• DankZedong @lemmygrad.ml
    35·
    2 years ago

    Without our social safety net in Belgium the vast majority of people would fall back into poverty, would be unable to afford medical help, would have no way of ever retiring.

    Not only that, because of the way our social safety net is designed, it is beating capitalist systems of unemployment benefits, healthcare and insurance at efficiency too, with a lower average cost (for the state) of case handling.

    A social safety net is not peak socialism but it is the thing that our socialist comrades died for in the past which is now preventing capitalist ghouls to completely destroy our society. The successes of this system get attributed to capitalist efforts to keep our Western European society at the top of the world in terms of living standards, while its flaws get attributed to lazy socialist profiteers.

    It is socialism that made sure this country has some way of helping the poor and unfortunate instead of letting them die of poverty. It was the union who started this system by allowing their members to contribute a small part of their wage to distribute among the unemployed in times where unemployment meant starvation. It was socialist effort who made sure the sick got treatment without them being able to afford it.

    Capitalism = unequal wealth except that the vast majority of the wealth is held by <1% of global society while the rest of us fight for bread crumbs. It is socialism who wants to abolish this barbaric system to distribute the wealth equally.

  • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
    321·
    2 years ago

    Pretty accurate description of the type. Pretty sure I’ve seen folks over at lemmy use this very “argument”, dead serious

      • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
        14·
        2 years ago

        Or they’ll just start describing why famines are bad and leaders sought to end them forever.

        They act like from beginning of time until 1917 Russia and Ukraine never had famines but as soon as ol J-Stal got in power he pushed the famine button to really stick it to those damn Ukrainians!

        Or how China was famine-free until Mao came into power and he singlehandedly invented famine in China.

        It’s also just ironic as fuck for liberals identifying happily as capitalists (even though they own little to no capital…) to think capitalism hasn’t had fuckloads of actually provably purposely done famines famously the Irish potato famine and also the Bengal famine. The list is incredibly long of historically atrocious famines done right out in the open solely for profit, meanwhile they point at (at worst) policy failures and general fuckups and conclude “aha! They tried to improve things and it didn’t go perfectly?! Genocide!!!” Meanwhile they’ll tell you the potato famine was “natural.” “Well, there were too many Irish after all!” (Legitimate argument at the time by psychotic landlords and such)

        And btw pay no attention to starving and malnourished people in the richest nations on earth living in the streets. That is clearly not a failure of capitalism as a system! That’s their own moral failure! They should get jobs or be job creators like those beautiful stockholders that contribute so much to society and should definitely not be immediately sent to the guillotine!

        I hate libs

          • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
            5·
            2 years ago

            I was gonna say that too, but wasn’t sure of the cause of it. I seem to recall from my high quality American public education ™️ learning it was natural, but that was a long time ago, and all I actually remember now is Of Mice and Men. Some might say my skull is like a glove. And my brain is like petroleum jelly that an odd man soaks his hand in to keep it soft. Something something rabbits.

  • geolaw@lemmygrad.ml
    21·
    2 years ago

    Somewhere out there is some very nice animated graphs showing just how big a billionaires wealth is. It’s still too big to be properly comprehended…

  • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 years ago

    OK Dennis but redo the capitalism picture where most people have 1 or 2 coins and one has several million.

  • Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    Fuck PragerU to death, it’s blatant propaganda masquerading as higher education and I cannot put into words how much I hate the damage it’s causing.