looked into what he intended the minimum wage to be) he did what all Democrat politicians do, he lied.

It was just another failed policy that he used to lie to the public about getting us out of the Great Depression. All he ever did was to cause the depression to last longer.

And what right does the government have to tell an employer how much they can pay their employees? NONE.

What right did FDR have to tell businesses what their hours of operation were to be? NONE.

What right did he have to employees of private businesses that they were not allowed to work overtime so they could feed their families during his Great Depression? NONE

What right did he have to confiscate everyone's gold? NONE

What right did he have to lock up innocent Americans of Japanese, Italian and German ancestry? NONE

FDR was the worst president we have ever had. Biden is pretty close. He locked up innocent protestors without due process, without legal representation and without being told the crime they committed.

Obama was pretty close when he signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 which gave Biden the illegitimate power to indefinitely lock up innocent Americans.

Woodrow Wilson, Carter and LBJ were also awful.

No. Ppl can talk to a politician and say I'll donate this much to a firm that advertises for you, if you do x in exchange.

Yes. That is corruption and unfortunately it is protected by the 1st amendment. It is not the purpose of the 1st amendment. The right to redress your government for grievance never excluding businesses. Congress can and do pass laws that hurt certain businesses and those businesses have a right to redress the government.

What we need is politicians with integrity. Ones who will not make special exceptions or allowances for businesses or anyone else for that matter, in exchange for kickbacks.

As long as there are Democrats that will never happen because Democrats have no morals.

I'm reading 1984 and this is so doublethink. You willingly believe that all politicians but the ones you support are bad. They're both clearly the same kind of bad.

I believe that ANY politician who does not strongly support the Constitution as it was originally intended does not support freedom.

What is believe is the poler opposite of the society in the book 1984. 1984 was about communism. Orwell was a socialist (who could see how dangerously close he was to communism) who wrote his book to describe communism.

Conservatives in America are 180° opposite of socialism and communism.

For you to compare me to the communism in Orwell's book means you do not understand my position at all.

Orwell was actually part of a political party that was more closely aligned with anarchic communism than the Democratic socialism he proclaimed himself to be.

Perhaps he was both. Apparently you know more about him that I do. I started reading 1984 and it just depressed me too much so I stopped reading it. I don't remember where I heard that Orwell was a socialist but it was quite a few years ago. I did see that stupid movie that was made in 1984 starring John Hurt as Winston Smith.

Maybe Orwell just liked the idea of communal living but as far as the government he believed in "Democrat Socialism". Vladimir Lenin also thought of himself as a Democratic Socialist. Josef Stalin called himself an "International Socialist".

An anarchic communist is NOT the same thing has a Marxist communist. I'm sure Marx has probably had some influence among anarchical communists but that type of communism predates Marx.

Orwell was born in India and ended up being captured by soviet's during the cold war for being roughly an Anarcho communist instead of a Marxist. He escaped to Britain, which if you remember was a NATO power involved not as majorly with democratic propaganda as America was. None of this was ever written into law, but it's common knowledge that communists, Russians, and Asians had various war crimes committed against them due to their affiliation with pearl harbor/Russia.

Wow. I never knew that. Thanks for that info. I love history.

What was the connection with Russia and Pearl Harbor. That is entirely new to me.

Orwell was a political fugitive for a good part of this life. You weren't allowed to be Communist back then.

Orwell was British. I don't know but I don't think the UK passed any laws against being a communist. That being the case, 1984, was his indictment of communism as being cruel. So why would the Brits bother him if he hated communism so much?

If he was a political fugitive there must have been some other law he broke because he certainly wasn't a communist.

[image deleted] Correct, the fact is, as usual, you don't know what you're talking about.

Redo, somehow the top caption slipped off to the right of the original during production.

It would be a huge mistake on your part (but then when isn't it) to think (something libs are incapable of) that conservatives have not read 1984. I would have to say that 1984 is read by more conservatives than libs because conservatives want to get a heads up on what life will be like when the libs get control. They've also read Brave New World and Atlas Shrugged for the same reason.

It's just me. I started it but it was just to depressing and I really wasn't in the mood to be depressed at the time. So I stopped reading it. I did read Atlas Shrugged and that one wasn't depressing. I did skip over John Galt's 3 hour radio ramble because I got the jist of it in the first few paragraphs, plus Ayn Rand had already said everything he said in his ramble, 300 times before in the book.

Russia and pearl harbor weren't connected, I included it just cuz it was the reason for Japanese internment camps in that era.

Ok. Thanks.

You even have 1984 backwards - almost.

It's about 1948, hence the title, get it?
And it's Winston Smith, not Vinstonova Smizeski. Gin & cigarette smoking Winston Smith, Victory brand. Oh, and he lives in London.

1984 is about Totalitarianism and the perils of... It isn't a critique of just the USSR, hence why it has three world powers which have divided up the entire planet between them and they're all playing the same game. It's based on Orwell's own experience working for the BBC. As propagandist. Not to the extent that Smith did, but he did alter the truth in order to disseminate it for purposes mandated by the British government during his stint working for them.

And the movie with John Hurt was excellent. John Hurt WAS Winston Smith. Totally as the character was an envisioned.

Perhaps you should have read the book, instead of reading a snippet of it as you said you did and then dropped it. When referencing something as much as you do that book, it works slightly better a lot if you're actually aware of what you're referencing.

Thanks for the biography on the book and the movie.

The book was written in 1948, it wasn't set in 1948
The book is a critique of Marxist communism. You are from the USSR.
Someone had to like that movie. But I am pretty sure you were not sympathetic with Winston Smith.

You didn't read 1984. It's about to totalitarian governments, not liberal ones.

But hey, keep citing your ignorance, you're validating the depths of your ignorance.

An example of a socialist policy would be abolishing renters or the stock market.

A communist policy would be the consolidation and distribution of food.

Socialists do not abolish renters, they just change who they pay rent to. The central planners (the government) becomes the landlord as the government then owns everything.

Of course they want to get rid of the stock market. The stock market sprang up out of what Marx called capitalism. The stock market is not a part of a free market, it was just formed because of the freedom that is found in a free market. It is a tool where businesses can find financing to operate their businesses. It is also a means of building a retirement portfolio so that those who invest can live more comfortably than could under social security.

Socialism predates Marx but it is the foundation that he build his version of communism on. It is also the foundation of Nazism and fascism. Today all of the above is just variations of Marxism because Marx had such a profound impact on those ideologies.

The glaring omission in all of those ideologies is the protection and promotion of individual liberty and the protection of our inalienable rights. In fact it is the destruction of individual liberty and our inalienable rights. It gives all power to the collective. They tell you that the collective are the people but the people have no control, all power and ownership is given to the central planners.

They promise all sorts of wonderful benefits of this type of government, yet not one single country in the world who has tried any of the variants of socialism have ever followed through on their promises. What they all give instead, is extreme poverty, misery and death, lots and lots of death. 100 million deaths in the 20th century.

People like Bernie Sanders always point to Scandinavia as the bastions of socialist success but what Sanders and other fail to see is those countries were about to fall apart when the tried socialism. They had to take a huge step back and open the markets back up just so they wouldn't collapse their economies. They still are more socialistic than we are but they could be so much better if they dumped socialism altogether. But socialism seems to be so very deeply ingrained in Europeans minds that they just think it is normal.

Considering that only 5% of the world's population from the beginning of man until now have ever known freedom, then I guess socialism is normal. Freedom (which is our birthright) is rare.

No... Your confusing two types of private property. One is the stuff you use like your toothbrush and the other is stuff you own, but you have no intention of using and instead make others pay to use it. Socialism abolishes the latter.

And the stock market wouldn't be TOTALLY gone, it's just that ppl wouldn't be able to buy into it, stock would be how workers get paid. All workers would just share the company profits. No minimum wage.

How is it that I can own property and make other people pay to use it? If I am charging a fee for using my land then I have to offer something more than just the right to walk on it.

The only thing I can think of that remotely fits your description is those who charge hunters for access to land. That's a pretty small niche group to cause a fuss over. And even at that they are giving them value for their money.

But all of those collectivist variations of socialism are about destroying all private property rights. If people are telling you that it is something else then they are lying. Just the way all governments work, if you give them an inch they will take a billion light years.

Stock is how workers get paid??? How does that make any sense? To participate in the stock market a business sells off part of itself to investors (i.e. retirement funds, private citizens, other businesses, etc). When they do that they are essentially taking out a loan. That loan is for paying salaries, research and development, resources, production costs and/or overhead costs.

Abolishing the stock market is essentially just killing off all publicly traded businesses. When that happens a whole lot of people will no longer be able to get the supplies they need just to live.

This is the problem with all of the stock market haters. Is there corruption in the stock market? Yes. There is corruption in everything. Corrupt people tend to seek power and wealth.

If you're going to take down everything that can be corrupted then that puts an immediate end to socialism, communism, fascism and Nazism because they are corrupt by design. Anarchy then becomes the only option. But I am not an anarchist. I still believe in restoring the original intent and purpose of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

No bro. It's a different definition. You're getting the definitions confused. They mean getting rid of renting apartments. Ppl wouldn't be allowed to scalp products either. Property held by non-human entities. Property held by companies.

All company property is owned by the workers.
The workers pay for the stock in work and they own the company. Like any small business. It keeps businesses smaller and diversifies the market. That way there's more competition, so better products get made.

Socialism is not the solution, it is the cause of the problems.

Taking away any kind of private ownership is and claiming it is just these few things is just a ruse. If you give any government that kind of power they will take it all. Especially a socialist government.

If I start a business and I spend my money on buying or building a building to house that business, that property belongs to me. If you give it to the workers then that business will collapse. That does not work, nor has it ever worked.

Workers can already buy stock in the company they work for if it is publicly traded. If it is not then the business owner owns 100% of the stock.

Why is keeping a business smaller a goal? That makes no sense. Some businesses cannot possibly produce the products they do without being large. How are you going to run a cellular telephone business without it being a large corporation?

What you are talking about is not freedom. It is government micromanaging how business can run. That is the biggest mistake you can make. It will send us back to the dark ages in no time.

That used to be how everything worked tho. It worked fine back then. And socialists don't use that definition private property. You're only gonna find it used in certain books. Most just specify landlords as being abolished.

I'm also not talking about freedom or a solution. This is just an economic type. I know so many ppl that run socialist business models and they work fine so I know it can work.

But you guys are so scared of something that's so far away from ever happening. That's the kind of stuff leftists prefer, but it's never going to happen without any actual socialists in any position of political power.

So we opt to work in the system to get things like, better worker rights and a minimum wage that adjusts proportionally to inflation. And like... We want gay/trans rights put in the bill of rights. That would be nice. but that's just any pro-lgbtq person. Some democrats even put that on their platform.

We're about 75% socialist now. You think your house belongs to you? Try stop paying property taxes and see how fast you get kicked off your land. The city/county government is my unwanted landlord.

How does a socialist business model even work? That makes no sense. Are you talking about communes? Where everyone in the commune works to produce a product?

However a product is produced it still needs to be traded to generate wealth. So the commune might be a microcosm of socialism it cannot survive unless what they produce is traded. The trade can be a barter or for money, it's all the same and it's all free market economics (aka capitalism).

The free market is just the natural state of being in a civil society. So is private property ownership. Mankind cannot be free otherwise. There is always someone controlling people without private property ownership, a free market and, to maintain a civil society, a strong sense of morality.

"But you guys are so scared of something that's so far away from ever happening."

The fear is that with small amounts of socialism in our government we are less free.

The fear is loss of freedom. Socialism is like a cancer, once it gets into a government it eventually takes over. And despite what you think, it is far more entrenched than you think. I mean, Bernie Sanders can proclaim himself a socialist and he doesn't get ran out of town on a rail. And if you ask me, I think Sanders won the 2016 and 2020 Democrat primaries. He was cheated out of the win by election fraud because the WEF can't control him like they can Dementia Joe. Hillary is already 100% on board with the WEF. She was supposed to win the presidency in 2016 but they miscalculated Trumps popularity and they didn't create enough fake votes. Something they were never going to let happen in 2020. But they got sloppy and everyone noticed. So the media ran a great big "you never saw that" campaign and too many people just accept whatever the media tells them.

So it seems like you're using a different definition for socialism than the ppl who call themselves socialists.

It's kinda orwellian. They're telling you that socialists want basically authoritarian rule, but it's mostly just adjustments to our current market to close the wage gap.

I love you. But your could consider that politicians are lying about what socialists/leftists want. Cuz we're just as unhappy with things too.

Also socialist businesses work by all members of the business taking home a cut of the profit directly. That's all it is. That's what we want. No wages, just workers sharing the profit according to how much they work.

Thanks for the love, and right back at you.

That's why I don't listen to politicians for information. I'll listen to them to know what they support or don't support but never for facts. And even then I don't trust them if they say they support X, Y and Z. Too many of them lie.

Profit sharing is not socialism. The employees are not co-owners of the business. Profit sharing is a means of reward. If everyone works hard and does their job the best of their ability and because of that the business increases their profits then they are able to trickle down part of their increase. If the business has a bad year they either stop or significantly reduce profit sharing. But at no point does the business share ownership with the employees, nor does the business require forfeiture of all of the employees assets to work there.

There were businesses who ran more socialistic at the turn of the 20th century. They only allowed their employees to buy from the company store. They locked the exits during business hours and they required long work days. Employees were looked as just a means to an end and they were expendable. That's much closer to socialism.