Why, in America, do rich white people with millions of dollars accuse poor white people with no dental insurance of being privileged?

[Jaysonava]

This was my weird experience in the USA when I was working as a working class person.

Also, I mention helping the poor and suggest the restaurant workers where I worked should not suddenly become unpaid 'volunteers' on Christmas Day...

... and I am a 'communist' ?

[BCA6010]

There's a big push in the US right now to basically crush the middle, upper-middle, and lower-middle income brackets and make income mobility basically impossible in order to establish the political and corporate elite as a protected pseudo-nobility. Major cities that are run by swamp scum have already passed measures to ban the construction of single-family housing that isn't at least ~5,000sqft, and radical measures that would basically force government takeover of apartments are getting pitched at increasing rates. It's very likely that within our lifetimes, private ownership of homes and cars will be made virtually impossible by anyone who isn't in a protected class. All last year, the nonsensical logic of locking down certain types of businesses served only to decimate opposition to the country's largest corporations, and consolidate political power while effectively doing nothing beneficial.

[Jaysonava]

Yes. I always support small business.

[WhiteSteve]

Being “privileged” in that context is about what you DON’T get that people of color DO get. It doesn’t mean your life is easy or you get something just for showing up. White privilege is about what people DON’T think and feel about us. It doesn’t mean your life is free of struggle or even easy…. it just means when you drive by a cop, he might not tail you and check you out, or people won’t look at you suspiciously for walking through their neighborhood, or won’t disregard Jamal’s job application and take Brendan’s seriously. Our privilege as white people really boils down to our overall perception in society, usually just by other white people, but white run most things around these parts, so that’s a huge advantage/disadvantage to have, whichever way someone has got it. That doesn’t necessarily translate to prosperity, but it means you don’t have those extra hurdles to jump that others do.

[Built_Like_a_Tank]

If it doesn't mean that your life is easy or that you're supposed to get something just for showing up, then it's not a fucking ***privilege***, my dear neolib.

Find a better word to describe what you want to and, if it's not too much to ask, find another grup to take all the heat for your cherished class of 1 percenters.

[WhiteSteve]

@Built_Like_a_Tank *anarchist, not a neolib. We’re supposed to be wild animals, all this bullshit we see is because we abandoned that lifestyle we’re meant to follow. But that’s neither here nor there for this particular discussion, that’s just what I believe to be naturally correct, what’s happening, like it or not, I have to view in a different context.

So to be clear…. you’re upset about the semantics? So if I offered the same concept with different wording, you’d embrace it? Probably not, right? Yet these are real things that DO happen, so I don’t know how people want it characterized. Any (legitimate, non-snarky) suggestions for a re-branding of this very true phenomenon of modern society?

[Jaysonava]

I think that you are brainwashed. The poor in the USA are getting increasingly malnourished and their standard of living is going down.

Did you see the comment by the guy who called me a communist worse than Hitler because I mentioned dental insurance and workers rights? That's the problem

[Jaysonava]

@Built_Like_a_Tank

neoliberal refers to the idea that capitalism emancipates the lower social classes. And that private property is an expression of emancipation.

[Built_Like_a_Tank]

@Jaysonava You have no clue about what neoliberalism means. George Soros wronged you.

[Built_Like_a_Tank]

@WhiteSteve It's SUPER funny to watch neolibs like you having to LARP as anarchists or whatever other performative shit in an attempt to hide your identity. 😂😂😂😂😂

The problem isn't about semantics, my dear dishonest neoliberal. The problem is that you're misleading people. You're using the name of an actual sociological concept to describe a different kind of phenomenon, which you could call an inconvenience, but not a power-based scheme of privilege.

[WhiteSteve]

@Built_Like_a_Tank I don’t think I’m really in favor of capitalism as it currently exists, at least the phase it’s in in America. Tough to be a neoliberal with that mentality. I believe in either complete, absolute, unbridled, for-better-or-for-worse freedom of behavior and thought and no imaginary institutions dreamed up by the human mind. If not that, then I’d accept a trade in allegiance to an entity or institution ONLY in trade for a complete full ride through life, stem-to-stern, if-I-want-it-I-get-it, no work/all play scenario. That’s it, that’s my price. Otherwise, no fucking sale, I’ll go it alone, take what I need, and leave the rest.

[WhiteSteve]

Yeah, this is why I’m in wild animal mode at base level…. people are shitty and don’t give a shit about anyone else, claim to love American and Americans, but you can starve on the fucking street for all they care if they feel you aren’t pulling your weight, or even if you are, the concept of money going to any cause, even a benevolent cause, other than their own, is like the most upsetting thing possible. That breaks down to giving way too much of a fuck about money and being trapped in an unnatural system forcing us to do so, which goes against our very biology. Standard of living is fucked here, on two levels: what we can afford, and what we’re conditioned by society to desire in the first place. People out here paying $700 a month on a damn pickup, c’mon, man…. The truck shouldn’t cost that much, AND you shouldn’t want that so badly to stretch yourself so thin. Then you can barely pay your bills and we wonder why our citizens are stressed out assholes, lmao.

[NotTacocaT6969]

Yeah, I haven’t been able to see a doctor properly since having brain surgery 12 tears ago.


I still remember the last time I woke up in an ambulance. I cried, not because of the pain, but because I knew that ambulance ride cost my family $1,000.

[iBeowulf]

Medical care used to be affordable before the government got involved and made everything crazy expensive.

[iBeowulf]

Those rich people are almost exclusively women and those poor white people are almost exclusively men... mystery solved.
Interesting, only white men don't receive Affirmative Action in universities and the workplace, violating the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to the U. S. Constitution, something we're about to change.

[rcljr]

Because by and large poor people sit on their ass and collect welfare, free Medicaid and food stamps, all paid for by rich people’s taxes. Why do you think so many rich people are moving from the US to Latin America?

[Jaysonava]

Okay boomer

[rcljr]

Fuckin A right a god damned boomer, you leftist cocksuckers are gonna be in for a world of hurt when we’re gone, you stupid fucks can’t even operate a can opener.

[jshm2]

Americans are the sort of dipshits who think they are in the right. When they can't even tell directions.

Hence why I make it a point to ignore any opinion of any American, unless (s) he/it can give me three verified and proper sources.

[iBeowulf]

Says the socialist with no guns.

[Built_Like_a_Tank]

The fundamental truth is that liberals HATE poor people and the rich liberals need to use someone as a shield, thus the scapegoatization of non-rich white people in this country: they get the blame that should be directed at the 1%.

[OddBeMe]

That’s the biggest joke. And poor people buy it and vote for rich people’s interests because they’re more afraid of immigrants.

[Browneye57]

Maybe you're a communist. [shrug]
I think you're just making shit up as you go.
If you don't want to volunteer then don't. I certainly don't.

[Jaysonava]

Uh oh... it's mr American. Taking everyone's rights away and interpreting it as human rights.

Favorably comparing USA to third world, rather than first world countries.

[Browneye57]

You're completely full of shit. Typical whiner. How 'bout some cheese with that whine? LOL

[Floppy2112]

Because some people are stupid. Others are loud. Mix vigorously with social media and you get stupid and loud.

[Jaysonava]

I am always being accused of being a communist. I am in Texas and I am like "the company makes you work on Christmas day as a volunteer for free? When you agreed to an hourly wage? That's bad!"

And then I am somehow a communist.

I just don't understand why people in Texas in particular thought that rich people were the victims...

[Anonymous]

Your a commy scum, worse than Hitler but just off Biden

[Gwenhwyfar]

Class is just as big a barrier as race

[Built_Like_a_Tank]

"Class is just as big a barrier as race"

Your brain on neoliberalism... I'm sure your cat is smarter than you. In fact, any living being does.

[Gwenhwyfar]

@Built_Like_a_Tank I’m not a neoliberal. Neoliberal actually means the opposite of liberal.

[Jaysonava]

Oh... I was confused by his comment. Do people in the USA actually think neoliberal is 'liberals'?

Neoliberal is support for the individual acquisition of wealth and property regardless of background. And the belief that the acquisition of money is the great emancipator and that people who work toward their money, work toward their freedom.

Liberals... it depends.
In Ohio and New York the liberals were more like socialists who were worried about workers having better wages.

Liberals in Texas... I don't even get what they believe in... because they talk more about celebrities and fashion than they do about workers rights and they openly reprimand anyone who vindicates the worker... they don't even know what a trade union is and they seem to hate the working class more than the conservatives.

The right wing had succesfully made any suggestion that there were poor people in Texas a taboo topic. So they openly really talk about workers probelms on secret internet forums that their employers cannot see. Otherwise they talk about stupid celebrity based stuff like "I am a liberal! I will express myself with my clothes... or something"

[Gwenhwyfar]

Like the Golden Peacock Club