heymeowmao

[ranger-kellyn]

love that because two idiots decided to fuck during an ice storm instead of playing a board game or doing literally ANYTHING ELSE i get to be forced to live during the decline of the us empire

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Canada is in deep crisis. It’s unfashionable in centrist circles to say so, but it’s true. The country is literally on fire and facing extraordinary and growing threats from climate change. It is staring down rising extremism, creeping toxic polarization, and low trust. Wealth inequality is on the rise. Its federal system is showing cracks, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Alberta and the national government. Oligopolies and monopolies run wild, exploiting consumers.

There are plenty of other problems too. But of the lot, the confluence of a few major challenges scream, House of cards coming down! Those are the country’s housing crisis, consumer debt, and high — and potentially rising — interest rates. Taken together, they paint a picture of working people staring down lives they can’t afford in the day-to-day. This hellish scenario persists, no matter how hard people work, and no matter how rigidly they follow the rules of the game — rules they were told are fair and just.

Full article

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[alwaysbewoke]

[thashining]

Education

[aurianneor]

2024 UK general election: choosing the Right or the Left.

The Left and the Right are two ideologies that recognise the importance of having elites. For the Right, some people are considered to have fewer rights than others: women, black people, workers, etc. The elite is composed of Oxbridge. The people have to sacrifice on their housing, health and education to give to the elites. The Right take advice from the richest. For the Left, elites are appreciated but the people are not asked to sacrifice for the elites. The elites are there to inform the people and help them to do better.

For the Right, everyone has to support their leader and repeat their ideas. That’s Rishi Sunak’s or Nigel Farage’s programme. For the Left, a plurality of opinions and strong debate are expressed.

Poverty in the UK has escalated since 2011 to reach 19% of the population. The cost of leaving has increased exponentially up to 12% per year. Energy has increased by 19% since 2022, rent 69% and food 40%.

Cost of living statistics UK: 2024 – Finder: https://www.finder.com/uk/banking/cost-of-living-statistics

Meanwhile, since 2017, tax havens have increased (to avoid paying tax). The UK rich people are getting richer. The top 10 billionaires in the UK are three times richer than 15 years ago. With the Tories in power during Brexit, work standards have been lowered (security, social and environmental measures) to the profit of the owners who became even richer. The Tories signed free trade agreements with developing countries with low security social an environmental standards creating an unfair competition with the UK workers. The British producers can hardly sell in those countries. Those free trades only benefit the owners of the factory there.

The UK’S Rich Are Getting Richer – Statista: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/27505/uks-richest-are-getting-richer/

Deregulation and standards after Brexit – what Naomi Klein’s ‘disaster capitalism’ can tell us – City University of London: https://www.city.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2019/10/deregulation-and-standards-after-brexit-what-naomi-kleins-disaster-capitalism-can-tell-us

Trade deals: What has the UK done since Brexit? – BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47213842

In the past, when the left has rallied, it has benefited the country: the population has increased its standard of living without sacrificing public spending or the performance of its economy. Let’s remember the spirit of 1945 and the New Labour in 1997. In 1945 was created public service of steal, health (NHS), rail and energy. In 1997 the left multiplied by four the budget for public health, reduced youth unemployment by 75%, they doubled the budget of public education, they introduced the minimum wage, 2 million people have been helped out of poverty. From 1997 to 2007, there were ten years of consecutive growth. The Labour of 2024 has the same ambition as the one in 1945 when they want to restore public services of energy and rail.

The Spirit of ’45 – Ken Loach – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_%2745

Labour governments’ achievements – Shrewsbury Labour Party: https://www.shrewsburylabour.org.uk/labours-top-50-achievements/

What’s more, the stock market did better when the Left was in power. The ones who suffered were the ultra-rich who had ill-gotten gains (tax breaks, tax reductions, etc). The ultra-rich don’t need the poor to struggle to benefit from their wealth. The Left isn’t milking them for all they’re worth, it’s just asking them to contribute their fair share. The economic crises have occurred when the Right was in charge : 1982 (Margaret Thatcher), 2019 (Boris Johnson). The Right didn’t deal with Covid very well: they didn’t stop economy soon enough and had many death. They gave the money borrowed to support the economy to the ultra-rich.

Early 1980s recession – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_1980s_recession

UK swiftly exits its third recession in 16 years – Resolution Foundation: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/press-releases/uk-swiftly-exits-its-third-recession-in-16-years/

Labour is right: billions were lost to Covid fraud, and the public deserve a reckoning – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/labour-billions-covid-fraud-pandemic

COVID, CONTRACTS, AND CONFLICT: THE YEAR CORRUPTION TOOK CENTRE STAGE – Transparency International UK: https://transparency.org.uk/COVID-contracts-conflict-2020-2021-year-corruption-took-centre-stage

The neo-liberals and the identitarians point to the bad guys; they target the foreigners, the “lazy” or the misfits. They give priority to the ultra-rich, who have more rights than others.

A very strong and very democratic state is needed to protect the workers against unfair competition from badly-treated foreigners and against the social and environmental dumping of foreign products. The people need to be richer so that they can buy quality goods and have quality public services (health, pensions, education, etc.). This wealth has been captured by the ultra-rich, not by immigrants or ‘idlers’. Britain is rich but inequalities are high.

Believing that the solution to the problem is to attack the poor, the disabled, the people of colour, etc. by treating them badly (inadequate pay, fewer rights) hurts the whole system: old diseases like cholera re-emerge, poorer working conditions are accepted, and so on.

Many people are angry and worried about their livelihoods, their health, their children’s education and so on. Providing public services for everyone everywhere will be very expensive. Neoliberals are asking the poor to have less (by cutting pensions and public services) because they think they don’t deserve enough. The identitarian right-wing is calling for the poor to be made to pay. The right is diverting people’s anger away from the bourgeoisie. The Left is calling for the ultra-rich to pay the price of these reforms, but they will still be very rich. To restore prosperity to the people, taxing capital and controlling prices is the way to go.

Even then, the laws passed by the House of Commons must not be blocked by the House of Lords, which is not elected by the people and is not a power check serving the people.

It’s a shame that the Brits don’t have the right to a referendum on popular initiative and that the only way to express themselves is by electing representatives!

10 Labour policies to change Britain Under the Tories, the NHS waiting list has tripled, and drastic action needs to be taken to get patients seen and receiving the care they need. 10 Labour policies to change Britain: https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/10-labour-policies-to-change-britain/

WATCH LIVE: Keir Starmer launches Labour’s manifesto. – Labour Party: https://youtu.be/gyna0dYUUSI?t=2061

Labour’s fiscal plan – Labour Party: https://labour.org.uk/change/labours-fiscal-plan/

Kickstart economic growth – Labour Party: https://labour.org.uk/change/kickstart-economic-growth/

Expert economists back Labour’s plan to end economic stagnation in UK – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/19/labour-plan-end-economic-stagnation-uk-economists

Woman who pulled out 12 teeth with pliers says government failing on NHS dentistry – ITV News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdWonwyrNiY

Genesis – Selling England By The Pound (Full Album Remastered) With Lyrics: https://youtu.be/GEE3T35C7Y8?si=fCicsBgsqtLVm850

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Législatives 2024: choisir la gauche ou la droite.: https://www.aurianneor.org/legislatives-2024-choisir-la-gauche-ou-la-droite/

Restricting personal wealth: https://www.aurianneor.org/restricting-personal-wealth/

A slice of the cake: https://www.aurianneor.org/a-slice-of-the-cake/

Oui au Référendum d’initiative populaire: https://www.aurianneor.org/oui-au-referendum-dinitiative-populaire-petition/

Immigration: https://www.aurianneor.org/immigration-2/

Living with dignity: https://www.aurianneor.org/living-with-dignity/

Rob the poor to feed the rich: https://www.aurianneor.org/rob-the-poor-to-feed-the-rich/

Le RIC – Référendum d’initiative citoyenne: https://www.aurianneor.org/via-httpswwwyoutubecomwatchv-e2lnzwuy4ks/

Price ceilings and price floors: https://www.aurianneor.org/price-ceilings-and-price-floors/

The Senate, the power to piss people off: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-senate-the-power-to-piss-people-off/

Humiliated by the Republic: https://www.aurianneor.org/humiliated-by-the-republic/

Nos ancêtres les marrons: https://www.aurianneor.org/nos-ancetres-les-marrons-il-nexiste-quune-seule/

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Sept. 5, 2023

"The accumulation of extreme wealth by the world's richest individuals has become an economic, ecological, and human rights disaster."

Hundreds of economists, wealthy individuals, and elected officials from around the world called on the leaders of G20 nations to help tackle runaway inequality by collectively raising taxes on the global rich, who saw their fortunes explode during the deadly coronavirus pandemic.

In an open letter to G20 leaders as they prepared to convene in New Delhi, India this weekend for their annual summit, U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) joined economist Jayati Ghosh, Patriotic Millionaires chair Morris Pearl, philanthropist Abigail Disney, and more than 300 others in declaring that "we cannot allow extreme wealth to continue corroding our collective future."

"Decades of falling taxes on the richest, based on the false promise that the wealth at the top would somehow benefit us all, has contributed to the rise in extreme inequality," the Tuesday letter states. "Our political choices allow ultra-wealthy individuals to continue to use tax shelters and enjoy preferential treatment to the extent that, in most countries in the world, they pay lower tax rates than ordinary people."

"At the same time, the world has seldom had more need for the richest to pay," the letter continues, noting that global extreme poverty rose in 2020 for the first time in more than two decades as Covid-19 threw the world into economic chaos.

That same year, billionaire wealth surged to a new high. Between March 2020 and November 2022, global billionaires collectively added $1.5 trillion to their fortunes, capturing nearly two-thirds of all new wealth.

Meanwhile, according to a recent United Nations report, around 165 million people were thrown into poverty during the pandemic.

"The growing gap between rich and poor has destabilized the global economy, exacerbated the rise of extremist politics, and frayed the very fabric of our social order," said Pearl, the former managing director of the investment giant BlackRock. "As an ultra-wealthy person, representing an organization of like-minded wealthy people, I am asking the G20 to tax us."

Pearl warned that if G20 nations don't "tax extreme wealth, the results will be a perpetually weakened global economy, the decline of democratic institutions, and worsening social unrest. The G20 must act."

The billionaire wealth surge has continued in 2023, with the world's 500 richest people adding more than $850 billion to their combined wealth in the first half of the year.

The new open letter argues that a coordinated G20 agreement imposing wealth taxes on ultra-rich individuals "would shrink dangerous levels of inequality while also allowing leaders to raise vital funds to tackle the multiple challenges facing our world."

"This will not be easy, but it will be worth it," the letter reads. "Much work has already been done. There is an abundance of policy proposals on wealth taxation from some of the world's leading economists. The public wants it. We want it. Now all that's missing is the political will to deliver it. It's time for you to find it."

Oxfam International estimates the average tax rate on the wealthiest individuals in rich countries has fallen from 58% to 42% since 1980, accelerating the rise of economic inequality. Over just the past decade, the combined wealth of global billionaires has more than doubled, growing from $5.6 trillion to nearly $12 trillion.

Billionaires' accumulation of vast wealth is also destructive to the planet. An Oxfam report released last year estimated that a billionaire is responsible for a million times more planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution than the average person.

"The accumulation of extreme wealth by the world's richest individuals has become an economic, ecological, and human rights disaster, threatening political stability in countries all over the world," the open letter reads. "Such steep levels of inequality undermine the strength of virtually every one of our global systems, and must be addressed head-on."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

[thoughtportal]

French colonialism

[headspace-hotel]

The reason "We (USamericans) should reduce our personal consumption of resources to save the planet!" won't change anything, is that there is no "we."

The average American does X amount of unnecessary shopping, but collapsing the wide range of wealth inequality into an average creates a vague call to action that sufficiently motivates 0 people.

Poor people feel guilty about buying stuff already. Even essential stuff. They have very little ability to adjust the amount they consume, and any adjustments that are possible would be almost negligible.

The moderately affluent and up vastly overestimate the impact of small adjustments to their lifestyle, and think of denying themselves any indulgence as extreme frugality. This is often the group that uses the "we" pronoun in the statement "We should consume less."

Most of the USA's carbon emissions come from heating and cooling and from cars. Since homelessness is treated as a crime, houses are not made sustainably or constructed smaller than a certain size, and it is virtually impossible to work or obtain basic needs without a car, there is a very solid and nearly impenetrable bottom to the scale of individual consumption.

So much consumption is near 100% impossible to opt out of, which means of course that the money that goes to it is never really yours, it just happens to pass through you on its way to its true destination.

This is obscured by the fact that the more privileged can ride a cushioned elevator below that bottom, play for as long as it takes for them to feel good about themselves, and take the elevator back up, and then write an article saying "See! I lived on 3 cents a day/lived in a 100sqft house/didn't use electricity for a week, and here's what I learned!"

Sure, you tried living a frugal life for a while. But you never doubted that the elevator would be there to take you back when you were tired of playing. You never felt the Fear. That's why you learned nothing.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Of course we can tax billionaires

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Billionaires are pretty confident that they can't be taxed – not just that they shouldn't be taxed, but rather, that it is technically impossible to tax the ultra-rich. They're not shy about explaining why, either – and neither is their army of lickspittles.

If it's impossible to tax billionaires, then anyone who demands that we tax billionaires is being childish. If taxing billionaires is impossible, then being mad that we're not taxing billionaires is like being mad at gravity.

Boy is this old trick getting old. It was already pretty thin when Margaret Thatcher rolled it out, insisting that "there is no alternative" to her program of letting the rich get richer and the poor go hungry. Dressing up a demand ("stop trying to think of alternatives") as a scientific truth ("there is no alternative") sets up a world where your opponents are Doing Ideology, while you're doing science.

Billionaires basically don't pay tax – that's a big part of how they got to be billionaires:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

By cheating on their taxes, they get to keep – and invest – more money than less-rich people (who get to keep more money than regular people and poor people, obvs). They get so much money that they can "invest" it in corrupting the political process, for example, by flushing vast sums of dark money into elections to unseat politicians who care about finance crime and replace them with crytpo-friendly lawmakers who'll turn a blind eye to billionaires' scams:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster

Once someone gets rich enough, they acquire impunity. They become too big to fail. They become too big to jail. They become too big to care. They buy presidents. They become president.

A decade ago, Thomas Piketty published his landmark Capital in the 21st Century, tracing three centuries of global capital flows and showing how extreme inequality creates political instability, leading to bloody revolutions and world wars that level the playing field by destroying most of the world's capital in an orgy of violence, with massive collateral damage:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

Piketty argued that unless we taxed the rich, we would attain the same political instability that provoked the World Wars, but in a nuclear-tipped world that was poised on the brink of ecological collapse. He even laid out a program for this taxation, one that took accord of all the things rich people would try to hide their assets.

Today, the destruction that Piketty prophesied is on our doorstep, and all over the world, political will is gathering to do something about our billionaire problem. The debate rages from France to dozen-plus US states that are planning wealth taxes on the ultra-rich.

Wherever that debate takes hold, billionaires and their proxies pop up to tell us that we're Doing Ideology, that there is no alternative, and that it is literally impossible to tax the ultra-rich.

In a new blog post, Piketty deftly demolishes this argument, showing how thin the arguments for the impossibility of a billionaire tax really is:

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/piketty/2024/10/15/how-to-tax-billionaires/

First, there's the argument that the ultra-rich are actually quite poor. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg don't have a lot of money, they have a lot of stock, which they can't sell. Why can't they sell their stock? You'll hear a lot of complicated arguments about illiquidity and the effect on the share-price of a large sell-off, but they all boil down to this: if we make billionaires sell a bunch of their stock, they will be poorer.

No duh.

Piketty has an answer to the liquidity crisis of our poormouthing billionaires:

If finding a buyer is challenging, the government could accept these shares as payment for taxes. If necessary, it could then sell these shares through various methods, such as offering employees to purchase them, which would increase their stake in the company.

Though Piketty doesn't say so, billionaires are not actually poor. They have fucktons of cash, which they acquire through something called "buy, borrow, die," which allows them to create intergenerational dynastic wealth for their failsons:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-borrow-die-rich-avoid-140004536.html

Billionaires know they're not poor. They even admit it, when they say, "Okay, but the other reason it's impossible to tax us is that we're richer and therefore more powerful than the governments that want to try it."

Piketty points out the shell-game at the core of this argument: the free movement of money that allows for tax-dodging was created by governments. They made these laws, so they can change them. Governments that can't exercise their sovereign power to tax the wealthy end up taxing the poor, eroding their legitimacy and hence their power. Taxing the rich – a wildly popular move – will make governments more powerful, not less.

Big countries like the US (and federations like the EU) have a lot of power. The US ended Swiss banking secrecy and manages to tax Americans living abroad. There's no reason that France couldn't pass a wealth-tax that applies to people based on their historical residency: a 51 year old French billionaire who decamps to Switzerland to duck a wealth tax after 50 years in France could be held liable for 50/51 of the wealth tax.

The final argument Piketty takes up is the old saw that taxing the rich is illegal, or, if it were made legal, would be unconstitutional. As Piketty says, rich people have taken this position every single time they faced meaningful tax enforcement, and they have repeatedly lost this fight. France has repeatedly levied wealth taxes, as long ago as 1789 and as recently as 1945.

Taxing the ultra-rich isn't like the secret of embalming Pharaohs – it's not a lost art from a fallen civilization. The US top rate of tax in 1944 was 97%. The postwar top rate from 1945-63 was 94%, and it was 70% from 1965-80. These was the period of the largest expansion of the US economy in the nation's history. These are the "good old days" Republicans say they want to return to.

The super-rich keep getting richer. In France, the 500 richest families were worth a combined €200b in 2010. Today, it's €1.2 trillion. No wonder a global wealth tax is at the top of the agenda for next month's G20 Summit in Rio.

Here in the US – where money can easily move across state lines and where multiple states are racing each other to the bottom to be the best onshore-offshore tax- and financial secrecy-haven – state-level millionaire taxes are kicking ass.

Massachusetts's 2024 millionaire tax has raised more than $1.8b, exceeding all expectations (it was originally benchmarked at $1b), by taxing annual income in excess of $1m at an additional 4%:

https://www.boston.com/news/business/2024/05/21/heres-how-much-the-new-massachusetts-millionaires-tax-has-raised-this-year/

This is exactly the kind of tax that billionaires say is impossible. It's so easy to turn ordinary income in sheltered income – realizing it as a capital gain, say – so raising taxes on income will do nothing. Who are you gonna believe, billionaires or the 1.8 billion dead presidents lying around the Massachusetts Department of Revenue?

But say you are worried that taxing ordinary income is a nonstarter because of preferential capital gains treatment. No worry, Washington State has you covered. Its 7% surcharge on capital gains in excess of $250,000 also exceeded all expectations, bringing in $600m more than expected in its first year – a year when the stock market fell by 25%:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

Okay, but what if all those billionaires flee your state? Good riddance, and don't let the door hit you on the way out. All we need is an exit tax, like the one in California, which levies a one-time 0.4% tax on net worth over $30m for any individual who leaves the state.

Billionaires are why we can't have nice things – a sensible climate policy, workers' rights, a functional Supreme Court and legislatures that answer to the people, rather than deep-pocketed donors.

The source of billionaires' power isn't mysterious: it's their money. Take away the money, take away the power. With more than a dozen states considering wealth taxes, we're finally in a race to the top, to see which state can attack the corrosive power of extreme wealth most aggressively.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/15/piketty-pilled/#tax-justice

[apas-95]

Is there a story behind China's one child policy that makes it not as horrifying as western media claims?

The defining feature of China's development for the past 70 years has been the urban-rural divide. In order to develop a semi-feudal country with a very low industrial level into an industrialised, socialist nation, it was necessary to develop industrial centres. To 'organically' develop industrial centres would have taken many decades, if not centuries of continued impoverishment and starvation, so programs were put in place to accelerate the development of industry by preferentially supporting cities.

Programs like the 'urban-rural price scissors' placed price controls on agricultural products, which made food affordable for city-dwellers, at the direct expense of reducing the income of rural, agricultural areas. This hits on the heart of the issue - to preferentially develop industrial centres in order to support the rest of the country, the rest of the country must first take up the burden of supporting those centres. Either some get out of poverty *first*, or nobody gets out of poverty at all. The result being: a divide between urban and rural areas in their quality of life and prospects. In order to keep this system from falling apart, several other policies were needed to support it, such as the Hukou system, which controlled immigration within the country. The Hukou system differentiated between rural and urban residents, and restricted immigration to urban areas - because, given the urban-rural divide, everyone would rather just try to move to the cities, leaving the agricultural industry to collapse. The Hukou system (alongside being a piece in many other problems, like the 'one country two systems', etc) prevented this, and prevented the entire thing from collapsing. The 'one child policy' was another system supporting this mode of development. It applied principally to city-dwellers, to prevent the populations of cities expanding beyond the limited size the agricultural regions could support, and generally had no 'punishments' greater than a lack of government child-support, or even a fine, for those who still wanted additional children. Ethnic minorities, and rural residents, were granted additional children, with rural ethnic minorities getting double. It wasn't something anyone would love, but it served an important purpose.

I use the past-tense, here, because these systems have either already been phased out or are in the process of being phased out. The method of urban-rural price scissors as a method of development ran its course, and, ultimately, was exhausted - the negative aspects, of its underdevelopment of rural regions, began to overwhelm its positive aspects. So, it was replaced with the paradigm of 'Reform and Opening Up' around the 1980s. Urban-rural price scissors were removed (leading to protests by urban workers and intellectuals in the late '80s), and the Hukou system, along with the 'one child policy', were and are being slowly eased out as lessening inequality between the urban and rural areas make them unnecessary. Under the new system, the driver of development was no longer at the expense of rural regions, but was carried out through the internal market and external capital. The development paradigm of Reform and Opening Up worked to resolved some contradictions, in the form of the urban-rural divide, and created some of its own, in the form of internal wealth divisions within the cities. Through it, over 800 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty - almost all of them being in rural areas - and extreme poverty was completely abolished within China. 'Extreme poverty' can be a difficult thing for westerners to grasp, wherein poverty means not paying rent on time, but to illustrate - many of the last holdout regions of extreme poverty were originally guerrilla base areas, impassable regions of mountainside which were long hikes away from schools or hospitals, wherein entire villages were living in conditions not dissimilar to their feudal state a century before. These villages were, when possible, given infrastructure and a meaningful local industry accounting their environment and tradition (like growing a certain type of mountainous fruit), or entirely relocated to free government-built housing lower down the mountain that was theirs to own. These were the people the 'one child policy' was aiding, by reducing the urban population they had to support. Again, there were exemptions for rural and ethnic minority populations to the policy.

Even now, Reform and Opening Up is running its course. Its own negative aspects, such as urban wealth inequality, are beginning to overcome its positive aspects. So, the new paradigm is 'Common Prosperity', which will work to resolve the past system's contradictions, and surely introduce its own contradictions in the form of chafing against the national bourgeoisie, as it increases state control and ownership of industry, and furthers a reintroduced collectivisation. Organising a nation of well over a billion people is not simple. It is not done based on soundbytes and on picking apart policies in the abstract for how 'dystopian' they sound. It is an exceedingly complex and interconnected process based on a dialectical, material analysis of things; not a utopian, idealist one. What matters is this: those 800,000,000 people now freed from absolute poverty. The things necessary to achieve that were, unquestionably, good things - because they achieved that. They had their negative aspects, as does everything that exists, but they were unquestionably correct and progressive things.

[she-is-ovarit]

By EDITH M. LEDERER Updated 9:11 PM PST, March 8, 2024 UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Legal equality for women could take centuries as the fight for gender equality is becoming an uphill struggle against widespread discrimination and gross human human rights abuses, the United Nations chief said on International Women’s Day. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a packed U.N. commemoration Friday that “a global backlash against women’s rights is threatening, and in some cases reversing, progress in developing and developed countries alike.” The most egregious example is in Afghanistan, he said, where the ruling Taliban have barred girls from education beyond sixth grade, from employment outside the home, and from most public spaces, including parks and hair salons. At the current rate of change, legal equality for women could take 300 years to achieve and so could ending child marriage, he said. Guterres pointed to “a persistent epidemic of gender-based violence,” a gender pay gap of at least 20%, and the underrepresentation of women in politics. He cited September’s annual gathering of world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly, where just 12% of the speakers were women. “And the global crises we face are hitting women and girls hardest — from poverty and hunger to climate disasters, war and terror,” the secretary-general said. In the past year, Guterres said, there have been testimonies of rape and trafficking in Sudan, and in Gaza women women and children account for a majority of the more than 30,000 Palestinians reported killed in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. He cited a report Monday by the U.N. envoy focusing on sexual violence in conflict that concluded there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualized torture” and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during its surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7. He also pointed to reports of sexual violence against Palestinians detained by Israel. International Women’s Day grew out of labor movements in North America and across Europe at the turn of the 20th century and was officially recognized by the United Nations in 1977. This year’s theme is investing in women and girls to accelerate progress toward equality. Roza Otunbayeva, the head of the U.N. political mission in Afghanistan, told the Security Council on Wednesday that what is happening in that country “is precisely the opposite” of investing in women and girls. There is “a deliberate disinvestment that is both harsh and unsustainable,” she said, saying the Taliban’s crackdown on women and girls has caused “immense harm to mental and physical health, and livelihoods.” Recent detentions of women and girls for alleged violations of the Islamic dress code “were a further violation of human rights, and carry enormous stigma for women and girls,” she said. It has had “a chilling effect among the wider female population, many of whom are now afraid to move in public,” she said. Otunbayeva again called on the Taliban to reverse the restrictions, warning that the longer they remain, “the more damage will be done.” Sima Bahous, the head of UN Women, the agency promoting gender equality and women’s rights, told the commemoration that International Women’s Day “sees a world hobbled by confrontation, fragmentation, fear and most of all inequality.” “Poverty has a female face,” she said. “One in every 10 women in the world lives in extreme poverty.” Men not only dominate the halls of power but they “own $105 trillion more wealth than women,” she said. Bahous said well-resourced and powerful opponents of gender equality are pushing back against progress. The opposition is being fueled by anti-gender movements, foes of democracy, restricted civic space and “a breakdown of trust between people and state, and regressive policies and legislation,” she said. [Click on the link to continue reading]

[odinsblog]

More than 250 billionaires and millionaires are demanding that the political elite meeting for the World Economic Forum in Davos introduce wealth taxes to help pay for better public services around the world.

“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society,” the wealthy people said in an open letter to world leaders. “This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”

The rich signatories from 17 countries include Disney heir Abigail Disney; Brian Cox who played fictional billionaire Logan Roy in Succession; actor and screenwriter Simon Pegg; and Valerie Rockefeller, an heir to the US dynasty.

“We are also the people who benefit most from the status quo,” they said in a letter titled Proud to Pay, which they will attempt to deliver to world leaders gathered in Davos in Switzerland on Wednesday. “But inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk is severe – and growing every day. In short, we need action now.”

(continue reading)

[vivelareine]

I’m really sorry that people jump to conclusions about you being a royalist. You seem to be quite nice and your posts are informative.

And it’s true that clergy and aristocracy at large benefitted from the rigged system. Also apparently the economy was already screwed up before, but Frev just had this specific set of precursor circumstances that lit up the powder keg, which was going to blow up eventually.

There is definitely a discussion to be had about all the nuances here, as Frev is a complicated subject.

Thank you! People can be... something, that's for certain.

I love nuanced discussions! I think they're especially fascinating when it comes to this era.

Like I love the fact that we can discuss how Marie Antoinette was personally charitable and kind, but that her personal charity and kindness existed in this almost incomprehensible vacuum of extreme wealth vs poverty.

To use an example I talked about on Twitter, there was an assistant gardener for the hameau de la reine who became ill shortly after being hired, and Marie Antoinette ended up spending almost 2000 livres (a hefty sum--the annual salary of the head gardener was considered a respectable 1500 livres per year, with room and board) on his medical care alone. When it became clear he would not regain his health, she paid for him to return home to England, with a large sum so he could set himself up somewhere.

This assistant gardener's annual salary, had he stayed to work at Versailles? 50 livres, which did include room and board, but still, 50 livres per year.

Now to take an EXTREME example, the infamous bracelets that Marie Antoinette purchased and her mother harassed her over cost 250,000 liveres. It would take 5000 years of this assistant gardener's salary to buy a pair of bracelets that she purchased on a whim. (Now this is an EXTREME example, because everyone considered these bracelets horrendously expensive and extravagant, and it was purchased during her short yet very significant 'wilder' days.)

So it's this fascinating contrast of, her being personally kind and thinking nothing of making sure he had medical care and personally seeing to it that he's not just kicked out of France with nothing and no way to live... and realizing that this personal kindness and compassion existed within this system of massive inequality.

It reminds me of the scene in Ever After (listen I will use any excuse to bring the movie up) where Danielle-in-disguise, after the prince frees the servant from the cart taking them to be indentured servants until they die: "You gave one man back his life, but did you even glance at the others?"

And not in the sense that I think Marie Antoinette would have been like "free this one man!" and ignored everyone else, but the sense that she gave charity, compassion, cared for others, paid for the upkeep of various families and watched over their children's well-being etc etc on a personal level... but she did not comprehend the need for systematic change outside of that very limited scope.

Re; Nuance...

Nuance gets lost a lot, on both sides.

IMO, I don't think people should expect to be taken seriously when talking about history if they are either huffing and puffing about Marie Antoinette being a bitch tyrant who got what she deserved, or if they're wringing their hands and saying Louis was perfect and the revolutionaries were devil worshipers who are burning in hell for daring to revolt.

(And like, I GET... if you just glance at my blog, you might go, oh wow, this person is really Marie Antoinette themed. Must be one of those people who thinks her life was the Sofia Coppola movie. But if you think that and you haven't bothered to read my blog or any of my social media, don't come up at me with some random BS like that and expect to be taken seriously. It's basic common sense and respect.)

[valtsv]

lmao people in your inbox acting like all Britain is a homogenous place where all white people are rich and happy is so weird. this is a pretty fucked up country where xenophobia is rampant and classism is so deeply ingrained in the political structure that even the labour party is fiscally conservative. like they hate Britain but also think it’s a really good place to be somehow. ffs it’s one of the last european monarchy it’s Not a good place to live without generational wealth.

it’s so much more complex than white people vs everyone else when britain is notorioue for colonizing other whites they deem inferior like uhhh the rest of the UK. like @anon I assure you the crown and the politicians coming from outrageous generation wealth don’t give a fuck about the poor people living in uninsulated government housing near charcoal burning plants. you’re delusional if you genuinely believe such a system doesn’t replicate extreme inequalities at home too. the working class never saw a penny for the colonization of other countries. yeah the country as a whole now benefits from ex-colonies being poorer and less stable cause capitalism, but let’s not pretend every white in britain actually benefits from capitalism.

white brits can be aware of the privilege of being white in a western country and also know that the system doesn’t give a fuck about them. white immigrants in britain know they’re white and also that tories would rather they be locked in company towns while the posh billionaires reap the benefits.

it’s not about defending white people it’s about how useless and counterproductive it is to target the people who are in no way responsible for your oppression when the real culprits are right there. jokes about tasteless pub food doesn’t do shit for the rich sons of white women dressed in blood diamonds. they also think it’s funny to degrade working class food.

yep! and those jokes affect EVERYONE who they apply to regardless of whether they're white or nonwhite, cisgender or trans, born in the country or an immigrant, etc. so it's completely pointless trying to justify your mockery by saying you're "only" targeting the "bad people" because that's just not how it works. it's so exhausting trying to explain that and being told you're just "making excuses for white/ablebodied/cis/etc. people".

[truthdogg]

How long can an extreme ultra-capitalist nation survive without becoming an authoritarian dystopia?

I’ve been pondering that today, but it’s occurred to me that it’s worth noting this extremist capitalist society called the United States did start out as an authoritarian dystopia.

I had originally typed “for a massive number of people living within it” to the end of the sentence above, but I’ve erased it because that’s what all dystopias are. They are never horrific dictatorships to everyone. There is always an in-group that lives in relative comfort with relative freedom that simply does not consider the suffering of others to be relevant to their lives.

The US was built by a wealthy merchant class to be that dystopia where those merchants and landowners were the in-group, replacing the king and his appointees. The country shifted toward freedom for all, toward democracy over time, not away from it. The right to vote was first held only by male landowners of the upper class, it was not designed to be egalitarian for all. The notion that it was ever meant to be for all people is a lie we tell ourselves so we can feel special about our country’s founding, but it’s still a lie, and it’s a dangerous one.

Accepting this history, and considering it, changes the question. It becomes:

How long can an extreme ultra-capitalist nation survive without returning to an authoritarian dystopia?

That’s a more tangible premise to consider. It shifts the argument from an inevitable economic condition in the hands of capital, to a political one in the hands of people. Extreme capitalist oligarchy has always been in direct opposition to full democracy, because under democracy, capital’s power can be overruled by the will of the people. When the needs of the people cannot override the interests of wealth, then democracy is no longer functioning; an oligarchy has control. Maintaining that control in the face of increasing hardship for people inevitably requires more power. This premise leads us to look at how oligarchy may strengthen its grip.

We can look right now and see precisely which elected politicians are arguing that the US is not (and should not be) a democracy, but a republic. We can see exactly who is arguing for a return to constitutional principles, while suggesting we suspend the Constitution. We can see exactly who preaches “Law & Order” while ignoring the law. We can see exactly who claims that some votes should count more than others, and that their candidate is “the real winner.” We can also listen and learn exactly who is paying them to do that. We can then gauge their support and the support for their ideas to see how much time we have left before we empower people to undo the past century of incomplete social progress.

An oddity of today is that the US is hurtling in two directions at once. One is toward a more empowered people, with unions rising, differences celebrated and enjoyed, and a support for struggling individuals. The other is accelerating wealth inequality, indifference to suffering, and desperation driving down wages while increasing profits. Both are happening, both are accelerating. That’s not sustainable.

The highly dedicated people pushing hard in both of those directions often see the other side as a destabilizing anti-American force, determined to upend whatever greatness we have. And they’re both right about that, it’s just that one sees America as a fully-formed sacred ideal that’s been lost, and the other sees it as a process for building a more perfect Union. This is the divide that the nation was born with, and the same divide that led to the Civil War.

I’m not shy about which side I’m on. We have to keep pushing for stronger democracy and a happier people.

The other side, the one that sees America as built by prophets, that wants to ban history so their prophets won’t be questioned, that unrealistically imagines themselves to be the in-group the founders intended, will return us to their authoritarian dystopia. That is where all of their arguments originate, and where all of their arguments lead.

That’s why MAGA uses the word “again.” They mean to return us to a time they thought was great, where the in-group was clear and life was miserable for everyone else, because they genuinely believe they’ll be the new in-group. They won’t, they all can’t, but they will take us there quickly as soon as they can.

[mai-komagata]

Tendi is a bit of an unreliable narrator in regards to orions

this is not hate of tendi or of lower decks, which I love heart and soul. Just a more realistic take on what we have been told.

But I do think it is important to keep in mind her descriptions of orion society are of someone *extremely priviledged* in the social hierarchy and that orion society is very unequal.

She is the rich international student at a university -- she is right to dispel a lot of myths about orion society perpetuated by the more hegemonic power in the sector. But also realize her perspective is heavily influenced by her position as one of the richest families in the planet. Like its good that her grandmother was a scientist on a science ship, and good on them recognizing orion scientific achievements. But was that a position available to the common orion, or like, something wealthy people were able to access in orion society? It is amazing that she is putting aside her privileged position to join starfleet, but is that a possibility for her only because she is wealthy? Like can the guy whose job is to carry divans all day make the same decision? Is she less likely to downplay aspects of society like hormonal coercion, or the slave trade as part of their piracy operations because the wealth of her family allows them to opt out of those aspects of society? Is she to some degree ignorant of societal inequality b/c of her wealth? She sees a lot of orion society as embarrassing and worthy of critique which is laudable of her. But I do think she might have a bit of a myoptic view, too. If you've never read this medium article on the international school class, it is enlightening: https://medium.com/@rachel.engel/an-open-letter-to-the-international-school-community-our-role-in-the-black-lives-matter-movement-c92ba725d93c (on the transnational capitalist class)