this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2025
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Don't forget the war on drugs

(page 2) 47 comments
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 22 hours ago

Republican ~~presidents~~ politicians are a pox on this country.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 20 hours ago

He was president of the Screen Actor's Guild; a solid union man. /s

The point is, functioning unions are necessary to keep the economy working in the public interest. But not all unions are interested in doing that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 23 hours ago

and we love (/s) what he did to sunny CA slashing property taxes by slashing the public education budget helping lead to a continuing decline in our education system.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 day ago

I'm willing to bet that trump beats those numbers

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 day ago

Let's not forget the treason of letting Oliver North! Besides everything else, North's Contras were drug smugglers who brought in so much cocaine that coke went from being a luxury to a street drug in just a few months.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States

Youtube video https://youtu.be/Mb1GfP5Rwys

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (3 children)

Congress approved the budgets that created all of that debt. Congress was controlled by the democrats the entirety of his time in office. Congress approves of all tax legislation. It's almost as if the democrats aren't any less inclined to support the wealthy.

Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%. This is because the brackets at that high of a level heavily incentivized rich people to engage in tax evasion or tax avoidance schemes. Removing this high tax rate made the government more money because fewer people cheated on their taxes. This has only worked once and there's no reason to believe further reductions to the top rate would create similar revenue increases.

The missiles sold to Iran were non-functional. The bigger problem was either using the profits from the sale to fund the Contras as we were destabilizing a foreign power for the crime of wanting less capitalism.

What Reagan's real crime was setting Americans against their own government. He was able to push through the destruction of a huge portion of the safety net we had for people under the guise of cleaning up corruption.

This macro is a mess.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

So the solution to people committing massive tax fraud is to lower taxes? Not to throw them in jail? 🙄

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.

Cutting the higher marginal tax rates caused more people to move money from less stable economies with looser banking regulations to US banks which resulted in increased tax revenue taken in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

Blah blah blah. Your solution is to let criminals keep ripping us off instead of doing something about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

As I said last time "Tax fraud, tax evasion and tax avoidance are not the same thing.".

No one proved anyone broke the law so there were no "criminals" to pursue. I was nine when this happened so I didnt make any decisions here.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Reagan's policies expanded wealth inequality, exploded the deficit, and created a narrative that still fuels anti-government rhetoric today.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 23 hours ago

The policies put forth by the GOP and put into place by the democrat controlled Congress expanded the national debt debt (deficits are annual shortcomings the national debt not deficit is the larger concern).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (2 children)

Congress dropped the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% and gained more tax revenue when it was set to 70%.

anyone have a source for this claim of increased revenue? if so, was it just a temporary effect with longer term structural implications? besides, wouldn't the solution to evasion have been increased enforcement? taxes aren't just about revenue, they're a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn't to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.

your argument falls flat upon historical analysis. if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them 'fixed it' then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. this all happened before Reagan and coincide with top marginal rates between 50-95 percent.

inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim. those who say so based on a loosely held 'I've done the math' argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it's not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I'll wait.

low tax rates are precisely how we got to people like Trump, Musk, Buffet, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and the incredible rise in number of hundred millionaires and billionaires who are now destroying our social safety nets even more so they can flatter their egos and act out middle aged divorced guy power fantasies.

inequality is why people can't afford things and is presently the single biggest problem of our society. taxes do make a difference in combatting that. Regean had a role in creating this system, whether you like it or not.

the power to tax is the power to destroy. we build prosperity by keeping oligarchs in check.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

anyone have a source for this claim?

This was the 1983 tax cut. The longer term implication was people realized Laffer’s suggestion that there is a top rate that is so high it promotes evasion, avoidance and fraud was demonstrated to be likely true. A negative outcome was the GOP claiming further cuts would do the same when there’s no reason to believe it would.

taxes aren’t just about revenue, they’re a redistributive force in the economy and arguably their main purpose isn’t to fund the government but to prevent the obscene accumulation of wealth and reduce inequality.

Presuming this is a serious statement, why do you think this is the case instead of them funding the government which is what taxes have always been about? We didn’t care much about wealth inequality until the last 200-300 years. The ruling class has always cared about taxes.

if high tax rates were bad, and lowering them ‘fixed it’

It didn’t “fix” anything. The higher rates led to lower tax revenues. The cuts provided more.

then explain all the massive social benefits from 1940-1980:

1946-1980 as 1940-45 are war years and aren’t as great.

The US made up roughly 40-55% if the total GDP of earth in that time. As WWII destroyed the industrial capacity if most nations the USA and to a lesser extent the Warsaw Pact nations were the only ones manufacturing heavy equipment. By 1980 most of the world has either developed for the first time their own industry or revoltp what they had. This massive gap between the US population and everyone else is why things were so good.

inequality has skyrocketed since Reagan and the policies which dismantled new dealism. I hate the Democrats who helped facilitate the rise in inequality and the gutting of social welfare programs (Clinton especially) but to claim that reducing the top marginal rates was an unequivocal good thing is a pretty extreme narrowly focused claim.

There’s no “good/bad” in economics because it’s social science not a religion or moral code. I said it brought in more tax revenue which is accurate.

Inequality has skyrocketed because of anti-union sentiments and the fact that between 1991 and 2003 1/3 of the total labor pool of earth could suddenly be hired by Westetn companies (the fall of the USSR, liberalizations within China and India moving away from socialist economic policies drove this).

those who say so based on a loosely held ‘I’ve done the math’ argument are merely using a rhetorical gotchya - it’s not a sufficient socioeconomic historically supportable argument. if it was, show me all the benefits that increased tax revenue provided from 1990-present. I’ll wait.

No one is saying this. Your grasp on this history is flawed. You even have gone so far as to suggest taxes aren’t primarily about funding the government which is frankly “novel”. I wouldn’t be taking any kind of authoritative tone on this subject if I were you.

I have to work but I’ll tackle the second half later.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 19 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

Libs showing their fascist imperialism even when trying to distance from themselves from their right-wing allies. Crying about iran while supporting genocide. How much did reagan send to the zio regime?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 19 hours ago

A lot? Israel was the middleman for the missile sales, they got a nice paycheck from Ronnie.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

History has a liberal bias if you care to read instead of listen to TV all day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If they're saying "lib" and not "liberal", then it's sure not from American TV.

And you're paraphrasing a television character.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Am American, and "lib" is used every day by MAGA on social media. Just go to X and scroll for a whole couple seconds to see overwhelming proof it's a MAGA culture war talking point.

I'm not against shitting on liberals either, but there's clearly a much bigger world wide problem of private equity Fascism that needs solved, and liberals have already been fighting that enemy (albeit not winning that fight). This makes them your friend whether you like it or not.

But solidarity isn't going to happen if you're too busy complaining about liberal bullshit to fight with them when needed instead.

Nazis are now in the White House and a Fox News host commands the biggest army in the world.

And that wasn't even the first 90 days of this dumpster fire.

So I'd rather spend the little time we have left before polical arrests happen to work together than spend time bitching about the history of our possible allies.

I voted for Biden, and was deeply critical of his team. But without question he would be a better President now than Trump is.

Imo words critical of liberals in the US are wasted. Trump will be far more critical of them in the long run, so I'd rather spend my time making allies instead of grandstanding while they're being publicly admonished.

The next step is them getting arrested, so the time for making allies isn't long.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Am American, and "lib" is used every day by MAGA on social media. Just go to X

That's not on TV then, and no I will not go on X. Here on Lemmy, "lib" is used overwhelmingly by leftists. This person complaining about imperialism and right-wing allies is not regurgitating MAGA culture.

Making allies is a great idea. We're not going to make allies by accusing them of watching TV (like Stephen Colbert) all day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

So is arguing semantics about where and how the term "lib" is being used a better way to gain allies?

Please.

If you ever do go to X, you'd see MAGA uses "lib" the same way the leftists here do. So sure, Lemmy residents may not be regurgitating MAGA culture, but they sure as shit sound like it by complaining about liberals in the same exact way using the same exact terms.

If you're looking for allies, maybe don't use the same language of your enemies to recruit them.

Your argument boils down to "but people on lemmy use the word "lib" in a good way." It's still the same thought terminating and dehumanizing word my dude, and just because you're admittedly in the dark to how it's being used on Twitter doesn't mean it can be used better by others in a different community.

If we rewind 80 years of history, you'd be defending the right to use the word "jew" to describe those with tight business purses despite it also being used by Hitler for other reasons. You would also defend this position by admitting to not ever reading what's happening in Germany.

Great take.

Would love to hear your ideas on marketing solidarity to liberal allies by using the term "lib" to win them over.

80 years ago it would be making signs that say "Hey Jews - let's work together to stop Hitler!"

Which, to the point I'm making, sounds like bullshit rather than a rally cry.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

And even better... he was a Christian.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Was he Christian tho? Or did he just tell people he was?

Seems like it’s in the political playbook to claim you’re a Christian to gain all the support of people who lack critical thought.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago

What a fucking hero

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