I’m not sure which is more delusional, thinking that this would actually work or thinking that anyone affiliated with the United States (or the West in general) is ever going to be prosecuted by the ICC.

The US always has done heinous shit but it was always under the covers. Not blatantly out in the open.

Uh… Vietnam?

I mean isn’t that what nonsense is?

Wouldn’t the market just expand to absorb the extra demand?

According to betteridge’s law: No.

Okay I’m not sure where you got this from, but you’re wrong on both counts. Socialists absolutely want to do more than just implement progressive policies (you’re thinking of social democrats); the definition of a socialist is someone who believes the working class should seize the means of production. Some socialists believe that can be done through capitalist democratic systems (we call those democratic socialists), but still the goal is a lot more broad than just implementing progressive policies; on the other hand you have more militant or even revolutionary socialists, who usually advocate direct action (sometimes but not always including violence). Meanwhile communists are a subcategory of socialists who believe in the creation of a moneyless, classless, stateless utopian society as described by Karl Marx.

Not a justification for that either. “Seizing” ships is another word for piracy.

If they could do that they wouldn’t try to get people to avoid unionizing. They still need people to work for them, regulations or no regulations.

Realistically, there are two possible explanations for why the Democrats are so stubbornly useless:

1. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it.

2. You can’t get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it.

Either way the idea that they could “learn” anything fundamentally misunderstands why they do what they do. Their job isn’t to get into power; it’s to make sure you don’t get into power.

Unexpected but not surprising in hindsight. This has been how that worked for a while now.

Yes and no. This ultimately a desire for their elected representatives to just fucking do something, and both Trump and Mamdani promised to do things that will make their lives better. Obviously one of these is a grift, but that’s beside the point.

You’re getting downvoted but I agree. Neoliberals will do nothing but say slightly meaner words to Trump as he kidnaps their constituents.

Wrong method, right answer kind of thing. NATO is far too much of a US sock puppet.

I mean, yes, but this “victory” came at the cost of two hundred thousand dead, God knows how many wounded, twenty years they could’ve used to develop their country and even tighter Taliban control than before the US invasion. Afghans managed to kick the US out, but they did not succeed at defending anything. If I was Venezuelan my lesson from this would be “absolutely don’t get into war with the US,” because such a war would leave their country in ruin just like Afghanistan.

If they do that will you protect them from the wrath of the US war machine? Exactly.

What? You’re not making any sense.

there’s simply 0% chance that any family anywhere in this country is living in poverty with that kind of income.

The original Substack addresses this point, but the short of it is: Most income gains from 35k to 100k are cancelled out by a loss of government benefits, so there’s a lot less difference between these than you’d expect. You only start making real gains starting from 100k. Now a family making 100k will have expendable income that’s true, but the vast majority of its income will still go towards essentials so it’s still one emergency away from insolvency.

Edit: This means that a family with two incomes and two young children making 50k is getting a market price equivalent of 50k in government benefits, so we can crudely approximate families straddling the poverty line as making 100k net. In that case the difference between the effective official poverty line and the proposed poverty line is a large but realistic 40%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_income_thresholds

TL;DR: “The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

Uh… right where they are? The American welfare state is insufficient across the board, so it needs to be strengthened across the board, and employers across the board should be forced to pay living wages.

I mean those are technicians, not factory workers. For those see: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes519199.htm