Millennials Don’t Stand a Chance

savagemike:

biokitty:

tactical-necromancy:

“Millennials now are facing the second once-in-a-lifetime downturn of their short careers. The first one put them on a worse lifetime-earnings trajectory and blocked them out of the asset market. The second is sapping their paychecks just as they enter their peak-earnings years, with 20 million kids relying on them, too. There’s no good news in a recession, and no good news in a pandemic. For Millennials, it feels like there is never any good news at all.”

And when our generation ends up royally fucked, we’re gonna somehow be blamed for it by gen-xers and baby boomers instead of the government literally sacrificing our generation multiple times for profit and bailouts and poor responses to crises like global warming and this pandemic.

Trust me, a not-insignificant number of Gen-Xers are in the same boat as Millennials.

That’s exactly correct. Where I live Gen-Xers are known as the “Sandwiched Generation”, having to care for our Boomer parents and our kids and really not getting much change in between. It’s shit for us all.

(Reblogged from favouriteitem-deactivated202007)

poodleman:

milk-and-meat:

fostertheory:

angrylittlesliceofpizza:

wrangletangle:

akireyta:

sandandglass:

Kevin Bridges: A Whole Different Story

…where’s the lie?

From a macroeconomics standpoint, Bridges is completely accurate.

The problem with most Tories (and many Republicans in the US) is that they either have big business interests at heart or have bought the lie that government is like a business. Government is not a business! Microeconomic principles, even ones that apply to entire industries, don’t apply to governments!

Here’s the fundamental macroecomic model of an economy:

image

(image from tutor2u)

Notice that the system is circular. The model shows that the economy inherently needs to be balanced. If some households are making hundreds of times the income of other households, they will put the vast majority of that money into savings and investment.

This is bad for the economy.

Some savings and investment is necessary. But too much means the little green arrows are siphoning off vast portions of the peach demand arrow (”purchases of goods and services”). This means that companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pie. Even if you heavily fund those companies, many will collapse due to lack of demand for their products, unless they become monopolies and the sole practical source of their product. Monopolies are technically illegal in the US, but we have them anyway because of this problem (and a lack of enforcement).

The other way you can damage the demand arrow is by shifting the proportions of the purple income arrow. Most people make money from wages, so if you significantly decrease those relative to dividends, interest, profits, and rent, you’ll harm the majority of households. In turn, this again decreases the peach arrow because many households only need a set amount of a given product in a year. The fewer households that can afford the products, the lower overall demand, because the remaining households won’t buy up the difference.

Households with average levels of income spend far more money than they save, of necessity, and they do so at a relatively steady rate. This is good for the economy.

Households with incredibly high levels of income - millionaires, etc. - save far more than they spend. They tend to make their money off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents - not wages. Therefore, to improve the economy, including increasing tax revenues for the government, two basic steps are urged by almost all macroeconomists:

1. Increase wages, especially at the lowest end. This expands the tax base and drives up demand for basic goods and services, stabilizing the industries necessary to a decent quality of life: agriculture and food production, clothing, housing, education, transportation, etc.

2. Use progressive taxes, in which those who make the most money, particularly off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents, pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes. This allows that money to be spent directly on goods and services or to be redistributed to poor households, who will in turn spend it on goods and services. In both cases, money that would have gone into savings and investment instead goes into demand. This makes businesses more successful and a large number of households more prosperous. Society as a whole benefits from decreased crime, lower health problems, and improved public goods like education, roads, emergency response, infrastructure, etc.

Macroeconomics is the opposite of an individual business. Individual businesses study how to take the most pie for themselves and keep it. Macroeconomists - and governments - study how to make the pie bigger and distribute it in such a way that society as a whole benefits from the growth.

Conservatives: doing economics wrong for the past several decades by deliberately pretending that knowing how to run a business is anything like knowing how to run a government. Being fiscally cautious and being uneducated do not have to go hand in hand. (I’m both, for example.) But the rhetoric for slashing budgets has been laden with errors and ideology since at least the 1930s, and I’m tired of it.

ONE MORE TIME FOR THE MORONS AT THE BACK IN OUR GOVERNMENTS

Or as Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.”

Ta dah.


Thank you.

I wish the part about aunts on facebook wasn’t true.

(Reblogged from schnappsshots)
View high resolution
(Reblogged from favouriteitem-deactivated202007)
View high resolution

(Source: quakerjoe)

(Reblogged from favouriteitem-deactivated202007)

memelovingbot:

this is a PSA from memebot’s dadmom because i know some of you are in the US and this is your first time voting so you might not know this but

YOU CAN’T VOTE ONLINE

THERE ARE NO APPS FOR VOTING

some states allow early or mail in voting BUT NO STATES LET YOU VOTE ONLINE.

if you see stuff about that IT IS PEOPLE TRYING TO OBSTRUCT VOTING

they are TRYING TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOU. they are hoping that if they spread misinformation about the election they can keep the left-leaning, internet-aware generation from the polls

THERE IS A LONG HISTORY OF DIRTY TRICKS LIKE THIS BEING USED TO ATTEMPT TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM VOTING. in previous elections we’ve seen lists of mostly Black people being targeted for calls saying to vote on the wrong day, stuff like that.

TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!

(Reblogged from mommapolitico)

Hillary Clinton played Donald Trump like a grand piano tonight. And I would like a million encores.

plaidadder:

image

I want everyone to know what Hillary Clinton did tonight. It isn’t just that she ‘won’ the debate; Democratic presidential candidates have been winning these debates on substance since 1980 and often, it doesn’t help them in the election. She went in there tonight with two objectives: 1) make people warm up to her personally and 2) make Donald Trump self-destruct. Donald Trump’s objective was to make people believe that he is a grown-up, or at least that he can pretend to be a grown-up for ninety minutes. 

I knew how it was going to go down as soon as she said, “Donald, it’s good to be with you.” I knew for two reasons. First: because she really meant it. She was genuinely pleased to be on a stage with him. And it’s not because she likes him. It’s because she knew she was going to fuck him up and she knew exactly how she was going to do it and she was really looking forward to it.  

Second: she called him Donald. She called him Donald all night long. Consistently and deliberately and for three good reasons. One: it reminds everyone that he has never held a position that gives him any right to a title other than “Mr.” Two: it seems friendly, but it also really pisses him off. And three: By calling him Donald, she avoided repeating his brand name.

This is the level on which Clinton and her team are working. Donald Trump has staked everything on his last name–the name he inherited from his father. It’s Trump this, Trump that, Trump the other. When he puts his name on a thing, it doesn’t say Donald anywhere, it just says TRUMP. TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP. Trump is a good brand name. It’s a noun, it’s a verb, it’s triumphant-sounding. “Donald” has none of those qualities. If she’d been calling him “Mr. Trump,” every time she said it, she would be advertising the Trump brand, which is of course the exact opposite of what she’s there to do. So she called him Donald. And he could not take it.

Without losing her temper, raising her voice, or descending to his level, she made that bastard reveal himself to the Jedi. She brought up things that are going to seem completely unsympathetic to voters, but of which Trump himself is really proud: like not paying any federal taxes (”That makes me smart,” Trump said), stiffing his contractors (”Maybe they didn’t do good work,” Trump said; “I took advantage of the laws,” Trump said), his repeated bankruptcies, the $14 million loan from his father (”A very small loan,” Trump called it). She noted that he exploited the housing crisis for personal gain (”That’s called business,” Trump said). She called him out for his racism; he responded by proving that she’s right (Trump, apparently, is aggrieved that he did not get a medal for opening a club that did not discriminate against Black people even though it was in a really nice part of Florida). When he made what to me was a cryptic jab about her “staying home” while he was traveling, she just smiled and said, “I think Donald just criticized me for preparing for this debate. And yes, I did. You know what else I prepared for? I prepared to be President. And I think that’s a good thing.”

He tried to talk over her. She ignored him. That was beautiful. One, because it’s exactly the way Trump should be treated, all the time; and two, because it made him even madder. His inability to get a rise out of her made him lose his mind. This is a man who wants to be President of the United States. And he spent an entire 2-minute segment begging people to call Sean Hannity so he could vouch for the fact that Trump was always against the Iraq war. Nobody would talk to Sean Hannity, he complained. Why would no one talk to Sean Hannity?

She was capable of actually remembering the original question and getting around to answering it after dealing with the human distraction standing next to her. He often seemed to completely forget the question seconds into his answer. At times, he was so busy talking over the moderator that he didn’t even hear the question. 

Hillary Clinton has been dealing with entitled, narcissistic, patronizing, asshole men her entire life as a Senator and as Secretary of State. She has skills in this area. She used them all tonight; and she enjoyed doing it. She looked like she was at ease, confident, and having a great time. She looked young. That was the way I put it to Mrs. Plaidder, and she agreed. She looked fresh, and energized, and exhilarated by the challenge. And that only made Trump’s “stamina” bullshit seem even dumber.

She stayed focused, despite his distractions. She dropped every bomb she came to drop at exactly the right moment. She used everything he bragged about against him. She made him too mad to put together a coherent sentence. And she smiled.

We knew she could to the job. We now know she can win this election.

During, I believe, the 2012 presidential election, people used to pass around a photo of Obama pointing forcefully at the camera with the caption, “Everybody chill the fuck out. I got this.” 

Y’all can chill the fuck out now. Hillary Clinton has this shit handled. She knows how he works and if he is ever fool enough to share a stage with her again she will fillet him. And yes. I AM WITH HER.

(Reblogged from noxyzen)

noxyzen:

It’s okay to feel sad sometimes, it’s okay to cry. But if you romanticise pain for too long, if you wallow until wallowing is comfortable, if you let it become normal, you will never be able to move on. And everyone needs to move on.

(Reblogged from noxyzen)

frankocean:

I read in the paper that my brothers are being thrown from rooftops blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs for violating sharia law. I heard the crowds stone these fallen men if they move after they hit the ground. I heard it’s in the name of God. I heard my pastor speak for God too, quoting scripture from his book. Words like abomination popped off my skin like hot grease as he went on to describe a lake of fire that God wanted me in. I heard on the news that the aftermath of a hate crime left piles of bodies on a dance floor this month. I heard the gunman feigned dead among all the people he killed. I heard the news say he was one of us. I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty. That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t. Many hate us and wish we didn’t exist. Many are annoyed by our wanting to be married like everyone else or use the correct restroom like everyone else. Many don’t see anything wrong with passing down the same old values that send thousands of kids into suicidal depression each year. So we say pride and we express love for who and what we are. Because who else will in earnest? I daydream on the idea that maybe all this barbarism and all these transgressions against ourselves is an equal and opposite reaction to something better happening in this world, some great swelling wave of openness and wakefulness out here. Reality by comparison looks grey, as in neither black nor white but also bleak. We are all God’s children, I heard. I left my siblings out of it and spoke with my maker directly and I think he sounds a lot like myself. If I being myself were more awesome at being detached from my own story in a way I being myself never could be. I wanna know what others hear, I’m scared to know but I wanna know what everyone hears when they talk to God. Do the insane hear the voice distorted? Do the indoctrinated hear another voice entirely?

(Reblogged from junch-blog)
‘Free Bird (live)’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd is my new jam.

‘Free Bird (live)’ by Lynyrd Skynyrd is my new jam.

(Source: Spotify)