I do mind, actually. In that I specifically want my taxes to go to that rather than going to more bombs for genociding Palestinians.
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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Absolutely, absolutely.
Okay what about a diversity initiative to fight antisemitism (in in the brains of young children and structurally in hospitals)?
rather than going to more bombs for genociding Palestinians
Got it. Who shall we genocide instead? /s
In fact, I insist.
The fact that people would rather see their taxes bomb a brown person's house instead of building 10 is sickening.
It’s somehow simultaneously terrible economic management and terrible ethical management. There’s just no upside to anyone but the Military Industrial Complex which funds the politicians. I really wish more people could understand that.
I deeply care. I'm pissed when my taxes don't do that. And I don't mind if some people who don't necessarily need it slip through.
It may be difficult to love my countryfolk right now, and I'm not the most pro humanity I've ever been lately, but right is right and wrong is wrong. Letting people starve when you can feed them is wrong. Also social services reduce social problems like crime far better than aggressive policing.
Also this is literally what "ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country" was about. That those with means have a civic duty to pay taxes that go to welfare and social programs rather than bitching and moaning about how their taxes disproportionately help people poorer than them.
Well said, I feel the exact same way.
I’d much much rather my taxes go to taking care of people than to cruelty.
"But what about the tax subsidies for billionaires? Won't someone think of the billionaires for once?"
Billionaires are hungry for power and spend so much time in private jets and on yachts, they're practically never home.
"I don't mind" is far too passive.
I want my taxes to benefit the people on the streets far, far more than the wealthy.
Looking at humans from a capitalist standpoint, since we are living in a highly mechanized and optimized labor society there will always be a surplus of labour. Not everyone needs to work and over time less and less people will need to work to sustain the whole. Defining humans as worthy to live or not based on their capacity to work means you accept some humans as surplus, fungible and ultimately liquidatable because the system has no use for them even if they are healthy and ablebodied.
This is not how you treat people. This is how you appraise livestock.
This is how you appraise livestock.
Funny you should mention that, the earliest known census-like record is the Domesday Book where surfs and other people that weren't of noble heritage were tabulated in the same way as ploughs, oxen, etc. This book was completed in 1086.
It also serves as an insight into a world, and indeed, contemporary world-view (neo-liberals and human resources), that the only people worth noting down are the ones with power and money. The individual simply didn't exist in recorded history until the printing press came about and changed everything. The only way someone could learn what was going on in the world was what they were told, since no one could read and the only people that were taught how to read were nobles and priests since books back then usually cost multitude more then the building they were stored in.
Not quite true that nobles and priests were the only ones that knew how to read. Lower classes absolutely knew how to read they just didn't use that knowledge for writing books - they used it for communicating and for legal purposes. The lower classes were actually quite litigious and a subsect of them required literacy as a means of self advocacy, occasional resistance and survival.
The concept of the peasantry being unschooled, idiot commons without the brains and means to aquire knowledge has always been a way to keep you and I, people who came after as their legacy, distanced from their history so we could instead align ourselves with the rich and powerful who could be seen as the "creators" of society and culture.
Those peasants and serfs were a lot more like us than people think.
Look, sorry, but your comment reads like you're pushing a pseudo-historical conspiracy theory. This particular book was made with sheep skin and all books created in Europe prior to the ~1200's were created in a similar fashion. Sure, people might have been able to read words like "Blacksmith" and "Sign Here" (where they would put an X as they didn't usually know show to write their names), but I wouldn't consider that as literate; and they wouldn't ever have the chance to learn how to read because all the books would be locked up in the chain libraries and the only people allowed to access them were nobles and church officials.
I'm not saying they were stupid, all human beings have the means to learn to read and write if given a chance, but back then there was no chance unless you joined the church or were born to a noble family simply because books were incredibly expensive and rare.
There is evidence of a number of uses of vernacular written language in archeological sites. The matter of literacy as mentioned around the advent of the Doomsday Book was not a measure of who could read common vernacular they way literate tends to mean today. It was a measure of who had completed their letters. A set form of schooling that covered about six years worth of language education and numeracy. So it's kind of hard to track actual literacy rates given sources at the time because the bar to count as "literate" by census records was specific. The majority of college level modern users of language would be unable to clear that bar. I would not be considered literate because I can only write vernacular. So you are semi-correct in that sense yes only nobles and men of the church were "literate" by standards of the time.
There are a number of archeological finds throughout the medieval ages that showed a general upward trend of the skill of being able to read and write fairly basic missives amongst humble people. A lot of our surviving evidence of peasant writing is on very rudimentary materials like bark and it is very practical use. People learned the skill from other people for doing stuff like writing IOUs or orders for goods or as reminders and most examples that survived were under 20 words in length. In a lot of places being able to read and write wasn't considered remarkable enough to record as a special skill unless you could do it in Latin. This is why you find books written for common people like the Dite de Hosebondrie ( Husbandry) for the peasant farmer or guides for common housewives in the 13th century in "rustic" language styles. Books were uncommon and expensive and you had to go to them to read them but the people who they were written for weren't always nobles or clergy.
https://www.medievalists.net/2024/11/medieval-daily-life-on-birchbark/
If you house the homeless they are no longer homeless so you can’t house them so they become homeless and then you need to house them and then they are no longer homeless so you can’t house them and then they become….
Sorry, got in a little loop there. Point being, taking care of people is ok. That’s what money is for. Even after the acute need has passed.
Every single study shows that it is economically cheaper to house the homeless. You literally save money. Less costs needed for policing, health care, social services and all that stuff.
But without the threat of homelessness nobody will work for me for what I want to pay them with how I want to treat them!
Ah! But! Then you create a more functional society with less inequality and greater overall stability! An economy less prone to outlandish bubbles the wealthy can exploit to get even wealthier! Even positive trends in medical outcomes for the population at large!
Plus all those poor cops you've put out of a job! Those are good union jobs, man!
So there are trade-offs!
I'm probably paraphrasing someone famous but the quality of a society is measured by the way it treats the vulnerable.
Yeah, it sucks to survive... stuff. Know how you're falling apart; a shell of your former self; due to the actions of some random halfwit. Then to face inevitable homelessness and war for continued survival from the same society that enabled the halfwit...
Nice to see some people care.
I do mind if they're spent subsidizing Walmart's shit paay
Well tough tits, they're going to killing brown children and making rich people more rich and you'll like it or you'll make them rich from within the modern slave system.
That's what I thought church was all about when I was a little kid. By the age of 8 I knew it was a boatload of crap as there were more mean people in church than nice and friendly ones. Even when they introduced 360 degree handshaking, it still felt contrived.
I learned at a very young age that church’s real purpose is to make shitty people feel better about themselves.
360° handshaking? Wut?
Yeah. One day in the middle of mass everyone started shaking hands with the person on their right, pew ahead, their left and pew behind. It freaked me out the first time I experienced it. All of the pained smiles. This started in early to mid seventies. I don't know if they still do it. It was a small town roman catholic venue.
That sounds like stepford wife shit. Sorry you had to deal with it.
Some people would feed 99 people who don't need it if it meant feeding 1 person who did. Other people would refuse to feed 99 people who need it if it also means feeding 1 person who doesn't.
We call that second group republican.
Goshdarn bleeding heart libruls!
We gotta take care of our own! No no not like that!
Yeah if we could track every dollar of my taxes and exactly where its going, that'd be awesome. But we already know where its going in america- war and politicians pockets.
Unless of course they voted for people who don't think that way. I don't want to help anyone not willing to help someone else.