Why can’t any government in the world aim to tax ultra rich more whilst making easier for small to medium large businesses to thrive. And policies on property supply rather than property buyers like all sorts of first time buyers programs.
Why are only same old policies keep being peddled when the world is still going to shit?
That doesn’t involve reducing the government size and budget entirely or subscribing to any extreme left or right?
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Yes. The property supply is a big one for them, that’s where the “ghost cities” narrative comes from. They do have wealth inequality, but they seem to be focusing more on directly combatting underdevelopment and poverty than making a point to punish their wealthiest, as they are wary of repeating some of the more dogmatic consequences of the Cultural Revolution, putting Class Struggle above the other foundations of Marxism, rather than alongside. Ie, you can’t just kill or sieze assets to turn a largely underdeveloped economy into a developed and complex publicly owned one, you have to develop into one.
If Marxism is “correct,” then centralization of markets are an almost assured bet, and as that happens, more and more industry can be publicly owned and planned directly, so the wealth inequality problem is one that almost fixes itself as long as the CPC continues to place a large emphasis on combatting corruption (which used to be a much bigger issue in the past) and directly appealing to the people via large programs like the Extreme Poverty Eradication Program.
There are plenty of governments that do that. Cuba, China, Vietnam, Korea, the late Soviet Union.
While Stalinist ultraleft economic policies were not so generous to small businesses, the new Chinese model (which has been adopted by most Socialist states, bar Korea, which hews still to the failed Stalinist model) focuses on nationalization of heavy industry (steel, aggregate, resource extraction, refinery) while allowing consumer goods and small-scale retail to remain in the hands of business owners.
The reason this doesn’t happen in the West or its neocolonies is that it hampers the wealth and resource extraction of the international finance capital class.
Reading another comment. China doesnt tax the ultra rich, like the Post was asking for.
I also wonder if its a good solution to do. But reading that comment, reveals that taxing the ultra rich wont make the problem go away.
In Germany we have a party called “Die Linke” which wants to tax the ultra rich. But slowly I feel like thats a stupid idea when looking how China works.
China does tax the rich but they also have an additional system of “voluntary donations.” For example, Tencent “volunteered” to give up an amount that is about 3/4th worth of its yearly profits to social programs.
I say “voluntary” because it’s obviously not very voluntary. China’s government has a party cell inside of Tencent as well as a “golden share” that allows it to act as a major shareholder. It basically has control over the company. These “donations” also go directly to government programs like poverty alleviation and not to a private charity group.
For clarity, China does tax the ultra-rich, they just don’t try to solve the conditions that give rise to wealth inequality through taxation alone like the Nordic Countries do, but through vast and rapid development of the productive forces. The former method, if exclusively focused on, can end up lengthening the process, whereas it is through development of the productive forces that the conditions that give rise to wealth inequality can be truly ended for good.
Essentially, if 1 hour of labor in China can produce more on average than 1 hour of labor in, say, the US, then it becomes easier to fulfill the needs of all, while simultaneously preparing the ground for increasing the ratio of production in the public sector (which works best with large, massive firms, rather than smaller firms, which work best with markets). This is why Marx says markets erase their own foundations as they develop.
These are separate questions, so I’ll answer them in order.
- There are governments that focus on reducing wealth inequality and property supply, like the PRC, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. They still have inequality, of course, as well as their own struggles and issues, but there is a concerted effort in Socialist countries to address the needs of the working class through their structures. China in particular does focus on supply a lot, that’s why they are endlessly building new cities to anticipate future necessity, the famous “ghost cities.”
As for small and medium businesses, these disappear over time and either grow or fail to be capable of influencing the system. In all countries, regardless of economic model, as long as markets persist there will be a gradual increase in proportion of production held by large firms compared to smaller firms, as competition forces growth and centralization. This is actually one of Marx’s most important observations, and forms the basis of Marxism’s view of Socialism compared to earlier Utopian Socialist types like Robert Owen and Saint-Simon.
- The “ultra rich,” in Capitalist countries, control the government. In order to truly tax the rich and provide large safety nets, the working class needs to have control of the State. This is far easier said than done, however, even Capitalist democracies aren’t genuinely democratic. If you look at US policy polling, systems like Single Payer healthcare are extremely popular across the board, yet that isn’t seen as a genuine possibility despite being proven in many other countries in various forms.
The Nordic Countries that seem to have the best of all worlds in this respect hide that they fund these nets through international usury, large IMF loans and the like. They function as landlords in country form, essentially, so their working class is just as exploited internally, yet bribed using much larger exploitation globally. The US, of course, is the largest Empire, but that doesn’t mean the Nordic model would “work” for the US.
- Old policies like austerity politics rise as the contradictions within Capitalism, ie wealth inequality, concentration of Capital into fewer and fewer hands, and so forth, sharpen. As Gramsci said,
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters.
- The policies you ask for aren’t extreme anything, really. They are easy to think of, and easy to question why they aren’t seen as a priority. The part where this shifts dramatically to the Left, is translating those ideas into reality. Just like you cannot simply ask a banker to give you free money, Capitalist systems will not let you simply take from the dragon’s hoard, regardless of how that hoard was gained. The “right-wing” answer is Imperialism in order to implement Social Democracy, while the Left-wing answer is Socialism.
You know who has the government’s ear? Ultra rich people. And they feed the legislators the horror scenario that higher taxes would mean they take their money and all their business and all the jobs attached to those to somewhere with lower taxes. And then they won’t get more in tax revenue while at the same time increasing benefits spending. It’s the billionaires’ lose/lose scenario. It’s a powerful narrative. The only way to fix this is to have all countries adopt similar tax codes. And that is about as likely as Putin getting the Nobel Peace Prize.
If my glib comparison is what you jump onto here, then have at it and virtue signal to your heart’s content.
Well, Putin is indeed very unlikely to get the Nobel Peace Price but not because war or not, Obama got it despite waging something like 13 wars including few blatant full-scale invasions.
Maybe he should try to bomb the Nobel comittee itself, who knows, maybe that would impress them.
Obama benefited from being barely in office in 2009 when he got the prize. I imagine the committee in Oslo regretted their decision later.
It’s not really that powerful, nor is it likely what billionaires are peddling to the politicians. Where would the billionaires go with lower taxes and yet the same secure standard of living? What’s to stop the politicians from raising taxes to 0.1% lower than these mythical low-tax countries with the stability and infrastructure to support their companies? That’s just the bullshit story that is fed to the public.
In reality it’s just what Elon is doing, but historically has been done more privately. “Prop up my business with low taxes, lax regulations, and tasty government contracts or I’ll spend $100M supporting a primary opponent.” And the politicians say “Ok give my
wifespouse a board position or something and we can deal.”I would say the powerfulness of the narrative remains strong. The big corporations find ways to the cheapest way of doing business like most rivers find the sea. It doesn’t have to be switching from a developed country with socialist tax code going to a developing country where labor is cheap. You can see it in the microcosm of the EU. The Republic of Ireland has favorable taxes and a less harsh data security watchdog so big tech companies headquarter there. Amazon sits in Luxembourg for similar reasons. Wages are cheaper in the East so manufacturing jobs tend to move there (or, sadly, the workforce moves west and gets paid cents on the Euro working in Central and Western Europe). If a government increases labor costs by demanding more benefits for workers, you reach a tipping point where companies pack up and move. Not all at once but after a while the creek becomes a river. That’s the spectre haunting Europe these days. It’s not just about a billionaire wealth tax, it’s also about the levies in employment, etc. They all need to be similar in the tax codes for the equal playing field the EU apparatus idealizes. When they’re not you move the mountain range out of the way for the river to find the sea more directly.
Trump’s terrific tariffs are supposed to create a pull effect, making the US attractive to manufacturing jobs. I think he will fail because be will drive up the cost of living so much that market demand will not rise along with his expectations, making investing in factories in the US ultimately not enticing enough. Never mind the fact that corporations fear uncertainty more than the Beelzebub.
Governments were formed and exist to protect property rights. As much as they can be said to have an underlying purpose, it’s to protect property rights, and those who own more property will always have a greater level of protection.
The thing the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, socialist revolutions of the 20th century, and the development of social democracies in the 20th century taught governments is that there comes a point where wealth inequality gets so extreme that it threatens the stability of government, which poses the largest possible threat to property rights. Governments learned that they need to have some form of wealth redistribution in order to prevent a violent revolution. To the degree that governments do address wealth inequality, it’s focused on doing it just enough to prevent the system from collapsing.
That’s why there’s really nobody focused on complete wealth equality. They don’t want that. They want to maintain status quo property rights.
Well put.
If anyone wants to read up more on “Governments were formed and exist to protect property rights” you might want to read The State and Revolution. It is pretty short and very relevant to this discussion
0·6 months agoOther formats (the link is a PDF):
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State and Rev also has some of Lenin’s best one liner quips ever written, definitely recommend that one. I should probably give it a second reading, it’s a real banger of a book.
Lenin’s uncontrollable urge to take any chance possible to shit on Kautsky will always make me laugh, lmao. For State and Rev in particular, (don’t laugh!) is my favorite jab of his
Keeping with Marx’s proud tradition of dunking on Proudhon for an entire book then dunking on him whenever he could later too.
My first interaction with that text was Marx Madness podcast, they had plenty of love for Kautsky dunking as well.
He’s incredibly easy to dunk on, to be fair
I’ve never read Kautsky, so I’ll have to take Lenin at his word since he was the first author to successfully lead a socialist revolution.
Kautsky does have some very good books to his name from before he became social imperialist that are worth reading even today like his summary of 1st book of Capital* or his history of early christianity.
*except the one chapter he allowed Bernstein of all people to write, but it’s useful too, shows how Bernstein was clueless hack even then.
Lenin does a pretty good job elaborating on Kautsky’s mistakes.
Excellent rec, and one of Lenin’s best works, alongside Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism IMO
why don’t rulers see as clearly as you? are they stupid, these most powerful men in the world?
CGP grey made a pretty interesting video about this:
CGP Grey is bad ass!
huh?
90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. https://www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/03/30/how-people-in-china-afford-their-outrageously-expensive-homes
Chinese household savings hit another record high in 2024 https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-bank-earnings-01-12-2024/card/chinese-household-savings-hit-another-record-high-xqyky00IsIe357rtJb4j
People in China enjoy high levels of social mobility https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/18/world/asia/china-social-mobility.html
The typical Chinese adult is now richer than the typical European adult https://www.businessinsider.com/typical-chinese-adult-now-richer-than-europeans-wealth-report-finds-2022-9
Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cw8SvK0E5dI
The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23119/w23119.pdf
From 1978 to 2000, the number of people in China living on under $1/day fell by 300 million, reversing a global trend of rising poverty that had lasted half a century (i.e. if China were excluded, the world’s total poverty population would have risen) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/China’s-Economic-Growth-and-Poverty-Reduction-Angang-Linlin/c883fc7496aa1b920b05dc2546b880f54b9c77a4
From 2010 to 2019 (the most recent period for which uninterrupted data is available), the income of the poorest 20% in China increased even as a share of total income. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.DST.FRST.20?end=2019&%3Blocations=CN&%3Bstart=2008
By the end of 2020, extreme poverty, defined as living on under a threshold of around $2 per day, had been eliminated in China. According to the World Bank, the Chinese government had spent $700 billion on poverty alleviation since 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/31/world/asia/china-poverty-xi-jinping.html
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million. With this, China has contributed close to three-quarters of the global reduction in the number of people living in extreme poverty. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience
None of these things happen in capitalist states, and we can make a direct comparison with India which follows capitalist path of development. In fact, without China there practically would be no poverty reduction happening in the world.
If we take just one country, China, out of the global poverty equation, then even under the $1.90 poverty standard we find that the extreme poverty headcount is the exact same as it was in 1981.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/07/5-myths-about-global-poverty
The $1.90/day (2011 PPP) line is not an adequate or in any way satisfactory level of consumption; it is explicitly an extreme measure. Some analysts suggest that around $7.40/day is the minimum necessary to achieve good nutrition and normal life expectancy, while others propose we use the US poverty line, which is $15.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/12-things-we-can-agree-about-global-poverty
Yet, they lack the simple freedom to acknowledge the existence of a certain date in their country’s history. The recognition of which, will result in their arrest and potential disappearance. Freedom is not free if your acknowledgement of the truth is considered “wrong think.”
get some new material troll
You can talk about June 4th, 1989 in China. Chinese usually call it the “June 4th incident,” which is what the government uses when referencing it in official statements on the subject.
And they can’t talk about it on its own terms (that is, more truthfully) because they don’t have the obligatory ritual of painting the entire picture the CIA gave foreign media before they can talk about the actual facts.
Think you mean can talk, not can’t, correct? In which case, I agree.
Yes, sorry. I phrased it differently on the first write and forgot to cancel the negative before posting, thanks for pointing it out.
No worries!
Libs refuse to read anything that isn’t young adult fiction and thus are confined to pretending the real world is literally 1984 or literally Voldemort or literally the Hunger Games.
Shit, the brainrot is so advanced we’re getting “literally like that marvel movie” more often than not nowadays bc y’all can’t even read kid books more.
That is bullshit. If you are refering to Tiananmen Square, then I highly recommend you watch the channel Felipe Durante on YouTube. He’s a Brazilian living in China and he have talked about it several times, and even talks about how his colleagues talk about it.
This idea that China is some sort of dystopian hell where you cannot talk about this stuff is just a western lie.
Yo, so I would like to first point out. I am not at all talking down to you, or denigrating your lived experience. I am just pointing stuff out and I do not mean any offense and I mean all of this. First, this is taken from the Wikipedia page regarding The Tiananmen Square Protests and Massacre:
**The Chinese government continues to forbid discussions about the Tiananmen Square protests[315][316] and has taken measures to block or censor related information, in an attempt to suppress the public’s memory of the Tiananmen Square protests.[2] Textbooks contain little, if any, information about the protests.[317] After the protests, officials banned controversial films and books and shut down many newspapers. Within a year, 12% of all newspapers, 8% of all publishing companies, 13% of all social science periodicals, and more than 150 films were either banned or shut down. The government also announced that it had seized 32 million contraband books and 2.4 million video and audio cassettes.[318] Access to media and Internet resources about the subject are either restricted or blocked by censors.[319] Banned literature and films include Summer Palace,[320] Forbidden City, Collection of June Fourth Poems,[citation needed] The Critical Moment: Li Peng diaries and any writings of Zhao Ziyang or his aide Bao Tong, including Zhao’s memoirs.
Print media that contain references to the protests must be consistent with the government’s version of events.[267] Domestic and foreign journalists are detained, harassed, or threatened, as are their Chinese colleagues and any Chinese citizens who they interview.[321] Thus, Chinese citizens are typically reluctant to speak about the protests because of potentially negative repercussions. Many young people who were born after 1980 are unfamiliar with the events and are therefore apathetic about politics. Youth in China are sometimes unaware of the events, the symbols which are associated with them such as the Tank Man,[322][323] or the significance of the date of the massacre 4 June itself.[324] Some older intellectuals no longer aspire to implement political change. Instead, they focus on economic issues.[325] Some political prisoners have refused to talk to their children about their involvement in the protests out of fear of putting them at risk.**
“Just watch that channel.” On that platform owned and operated by Google. Who were ousted previously for Project Butterfly, which was their move to illegally enter the Chinese Market. I say illegally, as Google, being an American company and major piece of the Global Spy network created under the Patriot Act, had no business working with an enemy of the State. Complying with Chinese censorship requirements and narrative control. The same Google who Alphabet were ordered to break up. Then found in contempt of court and now, miraculously still exist unchanged. My brother in Christ, from the bottom of my heart, please hear me. The corporate media we are consuming, whether produced through Legacy Media outlets owned by Billionaires. Or for Youtube, (also owned by Billionaires) is lying to all of us. That is why we are here, on Lemmy, a federated instance of a reddit clone. If I might offer a counter-narrative. Perhaps, this video you describe would exist as a token to show the tolerance of the Chinese government and their perceived modernity. They’re so well-known for their reactions to the mention of the single most globally derided act of barbarism against its own citizens. Despite the contrary being overwhelmingly well-documented and understood across academia. Or, maybe it is allowed to exist to benefit global corporatism by whitewashing the atrocities committed by China throughout the Tiananmen Square protests and Massacre. If we examine the global political climate we can deduce that the production of this content may serve the broader purpose of recontextualising global youth opinions of China. Potentially to ingratiate the Western Hemisphere into lifting the arms embargo between America/EU to China. Maybe to be timed at the heels of a global conflict driven by the collapse of the world’s reserve currency at the hands of billionaire sycophants created by Big Tech monopolies.
The same ones controlling the production, dissemination and censorship of all of the content on their platforms by virtue of being the capitalist owners of those that produce the unending novelty for the platform owners, for free. That also produce the algorithm that constantly feeds us tailored content, based on the massive profile of every single online activity, google search, voice note, photograph and recorded conversation that they have collected on all of us for the last quarter century. If there are people left by the end of this, there will be myths and legends about how humanity was manipulated into destroying itself. Using science meant to addict us, normalise loneliness and retrain our discourse to be innately combatant, disbelieving and adversarial. All because we are slaves to the mass hallucination. That fiat money actually exists and that it gives corporations power.
But that’s just like, you know, my opinion or whatever…
Hey, I appreciate the disclaimer at the top, it shows you care about this stuff, which is already a pretty good step.
Other comrades already provided you with links about Tiananmen Square. The only other two I can link here are this video debunking the western narrative by Hakim and this article about the Arab league’s conclusion after investigating Xinjiang.
With all that said, I think your conclusion is wrong. You are completely right when you say that media outlets and most of the internet are owned up by a handful of billionaires that control the narrative in their favor, including YouTube. But that doesn’t mean everything produced on these outlets are lies or wrong. On YouTube for example, despite the clear disadvantage, there are communists there subverting the machine to educate people on these issues you are speaking about.
Furthermore, your vision of China comes from these same media outlets you already rightfully criticized. I invite you to rethink what you have been told about China, and any other current socialist countries for that matter, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos and DPRK.
You can lurk or ask around on Lemmygrad if you’re curious and want to learn further about that.
You’re actually getting really close to the truth of it all when you mention how media in the West is corporate dominated, you just took that to an odd conclusion and think that there is censorship of criticism against China, and not the opposite. The truth is that the US government pays media billions of dollars to drum up anti-PRC narratives, as they want to pressure China into capitulation and opening up its markets for foreign dominance and not to its currently limited and highly controlled wiggle room. Moreover, the idea that every channel that is positive about China is propaganda is silly, when there’s known support for paid anti-China propaganda.
The CPC’s stance, and most Marxists in general, on Tian’anmen is that hundreds of protestors and PLA officers were killed in Beijing that day as the PLA advanced towards the square, but that the square itself was evacuated peacefully, which matches leaked US cables and the CPC’s official stance on what it calls the “June 4th incident”. This is a rejection of the commonly reported story in western media, such as BBC, of 10,000 people being killed on the square itself, which originated from a British diplomat’s cable. Said diplomat was later confirmed to have evacuated well before.
I reiterate, the CPC’s stance isn’t that the massacre didn’t happen, but that Western nations intentionally sensationalize the quantity of deaths and the character of the events. This is also why Western Nations don’t frequently report on the South Korean Gwang-Ju massacre that occured around the same era, where the South Korean millitary murdered thousands of High School and College students protesting against Chun Do-Hwan’s dictatorship. All of what I said is backed up by the Wikipedia page for Tian’anmen Square Protests and Massacre, such as Alan Donald revising his estimate from 10,000 to the low thousands yet BBC continuing to report the 10,000 figure:
In a disputed cable sent in the aftermath of the events at Tiananmen, British Ambassador Alan Donald initially claimed, based on information from a “good friend” in the State Council of China, that a minimum of 10,000 civilians died,[237] claims which were repeated in a speech by Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke,[238] but which is an estimated number much higher than other sources provided.[239][240] After the declassification, former student protest leader Feng Congde pointed out that Donald later revised his estimate to 2,700–3,400 deaths, a number closer to, but still much higher than, other estimates.[241]
In your Wikipedia blurb, you mention that the CPC censors articles like these that report on a clearly mythologized version of events. Quite right, they do, because they don’t want foreign governments trying to destabilize China so that they can take advantage and plunder their industry freely. The alternative is to just let western media do as it likes, and be subject to yet another US-sponsered coup.
I love how y’all are still seething that your color revolution failed
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/wikileaks/8555142/Wikileaks-no-bloodshed-inside-Tiananmen-Square-cables-claim.html
- https://rumble.com/v233t44-tiananmen-square-chai-ling-hoping-to-cause-bloodshed.html
- https://johnmenadue.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacrethe-one-sided-story/
- https://mango-press.com/the-tiananmen-square-massacre-the-wests-most-persuasive-most-pervasive-lie/
- https://web.archive.org/web/20170706000928/https://archives.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php
Every single Chinese person ive ever met (i’ve lived in Shenzen and I know a few in the UK) has been open to discussing what happened there what are you on about lmao
And why should I believe anything you say? I mean, if I’m correct and the internet is a giant skinner box used to condition us. Wouldn’t that be what you’d argue anyway?
And why should I believe anything you say?
Is it that inconceivable someone onlines been to HK or Shenzhen to you lmao, they are both cities of several million people and HK being a colony of the UK has free travel between UK>HK.
I met someone in the UK who was HK-British, her parents where a split of HK/Mainlander, allowed me to travel between the two and I had employment for about 6 months in HK as a chef; during that time I was able to speak to a lot of people.
You could just like, fucking talk to someone from Shenzhen man, no ones stopping you.
In the current pseudo-capitalist world economy, the rich do help in pushing a circular economy, in a variety of industries. If the rich are too taxed they’ll more easily leave the country and move elsewhere. Your country loses a lot of its GDP. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem, but it’s also how the government of today runs, where everything is run on credit and paid for later.
Lean-governments are possible, but in such a case a government can never spend more than its GDP produces. No government would go that way right now, mainly because people aren’t educated enough to make a decent argument for it, verbally or otherwise.
Your country either welcomes the rich, or answers to the IMF.
In summary//TL;DR: In a credit-based, credit-ran, loan-promised economy, greatly successful small and medium businesses are not enough to keep GDP high enough to pay off national debt.
Capitalism
Because the rich just pay politics to provide the law they want to have.
Because our governments are largely bought and paid for.
Because there is no profit it helping the poor.
Brazil is currently fighting to increase the income tax of the top earners. I don’t expect it to pass because congress and senate are, by and large, protector of the interests of the wealthy.
because that goes against the concerns of the elites. the rich, who pay for the campaigns of most politicians (surely they pay for all of those who have a chance to win the post of president or prime minister), will try to squeeze every dime they can from everyone else, specially from the poor.
small to medium business won’t thrive because that would be another entrant in the market to split profits with the larger, more established business. they have already large advantages because they purchase raw materials and utilities in bulk, hence they can get a lower price and larger profit margins than the smaller, newer entrants to the market. still, they want to be sure that everything remains like that and therefore have politicians to keep things that way. the idea that new business will make a difference in well-established markets is an illusion.
as for property supply, well, land in our system is not a resource, but a commodity. take the real estate market for example: investors are buying property to serve as a financial asset, they buy houses when they’re cheap, rent them and sell for a profit when the market conditions are good for that. they don’t think of housing as something that should serve their primary purpose - as the place of living for families. they don’t want to lose value on their properties, and that’s why they have politicians to represent their interests and keep things the way they are. same logic applies in big cities where investors buy commercial buildings and don’t want to see them not valued enough - by not having people actually working on them. that’s why they’re so radically against remote jobs.
It’s really easy to convince a huge number of poor people that the elites are the only ones defending them from poor people they aren’t personally familiar with. This trick has worked for 10,000 years at least.
