In his remarks, not only does Johnson claim Roe “gave constitutional cover to the elective killing of unborn children,” but he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: “Think about the implications of that on the economy. We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid and all the rest,” Johnson says. “If we had all those able-bodied workers in the economy we wouldn’t be going upside down and toppling over like this… Roe was a terrible corruption.” Mind you, social security and health care have been gutted in the last several years by Republican lawmakers, not people who choose to end a pregnancy.

  • weedazz@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I love how they don’t realize these unaborted kids are likely going to be unwanted, unloved, impoverished, lack education…and instead of turning into “able bodies workers” they will turn into the criminals Republicans think lurk around every corner ready to shoot them

    • ourob@discuss.tchncs.de
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      Oh they are fully aware. More criminals means more prisoners, which means more money for the prison industrial complex and super cheap (basically slave) labor.

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      Thats exactly what they want.

      They need poor uneducated voters to stay in power.

      They need poor uneducated criminals to hate lest they focus on themselves and tear themselves apart.

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      I don’t think they’re unaware of that at all. Until those kids become criminals, most of them will have to survive somehow. Given their presumed lack of education and prospects, that means meat to throw in the “entry level” grinder.

    • fluxion@lemmy.world
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      More “leeches on society” that they also pretend are the single source of all Americas budget problems

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      They need live births so they can grow up to be dead soldiers. Those are their favorite constituents because neither one votes.

      • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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        And also because the Republicans can project their views on those groups.

        “If the ‘unborn baby’ or dead soldier could talk, they’d say that we should absolutely overturn this election result and name Trump President again. After all, he will protect the unborn (unless they happen to reside in his mistress) and what did those soldiers die for if not President For Life Trump?!!!”

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      Well, if you think about it, in order to take over in a democracy, you have to break the democracy first. This is simply a necessary first step towards accomplishing the given goal. There would be no other method that might work here, since military coups are particularly difficult when we make our whole army swear an oath to defend a specific piece of paper from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

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    We’re all struggling here to cover the bases of social security and Medicare and Medicaid

    Yeah and a bunch of extra kids surely won’t increase costs of Medicaid.

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      This was the take I was going to comment. If Republicans are so into running the government like a business, the per unit net income of each additional human would have to be positive for this argument to work. And if that were the case the programs he seems so worried about wouldn’t have a problem to begin with. It’s not like there are flat costs that, through volume alone, will make the program profitable.

    • UnspecificGravity@lemmings.world
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      This guy isn’t planning past his own lifetime. Those kids will be someone eases problem. He just wants to make sure that he gets every penny he is due and that means they need more wage slaves.

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    Newsflash: people aren’t having kids because the cost of living is too expensive and the elite are strangling poor families, not because of abortion rights.

    Sometimes I look at US politics and question how a country can be terminally stupid enough to elect Republicans…

      • rayyy@lemmy.world
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        there are a lot of stupid fucking morons that live in this country.

        They are trained to be that way.

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    If he really cared about funding for social security, maybe he should just have a closer look at tax evasion and creative accounting by the rich and the larger companies. Or at the numerous pork barrels on his parties list.

    • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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      That’s because at every stage, children will be put through a social selection process whereby every year, the bottom quartile of children will be culled in order to improve the gene pool.

      This idea is © 2023 the US Republican Party, US patents pending, you may not use it for dystopian novels and films without payment

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      Trump was going to be the last one you could laugh at. Now he’s only paid lipservice, the void will be filled. From now on forward things are going to get serious.

      • TwitchingCheese@lemmy.world
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        For all of Trump’s fascism and corruption he was at least so amazingly incompetent at it. His actions brought to light a lot of shortcomings and vulnerabilities in the system we can now more effectively watch for as his slightly smarter cohorts try and exploit them.

        Too bad half the time “watch in horror” is about all we end up doing.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          Trump is not a fascist, he’s an idiot. Saying that he’s a fascist really does downplay actual fascism.

          • nicetomeetyouIMVEGAN@lemmings.world
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            I don’t think that calling Trump a fascist is undermining anything. All fascists have been, and are, very bad at actually being political. Politics is not on the mind of a fascist it’s in the way of the fascist. The dumb things Trump did were dumb politically speaking. But he absolutely killed it in the ideology department.

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      I mean, I feel like he’s being overt about the motivations the GOP has held for decades. It’s just that this is a time where their despicable desires about how our society should evolve are showcased.

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    That’s them saying the quiet bit out loud. They see population growth stagnating to dangerous levels and they need more poor people to feed thier capitalism machine, while not acknowledging that low population growth is occurring because they’ve starved people of the necessary resources to keep a child alive and enjoy / be able to afford parenting. The choice was provide adequate resources or force people to have babies without resources.

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      There are really only two ways to fix demographic decline:

      • Increase fertility rate
      • Replace dying people with people from elsewhere (i.e. immigration)

      The first requires social spending at levels that the Republican Party absolutely refuses to consider. Subsidies for childcare! Bigger tax breaks for poor and middle-class parents! Free preschool education! Mandatory paid parental leave! Higher wages for family breadwinners! Oh, the horror!

      The second requires admitting brown people into the country! Oh, the other horror!

      • masquenox@lemmy.world
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        demographic decline

        What “demographic decline”?

        Sounds to be more a case that the parasite class is worried that the “surplus labor” (ie, impoverished people) might not be all that surplus for much longer.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          “Demographic decline” is when the population of an area shrinks because more people are dying off than being born. From an economic standpoint, this is bad for a few reasons (regardless of the underlying economic system)—

          • You could lose economies of scale with things like public infrastructure. If you have millions of people contributing to the upkeep of, say, a metro line via the fruits of their labour (directly or through taxation), then that’s all fine, but if your population suddenly shrinks to half of what it was, the cost of upkeeping the metro line hasn’t halved, but the amount of total wealth in the area has halved, as now there are only half as many people contributing to the communal wealth.
          • The labour pool has shrunk. This is important because some things have a fixed amount of labour required and do not scale well. For example, a train always needs exactly one conductor regardless of how long it is, but now you only have half the number of conductors available. Again, it doesn’t matter whether we’re looking at a communist or a capitalist system, it’s easy to see how this is bad in both systems.
          • People tend to get poorer because the vast majority of economic activity (and therefore wealth) is generated through people interacting with each other. This also results in a reduction of government budgets because revenue is generally tied to group wealth and economic activity. This happens at a disproportionate rate compared to the actual percentage of population loss, meaning the amount of revenue per capita goes down as well.

          Some countries are already experiencing demographic decline. It’s bad for everyone, but it’s much worse for rich people than for poor people (in absolute terms), at least in capitalist countries, because rich people have much more direct exposure to the macroeconomic forces that result from it. Additionally, a lot of rich people’s wealth is tied to growth. Infinite exponential growth is impossible; it’s not a sustainable model for wealth. But they have a lot to gain from at least postponing the pyramid’s collapse until after they die.

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        Judging by what happens in Japan and Europe, I think you actually need to bribe women to have kids. Which I’m all for.

        I think the first two kids should include all expenses paid Disneyland vacations annually, free diaper service, free childcare, schools etc. Min 2 years aid maternity leave.

        Third kid? Congrats, you’re a hero, you get a free house and a million bucks.

        However, applicants must hold a college degree. I’d rather not have a bunch of idiots continue to reproduce.

        • NateNate60@lemmy.world
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          Maybe not a million dollars, but something like a $50,000 cash bonus per child successfully raised to adulthood and has graduated school without being expelled would motivate a good number of parents. The $50,000 is a paltry amount compared to the economic activity that a person generates throughout their lives so it’s a great deal for the Government, even when combined with things like childcare subsidies, etc.

          The second condition would encourage parents to deal with delinquent behaviour and keep their kids in school. If the kid gets expelled, you lose the $50K.

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      Don’t forget about loneliness. If people don’t engage with one another in the first place, then abortion isn’t even needed, let alone any parental care or accomodations.

      Thanks American individualism for that.

    • aidan@lemmy.worldM
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      Birthrates decline as populations become richer though? The poorest populations have done of the highest birthrates.

      • PersnickityPenguin@lemm.ee
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        Which is the only rational explanation for Republicans excuse of their shitty policies. Keep people poor to maintain the supply of infants. They do it for selfish reasons however.

      • WhollyGuacamole@lemmy.world
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        Plenty of them think this though unfortunately. A few years ago, I talked to a bank teller who was a middle aged white woman who said the same thing about abortion being the reason why Medicare and Social Security are underfunded.

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      Russia approved is why they voted for him, unless you think all those mysterious “campaign contributions” from a law firm run by three Russian nationals the night before the vote are just a coincidence.

      • orbitz@lemmy.ca
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        Also pretty sure I saw a headline that Russia is pleased with the new speaker (think it was from a ‘news’ source there). Though Russia is the number one shit disturber so who knows, they’d say whatever causes more chaos in the nations they’re against. The new speaker seems like their kinda guy though.

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    New House Speaker Mike Johnson Wants Women to Pop Out ‘Able-Bodied Workers’ to Fund Social Security

    In his remarks, (…) he rails against the imagined economic detriments of abortion, pushing his caucus’ outlandish claim that by depleting a hypothetical workforce, abortion has defunded social security: (…)

    If abortion truly defunded social security, shouldn’t small-government Republicans support it?