alt Hacker NewsThis is why immigrants are often the most exemplar people of the American Dream today. Most of the people today pushing socialist or communist agendas are not these immigrants, but instead children of very wealthy company owners that only saw a downward trend from their parent's trajectory. It's from that privileged that they found fighting for other people their cause. However it's misguided and they don't even understand this. They're in a small class of very privileged people, and they're pushing an ideology that has taken so many people from the world. And they don't understand that most people just want a meaningful job, not handouts and not free stuff. Meanwhile these people just keep pushing it to college students and the cycle continues. No matter how many times you tell them that it hasn't worked before they always respond with well it hasn't been done "right", and even current attempts in the United States are causing nearly unlimited fraud, they won't listen. The current philosophy of these people is to break the United States so badly that the only trajectory could be up. It's almost like they're seeing their own failures as people and want to replicate it for the country. Stop treating everyone as a victim, stop being a victim and you'll see the world shine.
Steps off soap box.
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Most socialists and communists have an ideological blind spot in that they don't understand how to create any wealth in the first place. Based on their policy proposals they implicitly seem to believe that the means of production just appear from somewhere, like a gift from a benevolent parent. And that wealth can be redistributed based on ideological whims without destroying it — or without preventing it from being created in the first place. This is an example of magical thinking.
> And they don't understand that most people just want a meaningful job, not handouts and not free stuff.
Wanting my tax dollars to go to children who can’t access food is not begging for a handout - you’re repeating middle school Republican propaganda at this point.
I’m a success story, but unlike you I’ve developed some empathy for the very real cycle of poverty I myself got out of, instead of the jingoistic “just create value”.
> They're in a small class of very privileged people, and they're pushing an ideology that has taken so many people from the world.
This is exactly how I feel about your ideology - that if only people would stop being a victim and think outside the box instead of complaining then they would see a better world. You’ve never dealt with disability or not being able bodied, you don’t see the value in anything other than what makes money.
There’s a spec of truth in it - some people turn their minds off and think of themselves as victims. I think of myself as a survivor, and a lucky one at that. I’ve overcome a lot and I can see where if many things outside of my control went the other way I could be dead right now. Wanting the path to be more clear for the next person is exactly the “see the world shine” that you advocate for.
We have the highest concentration of wealth ever in this country, because that’s what this system produces right now. Has it improved the world for the average person or made it worse?