Who documented this beautiful piece of cinematography?
Here, then, is the case for a [universal basic income], as I see it. For many — perhaps even for most — work brings both intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. For those who can work, and can find jobs, a UBI isn’t likely to lure them into indolence. Hell, it may even increase their incentive to work, both because they’ll achieve a higher standard of living and because employers will have to offer better pay and better conditions to attract workers. (As Dylan Matthews notes here, past experiments with basic incomes have shown little effect on work incentives.)
But for those who can’t work or can’t find jobs — and there are millions of these people, and our country has nothing even approaching an answer for them now — a UBI could be a boon, so long as relying on a UBI for income is respected. It could give them the freedom to turn their passions into their vocations — they could be an artist, or a writer, or a Reddit commenter, or a competitive video gamer, even if they don’t make much or any money from those pursuits.
Instead of their social status being in the hands of employers with no use for them, it’s in their hands, and they’ll have plenty of incentive to figure out a way to present themselves as high status.
Seriously, that sort of thing gets under my skin like nothing else. It’s… just… it despairs the Josie
I can’t believe that young folks taking part in fandom these days are coming away with these conservative ideas about content and thought purity and thinking that this is the new progressive activism. This idea that portraying a thing convinces society as a whole to emulate said thing. They scoff when 60 year old pundits on TV scaremonger about video games causing children to gravitate towards violence (think of the children) but then jump down the throats of queer women in fandom for writing about their sexuality in adult spaces lest a child chance upon it (think of the children).
They fail to see the irony in the fact that, by doing this, they are seeking out content which by their own ruleset many of them are too young to be seeing, and in that their new activism is the same thing that the conservative right has been levering as a tool for oppression for centuries. They can’t see that irony because the fear of violence social expulsion and branding as a “literal child abuser” (because anyone who disagrees must of course be demonized) has transformed any dissenting thoughts into badthink that must be blocked out at all costs!!!
By the way, it is always queer women who end up the target of these campaigns. Straight cis men are seen as too unapproachable; we queer women are picked out because they see us as soft targets – they feel that they can exploit that and exercise their thrilling witch hunt muscles on us without facing serious repercussions. And they still get to feel like heroes at the end of the day, because once we disagree with the prevailing purity wisdom we become bad nonpeople. Forget the fact that this is the same oppression that queer women have faced for decades, except now it’s coming from the progressive left as well as the right.
It’s pretty horrifying. It reminds me a little of how terfs use wrapping-paper activism to front their regressive ideals as with a progressive facade, convincing themselves that they’re in the right, really. And to be honest, I think that what some of these antis are doing is just as dangerous as the terf corner of feminist activism. And coming from a trans woman, fuck, that means a lot when I say it. You have no idea.
Are you tired? I am so tired. I am too tired even to be funny about why you should call your Senator, (202) 224-3121, and tell them that this is a bad bill. So I will, as usual, link to Indivisible’s thorough, comprehensible explainer and call scripts.
YOU: Hello! My name is [ ] and I’m calling from [part of state]. Can you tell me how Senator [ ] will vote on the Graham-Cassidy health care bill if it comes up for a vote?
COMBATIVE STAFFER: The Senator hasn’t reviewed the text of the bill yet and hasn’t taken a position on it. There is no vote scheduled on that bill though.
YOU: I want Senator [ ] to oppose Graham-Cassidy. The bill is just like other TrumpCare bills in that it destroys Medicaid as we know it by turning Medicaid into a capped system. This hurts children with disabilities, seniors, and even victims of natural disasters like Harvey and Irma. It also takes away funding to help people afford health insurance through the marketplace, and it hurts states that have expanded Medicaid.
COMBATIVE STAFFER: Obamacare is a failure. The Senator believes we must stabilize the market and lower premiums.
YOU: If that’s what the Senator wants to do, then supporting the bipartisan, transparent process that Senators Alexander and Murray are leading through regular order would be a better option than supporting the Graham-Cassidy bill. I expect Senator [ ] to respect regular order and reject the Graham-Cassidy bill if it comes to a vote.
COMBATIVE STAFFER: I’ll let the Senator know your thoughts.
YOU: Yes, please do. I will be watching this vote closely and I expect Senator [ ] to oppose. Please take down my contact information so you can let me know what Senator [ ] decides to do.
If your Senator has already come out against the bill, please call them anyway and tell them you support their decision. This may feel pointless, but it isn’t, because it provides them with necessary political capital, and also, it is nice for the staffers to be thanked and appreciated.
YOU: Hi, my name is [ ] and I’m a constituent from [ ]. I’m calling to thank Senator [ ] for her opposition to Graham-Cassidy and to reiterate that I and my community stand behind her as she fights against it. And I also wanted to thank you and the rest of the Senator’s staff for all the hard work you guys are doing!
BELEAGUERED STAFFER: Thank you. I’ll pass your thoughts along to the Senator.
YOU: Thanks, please do. Hey, incidentally, do you ever feel like just screaming? Just screaming and screaming and all the time screaming and never not screaming? Because I’ve felt that way for months and I don’t even have to answer phones for Congress! Haha. Whew.
BELEAGUERED STAFFER: Uh, I –
YOU: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hahaha.
BELEAGUERED STAFFER: [nervous laughter] Well, thanks for your support, and –
I try and bring up how he ruined free in state tuition in the name of hippie bashing when he was California’s governor often, but don’t exactly have the biggest platform.
“Worst of all, these students’ sense of the future is constrained by planning for and then paying down their student loans, often for decades. Economists are waking up to the fact that when young Americans enter the workforce burdened with over a trillion dollars in cumulative debt, they become risk averse, unwilling to move, less able to make major purchases, and slower to become homeowners. Not coincidentally, they don’t feel safe enough to register any major protests against the society that’s done this to them.”
Damn.
i am reblogging again because….. fuck ronald reagan forever and ever and ever and ever.
Economists should be adept in their fields, how are they only now realizing that paying off our student debt is a fucking priority over anything else other than food?
Weird, it’s almost like there’s something missing from the study of economics.
Who would have possibly thought that a young generation owing trillions of dollars cumulatively could have an effect on the economy?
privilege discourse undermines intersectionality when it’s presented overwhelmingly along one axis at a time.
this is a good post about white privilege. but actively detrimental to an intersectional understanding of community needs if your takeaway from it is that whiteness is the ur-privilege.
so i invite everyone to go back and reread that, substituting a privilege they themselves have for ‘white’. here’s a chart of axes of privilege for the general united states:
but be aware there may be sub-communities where the domination dynamic is locally flipped, for extra confusingness; for instance, in a university setting, someone young or young-looking is going to be less respected than someone old or old-looking, as it’s assumed the young person is a student and the old one’s got tenure. this doesn’t erase the dynamic in media where the young person is a hero and the old person is a villain or a prop, or in non-academic workplaces where the young person is vastly more employable.
in short, privilege is an extremely complicated dynamic, and the tumblr habit of acting like the more axes of oppression you can claim the more above criticism you are is actively harmful to the cause. what we need to do is the opposite. we each need to find the area where we have power to uplift others.
Guys, the first images of Irma’s level of devastation are coming out of Barbuda and it’s heartbreaking. The President of Barbuda says that 90% of the island is uninhabitable, upwards of 60% of the TOTAL population are now homeless because the hurricane destroyed virtually every building and home on the island, and that the estimated damage is valued at no less than $200 million dollars. That’s money a small island like that doesn’t have. They’re saying it’s going to take years to rebuild and Hurricane Jose is right behind Irma on the same path which means they could be hit twice. This is just one of the islands being affected.
Please, show up for the Caribbean like you did for Houston. There is no safety net for any of these islands including mine. They’ll rely entirely on foreign aid. Find local charities or global trustworthy charities (NOT the Red Cross) and make a donation asking them to aid the Caribbean. There’s whole countries being turned into rubble with no financial means to repair their infrastructures. They’re going to need help.
For the hundreds of people replying or in my inbox asking “Why not the Red Cross?!”:
Seriously, guess where I found all of those in two solid minutes of searching? Google. Even better, they didn’t charge me a penny for it.
Stop wanting things to be spoonfed to you. While you waited for someone to link you to sources, you could’ve done it yourself and already donated to people who desperately need it.
Because people are also asking where to donate instead of the Red Cross:
Habitat For Humanity [83% rating on Charity Navigator // Because with islands like Barbuda 90% destroyed and French St. Martin said to be 95% destroyed then people are going to need homes built]
Catholic Relief Services [90% rating on Charity Navigator // For those who would want to donate to a religious organization]
If there is a note or comments section on their donation page please do let them know that you would want your money to go to their Caribbean relief efforts. Houston and Florida have the US government backing them in whatever they will need but these islands will have very little except for these charities to fall back if they have any hope of rebuilding what seems to be entire countries in some cases. For the people who lost everything even a few bucks will go a long way.
For the most part I would suggest staying away from privately launched GoFundMes unless you know the person directly. Ultimately, you just never know where those funds are going to end up and if your money will be used wisely. Sure, the same can be said for charity organizations but at least there is a better shot at possibly helping through them. The five listed above are world known and have been studied by charity oversight organizations. It’s as close to perfect as we’re going to get.
Please donate if you can! [ Here’s ] a list of essentials to donate.
This’ll be queued on repeat for the next few hours.
BRUH ARE U KIDDING ME THE HIGHWAY I LIVE NEAR HAS BEEN UNDER CONSTRUCTION FOR LIKE 4 DAMN YEARS AND IT TAKES THEM 6 MONTHS JUST TO FIX A DAMN POT HOLE
The hell do you mean “capitalism could never”??????? Last I checked, the UK is still a capitalist nation. The US could never because the US doesn’t invest in public works to the same level as other comparably large economies because we spend all our money on the military.
Whaleologist is right but….fuckin what? You can seriously do that shit in 15 hours. I honestly am amazed. That’s how you know I’m a fucking American, like, my goddamned mind is blown.
This isn’t an issue of capitalism or even public works investment.
This is an issue of how American budgets work, because America is the most idiotically designed country you could ever imagine.
American budgets are not organized by need, they’re effectively PRESCRIBED. There’s no pool of government funding that is assigned according to where money needs to go at any given time. We assign budgets in advance and they’re extremely difficult to change. Guaranteed if you ask any American politician about this, they’ll tell you it’s to “reduce government waste” by making people use their resources carefully instead of taking on unnecessary projects.
This is not what actually happens.
Because if you DON’T USE 100% of your budget every year, you will be assigned a lower budget for the next year, “to prevent government waste.” So they prescribe you a budget in advance and then you HAVE to use all of it, or else it’s a NIGHTMARE to do anything new in the future – you have to go through a billion hoops to get funding for a new infrastructure project that is a one-time expense. It’s not cheap to build a new thing, but because it’s a public good that will last a long time, you don’t need to budget for it every year – but the one year you do need to budget for it, it’s an enormous pain in the ass because everyone responsible is desperate to “cut government waste.”
So with American construction projects, especially on roadways, you basically have a system where people are FORCED to take longer than necessary just to use up their budgets. It is literally a regular occurrence in America for a road to be torn up for no reason, just so they can spend money filling it back in for the next four months.
And that’s why the crumbling, outdated, and underfunded infrastructure in America is an embarrassment to western civilization.
And the fact that this fucks up transportation, stresses people out, makes us all sicker and more miserable, and forces us to sit in traffic wasting gas that we have to spend a bunch of money on because one of the things we never invest in is mass public transit (because of heavy lobbying by the automotive and oil industries) – all of that should probably not be considered a coincidence.
In the name of “efficiency” and “cutting government waste,” we’ve invented the most fucked up, purposefully wasteful mandatory maximum budgeted spending that has totally eliminated our ability to respond to short term budgetary needs. Potholes take years to fix, construction goes on for years even as nothing actually gets done, etc. All because the budgets HAVE to be wasted in order for anyone to keep their funding – and notice how much of American budgets go toward things like “administrative costs”.
Our entire country is a money laundering conspiracy.
American capitalism is the most wasteful garbage budgeting system on earth.
It is fundamentally designed to be inefficient and stupid, because doing it this way allows us to keep government spending (on public goods) as close to the absolute minimum as humanly possible in order to preserve the lowest possible tax rates on the people who ‘matter’ to the people who are making the decisions – which of course means the wealthy donor class created by the dramatic shift in economic policy under Ronald Reagan.
Because every single goddamn problem in America is Ronald Reagan’s fault.
But Republicans are the “fiscally responsible ones”, amirite.
Holy shit that’s the exact system that the USSR had for budgeting factories, how did Reagan copy the worst thing about the USSR’s economy?
Good to know I live in a non-capitalist country, I guess?
yeah, basically government funding in the us is designed to be a cow the oligarchs can milk regularly. nothing to do with whether anything gets done.
as for republicans claiming to be fiscally responsible, don’t even bother trying to compare what they say they do; what they say is whatever marketing studies tell them will get them elected, and what they do is what makes them richer. there’s no causal relationship between those items.
When your politician wants to do the right thing, they need your help. Calls and tweets are very helpful to them. Here’s why:
Politicians can’t just do whatever they want, because they represent us. Whatever they believe personally, they have to take into account what their voters think. Politicians can do some unpopular things, but they have to pick unpopular issues very, very careful, or they lose reelection and can’t do anything at all.
If you call/tweet your representatives about something they already agree with, you are telling them: We have your back. You don’t have to worry that doing the right thing will cost you the election. Doing the right thing will get you votes, and make you *more* likely to win. That gives them more options.
Another way that calling representatives who are on the right side helps them: Representatives can’t pass legislation by themselves. They have to persuade other representatives to vote the right way. There are usually politicians who are on the fence and potentially open to persuasion.
If your representative can say to other representatives: “My phones are ringing off the hook about this issue”, or “My twitter mentions are overwhelmed with people asking me to do this”, it can persuade other politicians that this issue matters to voters. Every representative who can do this makes a difference. A politician may sometimes be in denial about what their constituents are saying; it’s harder to stay in denial if they’re hearing it from multiple politicians whose states/districts are similar to theirs. Even if your representative is unwaveringly on your side and in a safe seat, your calls/tweets can help them to persuade others.
Stories and pictures also matter. Telling stories can persuade politicians to do the right thing. During the health care debates, every politician told stories that a constituent told to them. The vote was close, and the Republicans who voted against it said that stories were part of what convinced them to do the right thing. If you tell your representatives stories about why the issue matters to you, it can help them to act on it, even if they already agree with you.
Tweeting pictures at your representatives can also help. Pictures of protests show politicians that people care enough to show up in person and protest. This suggests to them that people care enough to show up and vote. This is reassuring to politicians who agree with you, and they can use those pictures to put pressure on politicians who aren’t sure how they want to vote. Pictures of real people affected by the issue are also helpful. They show, viscerally, that this is about real people. That can be very persuasive.
Another reason why contacting politicians who agree with you matters: If you make the issue you’re calling/tweeting about a safe issue for them, then they don’t have to spend political capital on it. If they don’t spend political capital on it, then it’s available to spend on a risky issue. Calling/tweeting them helps them to do the right thing about the immediate issues *and* future issues which may be riskier.
Tl;dr: Even if your representatives agree with you, it’s still worth contacting them about important issues. Calling, tweeting, and otherwise contacting them can give them them *ability* to do what they already want to do. Tell them stories. Tweet them pictures that tell stories, including pictures you take at any protests you go to. Scroll up for more explanation of why this matters.
“People work backwards from identity to policy positions” is an essential truth that shows why so much political analysis falls flat. I’ve heard multiple ex-Republicans say that the main reason conservatives deny climate change is because liberals care about it. It’s an issue pushed by effete Hollywood leftists and college hippies, so they’re against it because it makes you a real American to be against those people.
just moving along like everyone else 