Taxes do not pay for this stuff. This isn’t even obscure or complicated at all. Everyone knows the national deficit goes up every year and always has. The government could just as easily deficit spend for healthcare and such, on top of all the war. They print the currency, there isn’t some shortage of US dollars. There might be a shortage of labor for healthcare, since they want everyone working for the MIC.
The point is that people are paying money into the system, expecting it to work for their interests. The idea is to emphasize that it is not actually doing that.
I think it’s actually way more effective to actually educate people on how things work than for socialists/progressive forces to endlessly repeat canards about tax money yadda yadda yadda. It seems insincere to try to get people to believe something false (that taxes matter) just to get them to agree with you (that imperialism is bad).
The goal is to get people to think correctly about how the world works, not score rhetorical points.
I think far more effective messaging would be: The US is murdering good people, who just want to live good lives. Our labor is being used to make their lives worse. Instead, lets use our labor for everyone’s benefit. Lets replace the war industry with renewable energy, health care, and technology that benefits everyone.
In the abstract I agree with you, but in this context, there is nothing insincere about: “you pay into this system like it’s legitimate and it’s actually very crooked”. Of course it should go beyond that, which is why I emphasized in my previous reply the need to talk about imperialism and AES states and so on. As I stated before, “This alone is not anywhere near ML thought. It could languish in socdem territory if that’s all you say.”
It’s a tactic. Maybe there are more effective tactics to getting through to people, so if you have them from actual practice, feel free to share so others can learn from it. If the messaging you proposed is just an idea, then please try it and let us know how it goes. Maybe it would work really well on some people.
Instead it’s like people are trying to play into American greed and chauvinism by complaining about how expensive it is to murder Muslims. If only a Muslim life took $1,000 to destroy instead of $1,000,000!
No, I think it’s just a basic appeal to self interest, which is sometimes more effective than trying to rally someone to care about a person halfway across the world, at least as a starting point. I don’t see what is greedy about wanting healthcare or wanting to be paying into a system that cares about you. And it’s only chauvinistic from the standpoint of “better conditions for the people living in the imperial core at the cost of everyone else in the world.” Which again, could be a problem if you go for one form of appeal that has too much overlap with reform messaging and stop there. That’s why you don’t linger in one appeal and stop there. Political education must be continuous and consistent where possible.
So to sum up: I could see it being mistaken as reform messaging in some contexts, but when used as a broader strategy, I don’t see it as inherently being that.
They definitely don’t.
The point is that people are paying money into the system, expecting it to work for their interests. The idea is to emphasize that it is not actually doing that.
In the abstract I agree with you, but in this context, there is nothing insincere about: “you pay into this system like it’s legitimate and it’s actually very crooked”. Of course it should go beyond that, which is why I emphasized in my previous reply the need to talk about imperialism and AES states and so on. As I stated before, “This alone is not anywhere near ML thought. It could languish in socdem territory if that’s all you say.”
It’s a tactic. Maybe there are more effective tactics to getting through to people, so if you have them from actual practice, feel free to share so others can learn from it. If the messaging you proposed is just an idea, then please try it and let us know how it goes. Maybe it would work really well on some people.
No, I think it’s just a basic appeal to self interest, which is sometimes more effective than trying to rally someone to care about a person halfway across the world, at least as a starting point. I don’t see what is greedy about wanting healthcare or wanting to be paying into a system that cares about you. And it’s only chauvinistic from the standpoint of “better conditions for the people living in the imperial core at the cost of everyone else in the world.” Which again, could be a problem if you go for one form of appeal that has too much overlap with reform messaging and stop there. That’s why you don’t linger in one appeal and stop there. Political education must be continuous and consistent where possible.
So to sum up: I could see it being mistaken as reform messaging in some contexts, but when used as a broader strategy, I don’t see it as inherently being that.