In his remarks, not only does Johnson claim Roe “gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children,” but he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: “Think about the implications of that on the economy. We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest,” Johnson says. “If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this… Roe was a terrible corruption.” Mind you, social security and health care have been gutted in the last several years by Republican lawmakers, not people who choose to end a pregnancy.

  • weedazz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I love how they don’t realize these unaborted kids are likely going to be unwanted, unloved, impoverished, lack education…and instead of turning into “able bodies workers” they will turn into the criminals Republicans think lurk around every corner ready to shoot them

    • ourob@discuss.tchncs.de
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      Oh they are fully aware. More criminals means more prisoners, which means more money for the prison industrial complex and super cheap (basically slave) labor.

    • Restaldt@lemmy.world
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      Thats exactly what they want.

      They need poor uneducated voters to stay in power.

      They need poor uneducated criminals to hate lest they focus on themselves and tear themselves apart.

    • TurboDiesel@lemmy.world
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      I don’t think they’re unaware of that at all. Until those kids become criminals, most of them will have to survive somehow. Given their presumed lack of education and prospects, that means meat to throw in the “entry level” grinder.

    • fluxion@lemmy.world
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      More “leeches on society” that they also pretend are the single source of all Americas budget problems

    • AFaithfulNihilist@lemmy.world
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      They need live births so they can grow up to be dead soldiers. Those are their favorite constituents because neither one votes.

      • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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        And also because the Republicans can project their views on those groups.

        “If the ‘unborn baby’ or dead soldier could talk, they’d say that we should absolutely overturn this election result and name Trump President again. After all, he will protect the unborn (unless they happen to reside in his mistress) and what did those soldiers die for if not President For Life Trump?!!!”

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      Well, if you think about it, in order to take over in a democracy, you have to break the democracy first. This is simply a necessary first step towards accomplishing the given goal. There would be no other method that might work here, since military coups are particularly difficult when we make our whole army swear an oath to defend a specific piece of paper from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

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      I’m tired of asking this question but I guess I’m going to have to start asking people in this site, too:

      What are you going to do about it?

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    We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid

    Yeah and a bunch of extra kids surely won’t increase costs of Medicaid.

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      This was the take I was going to comment. If Republicans are so into running the government like a business, the per unit net income of each additional human would have to be positive for this argument to work. And if that were the case the programs he seems so worried about wouldn’t have a problem to begin with. It’s not like there are flat costs that, through volume alone, will make the program profitable.

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      This guy isn’t planning past his own lifetime. Those kids will be someone eases problem. He just wants to make sure that he gets every penny he is due and that means they need more wage slaves.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      He doesn’t want more of those type of people. He wants the sort of person that has a name like “Mike Johnson.”

      • SinningStromgald@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Mike Johsons dating profile would read:

        Looking for smart, white, christian, gun lover.

        Racist is a strong plus.

        Loose morals otherwise are acceptable.

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      Immigrants are usually pretty conservative. If they could drop the xenophobia they’d have a pretty reliable and growing voter base. We’re lucky racists are dumb.

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    In his remarks, (…) he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: (…)

    If abortion truly defunded social security, shouldn’t small-government Republicans support it?

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      Russia approved is why they voted for him, unless you think all those mysterious “campaign contributions” from a law firm run by three Russian nationals the night before the vote are just a coincidence.

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    Why does he assume all the aborted babies would’ve been able-bodied? My poor daughter certainly wasn’t. Fuck this insurrectionist dolt.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      That’s because at every stage, children will be put through a social selection process whereby every year, the bottom quartile of children will be culled in order to improve the gene pool.

      This idea is © 2023 the US Republican Party, US patents pending, you may not use it for dystopian novels and films without payment

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    If he really cared about funding for social security, maybe he should just have a closer look at tax evasion and creative accounting by the rich and the larger companies. Or at the numerous pork barrels on his parties list.

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    That’s them saying the quiet bit out loud. They see population growth stagnating to dangerous levels and they need more poor people to feed thier capitalism machine, while not acknowledging that low population growth is occurring because they’ve starved people of the necessary resources to keep a child alive and enjoy / be able to afford parenting. The choice was provide adequate resources or force people to have babies without resources.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      There are really only two ways to fix demographic decline:

      • Increase fertility rate
      • Replace dying people with people from elsewhere (i.e. immigration)

      The first requires social spending at levels that the Republican Party absolutely refuses to consider. Subsidies for childcare! Bigger tax breaks for poor and middle-class parents! Free preschool education! Mandatory paid parental leave! Higher wages for family breadwinners! Oh, the horror!

      The second requires admitting brown people into the country! Oh, the other horror!

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        demographic decline

        What “demographic decline”?

        Sounds to be more a case that the parasite class is worried that the “surplus labor” (ie, impoverished people) might not be all that surplus for much longer.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          “Demographic decline” is when the population of an area shrinks because more people are dying off than being born. From an economic standpoint, this is bad for a few reasons (regardless of the underlying economic system)—

          • You could lose economies of scale with things like public infrastructure. If you have millions of people contributing to the upkeep of, say, a metro line via the fruits of their labour (directly or through taxation), then that’s all fine, but if your population suddenly shrinks to half of what it was, the cost of upkeeping the metro line hasn’t halved, but the amount of total wealth in the area has halved, as now there are only half as many people contributing to the communal wealth.
          • The labour pool has shrunk. This is important because some things have a fixed amount of labour required and do not scale well. For example, a train always needs exactly one conductor regardless of how long it is, but now you only have half the number of conductors available. Again, it doesn’t matter whether we’re looking at a communist or a capitalist system, it’s easy to see how this is bad in both systems.
          • People tend to get poorer because the vast majority of economic activity (and therefore wealth) is generated through people interacting with each other. This also results in a reduction of government budgets because revenue is generally tied to group wealth and economic activity. This happens at a disproportionate rate compared to the actual percentage of population loss, meaning the amount of revenue per capita goes down as well.

          Some countries are already experiencing demographic decline. It’s bad for everyone, but it’s much worse for rich people than for poor people (in absolute terms), at least in capitalist countries, because rich people have much more direct exposure to the macroeconomic forces that result from it. Additionally, a lot of rich people’s wealth is tied to growth. Infinite exponential growth is impossible; it’s not a sustainable model for wealth. But they have a lot to gain from at least postponing the pyramid’s collapse until after they die.

    • Resonosity@lemmy.ca
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      Don’t forget about loneliness. If people don’t engage with one another in the first place, then abortion isn’t even needed, let alone any parental care or accomodations.

      Thanks American individualism for that.

    • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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      Birthrates decline as populations become richer though? The poorest populations have done of the highest birthrates.

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      Trump was going to be the last one you could laugh at. Now he’s only paid lipservice, the void will be filled. From now on forward things are going to get serious.

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        For all of Trump’s fascism and corruption he was at least so amazingly incompetent at it. His actions brought to light a lot of shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the system we can now more effectively watch for as his slightly smarter cohorts try and exploit them.

        Too bad half the time “watch in horror” is about all we end up doing.

    • Resonosity@lemmy.ca
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      I mean, I feel like he’s being overt about the motivations the GOP has held for decades. It’s just that this is a time where their despicable desires about how our society should evolve are showcased.

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        Plenty of them think this though unfortunately. A few years ago, I talked to a bank teller who was a middle aged white woman who said the same thing about abortion being the reason why Medicare and Social Security are underfunded.

  • books@lemmy.world
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    In that thumbnail, boebs is looking at him like she wants to take him to beetlejuice

    • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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      You think he wants women to have jobs? He wants women to keep popping out babies. That would be their job if he got his way.

      Edit: Oops. I just realized you meant the babies, not the women. I’m going to keep this comment here though because I still think it applies to Johnson.

      • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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        He wants the babies to keep popping out babies and women to get jobs? That seems on-point for them, except for the women and jobs thing.

        • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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          No, the women pop out the babies and the babies get the jobs. Well, the Republicans will graciously allow the babies to grow up just enough so that they can walk. After that, though, it’s “get into the factories and stick your tiny fingers into those meat grinders!”