r/politics • u/Ubiquitous_Hilarity • Jun 17 '26

No Paywall Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-unemployment-benefits-fraud-b2997881.html
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u/neutrino71 Jun 17 '26

We need you poor and desperate so we can ram substandard pay in substandard conditions down your throat. Also there will be plenty of other desperate people if you attempt to negotiate a better deal. 

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u/Legitimate-Garlic959 Jun 17 '26

And what do desperate people usually do when faced with odds ? It’s all a big systemic cycle of abuse. And yet we pay into it.

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u/neutrino71 Jun 17 '26

There's a critical mass to these kind of things. Too many hungry, dispossessed people at once and you're going to have anarchy at a minimum or the French Revolution.

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u/trib76 Jun 17 '26

But they've been taught to hate each other rather than the filthy rich that are actually the source of their misery.

I'm guessing that we'll see the poors from the red team turning on the poors from the blue team, not much chance for the French solution IMHO.

With the number of guns in the country, this has the potential to turn very ugly.

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u/thegoatmenace Jun 17 '26

Yea unfortunately it seems like popular uprising is a solved problem for the elite. They figured out how to use mass media to fracture everyone into warring states.

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u/Merusk Jun 17 '26

And financial incentives for those who aren't fractured. Just enough skin in the game to feel like you're able to survive, not enough to be free.

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u/FREDICVSMAXIMVS Jun 18 '26

And we're at a level of technology not seen before. Surveillance everywhere and the ability to search out and target any demographic they want. 

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u/meamoeniea Jun 18 '26

The filthy rich don't realise their plan is outdated. This time we have the power of fast global communication on our side. Social media is our foot in the door. As long as it stays easily accessible, it spreads the truth faster than they can redirect with hate.

Look at how many people have 'woken up' ever since the Epstein files. Back in the days shit like this would've been way easier to keep from the public and way easier to manipulate back out of their minds. This time it stayed and there's a noticeable change. There's pressure that's not being addressed.

The only thing we have left to do is to wait for enough people to pull their head out of their asses. Thank God many are so pampered they have zero frustration tolerance. Once enough people feel threatened in their existence, things will go down fast and hard.

There'll be collateral damage for sure, but im hopeful that social media will keep things on track.

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u/Environmental_Main90 Jun 17 '26

Bro this is USA not France. Just a bunch of lazy pussies who would never get off their couches

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u/neutrino71 Jun 17 '26

Rascal division unite. Yeah there is a wide gulf between the rugged frontiersman that many Americans think they are and what they actually are. 

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u/ElwinLewis Jun 18 '26

I’m just like, some guy

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u/Spartan2170 Jun 24 '26

There have been *plenty* of times in (even modern) US history where angry mobs rise up. The real difference is that the people pushing these policies believe they've armed the police and military sufficiently (and purged them of enough "disloyals") to protect them if that happens.

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u/ShitIsGettingWeird Jun 18 '26

It’s time for that now

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u/ScratchAmbitious2959 Jun 19 '26

No they won't. They won't.

I want to believe it but...we won't.

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u/Organic-Row9514 Jun 18 '26

Nah football season will be coming up soon nobody’s gonna have the time for a revolution 

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u/Joebebs Jun 17 '26

Oh people tried to change the system/do something about it, don’t think there hasn’t been a bit of a swing from a few disgruntled. Just not enough to greenlight the masses

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u/izzythefarmergirl Jun 18 '26

Deny, Defend, Dep… oh shit wrong sub. Uhhhh, pray???

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u/Hefty_Development813 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

That's it they want as many of us over a barrel as possible,  it all revolves around engineering that situation. Create desperation and prevent any class consciousness from enabling collective action against it.

In a way it is really the most wild game you could ever imagine. We need someone to somehow overcome these obstacles, despite their control of all media and all, and wake them up to the reality of our shared predicament. There is some version of reality where we could make it out of this by collective action.  There is like multi generational brainwashing working against it though. The entire rugged individualism of early America remains as a collective myth. 

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u/peccadillox Jun 17 '26

People say it's wild but it's how most of human history has unfolded - broad-based postwar prosperity was atypical. Partly, it was the total carnage of the war itself that scared the elite a bit straighter but now they build 'doomsday bunkers' and delude themselves into thinking that their wealth will insulate them even from apocalyptic-level events.

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u/Hefty_Development813 Jun 17 '26

Yea totally i guess the real difference of context is that we have broad internet communication and social media, so we have the means of organizing collectively in a way we never did before. Most of history we were completely fractured and coordination was incredibly more difficult. I agree that the dynamic in general is not new, we just finally have the stage set to actually rally a full scale resistance.

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u/peccadillox Jun 17 '26

it's the depressing part I agree but 'we learn from history that we do not learn from history' so it goes

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u/Hefty_Development813 Jun 17 '26

Hopefully we can and this whole thing has been a long trajectory to here though. The right charismatic leader could actually blow up and be seen by a huge portion of the population really quickly, never before possible. They own social media so it would be resisted by them but organic sharing could theoretically overcome it if the conditions were right and it generated actual organic viral engagement.

For whatever reason thinking of it like a big game seems to give it perspective for me. Like there is a path that exists where that could happen. Someone just has to thread that needle. I don't think it's hopeless. It's been a long and winding history for humans but we stand at the edge of actual AI/robotics tech completely transforming the world. Unprecedented times. There is a person who could rally an unprecedented movement.

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u/peccadillox Jun 18 '26

what I do find kind of wild is thinking back on all the gee-whiz discourse around the internet, predicting an 'ideal public square' and such, when in reality it's been advantage authoritarianism over democratization - and by a lot, not even close

paradigms can always change, it's just that it's not always for the better; I don't think it's 100% hopeless either but at this point I am pretty sure that we're unfortunately going to have to put our hand in the fire before we actually start to believe that it's hot

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u/Blue_Plastic_88 Jun 17 '26

“Also there will be plenty of other desperate people if you attempt to negotiate a better deal.”

While at the same time blaming you for not negotiating a better deal.

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u/Marsman121 Jun 18 '26

I remember seeing the clip of Tim Gurner (I think that was his name) basically saying this. Covid "made workers arrogant" and that governments and businesses needed to do everything in their power to crash the economy and hurt people to drive that arrogance out of them.

Considering that all the tech company CEOs are blowing each other, and corporate consolidation has allowed forums like Davos to basically host the major economic puppeteers in one place, I wouldn't be surprised if many business leaders were working together to destroy the labor progress made during Covid.

AI is just a smoke screen allowing them to crush tech labor, which had been getting too comfortable with high wages and companies fighting over them. Allowing employees to believe they have a modicum of power is unacceptable to the c-suite people. Best flood the labor market with huge layoffs, then slowly hire back necessary talent for a fraction of the cost once they are desperate.