Film Theory: There's Blood on Captain America's Hands

You have a problem with Bucky. He “missing presumed dead.” His pay stops there. His parents would get his $25,000 government life insurance and his account would be closed. Now, if he were declared “missing presumed dead” his benefits would continue to grow for seven years. At that point, with no further evidence of him being alive, his payouts would be made and he’s back to zero. But let’s sat he is just declared missing. The minute he took up arms against the US, he loses everything. So no matter how you slice it, he broke.

As shown in CA: the first avenger, Bucky actually was doing very well for himself. In comparison to Steve he has a suit, and mentions a car while Steve is just scraping by. Bucky came from a very well off family and I want to know what that money would look like today.

The theory where Bucky is a millionaire, just sounds hilarious and genius

The senators weren’t corrupt. They weren’t stealing money, they weren’t killing people, and they were even willing to listen to other’s possible solutions. And all they get is: “Do better”. If actual senators tried doing their jobs as hard as these senators did, the world would be in a utopian state.

Sam: “Do Better.” Governor: “Okay? How?” MatPat: “I got this.”

You might want to look into the numbers again on how much Bucky would have now. I forget which law it is, but I'm pretty sure soldiers who are either POWs or MIA are compensated on their return based on the assumption that they had been in military service (and given the appropriate promotions) for the entire period they were missing. So both Steve and Bucky would have received a pretty substantial amount of back pay after being MIA in the ice and a POW of Hydra respectively.

This whole issue is why I honestly despised the whole "let's bring everybody back" idea. Even leaving alone the logistics... What about the people who came back after being dead for half a decade to find their families moved on? Their spouses remarried, their children grown up? What happens then?

Re: your maths for how rich Bucky was, it would depend on whether the army would be willing to consider him a POW for his time captured and under the control of HYDRA. A soldier held as a POW would be entitled to any back pay, pension and reasonable rank increases that would have been earned during the period held. There's still a reasonable argument for Bucky being rich - but only if the Army decides to play ball.

On the whole Bucky getting rich thing. He never was officially discharged from the army (because the army thought he died) so the army would owe him back pay for every year since 1942 and what they owed would be whatever the pay scale is for sergeant in those years. So he’d be owed a lot of money

Your potential theory falls apart upon Bucky’s assumed death. His money would have all gone to his next of kin. Even when he would have been found alive years later. That money would be gone and probably spent.

The biggest problem that phase 4 introduces is the fact that the Avengers blipped back half the universe without giving the world (or the rest of the universe) any notice whatsoever.

I kinda equate the whole "Do better" thing to the steak analogy. Lets say your at a restaurant and you order a steak, you take a bite and decide you don't like it. You then complain to the waiter and you tell them "This steak is terrible, you need to do better". Naturally the waiter say's "Of course sir, what can we do to make it better for you" and your answer is "He's the chef, he should figure it out"

I’m glad to see that this is getting a video. I have to be honest, Sam being like “be better” felt a lot more like Disney just admitting that they don’t know how the problem should be solved

There was a reason on why it felt a bit chopped up, that's because it was. There was supposed to be a side-story about a pandemic, but Marvel cut that due to, well, the pandemic still being around when the show aired.

Its funny that Sam was so quick to blame the politicians like "Be better" i woulda said "its you heroes that failed us 1st, if you DID BETTER against Thanos this wouldn't even be a problem."😂

But you also have to remember that falcon in the Winter soldier was originally going to be about a virus and I think the flags Masters were trying to steal the cure for the homeless people so the reason that it doesn't make that much sense it feels rushed is because of the pandemic they had to basically in a way rewrite the whole thing in fear of people having a negative response to the original plot.

So basically Bucky is madly rich (not rlly) and Mat didn’t want to make a full video about it yet and just threw it in for fun, I love these videos 🤑

Sidenote: remember that they cut the series down from 9 eps to 6, and cut out the whole pandemic plot which is why they needed the medicine, due to *cough* *cough* things. I think Sam's speech at the end was changed because of that to the slapdash monologue.

I actually thought this while watching the episode, the politics in the show were handled a lot better than some other shows and did try to be balanced and the world of the MCU is different to the real world now, but some of it still didn't quite sit right with me. However, as Matpat said, his speech does still resonate with me.

I'm really impressed with Matt for taking on such a powerful topic and actually being real about it. Platitudes like "Be Better" make for great sound bites but don't help. We do a phenomenal job these days of pointing out problems endlessly, but it's crickets when it comes to real solutions. Thanks for this video!