15 million of them. That is a staggering number.
It's also not an accurate number. The official count for Biden in 2020 was about 81.3 million (found many places online, but the official one is a good choice) and the unofficial count for Harris by AP so far is about 74.3 million. That's about 7 million, which is less than half of what you claimed.
People have got to stop just posting straight up false information. If you don't know, don't post.
I haven't read the book - and probably won't, since Dyer's not a historian, has no relevant credentials listed on his website, and has never written a book before - but based on the article, it doesn't sound like he's saying anything new.
It does sound like it's being weirdly misrepresented, because Dyer didn't "reveal" anything and his wealth isn't any more or less "intimately connected" than any other wealthy person's at that time. It also sounds like it overstates his wealth. He primarily got his money from being Master of the Mint, which until Newton was a symbolic post intended to give him income in return for his major contributions to science, but in standard Newton fashion he ignored the implied social norm and took it seriously instead. That gave him a comfortable income to essentially have some nice things. We're not talking billionaire wealth.
As for the connection to the slave trade - based on the title, I'd expect him to have owned the slaves, or led the expedition to enslave people in order to be "intimately connected." For the time, this was about as connected as any landowner was to slavery. That's not to say it was fine, just that this is expected for anybody of his station and is absolutely not new or surprising information.
But I guess I'm acting all surprised that the Guardian made a shit article, and that shouldn't be news to either.
The entire business would be such a trivial government operation, and we wouldn't have to lose money to corporate greed.
He's gotten worse, but people also used to be more charitable. I thought he sounded like a pretentious know-nothing CEO when I heard him talking about the Hyperloop in 2012, and it's been an impressive downhill run from there.
My gut says "that's probably true, but that doesn't mean much." Let me pick it apart.
LBJ attempted his War on Poverty and Great Society, and while it didn't go as far as he wanted, he still got some good stuff out the door. Food stamps, medicare, medicaid, minimum wage, just to name a few. No contest compared to everybody that came later.
Nixon was a Republican, and I'll skip all of them because by this point in history they would never be as economically progressive as Biden.
Ford was a Republican.
Carter ran on being socially liberal and economically conservative. Outside of minor policy like the Community Reinvestment Act, there's no help there, obviously.
Reagan was a Republican.
Clinton ran on the Third Way, which was sort of what Carter did but even more disastrous. Notable policy included gutting welfare and widespread deregulation.
W was a Republican.
Obama got ACA passed and used an obviously Keynesian approach to economic recovery with the recession he was given, pulling away from Clinton's conservative Third Way.
Trump was a Republican.
Biden did a similar Keynesian approach to economics.
I would assume your statement hinges largely on the "biggest infrastructure bill" type rhetoric, because he didn't do anything new, he just continued to fund things that the government needs to fund in order for the country to operate. He sure spent a lot, but whether that's the metric we should be using for most progressive is up for debate.
Personally, I'd say Obama was more progressive because he actually did something substantial and new with the ACA, but it doesn't put him in another tier above Biden. Of course, neither comes remotely close to LBJ.
What that statement really shows is how far the government has fallen from even attempting to provide value for people.
Heritage Foundation has been running Republican policy for decades. That's not obvious to anybody who hasn't read a significant amount about recent history, but there was no doubt about it for people that have.
What a roundabout way to say they've just been stealing people's money with no oversight or consequences.
Have to disagree with you here. I'm not a journalist, but I read easily digestible headlines all day. I had to go back and carefully parse this sentence one word at a time. It's just a bad headline.
My household is in the top few percentile, we're fine. I just think everybody else should also have the luxury of not having to choose between relationships and shelter.
People say this kind of thing a lot, but I don't really understand if they don't have any family or friends, don't care about their family and friends, or just think it's reasonable to have to choose between your relationships and living in an affordable house.
It was a really bad year for California props, people just took a hard right turn.
No to: raise the minimum wage, provide housing, abolish slavery
Yes to: harsher sentencing and some weird vendetta a rich guy has against an AIDS nonprofit
Motherfuckers complain about homeless population nonstop and then refuse to pass anything to fix it.
We both know the reasonable way to interpret your post, and the way nearly everybody would interpret it, is that that's the current or final count. It's also outdated to say 74 million fewer people voted for Harris, but at one point, that was in fact the count. But it's more than outdated - it's misleading to the point of being factually inaccurate to any observer.
I can't believe instead of being like "oh shit, I made a mistake, my bad, I better think for a second about this in the future" you're going to try to justify it. Whatever, that's social media at this point I guess. Surely I'm not the problem, says everybody feeding misinformation in a giant circle. I thought Lemmy might be better, but it's just not. Thank you for convincing me to finally give all social media up.