Get in the Hilux

I want to both upvote and downvote this at the same time. So I will do neither, I will just state my opinion..

This is not a shitpost, this is fact.

Here. Take a booby prize
- Van accelerator?
- I dunno who the face is on the accelerator pedal, but it looks like someone loved riding their clutch...
Agreed.
Billionaires should pay everyone for stolen time, potential contributions to better world living. They currently pay only toxicity, diminish quality of life on Earth.
- Billionaires should not exist at all. I saw a post saying that once you earn $999.999.999 dollars you get a trophy saying "I won capitalism" and everything else you earn goes to taxes. We should absolutely do that
It's literally not a fact. Net worth is a price tag, not an amount of cash.

Actually, I'd be happy to keep working if it means that everybody on earth gets a decent standard of living.

Absolutely agree. I don't have any urge to stop working. But 40 h / 5 days a week is too much. Life is too fucking short especially given how productivity has skyrocketed yet wages have barely kept up.
Obligatory fuck Ronald Reagan and the Republican party.
- Sure. We can do both. Make sure everybody has a bearable workload and make sure everybody has enough.
I'm with you on this.
If we can meet the housing, food, and medical needs of everyone, then that would be sufficient.

BUT THINK OF THE BILLIONAIRES COMPETING AGAINST EACH OTHER TO BUILD BIGGER MEGA YACHTS. THINK OF THE YACHTS.

I think they compete in Space cock

It's not time stolen from you as the work needs to be done either way, but it's money stolen from you as you're either underpaid or paying too much for what you're buying.

Very often the work does not need to get done, the work uses up a poorly paid employee's entire work day to squeeze out an extra fraction of a percent of profit.
You're right about money, and employers are often stealing time as well.
- See also: bullshit Jobs
  https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466958-bullshit-jobs
- I believe it was Marx who first observed that superfluous jobs, as well as unemployment, are inextricably linked to capitalism.
  EDIT: Found a relevant Marx quote in Grundrisse:
  Capital itself is the moving contradiction, [in] that it presses to reduce labour time to a minimum, while it posits labour time, on the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it diminishes labour time in the necessary form so as to increase it in the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing measure as a condition – question of life or death – for the necessary.
  See also Marcuse, 1969:
  The absorption [i.e. disappearance] of unemployment and the maintenance of an adequate rate of profit would [...] require the stimulation of demand on an ever larger scale, thereby stimulating the rat race of the competitive struggle for existence through the multiplication of waste, planned obsolescence, parasitic and stupid jobs and services.
- https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=4042
It is time stolen from you as well. You only need to work a fraction of the time you do in order to cover your wages, the rest of the day is free profit for the Capitalist.
- .
- You're ignoring that what you output from your work needs to be... Outputted? So the issue is that you make less than you deserve for the amount of work that you do... If you make 25$/h and it wealth got redistributed so you would make 100$/h it doesn't mean you could work 10h instead of 40h, your employer would still need you to 40h (or close to it, maybe you would be motivated by the increase in salary and work faster but that's speculations) to achieve the same result.
  If unemployment was at 75% and wealth redistribution happened to quadruple salaries then we could say "Instead of having 25% of the population working 40h/week at 25$/h, we'll have 100% of the population working 10h/week at 100$/h so in the end the people that are working already will be making the same annual salary" but that's not the case.
You are not only working to mentain a functional society, you are also working to constantly grow it (each year more stuff must be made, more money must be earned, more of everything) it and also to create a very big surplus for the rich. We also burn perfectly edible food, ruin perfectly wearable clothing and make electronic devices that intentionally break in a few years to get you to buy another one sooner just to get the 1% more money. If we didn't do all that and they lived normal, non-luxury lives, everyone would have a lot more free time. If everyone worked only 20 hours a week, we'd make enough to sustain our society.
- Also, most workers are so deeply alienated because they know that they aren't working for themselves, they are working for someone else. Which is why most people simply stop giving a fuck at some point.
  There is so much inefficiency because most who do the actual work don't have much motivation to do a decent job, yet alone think about what they are doing because you simply get punished, or at least don't get any reward, for thinking. And they people who (should) do the thinking often don't have a clue as they live in a bubble.
  And of course there is all the bullshit about shipping stuff across the world to do different stuff when it is completely unnecessesary..
- If everyone was making more money demand would increase therefore people would need to work more, not less...
It's time stolen from you if you have to commute to your job.
It's time stolen from you if a lot of your job is pointless busywork.
it impairs the economy. More folks could hire people to do things. Remember there were milkmen and tv repair men at one point in time. You could hire someone to clean your house and they could hire someone to do their taxes. its amazing how an economy works when people have money to spend rather than hoard.
- There were also icemen at one point. Then we invented refrigerators. Nobody seems to miss having a giant block of ice delivered to their house to keep the food we buy at the stores cold. But one thing I think a lot of people miss is appliances that didn't need to be thrown away.
Fam, at my last job they had roughly 23h of activity for me per week. 17h of nothing to do and still having to stick around because i needed every penny to be able to pay my bills.
- Anecdotal, plenty of jobs where downtime doesn't exist.
For many jobs it is indeed stolen time https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=4042
- Oh wow, a comic!
well if you got more money per hours of work or things were cheaper, you would probably work less
- How many hours of work are necessary to build car? Does it suddenly take less just because the employees are paid more? No.
  If a client wants an employee's help for 15 minutes, will they suddenly want their help for 10 minutes just because the employee is paid more? No.
  There are bullshit jobs around, but most of them aren't, the work needed to accomplish the tasks will still be the same.

Fucking yes. We need to be having economic conversations on the basis of time.

I'm not opposed to being rich, or really even being filthy rich, I think the fair chance of being able to live lavishly is a great motivator for folks to shoot for their best ideas.

What I am opposed to is being so obscenely rich that it would take several generations of chronic mismanagement for your descendants to manage to blow through the funds within a time limit of "by the end of the 22nd century."

Most generational wealth has reduced to being a small supplement for the recipient to supplement still having to work for their living with by the time the original person who built it up's grandkids have had their turn with it, maybe the great grandkids if the family makes it a point of staying grounded and using the wealth wisely.

That's not even from blowing through it like madmen, it's from how many people it's getting divided among by then and how likely any one of those individuals are to just decide they don't need to work anymore on getting access to it.

I'm fine with people having money, but there should be a hard cap.
Billionaires do not need to exist.
- Agreed, but just saying "you can only have this much money" will get fought tooth and nail, IMO the way to do it is through basing the rates in tax brackets on the percentage of wealth controlled by people in those brackets.
  It's not a "hard" cap, but it does pit the rich against each other to have more than the other rich assholes while not having so much that they're all paying an above 100% tax rate.
  Might not be as delicious as frying them for ourselves, but watching the rich eat each other will be far more entertaining, and is shown to be far more effective. Take it from the once Shah of the Sasanian Empire Kavad, if any one noble is getting too powerful, the best tools to use in bringing them down is other nobles jealous of their ascendency.
- There doesn't even need to be any kind of cap, they just need to pay more taxes and be prohibited from buying politicians.

Conspiracy theory: The reason we have the Chicken Tax is to keep the Hilux out of the US because it's too effective a weapon against the military

It is so smaller more competitively priced and actually usable trucks stay out of your country
- That's too credible for me to believe
Top gear put a Hilux up against a 1984 chevy half 4x4 they found on craigslist. The old chevy won, only vehicle running at the end.
- [citation needed]

It's good that you are getting support. I do think your jokes here are a bit in bad taste though. It isn't likely to make anyone feel good about supporting others, or about being supported.
- The point of helping others isn’t to make yourself feel better
I mean, that's a sweet position if the safety nets actually helped. Just kinda lame you have the same attitude as a 1%-er about it which just points to trolling. Would rather my taxes go to housing someone than war manufacturing or price gouging by corporate companies.
I was happy to pay my taxes before I needed it, and I’ll be happy to pay my taxes after I need it. This is temporary, and it’s important that people get the help they need when they need it.
Problem is that the cost vastly surpasses the taxes you paid and will pay. And since the really rich always have the means to weasle out of the system, the middle class is bleeding until it can't any more. Countries like Germany are squished by the cost of their welfare system.
- the funds sholdn't come from the working class, but instead the rich. increase taxes on the highest earners to fund welfare.
- Pretty big assumption here that they won't pay more taxes than what they get from the government. I paid $20k in tax in the first year of my first non-retail job. If they paid taxes for 7-8 years before covid they probably already paid for themselves.
You are a success story, which most people who have had hardships will be if only given a chance.
If you can work and you choose to live from benefits, you are a leech.
- i think anyone should be allowed to choose whether they want to work, and if they choose not to, they should at a minimum be provided housing, food, running potable water and clothing.
- We had almost full automation for 60 years in factories, where did that money go? There are leeches in society, but OP is not among the relevant ones.

They won't sell the Hilux in the US because it's too easy to turn into a technical. Nobody out here with a Tacoma technical

Bunch of yeehawdists rolling around in Hiluxes would be sub-optimal

Who tf pissed on this image?

Shitpost? This is just unadulterated truth

More people need to read Marx. I recommend reading Wage Labor and Capital and following it up with Value, Price and Profit if you have a couple hours to spare.

- Why involve ChatGPT, rather than actually starting with the basics of Marx's critique of Capitalism, especially the two I linked? I specifically mentioned WLaC and VPaP because they are already summaries and simplifications of Capital.
  Going beyond those two works into more complicated class dynamics like the petite bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat, and so forth, concepts like the Base and Superstructure, Historical and Dialectical Materialism, and so forth can be explored later.
  Leftists absolutely should read theory, yes, but making theory a book-reading competition results in well-read academics who haven't done any organizing on the ground, endlessly bickering and purity testing each other to no avail, wondering why Socialism hasn't been built yet.

Forget not working. It's not even that I want to not work. I just want to not struggle to survive. I don't want to have to work a gruelling 40 hours every goddamn week. I want to have the time to pursue other means of work, to contribute to society as a whole, not just to one, single company! Yeah, being able to have more time off would be great, but I don't want to not work, I want to be able to contribute in my own ways too. And I can't do that when I'm working 40 hours and still living fucking paycheck to paycheck.

Nobody seems to have mentioned the very oddly placed highlight

I don't mind working when it's either something I enjoy doing and would do without it being a job, or if I can see it tangibly improving something or someone by providing something other people (or myself) need.

If all I see is the boss getting richer while I am doing something I literally would only do because I am being paid to do it,, fuck that job.

Is there any reason why they should keep more money than they ever can spend?

And at what cost to the climate/resources did they get this rich? Compare that to what they have done for the climate/resource.

We have reached the point where this is shitposting. I feel that we have failed as a species.

/s

Now we know the real reason why you can't buy a hilux in america.

I am just against what they are allowed to do with this money. How many airplanes full with fules can they blow up just for fun? Want to find fastest way to blow it up. Is it fair that they can ignore the climate impact completely? Just do what ever bad stuff they want to.

Is that a thing? Blowing up fully-fuelled airplanes just for fun?
- Almost. Look at spaceX and their Rockets.
  I am just saying that they are allowed make very heavy impact to the climate compared a normal person. Just take their jet plan or helicopter wherever they go is allowed.

If it makes you feel better...

No they aren't. The number that's increasing is a price tag, not cash. That's why no one's wallet or bank account gets bigger when that same number goes down.

Who do you think the profit of increasing the price tag goes to? The workers in the factory to help them deal with inflation, or the rich shareholders?
- Who do you think the profit of increasing the price tag goes to?
  Whoever sells the appreciated asset to someone else, who was willing to buy it at the new, higher price.
  And if they don't sell, there is no profit, it's still unrealized.

You see how that would be bad for the economy, right? Good for individual workers, but bad for consumers since there's no longer a person doing some service, like I don't know, medical care. I fell off the bike in Canada and spent 7 hours covered in blood before a nurse saw me and bandaged me up.

As an American I also had to pay $1000 USD for this (insurance will eventually refund this to me, hopefully)

I'm Canadian, and I dont mind our healthcare system one bit. You only had to pay because you were American.
It's far from a perfect system, but at least I'm not riddled in medical debt, or have to financially plan to have my wife deliver a kid.
- It's not about paying, my insurance will get me back. It's about the wait time in the emergency room. If you're not dying they never see you until early in the morning

Money is not finite. Quit acting like it is gold bullion. It's not. Whatever amount someone aquires has zero effect on your pile. This argument reeks of grade 2 math.

- And people say memeing is not an artform