this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2023
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!

Rules

Version without spoilers

0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.


2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such


That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.


That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).


4. No Bigotry.


The only dangerous minority is the rich.


5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.

(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)


6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bruv. It was a scam from the get go.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

The romans called it the horse and sparrow theory

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

a study is helpful to show anyone who argues for those policies

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Not really. Neoliberals don't push neoliberalism because they think it works, they push it because they get rich off its failure.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

oh for sure, it's just helpful if they're making a bad faith argument that it does work. it gives you some authority when you call them a fucking liar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yes it's always helpful to have evidence.

If the governments around the world were advocating for stabbing yourself in the eye with a rusty fork, it would be useful to have evidence that stabbing yourself in the eye with a thrusty fork it's not in fact beneficial. Yes it's obvious that it's bad to anyone with a brain, but they'll argue the point unless there's some irrefutable evidence.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Since when do morons listen to logic?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’m so shocked by this because Ronald Reagan said this and he’s the singing cowboy!

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Peter, you're from the future, you're supposed to- you know what forget it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

He looked me in the eyes, I'm voting for him

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

Just 50 years? How can you really know anything without a full century? /s

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Yeah, no shit.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Full source article text since it's behind paywall:

Fifty Years of Tax Cuts for Rich Didn’t Trickle Down, Study Says

  • Paper looks at fiscal policies in 18 countries over 50 years
  • Governments shouldn’t worry about taxes on rich, author says

By Craig Stirling

December 15, 2020 at 6:01 PM CST

Tax cuts for rich people breed inequality without providing much of a boon to anyone else, according to a study of the advanced world that could add to the case for the wealthy to bear more of the cost of the coronavirus pandemic.

The paper, by David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London, found that such measures over the last 50 years only really benefited the individuals who were directly affected, and did little to promote jobs or growth.

“Policy makers shouldn’t worry that raising taxes on the rich to fund the financial costs of the pandemic will harm their economies,” Hope said in an interview.

That will be comforting news to U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, whose hopes of repairing the country’s virus-battered public finances may rest on his ability to increase taxes, possibly on capital gains -- a levy that might disproportionately impact higher-earning individuals.

U.K. Urged to Levy $350 Billion Wealth Tax to Fund Pandemic

It would also suggest the economy could weather a one-off 5% tax on wealth suggested for Britain last week by the Wealth Tax Commission, which would affect about 8 million residents.

The authors applied an analysis amalgamating a range of levies on income, capital and assets in 18 OECD countries, including the U.S. and U.K., over the past half century.

Their findings published Wednesday counter arguments, often made in the U.S., that policies which appear to disproportionately aid richer individuals eventually feed through to the rest of the economy. The timespan of the paper ends in 2015, but Hope says such an analysis would also apply to President Donald Trump’s tax cut enacted in 2017.

“Our research suggests such policies don’t deliver the sort of trickle-down effects that proponents have claimed,” Hope said.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Wasn't even the first study to say this.

[–] words_number 8 points 1 year ago

I am shocked!!

Trickle down effect is a complete hoax and always has been?! :-O

How did they manage to find out this secret? The CIA must have been involved in the research. I bet at some point they might even find out that the sky is blue! What a time to he alive!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Republican voters don't care about liberal conspiracies like "historical data".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I thought when rich people had more money, they would be nice and give it to the poor... Who knew?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

you don't say

[–] Decompose 0 points 1 year ago

Here's an idea: stop allowing central banks to print money and hand it to the rich for free.

If you're happy giving the rich free freshly printed money that screws you with the Cantillon effect, don't complain about tax cuts. That's a drop in the bucket.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What? Don't you feel their golden shower trickling down on us? I know I do!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I think mines broken because it's brown...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah, I can feel heavy bars of gold falling onto my head.