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this country's definition of freedom is limited to the freedom to put your life at risk to make enough money to survive. real freedom is no matter what, you will have healthcare and no matter what, you will have safe, decent housing, and no matter what, you will never go hungry.
real liberty is about self-determination, and to me that means workers should own the companies they work at and determine how those companies and the work inside them is structured.
real choice is being able to walk away from your job knowing you will be fine in every way that counts.
if you started working as a teenager you're going to work for fifty years. fifty years so you can live at just above poverty in old age, the government saying it will pay you more the longer you work because they know the longer you work the less you will live.
people who believe in liberty and freedom would say we're going to stop the hoarding of wealth which is the theft of freedom and provide through direct transfers, through public programs, through the safety net, what people actually need to have a dignified life.
all the wealth, all the nation's private wealth less its private debts, spread evenly, would be about 300 grand a person, in money, in illiquid assets, in all of it together, a small fortune for every person, as just a starting point.
instead, the wealthy suffocate the rest of society. they suffocate politics, they buy governments, they force people into illiberal workplaces where their survival is predicated on their exploitation.
believing in liberty means increasing the power including the economic power of ordinary people, and reducing the economic power of the rich. it means living wages, it means guaranteed healthcare and housing.
it means giving companies to workers in labor arrangements, and providing the plenty to all.
you're not free if a hundred thousand of you have to build the fortune of one man just so you don't starve, just so you can go to the doctor, just so you can afford shelter.
you don't have liberty if the only way to live outside of poverty in old age is to spend fifty years from the time you were a child working in companies whose wealth all goes to a fraction of the people.
i don't see the great deal in people being asked to work for decades to have a modicum of dignity and having that stolen from them anyways.
how many people spent their last year of life in this country finding out how completely alone they were?
a politician who gave a shit about human dignity and the sacredness of human life and for liberty and freedom, would say we're going to shut down for a little while. we're going to use that time to vaccinate as many people as possible. on the other side, your shit is guaranteed.
they would say give me six to eight weeks and at the end of it you'll never have to worry about having money to go to a doctor again, you'll never have to worry about having a safe place to live again. we're going to guarantee that as a right for our people to liberate them.
we will spend whatever it costs to ensure everybody has healthcare, everybody has shelter, everybody has food, everyone can go to school. then you make the decisions about what you want to do with your life in this country.
we need some other choice than work or starve.
the reason for people's misery is simple. the government failed at the basic thread of what it suggested it was here to do, the most basic. and now, when people get out of this, if they get out of it, what is on offer but trying to work for decades on a planet that's killing you.
you'll go back to work, to your shitty boss, to your fucked up company. that's the dream. you will get sicker and your children will get sicker and shit like this will happen from time to time while the companies that own everything destroy what's left of the planet.
that's not enough. that's not enough for people. that's not a vision for people, that's not hope for people.
i want a country and a planet where it's easier to live instead of what we got which is a country and planet where facing inaction and collapse a lot of people just become less afraid to die because that's the only other choice.
the distance between what is being offered and what is necessary is an enormous and dehumanizing gulf.
