this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.

If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.

Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!

Rules

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0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)


1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here


Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.


2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such


That means condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.


3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.


That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).


4. No Bigotry.


The only dangerous minority is the rich.


5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.

(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)


6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.



  1. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Specific example: I think you may want to check your rates, the rate differential between highest and lowest in your example seems much lower than the current system. General idea: Couldn't the rates just be adjusted to the base or unlinked later? Changes would have to be legislative anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I kinda pulled the exact multipliers out of my butt, however! I've spreadsheeted this shit out and there's a way to do it such that 60% of Americans wind up with a tax break while putting some serious screws to obscene wealth in the highest brackets. I even added an additional multiplier for every multiple of twenty times the average of the lowest quintile's wages someone's income rises above. Twenty because that's the predicted "ideal" wage ratio between an organization's lowest and highest compensated members.

So you have the top bracket rate, and then after the first multiple is passed, that gets taxed at the nominal rate times the multiplier, and so on and so forth past each new multiple.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I really think you should re-address your idea on a theoretical framework. It's difficult to imagine that a new set of income tax rates would address extreme wealth or address the crises of capitalism regardless of the numbers you have in your spreadsheet. For example, OP suggests using total wealth as a tax base to alleviate inequality which would be a new way of approaching the issue.

If you'd still like to use income tax rates to approach inequality, I would suggest starting with high negative percentages and increasing them through your table. Kinda like this:

base * { -99%, -98%, ....., 99%}

Sorry if this comes off as harsh, I appreciate that you're looking to for a way to address these issues.