IMO, As someone who is successful at life with little to no effort, I'll say luck plays a HUGE part in my success, way more than working hard if that's even a factor.

I own my nice home and 3/4 acre yard outright, and 4 cars, a racecar, a pond I can swim in, solar power, orchard, etc.
Most of the money that bought these things came from the luck of being born into a fairly wealthy family and outliving a few. I broke my back at 31 and essentially retired.
I feel like I'm more successful than most Americans financially and elsewise, with zero debt, multiple assets, a long and stable marriage, etc....and I feel I've put less effort into achieving these things than most people. The only logical explanation I can come up with is luck, including the luck of my birth with decent genes and money for nothing.

Reagan happened.

That's when Republicans became the party that worked to serve the interests of corporations and wealthy individuals. To do that they needed to get people to vote against their own interests. To accomplish this, they've resorted to increasingly extreme methods to attract votes from easily manipulated people.

America is in for a serious wake up call when schools don't reopen, because spoiler alert. They're not reopening. And guess what, there's no alternative child care that will be available. Really. None. This is fine for the upper middle class and the wealthy, they can afford it, but the middle and lower class are going to be absolutely destroyed. Having a child unable to return to school means they can't work.

Don't believe me? here's what's going to happen. Currently in my state there's already a shortage of substitutes. They've cancelled classes numerous times because they simply can't find a sub when a teacher is sick. Now imagine what happens when a school has an outbreak and 30 or 40 students and staff gets sick. It's going to completely destroy the school, and the morale of teachers who are still there will be in the toilet. The classes they do continue are going to be absolutely worthless. The teachers will be miserable, and so will the kids. Now imagine the fact that school districts in Republican counties will refuse to shut down.You think these teachers are going to continue going to work and risking their lives? Nope. Not for what they get paid. So eventually the teachers union is going to stand up for the working conditions, and if they don't go online, they're going to strike. This will effectively shut down public schools across the entire US and costs billions and billions of dollars. But here's the worst part, all these schools that follow Betsy Devos' advice, and are taking the Republican approach of "stay in school no matter what!" are going to have zero alternate plans. You think it was bad back in march when schools were closing and didn't know what the fuck to do, take that times ten. Now, we've got another complication on top of everything else, and that's that parents are already fucking crazy about their kids education. They're not only going to be losing their shit because their kids will have to stay home, and they can't work, but their kids also won't be getting educated. Think of the gathering of the juggalos, and imagine it's Karens at a school board meeting. That's where we're headed. It's going to be an absolute shit show, and all because Americans are too fucking dumb and arrogant to simply wear a mask, and social distance for a few weeks. really, we could have this behind us like the rest of the world, but we've got to sit in time out and watch 100s of thousands die because we're acting like toddlers.

I would encourage everyonw to watch the latest interview with Betsy Devos. When asked what should be done when there's an outbreak at schools she said "we need to reopen schools", when asked again, she just repeated herself. They literally have no alternate plan. None. When the outbreaks happen, these schools are going to close, and the schools will have no contingency plans. Because the leadership in the US has been so abysmal, and the rich people making decisions have nothing to worry about. Fuck the poor, make them bring their kids to work, that's where we're at.

This looks a lot like Trump's future goals for the US, as he takes any wealth from the middle class and hands it to the wealthy corporations. There is no mistaking who is really benefiting from Trumps decisions and policies. and it's not you.

It's certainly one of the easier "conspiracy theories" to believe. There were almost certainly a number of powerful people who wanted what Epstein knew to remain secret, and were thrilled that he died. It's super plausible that someone would arrange for him to be killed. Hell, there could've been competing hit-persons all trying to get the job done first for their particular wealthy child-diddling client.

Compare that to something like flat earth - why the fuck would anyone bother to hide that? Who would actually benefit from conspiring to make people think the earth is round rather than flat?

I tried to look up some information on this Charlie Kirk....

This guy holds no credibility, and is basically a laughing stock all over the internet.
He is essentially a "Culture Warrior" bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers. His job is to create fictitious propaganda which benefits the Koch agenda and seed it in as many places as possible.

Even Conservative groups are speaking out against him. (Young America’s Foundation) “The long-term damage TPUSA could inflict on conservative students and the Conservative Movement can no longer be ignored..."

Turning Point USA, Charlie's pet project, is an astroturf nonprofit funded by the Koch brothers in order to make old conservatism look cool and appealing to millennials by sharing/posting/reposting cringeworthy memes and image macros.

Charlie Kirk was born into a wealthy Illinois family.
-His father, Robert W. Kirk, was the project architect manager for Trump Tower in New York.
-Charlie became politically active c. 2010, when he joined the Tea Party.
-He is an evangelical Christian, who believes that atheism leads to socialism.
-Kirk blames much moral failure in communist countries on atheism.
-Charlie claims that undocumented immigrants don't have rights because they aren't citizens. About a month earlier, while delivering a speech, he said that rights don't come from governments

Bob said that her line of argument (selling regulation policy changes for self enrichment), is less of an obvious motivation for someone who enters politics already wealthy.

That's a perfectly fine statement to make, as there is less to gain.



Net effect wise, nothing has changed for the average person. So I would argue that POTUS is more ineffectual than able to make things exponentially anything.

-scheherazade

You are both saying the same thing.

The only difference is that the cynicism isn't consistently applied to everyone who warrants it.

(I heavily suspect that when the money doesn't add up - someone is making money on the side. And it just so happens that they are in the position to sell regulatory capture, so it is the most likely candidate.)




In this case AOC is on point (granted that Trump is wealthy prior to office).

If I were to criticize her, it would not be for this stuff.
(It would be for identitarianism [vs individualism])



The guilt so far is the sort of guilt everyone has. Not saying everything is kosher - just saying that everyone is guilty, malfeasance or not.

There is a saying, show me the man, I'll show you the crime.

I'm sure that the FBI can look closely enough to everyone related to trump and find something to convict everyone of. It may not be foreign influence related, but it will be something. They can even drag things out until the prez is out of office before going after the juicy targets.

-scheherazade

Jesus, is it not enough to be handsome, famous and insanely wealthy? Do you dickheads have to be funny and charismatic too?

I hate you, you awesome bastards.

I'm always unsure why people seem to have a problem with this. I suspect it's tort-reform-propaganda at work.

The amount of civil cases filed, aka access to the court system by the general public, should be considered an integral part of a healthy democracy.

"How often plaintiffs sue will also turn on the predictability
of the courts. Recall the standard model of litigation and settlement.

Litigation is more expensive than settlement, so disputants do best if they settle their quarrels out of court, all else equal. Suppose they know what a court will do. If so, they can settle their dispute by that expected litigated outcome and pocket the fees they would otherwise have paid their lawyers. The point is simple: if they know what a judge will do, they have no reason to ask him. Under this model, disputants primarily litigate rather than settle only when they each hold optimistic estimates of their prospects in court."

"Coffee spills, Pokemon class actions, tobacc o settlements. American courts have made a name for themselves as a wild lo ttery and a money machine for a lucky few lawyers. At least in part, however, the reput ation is unfounded. Ameri can courts seem to handle routine contract and to rt disputes as well as th eir peers in other wealthy democracies.

More generally, Americans do not file an unusually high numb er of law suits. They do not employ large numbers of judges or lawyers. They do not pay more than people in comparable countries to enforce contracts. And they do not pay unusually high prices for insurance against routine torts. "

http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/pdf/Ramseyer_681.pdf

Not wanting to get rich in Norway? Not wanting toys? Meh.
Military spending in Norway per capita? We're in 7th place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita

In Scandinavia anyone can get wealthy. Anyone can get a proper college education.

Health care? In the US you spend more per capita than in Scandinavia.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-spending/u-s-health-spending-twice-other-countries-with-worse-results-idUSKCN1GP2YN

I quite prefer the model here, and wouldn't switch for the world.
Sure I pay a lot of taxes - half my salary goes to taxes, and I pay 25% VAT on the rest - but I do get value for my money; education, health care, pension and a good infrastructure.

And hey - to help other countries - how about we add up the military spending we use with with how much we spend on development aid:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_country_donors

I wish we could just transfer some of the extreme wealth of the wealthy and put it into infrastructure, jobs, sustainable energy, free education, free healthcare, etc. Because fuck them, they have way too much money and I certainly haven't seen anything good come from the elites in this country having that much money while the working class has remained stagnant for the last 40 years.

Taking you seriously for a moment, I've never understood the armed militia/tyrannical government idea. Personally, I'd trust a soldier long before I'd trust a corporation or a judge, and never a lawyer. It's not the army people need to fear, they are us, it's the wealthy whose outlooks are alien.

Former friends of mine had a remarkable business surge that took them from lower middle class WELL into the 1%. The diminished empathy that came along with it is why they're former friends, not current ones. It was gross how their attitudes and beliefs changed.

My brain is moving slow this morning. But it sounds like an argument that wealthy people should stop hoarding wealth and allow more equitable distribution because they'll be better off. But they already have all the wealth in the current system, so you're not incentivizing them to change their patterns.

If you're arguing for a new system that doesn't allow the amassing of wealth by a small percentage of people, you're going to have an uphill battle because money = speech and thus, those with the money have more rights to decide how the system works.