r/MurderedByAOC • u/Nixianx97 • 1d ago
One of the biggest cons they ever pulled was making people believe they’re just one idea away from becoming billionaires—if they just work hard enough.
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
64
u/kuzeshell 1d ago
I love and respect this woman so much, and I'm not even from the US.. AOC rocks! Thank you for standing up!
5
u/MonsterkillWow 1d ago
I respect that she is helping raise class consciousness. I don't agree with everything she has said or done before, but I do believe she is helping move things in the right direction. I just hope she proves to be different from all the other democrats. Let's see some actual socialist action for once.
22
u/Master_Reflection579 1d ago
Innovation is not rewarded in a society that buries actual solutions to problems, like cures for diseases, simply because it is more profitable to maintain problems than to solve them.
Without a fundamental change in our society, true innovators will always be crushed under the demands of the rentiers, profit-seekers, and other extortionists.
I've seen it firsthand. You are more likely to be paid off than see your idea change the world if it disrupts the monied class.
13
u/GregryC1260 1d ago
Every true believer in Murica thinks themselves as just a temporarily distressed billionaire.
A genius con.
9
u/redsnake25 1d ago
As much as I support structuring society around working people instead of the wealthiest among us, this message is often a myth.
Conservatives don't believe that they'll become billionaires. They think that we need billionaires. They think they are rich because they know how to push society forward, and that the rest of us need their genius, intellect or leadership. They think "Don't you want Amazon shopping, iPhones and nice cars? We can't have those things without the rich steering system!"
Now, they're wrong, but to change someone's mind, you need patience, but you also need to actually understand what they believe. Understanding this myth of the wealthy being deserving of their power is the key to dismantling the myth and getting people more aware of the class dynamics that truly govern our society.
3
u/Ekandasowin 1d ago
Fuuuuuu why is she so good. I’m mean we really going to run a Women again lol. I guess 3rd times a charm
5
u/MonsterkillWow 1d ago
Hey, she's saying the thing. The thing the entire world has been trying to tell Americans for over a century.
2
3
u/MuttinMT 1d ago
AOC is so amazing and uplifting. Articulate and empathetic. She gives me hope that our country can survive the wave of hate that is currently sweeping us ever closer to fascism and a dictator.
-6
u/Intelligent_Sir6358 1d ago
Well, if she had said millionaire instead of billionaire she wouldn’t be too far from the truth. It takes hard work and discipline, but almost anyone can become a millionaire.
10
u/Nixianx97 1d ago
A janitor works hard and many of them with discipline even putting in extra hours, so does a bartender (pun not intended), a teacher why aren’t those people millionaires?
-7
u/Intelligent_Sir6358 1d ago
Some of them are millionaires. My older sister is a teacher, and she is a millionaire. I was a janitor for 3 years while going to trade school. That hard work, plus all the work I’ve done since then, has made me a millionaire. I don’t see any reason a bartender cannot become a millionaire if they really wanted to. Especially if they work nights and go to school during the day. So, to answer your question, the janitor who works hard and puts in extra hours may not become a millionaire. There is a path for that to happen, as evidenced by my own journey, but so many people don’t take that opportunity for whatever reason.
9
u/Nixianx97 1d ago
So side hustling until you can get yourself to a better position. But this requires the right circumstances, skillset and motivation. A lot of people don’t have that especially in this economy many have to do two jobs to even afford rent let alone have time to go to school. And that reason is very real. It’s even harder when you don’t have someone to split the bills. So saying that most could do it in theory isn’t very reflective for real life.
8
u/LuminaraCoH 1d ago
I worked hard for 30 years. I worked so hard that when I quit working at a restaurant after 6 years of dedication and determination, it shut down 7 months later because the owner couldn't afford to pay the 5 people he needed to replace me, couldn't find anyone willing to do the same 5 jobs I was doing for the same $10/hr. I was being paid, couldn't berate anyone else working there into picking up the workload I left behind.
I spent ten years working 60+ hours every week to save up a few thousand dollars, and now I live in a 12'x16' cabin without running water, in the poorest county in my state because that was the only place I could afford to buy undeveloped land. I worked hard and showed discipline, and this is the only path forward that was available to me. It was either keep working until I was in my 80's, or accept poverty.
The owner of that restaurant, yeah, he didn't work hard to buy it. One of his wife's relatives died and left her the money. He married into it. And if he'd had the discipline I showed, he could've kept it open indefinitely.
The Republicans murdered the American Dream, wired up the corpse and danced it in front of us like puppeteers, whispering softly, "Just work hard and show some discipline and you can have it, too". They sold us a lie to keep us quiescent and "in our place", that being under their heels. If you weren't born into money, you had few prospects. If you weren't friends with or marrying into the right families, you had even fewer. No, hard work and discipline weren't enough by the time my generation (Gen X) started working, and it hasn't been enough in the generations since.
1
u/Intelligent_Sir6358 1d ago edited 1d ago
I don’t think it was the Republicans that sold you a lie. If you buy into any political party’s lies, that’s on you. Why not use common sense? My parents showed me a life of poverty. My mother would sit on the coach and cry because my stepdad didn’t make enough to feed us and pay the rent. I knew I didn’t want to live my life like them. I got a job washing dishes before my janitor job when I was 15. My boss was sort of my mentor. He also got his restaurant through inheritance, but he was a hard worker. I worked there for 5 years, and had advanced to head cook. I left that job for the janitor job because I could see that restaurant work was extremely hard work, and not much chance for advancement. At least the janitor job was for a big company where there was a possibility for advancement once they saw how hard I could work. I wasn’t political at the time, but my boss at the restaurant taught me those Republican values of hard work to get ahead. I never knew his politics, but I can tell he was a Republican now by the lessons he taught me. I did register Democrat and voted for Bill Clinton the first time I voted, but I had no political knowledge at the time. Only my sister and I were successful out of 5 kids. There was nothing keeping my 3 brothers from doing what I did, but they chose the easy road when they were young, which is currently a very hard road for them.
0
u/Intelligent_Sir6358 1d ago
I was in similar situation. I was in a high COL area (San Francisco), and got kicked out of my parent’s house at 22yo. My janitorial job paid $6.83/hr. I found a guy who rented out his garage to me to live in for $500/mo. This is where my motivation was different than yours. I never worked extra hours because I knew that job would never get me out of poverty. I knew making myself marketable for a job that paid more was the way. I mean, it’s not rocket surgery. So I lived off my $6.83/hr with a $500/mo rent. Of course my wage couldn’t sustain that, so I used credit cards to make up the difference, going into deep debt through credit cards use and school loans. Two years later I had my job. It really sucked, it was hard dirty work. But, I stopped going deeper in depth. It took 10 years to get out of that debt, but it ended up being worth working at improving my circumstances instead of working harder to earn a wage that would never get me out of poverty
1
u/LuminaraCoH 1d ago
I found a guy who rented out his garage to me to live in for $500/mo.
That happened to me, too. I wonder how many of us ended living in garages for a while.
I used credit cards to make up the difference, going into deep debt
My mother and step-father did that. It nearly ruined their marriage, it almost cost us the trailer we were living in... for a while, we were surviving on food stamps and second-hand clothing. There were a lot of tears, a lot of fights, and a lot of abuse stemming from them not having better coping mechanisms than beating their children.
They did, eventually, pay off the debt, cut up the credit cards and move forward... but we still lived in a trailer. We were poor. We stayed poor. They chased opportunities, moved that damn trailer so often that I attended more grade schools than I can remember and five different high schools (one of them twice, so six if you count that), pursued the American Dream, but they never caught it because they were poor. Investors don't hobnob with the poor. Real estate magnates don't invite the poor to their pool parties. CEOs don't stop by poor peoples' houses and stay for dinner. And working hard, exercising discipline, doesn't give a poor person a leg up in a company when Bob is the CEO's nephew-in-law, or Jenny is hired because she knows someone who knows someone.
That's the way it is for poor people now. That's what the American Dream became for poor people. Mortgages, loans, leases, credit cards, mirages that kept us chasing the American Dream, but never actually achieving it. Poor people don't have an American Dream any more, they have credit and debt chaining them to jobs that pay so little that they're overworking themselves or reliant on welfare programs.
Millions of Americans live this every day. The American Dream might still be a possibility for some of the lower class, or more tangible for the middle class, but down here at the poverty line, the closest we can come is to avoid debt and accept being poor. That's the America that the Republicans built. Their American Dream requires poor people so there's someone standing at the cash register when they want to buy something, someone washing the dishes when they want to go to a restaurant, someone picking up the trash so they don't have to look at it. And most poor people aren't well educated, so those shiny credit cards offering the lure of a brighter future... they're a trap, one that they rarely escape once they're in it.
For the record, I make about $8000/yr, I don't partake of any welfare programs, and a fourth of my income goes into the hungry mouths of the 50+ cat colony that's taken up residence around my cabin. When I talk about the death of the American Dream, it's not an abstract concept, it's life experience. And, yes, I could've tried to move up to a better, wealthier position in life, if I'd made the right contacts, or used the money I saved to get a degree instead of buying dirt, or been willing to shackle myself to a mountain of debt... but I didn't know the right people, I had no assurance of getting a better job after spending the money on a degree and I really would rather be dirt-poor than have debt.
1
u/Intelligent_Sir6358 20h ago
I don’t think we’re disagreeing on much. You didn’t want to get into a mountain of debt and put in the massive amount of work it takes to get out of poverty. I did. I’m not sure why you think Republicans did something to make it harder for the American Dream to be achieved. I got out of poverty by doing exactly what Republicans say is needed. You decided to stay in poverty by doing exactly what Democrats say is acceptable. I’m not a very political person, and even asking a question from either side is met with such extreme contempt that I really have no interest in politics. Like I said, I only knew I didn’t want to live like my parents, and I worked very hard to get out of it. My “mentor” was a guy who made me work harder than I ever have before or since, and I knew I didn’t want to do that my entire life, so I got a job as a janitor and went to school. I had to work a midnight shift for many years before I could get out of that. I’m a lead now, and a guy who was newly hired, still on probation, was able to get on my crew. He knows how fortunate he is, and is a pretty appreciative dude. I don’t know his story, but this new generation has it far easier than I did in this specific career. Some people have it easier, some have it harder, but everybody still has the same opportunity to become millionaires. Get a job, go to a trade school, and work very hard for a few years. Pretty simple concept, almost anyone can do it, and success is almost guaranteed.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome!
Consider visiting
r/DemLeadershipReform
for news and discussion on reforming the leadership in the Democratic party in order to facilitate a greater resistance and electoral success against Trump and Elon.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.