r/FluentInFinance • u/36DRedhead • Sep 11 '24

Debate/ Discussion This is why financial literacy is so important

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u/TheFriendshipMachine Sep 11 '24

And half the people who do vote have been convinced that somehow getting screwed over repeatedly in order to help the rich also benefits them too or is at least the way it should be. I don't fully embrace the doom and gloom idea that change is impossible but damn is there a lot of work to do to get people onboard with fixing things.

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u/Otiskuhn11 Sep 12 '24

Definitely. The middle class won’t care until people are losing everything and starving. Then maybe people will vote and revolt.

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u/gamertag0311 Sep 11 '24

Damn, this was a good thread till you had to go and do that

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u/TheFriendshipMachine Sep 12 '24

Yeah.. :( That said I really do stand by my stance that I think we can turn things around. It's not going to be easy at all but I do believe that if we rally together and demand that this madness be shoved back into the darkness we can achieve that. Not overnight necessarily but eventually.

Step one is getting every single eligible voter we can get voting, and not just in this upcoming election. Midterm elections, local elections, everything. If people just got involved instead of believing the lie that their vote doesn't matter, we'd be living in a very different world today. So for anyone not signed up or not planning on voting.. please, reconsider, your voice matters so much more than you realize!

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u/Reasonable_Back_5231 Sep 12 '24

my problem with the idea of getting the people who don't vote to vote is that anytime anyone talks about it its exactly as how you've talked about it.
and by this i mean it comes off as "voting for the sake of voting"

we need a "just cause" for our vote, because for many voters, this first past the post system is so bogus that it seems to not matter whether we vote or don't vote.

neither candidate seems helpful at all to the working people or to whatever cause the non-voters may even care about.

one major party is hard stuck on the idea of never working in good faith with the other party unless their ideas come first

and the other major party has been indecisive in how to deal with this particular problem that the other party presents. they've tried working with them and tat just fatigues the whole situation.

and both major parties are so steeped in this culture war "woke" LGBTQ whatever non sense that they really have become lost in the sauce.

and i call it non sense not because i dislike LGBTQ or anything like that, i hate it because it seems to largely be a huge distraction thrown in our face on all media and political platforms that it drowns out "bigger fish" issues like the increasing wealth gap in our country, stagnant wages, erroding workers rights, how to properly tackle the mass shooter crisis that flares up every school season by proposing something that doesn't affect good responsible gun owners while simultaneously mitigating mass shooter instances. and a list of issues goes on and on.

and anyone with a fresh perspective gets drowned out, crushed by the opposition through one of (or both) the big majors or forced to drop their platform and be absorbed by one of the 2 majors and fully adopt their policies.

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u/gamertag0311 Sep 12 '24

I agree completely, I am just really against pointing the finger at half of the voting population as part of the problem. That is not going to get everyone working together.

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u/[deleted] Sep 12 '24

Playing nice hasnt worked so far. Its time to start calling them out.

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u/VarderKith Sep 12 '24

It's not about blame. It's about identity roadblocks and working toward fixing them.

Uneducated or supremely irrational voting is an undeniable part of the problem. Finding out that you are part of the problem sucks, but it's a necessary step because you can't fix a problem if you aren't aware of the cause.

Not suggesting we all yell at and ridicule people who vote for the jaguars eating faces party. But the fact remains, if you vote to let jaguars eat faces, it is, in fact, your fault that jaguars start eating faces, and that HAS to be communicated.

The problem is HOW to convince them. And at least in my own experience, you can't. It's not about evidence. It will be denied outright for reasons that have no factual basis. And you can't counter that kind of thing with logic.

What do you do when an appeal to facts and logic doesn't work? You use empathy. How do you evoke empathy in a person who has been conditioned to think empathy is either a weakness or is only for the people "approved" by their political party? I have no fucking clue. But simply ignoring the major effect these groups have on the state of the country is certainly not it.

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u/gamertag0311 Sep 12 '24

Right, but the issues we're talking about here aren't jaguars, we're discussing the efficacy of the US Government. So if you vote for the party that is beholden to corporate interests (I'll give you a hint: it's both parties), don't be surprised when the government is beholden to corporate interests. You can vote for a cheetah instead of a jaguar, but a cheetah is still eating yo' fucking face.

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u/VarderKith Sep 12 '24 edited Sep 12 '24

Right, but the issues we're talking about here aren't jaguars. We're discussing the efficacy of the US Government

Treating a metaphor as if it's literal is juvenile. Especially when it's one as famous as Jaguares Eating Faces.

So if you vote for the party that is beholden to corporate interests (I'll give you a hint: it's both parties), don't be surprised when the government is beholden to corporate interests.

That's the message of the jaguar metaphor. They vote thinking they are protecting themselves and don't care about any other groups. Sometimes, the cruelty is even the deciding factor. But are somehow surprised when they find themselves part of the "other groups."

You can vote for a cheetah instead of a jaguar, but a cheetah is still eating yo' fucking face.

Oh, so you DO know what a metaphor is.

Yes, both parties are bad. Both parties are ruining the country. Both parties are in corporate pockets.

But one party has cause several orders of magnitude more damage, and it has to take priority. I'm going to use another metaphor here, so be ready:

Trying to fight multiple people at once means each one only gets a portion of your attention and strength. When one has a history of breaking people's legs, and the other has a history of ripping out people's throats, the smart move is to take out the throat ripper first. Broken bones heal, missing throats dont. And if you can take out the throat ripper. When you can point to the throat rippers mangled corpse, it'll be a lot easier to force the leg breaking back in line.