this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
929 points (98.4% liked)

Comic Strips

20006 readers
2015 users here now

Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.

The rules are simple:

Web of links

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] SabinStargem@lemmy.today 85 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 7 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Thats more of an SEP field

[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago

Ah! The Somebody Else's Problem field! Someone actually knows it!

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in the world who read the books.

[–] Inucune@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

A system's function is what it does. He is invisible.

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 24 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

And all to have a few thousand extra billionaires.

[–] NikkiDimes@lemmy.world 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, but maybe someday I'll be one of those billionaires!

[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 4 points 3 hours ago

Then that'll show someone like me!

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You vastly overestimate the billionaire cast. As of April 2025, there seem to be 902 billionaires in the US. (I can't access the original Forbes article, sorry).

[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 6 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

Always love a good pedant.

But the exact number really doesn't matter and isn't the point.

[–] Kornblumenratte@feddit.org 2 points 3 hours ago

Thank you.

I think the exact magnitude of the billionaire caste illustrates the magnitude of the point.

[–] loonsun@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 hours ago

Well it kind of does. Less than 1k people is a lot easier to grasp than thousands for people.

[–] ceenote@lemmy.world 178 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Full-time jobs that don't pay a living wage should be illegal. No matter how "beneath" you the job feels, if we need someone to do it "full-time" then anything less than a full living is a rip off, and you have to either advocate for taxpayers to subsidize the employer's greed or that they overwork to make a living.

[–] Strider@lemmy.world 9 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Not only that, the other side is also that owning buildings as investments should also be illegal.

[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

In my country buildings and flats appreciate at a rate of 6% year-on-year on average. Rent is only 3% of the value of that property per year, on average. So a landlord can take 9% and have to deal with renters, their demands and the risk of them breaking things, or take 6% and do nothing at all. Keeping properties empty and off the market is enriching themselves on the suffering of people who now don't have a place to live.

So in my opinion there should be a vacancy tax that exactly matches the value appreciation rate of the property. Then landlords have the choice between 0% (=loss of money due to inflation) or 9%. And if they still don't want to rent the place out, they can still sell it to someone who wants to live there.

That proposal would still keep renting out property as a profitable way to go, while also helping people who want to buy property to live there, and the only people who would get harmed by this are people who purposely take property off the market to create scarcity to enrich themselves.

[–] Eq0@literature.cafe 3 points 6 hours ago

I would add strict rend regulations. A one bedroom apartment should not be rented for more than 1/4 of minimum wage…

[–] slaneesh_is_right@lemmy.org 89 points 1 day ago (5 children)

It blew mi mind today when i read that people work at Walmart AND collect food stamp. What is even the point of working if you can't afford to live?

[–] Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca 55 points 1 day ago (1 children)

That's been known and publicly stated for what feels like a decade or more. Good to know NOTHING has been done about it.

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 44 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure its in Walmart's on-boarding process to instruct new employees to apply to welfare programs. If your multibillion dollar corporation is pushing their employees onto government assistance than what the fuck is the point of working. You know that nothing you do will get you a better salary because they aren't just doing this to you but thousands, maybe millions, across the US and globally. And the c-suite is raking in billions in profit that they squeeze from their employees. But don't worry Walmart had a college repayment program so they are giving back /s

[–] ozymandias117@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Their on boarding process 10 years ago also implicitly told you that they would fire you if you attempted to unionize, and even explicitly told you to report your coworkers to management if they talked about a union.

It's extremely illegal, but I've never heard of them getting in trouble for it.

[–] Mac@mander.xyz 6 points 18 hours ago

That's because we gained workers rights by force and ever since: the elite have been driving us (the working class) apart from each other to make us isolated and powerless.

[–] Test_Tickles@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

They have shut down entire stores that were trying to unionize.

[–] kalkulat@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Like Starbux, in its hometown.

[–] Icytrees@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 day ago

Low wages and poor labour laws actually make it so big corporations can indirectly profit off social programs:

https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/11/which-companies-have-the-highest-number-of-workers-on-medicaid-and-food-stamps/

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago (1 children)

If you are not paying living wages for a full-time job, that means you are getting subsidized employees from the government.

[–] glitchdx@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago

part of walmarts onboarding process is how to apply for government assistance like snap

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] j4k3@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Commodity housing is a crime against humanity.

[–] atcorebcor@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 hours ago

The only reason housing, an otherwise depreciating asset, can become an investment is through land scarcity (to be solved with land value taxes) and through housing scarcity (created with policy such as height restrictions, “green” belts, and difficult building permit processes)

[–] kalkulat@lemmy.world 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Buying homes to use as gambling chips is a crime against humanity

[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 7 points 22 hours ago

IMHO the problem is systemic. There are very few ways to save for retirement without economic rent. Landlords suck, and so does the macroeconomic policy that encourages becoming a landlord instead of just saving money.

[–] MisterNeon@lemmy.world 94 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I'm very worried I may appear in this comic soon. I hate being an American.

[–] ignotum@lemmy.world 71 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

Land of the free, free to die on the streets

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 62 points 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (1 children)

"But not these streets, we want people to come through here and spend money. Wouldn't want to risk them seeing you and giving you that money instead."

[–] AlecSadler@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In some areas of the country, being homeless is a crime.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

You and me both. I have about two weeks left...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 51 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)

Feels like the problem is systemic and tied to the high price of real estate relative to the low price of wages.

Would be nice to get some kind of public officials involved. People genuinely interested in building public housing or, at least, implementing a citywide rent freeze until supply is released to match demand.

Millions of Homes Still Being Kept Vacant as Housing Costs Surge, Report Finds

[–] falseWhite@lemmy.world 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The current system is broken fundamentally and cannot be fixed, because it was actually designed this way and is working as intended by all billionaires.

We are way past simple changes like that and relying on bureaucrats to do anything is just giving them time to make things even worse.

What we need is to send all the billionaires straight to giloutine, take their wealth, redistribute it and build a new system where no single person can have so much power to affect millions of other people.

[–] buddascrayon@lemmy.world 0 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

History has taught us that the violent overthrow of a government, even a hopelessly corrupt one, never leads to a better state.

Yes, we need to strip billionaires of their power in the government. But we need to do it through laws and an orderly takeover of power through our electoral system. The minute we take up arms, things will go from bad to worse in the blink of an eye.

[–] falseWhite@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Of course, because no one should have opposed Hitler with force. Obviously this didn't lead to anything better than the Nazi government.

Or no USSR republics should have fought to overthrow the Kremlin government and establish their own. Because none of those countries are way better off than Russia is now.

Or the French should not have tried to overthrow the broken and unfair Monarchy exploiting the poor.

In the same fashion, no one should fight to overthrow an extremely corrupt capitalist and cruel fascist government.

Let's just hope that billionaires controlling the government will be nice to the poor in the next election 🤞🤞🤞

If anything, history has taught us the complete opposite.

Things might get worse in the short term, but sometimes a complete government overthrow is the only way to make impactful changes to a system that's rotten to the core.

Poor North Koreans didn't overthrow their government in time and now look at them. But of course, they can "vote" for a better government next time.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] plyth@feddit.org 20 points 1 day ago

770,000

It's an entire city.

load more comments
view more: next ›