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Politics: where a week is a long time
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Trump being the nominee in 2024 might actually help the Dems. Sure he’s loved by his base, but that base continues to shrink as only the cultiest of them survive as time marches on. Meanwhile, Trump is loathed by even more people than those who adore him. He basically handed the Dems the house, the presidency and the Senate by being an asshole who can’t stop lying. If 2024 is Harris vs some random GOP dude, the liberal electorate might not care enough to show out in force. If it’s anyone vs Trump there seems like a greater chance that people will show up to keep his dumbass out of office again.
With all of this and the mess in Texas that seems to have been largely caused by deregulation and Texas just not wanting to listen, The GOP is flailing right now. Their biggest saving grace is that Deme are still unwilling to kill the fillibuster and force their agenda through.
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I tend to agree. Despite his solid core of support I think Trump now would only serve to splinter the Republican vote.
The interesting thing for me in listening to a show interviewing Obama voters that switched to Trump was how they were aware of a lot of his failings but the driving force was that ‘he isn’t a politician’. Voter after voter admitted they disliked various parts of his rhetoric but ended on that point as why they were voting for him.
So to me that’s huge when it comes to their candidate choice. If it’s Harris v an establishment Republican face that may not enthuse those people to turn out for him either. I think maybe the biggest concern is if they put up a sports star or businessman as their face.
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This sounds way too much like the same rhetoric that was bandied around before Trump won the primary, and all the people who were saying that fell right in line.
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Provided Trump is still alive by 2024.
If you need help funding the assassin, let me know.
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This sounds way too much like the same rhetoric that was bandied around before Trump won the primary, and all the people who were saying that fell right in line.
If Trump runs he’s winning the primary easily. I’m just saying that unlike 2016, people now know he can win and will do anything to win which makes me believe that even more people who hate him will turn out to vote against him. I could be wrong, but I’m also just hoping he is dead or in prison before that because I don’t want to deal with even the potential of another Trump term.
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Provided Trump is still alive by 2024.
Your mouth to Cthulhu’s tentacles.
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Saw this on the Internets:
How do you milk sheep?
Tell them the election was rigged, then ask for “donations”.
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Provided Trump is still alive by 2024.
If you need help funding the assassin, let me know.
Do the Kickstarter rules *specifically* prohibit crowdfunding an assassination?
Asking for a friend…
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Re: Trump running in 2024. I would love to see him try to campaign in NY.
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Guess which US Senator from Texas flew to Cancun while the state was freezing to death and having to boil water? pic.twitter.com/fNY00EmMMR
— Gene Wu (@GeneforTexas) February 18, 2021
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If Trump runs he’s winning the primary easily. I’m just saying that unlike 2016, people now know he can win and will do anything to win which makes me believe that even more people who hate him will turn out to vote against him. I could be wrong, but I’m also just hoping he is dead or in prison before that because I don’t want to deal with even the potential of another Trump term.
No, you’re absolutely right. Trump was a one-term presidency – something that seldomly happens – for a reason. Him running again would ensure two terms for Kamala Harris. So right now he’s a huge headache to the GOP, but really only to them.
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So, Ted Cruz isn’t the only asshole in Texas elected to public office:
Texas mayor resigns after telling freezing residents to stop complaining about cold snap
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This sounds way too much like the same rhetoric that was bandied around before Trump won the primary
A bit I suppose but I think we’re armed with extra information now on how he can win and can lose, as he’s done both.
I struggle to see really an even more aged and addled Trump, with various lawsuits on his ass now he’s out of office, winning as he did in 2016. Not impossible but a lot less likely, his 40% will remain loyal but I’m not sure where the other 11% needed comes from.
Which is why my fear is more they just play the same populist trick with a different, fresher face off the TV. Potentially more dangerous in many ways, Trump’s ego and lack of any real ideology held him back to a degree. He was distracted by Twitter followers and TV ratings over doing too much.
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Might be that the gig is now up in the gig economy, as the UK Supreme Court has ruled Uber drivers should be classed as workers, with access to minimum wage and paid leave.
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My hope is that Trump, with his massive ego unwilling to sit on the sidelines in 2024, will serve as a spoiler to whatever candidate the Republican Party wants to support, splitting the GOP vote and allowing a smooth Kamala Harris victory. This country needs an extended Democratic reign in the White House (and hopefully the House and Senate) to undo much of the damage that Trump caused in 4 loooooong years.
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Might be that the gig is now up in the gig economy, as the UK Supreme Court has ruled Uber drivers should be classed as workers, with access to minimum wage and paid leave.
There was a great article on crowdsourcing tech companies and its effect on labor relations from few years ago:
The Crowdsourcing Scam (thebaffler.com)
<span style=”color: #292b2c; font-family: ‘Lyon Text Web’, serif; font-size: 18.6667px;”>These labor markets depend on a kind of internalized offshoring. By fine-tuning an increasingly unstable employment regime—part of a countrywide “jobless recovery”—companies can focus on retaining and fairly compensating highly skilled (and highly sought after) employees, such as engineers, lawyers, programmers, doctors, and scientists. Meanwhile, less complicated work can be either farmed out to low-wage freelance and temporary workers or subdivided into smaller and smaller units of work, which are then widely distributed through a cloud-based labor market. The result is an extreme form of Taylorism: in boom conditions, workers have more tiny tasks than they can say yes to, but they acquire no skills, they learn nothing about the product or service to which they are contributing, they have no contact with other workers, and they have no chance to advance or unionize. They simply do the task offered to them, for a very low fee, and move on as quickly as possible. Imagine a factory in which each employee wears blinders and can see only the thing in front of him on the conveyor belt. An algorithm acts as the overseer, and this boss doesn’t miss a thing. (If you work for Gigwalk, for example, and don’t respond to a message within thirty minutes, the app may lower your rating in its system, decreasing your chances of getting more work.)</span>
However, in America, it seems like this is exactly the sort of work a lot of people prefer. Again, it is a bit concerning and reminds me of the “Worry Free” living idea in the movie SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. Not in the particular comparisons, but in the way people value benefits that actually turn out to be detrimental in the long term and provide no guaranteed income or participation in the driving forces for prosperity in the economy.
Californians pass proposition to let Uber treat drivers as contractors: projection | Reuters
Voters in trend-setting California backed a ballot proposal by Uber and its allies that cements app-based food delivery and ride-hail drivers’ status as independent contractors, not employees, according to a projection by data provider Edison Research.
However, we are certainly starting to see an increasing movement to break up or limit the power of tech giants, but I think it is really led by interests that are either already wealthy and influential or want to carve away some of the wealth of the tech companies. Not actually a grass roots movement that has the rights and interests of the common population in mind.
Why Google caved to Australia, and Facebook didn’t – The Verge
Over the past few days, Google has been signing deals with the biggest publishers in Australia for exactly this reason. Seven West Media got a deal, Nine Entertainment got a deal, and on Wednesday, one of the country’s biggest conglomerates — Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. — got its deal. In exchange for an undisclosed sum, Google will feature News Corp. articles in its News Showcase product in Australia and beyond.
Rupert Murdoch is not exactly a man of the people, but he wins much much more than local news or individual journalists in this deal.
Now, personally, I am suspicious that a lot of these tech companies and movements, even the giants, will end up being some modern day sort of Ponzi scheme or Tulipmania or Mississippi Company bubble to go way back – a cyberpunk variation on the Emperor’s new clothes. It’s likely Uber and Lyft will eventually be charging more than you’d pay for a taxi once they dominate the market and run cabs and car service companies out of the business. Food delivery costs will likely have to rise as well once Grubhub, Doordash and Postmates (or whatever monopoly company they become) become the only available way to deliver food. All of the benefits for these companies though is built on the backs of the people actually doing the manual labor for them. It’s not too different from the conditions before the labor movements in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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I feel like the tech aspect of a lot of this stuff is a bit of a red herring, and the idea that it fundamentally changes the core employer/employee relationship a convenient fiction.
A lot of it comes down to issues similar to the ‘McJob’ complaints around part-time workers’ rights and employer obligations that Naomi Klein was railing against two decades ago in No Logo.
The difference is the narrative being sold this time around, that this is somehow all liberating for the employees because of the entrepreneurial freedom it offers them.
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Yeah, that summarises it well. But either way, the point is that the governments really need to get their shit together in protecting workers’ rights.
And just because I like it, here’s a clip from a German comedy show in which they tore into this kind of thing in the delivery business and its sub-sub-sub-contracting that ended in a Brechtian communist song that was quite fantastic:
(Hey, it even has proper English subtitles!)
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My hope is that Trump, with his massive ego unwilling to sit on the sidelines in 2024, will serve as a spoiler to whatever candidate the Republican Party wants to support, splitting the GOP vote and allowing a smooth Kamala Harris victory. This country needs an extended Democratic reign in the White House (and hopefully the House and Senate) to undo much of the damage that Trump caused in 4 loooooong years.
I don’t have high hopes for the Dems in 2022. Because right now the only thing standing in their way is themselves. They won’t get shit done in the next 2 years unless the Manchins and Sinemas of the party stop trying to play in the middle ground. Mid-term elections almost always go against the party in power. This will be especially true if the Dems just sit back and continue to let the GOP block everything. Because we all know the GOP is only going to get more crazy with gerrymandering and voter suppression bills, so if the Dems don’t fight with every tool possible then it’ll be very hard to convince people to come out and vote in 2022.
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Yeah, that’s why I was so disappointed with Biden as their choice in the first place. It was the safe choice for beating Trump, but it’s not a candidate that’ll enthuse anybody in the long term. And neither is Kamala, honestly, because she’s another status quo politician.
What I would’ve given to see President Liz Warren take Wall Street apart. Man.
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Right wing idiot Thierry Baudet stormed out of an interview yesterday…it was completely ridiculous. The young female interviewer was completely flabbergasted. They were talking about food culture in the Netherlands, he said how he hated Dutch coffee and sandwiches which is funny for a nationalist, and suddenly Baudet started being nasty at the interviewer, telling her she was “too hard” and her “heart was closed.” Then he walked off muttering about her being a bad interviewer.
We have elections in 20 days and his party has completely collapsed. We’re likely gettting another centrist government with the same parties forming a coalition.
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I feel like the tech aspect of a lot of this stuff is a bit of a red herring, and the idea that it fundamentally changes the core employer/employee relationship a convenient fiction.
Exactly, it does seem that the tech aspect is treated with some magical thinking. It reminds me of the early days of the personal computer when police agencies created “computer crime” divisions. These weren’t “cybercrimes” as the Internet didn’t exist in any form like it would eventually become, but crimes where computers were used for any purpose from keeping a budget for illicit profits or composing ransom notes or basically anything involved in a crime. Eventually, it became clear that the rationale for “computer crimes” made about as much sense as defining crimes that used a pencil versus a typewriter. It was simply an upgrade in technology, but not a different kind of crime. The problem wasn’t that they needed specialist attention, but that police and police departments in general simply needed to learn how to use computers. And, often, police were the last organizations to computerize since they were publicly funded and, obviously, often resistant to change.
The Strange Saga of Ted Cruz’s Marie Antoinette–Style Cancún Vacation (msn.com)
He flew home less than 24 hours after he had departed, tragically unable to score an upgraded seat, it seems. Of course, 13 million of his constituents were unable to score clean water; nearly half of all Texans are currently under a boil-water advisory.
It is a baffling case. Pandemic, catastrophic winter storm, and it’s not like the Senate isn’t facing a mountain of work for the next stimulus bill… sounds like a good time to fly down south of the Border and drink some margaritas by the beach. How do people vote for this guy? Honestly, who could look at any other candidates and say “oh, they’re much worse.”
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It’s pretty baffling that Cruz got elected at all. I know it’s Texas, but he’s just awful. Meanwhile the guy he beat is out there organizing phone banks to reach out the senior citizens to make sure they’re okay and AOC is out there raising $2 million dollars for Texas (a state that loathes her) while committing to also work at a food bank in Houston. Hopefully Texans get through this and it serves as a wake up call for a lot of them that the representatives they’ve supported through the years are scumbags whose policies are trash for the state.
I also hope they sue the energy company into oblivion since I hear lots of people are getting hit with surge pricing rates of thousands of dollars all because the company (and state leadership) wanted to avoid federal regulation and cut costs wherever they could.
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I also hope they sue the energy company into oblivion since I hear lots of people are getting hit with surge pricing rates of thousands of dollars all because the company (and state leadership) wanted to avoid federal regulation and cut costs wherever they could.
There’s the Western interconnection, the Eastern interconnection and the Texas “not really” interconnection.
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Yup. That’s our Lyin Ted pic.twitter.com/AOgSSfvrgY
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) February 20, 2021
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According to a person familiar with his plans, Graham plans to spend his time on the golf course with Trump — ideally convincing the former president that regaining congressional majorities for Republicans will help bolster his own presidential legacy. This person said Graham wants to be “constructive,” urging Trump to use his influence for the party’s good.
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It’s pretty baffling that Cruz got elected at all. I know it’s Texas, but he’s just awful.
There’s a fun Behind the Bastards episode about Cruz. He’s even more of a psycho than I’d have thought.
I’m quite happy with Biden, he has done some great things so far, especially stopping US support for the war in Yemen. He also seems to be doing something about private prisons. I wasn’t enthusiastic about him originally but he might be alright.
Yeah, you’ve got to give it to him, he came out of the gate swinging. Maybe I was too negative.
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But either way, the point is that the governments really need to get their shit together in protecting workers’ rights.
As much as crowdsourcing gets attention as a way for tech startups to use their applications to treat their labor as “contractors” rather than “employees” – which is the essential advantage of their business model, getting around labor laws to offload labor expenses onto the worker, the fact that governments allow multi-level marketing companies to exist is a good indicator that they will not really put much effort into the labor inequity of crowdsourced “gigs.”
MLM’s (“pyramid schemes” or “snow ball schemes”) are worse than cults. I often rail on Scientology, but the average “public” scientologist is just paying a lot for what is a bunch of brainwashing material. For the average public member of scientologist, the difference between their religion and the average devout Catholic or Muslim is that the Scientologist is paying a lot more for it. In COS Int, the people who are really abused and suffer the most are the staff and SeaOrg members. The people who are actually in the corporations of the Church.
In an MLM, the actual executives of the company and the people on staff in their offices are the ones who benefit from the profits of the scheme. While the “distributors” who are recruited into the scheme are either losing money or making less than minimum wage. Unless they are at the very top – the top 0.1% – they aren’t profiting, and they are probably alienating all their friends and family or, worse, recruiting them into the same scheme to suffer the same things.
Supposedly, if the majority of a company’s income is attributed to recruitment rather than to sales of products or services, then it is illegal. However, the government bends over backwards to allow MLM’s to manipulate their books to “show” that product sales are greater than recruitment fees often by conflating the two. Let’s say you’re getting into a cosmetics MLM, and you spend $5,000.00 US for a “starter pack.” In that purchase, there is a $500.00 membership fee. So, the company will record that as $4,500.00 in cosmetic sales and $500.00 in recruitment fees even though the whole package is part of their recruitment scheme.
Again, like with rideshare apps where the drivers will actually fight for and promote legislation that allows the companies to treat them as contractors and not employees – essentially begging to be stuck with all the labor costs of the venture for minimal compensation – the “distributors” – the people who are actually the sales force for the MLM’s never think that they are actually employees. Instead, they think they are part of the “family” and part of some great movement for personal independence. There is a whole lot of libertarian philosophy tied up in all these scams from pyramid schemes to personal improvement and financial independence gurus like Dan Lok, Tony Robbins and Jordan Peterson. As attractive as libertarianism is as a philosophy, in the real world, it is just a dirty scam and it has poisoned the economic mentality of Americans even if they’ve never heard of it because, most often, whomever they are listening to on the news, financial advice columns are in the Internet about the financial choices they should make certainly has been heavily indoctrinated by it.
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MLM’s (“pyramid schemes” or “snow ball schemes”) are worse than cults.
It’s incredible that that stuff is legal.
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It’s incredible that that stuff is legal.
And again, it goes back to the Reagan era and the perpetuation of money in politics. Really, now you should just say money IS politics.
Yet, just as dissection of MLM’s defining elements reveals a calculated swindle, the record of government toward MLM lays bare the nasty reality of a political fix. MLM is sustained not by law or markets but by Ponzinomics, a delusion belief system that relies upon – requires – government complicity. President Trump’s direct and personal role as MLM’s namesake endorser and his ceremonial anointment of Betsy DeVos from the Amway family to the Presidential Cabinet only made official what has been going on for 40 years, under Democrats and Republicans.
Ponzinomics shows how the famous 1979 Amway decision was not an exalted and final legal ruling at all. It was made by an Administrative Law Judge, not even part of the federal judiciary. The FTC was free to reject it. Legally, it does not bind the FTC in future actions and has no inherent application for other MLM cases. The FTC’s decision to accept the ruling – which ignored the data and research of FTC investigators – was likely driven by the politics of the day, not facts or law. Amway’s two owners had insinuated themselves into the highest levels of the National Republican Party and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce. They were major financial backers of the Michigan Congressman who, fatefully after Watergate, had become President of the United States, just when the FTC was prosecuting Amway. They held private meetings in the White House with the President and discussed the prosecution. One of the Amway founders was the chief fundraiser for the 1980 presidency of Ronald Reagan, who returned the favor with no MLM prosecutions during his 8-year term and by personally attending and speaking at a huge Amway rally in 1982 where he famously proclaimed about Amway, “You really are capitalism in America.”
DeVos Family Made $14 Million In Political Contributions In The Last Two Years Alone (mcfn.org)
When Federal administrations have been protecting Ponzi schemes and mentally destructive and rapacious “direct sales” cults for longer than most of us have been alive, it’s hard to expect much from government no matter who gets elected. However, even though the “police” so to speak are in the pockets of the scammers, there is some reason to believe that we can stop this from the front end by preventing people from being taken in. More and more people are learning the truth – there is no such thing as a legitimate MLM even if the government says, in theory, there could be.
Again, it is the same thing with cults. Jason Beghe was a celebrity Scientologist and, in a lot of ways, he still thinks along Scientology’s principles, and he actually left the COS because it didn’t line up with what it claimed. He looked at the data – which is a common statement in Scientology – and he simply asked “never mind O.T., just show me Clear. Just provide a real world example of Clear.” Scientology can never do that, which is how you can know it is fraudulent.
Same with MLM’s. Just find one that makes money selling whatever it is supposed to be selling rather than from selling the “opportunity” to sell these things to recruits who are then supposed to make their money selling the opportunity to more recruits rather than selling the product or service at the center of the “business model” to actual paying customers. You can’t find it. It doesn’t exist!
Essentially, it is supposed to be direct selling, but direct selling is practically extinct. So how are people supposed to get independently wealthy even “in theory” when there is no real market for their products?
Honestly, what we need is a combination consumer/worker protection movement as the fine line between labor power and consumer power doesn’t exist today. The commoners today are exploited both for their labor and for their purchasing power, and that is not exactly something that was explored in Marx’s Capital.
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Jim Carrey Retires From Political Cartooning With ‘Orange Julius Caesar’ Out of Office
I have to admit, ‘Orange Julius Caesar’ is a nickname I probably never would have thought of.
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There’s a draft for a Supply Chain Law going into the Bundestag soon, and apparently it’s not bad (not as good as it could be, either, but hey, a law like this with any teeth at all would be an amazing accomplishment). This addresses one of the big things the world has been doing completely wrong for ages, and it makes me a wee bit hopeful.
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-fine-firms-for-rights-breaches-in-supply-chains/av-56553801
The German government has published a draft supply chain law that aims to hold companies accountable for human rights breaches. Ministers have described it as Europe’s strongest legislation against worker exploitation.
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McConnell to support Garland for attorney general
After he blocked Garland from getting into the Supreme Court. Change of heart or hypocrisy?
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Hypocrisy, without a doubt.
Attorney General isn’t a lifetime appointment, whereas a Supreme Court Justice is there until he dies. McConnell wanted to stack SCOTUS with conservative judges who lean Republican. He wouldn’t even allow Garland to be interviewed for the job, even though he obviously considered him qualified based on this new support for AG.
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McConnell is just doing what he’s always done, play politics. He could stop Garland being appointed to the Supreme Court (and did so) he can’t stop him as AG (just delay it which is rather pointless at this juncture).
Yes he’s a hypocrite but he’s consistent in using whatever power he has that week to get what he can. It’s what he always does.
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Billionaire philanthropy is a ‘PR scam,’ says CEO who raised his workers’ minimum pay to $70,000
Dan Price, the CEO of the credit-card processing company Gravity Payments, slammed America’s elites on Twitter TWTR, -1.71%, charging that the average billionaire donates a smaller share of their money to charity each year than the average non-billionaire.
As evidence, Price cited a recent ranking of the biggest charitable contributions of 2020, which included deep-pocketed donors such as Amazon AMZN, -1.09% founder Jeff Bezos. Critics of wealth inequality have pointed out that billionaires have seen their fortunes swell during the pandemic, but the contributions they’ve made to charity represent a tiny fraction of their growing wealth.
(An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment.)
Price was inspired to weigh in on philanthropy because Washington state is debating a proposal to create the nation’s first state wealth tax, he told MarketWatch. The tax would apply to people whose net worths are over $1 billion.
Price said one of the most frequent criticisms he’s heard of the proposal is that “billionaires don’t need to pay taxes because they already donate.”“In reality, the amount they donate is a fraction of what they would pay if their tax rates were in line with the working class,” he said.
Billionaires pay the lowest tax rate of any income group nationally, Price added. In Washington state, the richest pay 3% of their income on taxes, while the poor pay 18%, he said. (That’s according to a report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank.)
“I think billionaires donate for various reasons, but it’s clear that giving away the equivalent of what’s in their couch cushions helps them avoid having to face steeper bills that would actually make a difference in solving systemic problems,” Price told MarketWatch.
The average American donates about 2% of their disposable income to charity each year, according to Giving USA, an annual report on charitable giving.
Calculating how much of their wealth billionaires give away is difficult. They don’t always publicly announce their charitable giving, and many aren’t required to disclose how much they give away.
Bezos was the No. 1 donor of 2020, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. He pledged $10 billion to establish the Bezos Earth Fund, but only part of that money actually went to charity last year. The fund handed out $791 million in grants to environmental groups in 2020. Bezos also donated $100 million to Feeding America, a national network of food banks.
Meanwhile, Bezos’s net worth shot up to around $188 billion by November 2020, according to the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies, a frequent critic of Bezos and other billionaires. Using those figures — which are a moving target — Bezos gave away roughly 0.47% of his net worth in 2020.
America’s billionaires stepped up their giving to charity in 2020, with the 50 biggest donors shelling out a combined $24.7 billion to address urgent problems including the pandemic and its economic fallout and calls for racial justice. The 50 biggest donations in 2019 totaled $15.8 billion.
Despite the economic turmoil created by the coronavirus pandemic, overall charitable giving — by billionaires and non-billionaires alike — increased in the U.S. in 2020, according to a recent estimate.
Price made headlines in 2015 after announcing he would pay every employee at his company at least $70,000 a year. In the early months of the pandemic, Gravity, a credit-card payment processor that works mainly with small businesses, saw its revenue plummet by 50%. Price said he avoided layoffs by asking his employees to take pay cuts. The company later paid back those employees.
Price also cut his own $1.1 million salary down to $70,000 along with the rest of his employees. Some observers have suggested that if he had maintained his own high pay, he would have more money to give away to charity, he previously said. But Price doesn’t think “the world needs another billionaire philanthropist,” he said, “because we’ve been relying on billionaire philanthropists for so long, and I don’t really think that’s working out very well for us.”
He added that he would rather see a system with more “justice and integrity” and companies that take care of their workers.
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It’s great that billionaires and multimillionaires donate to worthy charities and humanitarian concerns; but a tax on the ultra-rich would benefit much-needed services that are important but don’t get charitable donations. Things like subsidizing public transportation; funding infrastructure repairs on bridges, roads, water and sewer pipes; and supporting municipal parks, libraries, and community centers. Taxes pay for the boring, unsexy things that are also important and necessary, but do not get the charitable support that food banks, animal rescue, and disaster-relief services get.
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Billionaire philanthropy is a ‘PR scam,’ says CEO who raised his workers’ minimum pay to $70,000
Bill Gates has actually increased his fortune as a result of running his foundation. It’s an investment fund that does philanthropy on the side.
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Only semi-relayed, but I hate how narrow the viewpoint is when it comes to raising the minimum wage here. The only talking point is usually around inflation and maybe potential job losses even though studies don’t really back up those claims very well. Conservatives love to ignore that higher wages means less reliance on the social welfare programs they loathe so much or that higher wages for low income families means more money into local businesses and more tax revenue. They also conveniently ignore that if minimum wage had kept Pace with inflation over the last 50 years it would be at $12 right now which means the value of the minimum wage is about 40% less than it was when a lot of these dickbag politicians were out there getting their first jobs.
It also might benefit the GOP to realize that the more they allow themselves to be radicalized to the right, the more likely there will be backlash that radicalizes people to the scary socialist left to fight the GOPs bullshit.
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There’s always the same disingenuous argument about small businesses with minimum wage. They don’t really give a shit about them, politicians are all about corporate donors, but there are easy measures there anyway if it is a genuine concern. A higher wage means higher tax income, so if a group of smaller companies are genuinely struggling you can assist them with that.
An example to look at is maternity pay in the UK. This is a universal right but if your company has below a certain level of revenue the government will cover it for you. Which is fine, say you employ 5 people and one goes off on maternity that is a genuine issue, 20% of your workforce unavailable and still needing to be paid. This is not really a common situation, the vast majority of people are either employed by corporations, the public sector or are self employed so that scenario can be covered without much impact.
So similarly if small business employers genuinely struggle with expanding a budding business with the higher costs then help them out with tax breaks or whatever. It’s a very very small slice of the pie. In reality those tax breaks are significantly slanted towards huge companies that flip their locations with the wind. Just as Warren Buffet pointed out his personal tax rates were much lower than his PA’s you’ll find Dave’s Deli is paying full whack while Amazon isn’t.
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The other right wing reaction when talking about raising the minimum wage is “they should go find a better paying job” along with “get training/education so they can get something better”. Were it that easy. The 21st century solution to everything seems to be “learn to code”.
When people say that if minimum wages are raised it will cause businesses to fail, my reaction is, “if a business can’t handle an increase in the minimum wage, it already has some serious issues and may deserve to fail”.
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Agreed. Any business that can’t pay a living wage to its employees probably shouldn’t be in business. It’s sucks, but there is a cost of being an employer. If you can’t shoulder that cost then you probably shouldn’t open that business.
And like gar said, there are plenty of ways the government can help small businesses if they want to. They just don’t want to.
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McConnell flip flopping on Trump. In other news, water is wet.
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Honestly, this is the crazy thing about capitalist economies that is hard to wrap the brain around. I spent forever reading Marx’s 3 freaking volumes of Capital and even tried Adam Smith’s massive volume (which is really hard to understand just in the way it is written) just to try to get a basic idea how this is supposed to work AND it still seems massively too complicated and absurd a system that anyone would buy into. Marx, honestly, did the best job just trying to explain how it works, but it took him forever and what he describes is a hundred years too old for today’s pyramid scheme economy.
Colin Quinn did a joke about it.
There’s an apple tree. A guy comes along and puts a fence around it. Now, it’s his apple tree. Another guy comes up to the fence and says he’d like an apple.
“Sure, how many?”
“Just one.”
“Okay, they’re a dollar each.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Okay, we can fix that. Here, come over to this side of the fence.”
The second guy steps over the fence. The owner gives him a red cap and gloves.
“Now, you’re an employee. I’ll pay you a penny for every apple you pick.”
The new employee picks a hundred apples and the boss gives him a dollar and tells him to give back the hat and gloves and step to the other side of the fence.
“Now, you’re a customer.”
He takes back the dollar he just gave the man and gives him one apple out of the one hundred that the guy picked.
So, the “owner” doesn’t make any money, but he does keep the product of the labor – the hundred apples, that he can sell to other customers. However, where do the consumers get the money that they will pay for those apples? Obviously, from the same scheme in every other production center for the market.
In the end, though, it feels like a big pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme is also related to the “endless chain” or “robbing Peter to pay Paul” rackets. However, the way modern capitalist economies work is that the scheme lasts long enough that Peter dies before he wants his money back.
Essentially, capitalism feels like a pyramid scheme that has a generational timeline. It sustains itself because the vast majority of people who go into the scheme die before they reach the other side of it. It depends on a major percentage of “losers” in the economy basically evaporating especially during contractions, downturns, recessions and depressions.
Ironically, this means that it really doesn’t matter what the wages are. Actually, it may be a distraction. Rather than raising wages, if the government provided housing, vocational education, employment services and universal healthcare – almost any service you can think of to support workers and professionals – then wages could be very low because people would not need as much money to live comfortably. Employment would be very high because companies could afford to hire more people and would not need to spend money on benefits. In the end though, those wages are going back in the pockets of the employers’ businesses anyway.
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The other right wing reaction when talking about raising the minimum wage is “they should go find a better paying job” along with “get training/education so they can get something better”. Were it that easy. The 21st century solution to everything seems to be “learn to code”.
This is the UK government’s approach.
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What the UK government didn’t realise is they were also communicating their attitude to the arts with that ad campaign
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But on the plus side, it generated some brilliant parodies.
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What the UK government didn’t realise is they were also communicating their attitude to the arts with that ad campaign
They can’t tell their arts from their elbow.
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The other right wing reaction when talking about raising the minimum wage is “they should go find a better paying job” along with “get training/education so they can get something better”.
Yeah Jim used to work a variation of this one of move to the city and get a better job but it only works on an individual narrative. You can help or convince me to study or move to get a better job but it can’t be a solution for a society, whether it be your town or country or globally.
In the end we still need people to clean toilets, serve coffee, stack the shelves at your supermarket and drive taxis. A country of white collar middle managers and IT consultants cannot function.
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The other right wing reaction when talking about raising the minimum wage is “they should go find a better paying job” along with “get training/education so they can get something better”. Were it that easy. The 21st century solution to everything seems to be “learn to code”.
This is the UK government’s approach.
Holy fucking shit, that is terrible.
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It’s also worth noting that there’s a narrative around minimum wage jobs being for young people who want some spending cash or starting out in life, but increasingly it’s a full-time job for adults. Like when I was working minimum wage in a warehouse there were plenty of young people there, but loads of them in their 30s and older. Now, a lot of those people were in positions of responsibility, but still minimum wage. Less than minimum wage for a while, in fact as Tesco dragged their heels on rolling out government-mandated pay increases. In 2013, 40% of fast food workers in the US were over the age of 25, and my understanding is that the age is trending upwards there too.
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Exactly, the minimum wage model only works for a majority of kids because they don’t have to pay for basic living expenses. They have parents taking care of that. Again, this means that if you want to have low wages, then someone has to pay for housing, food, medical care, vehicles (if you drive to work) and any other labor expense. Either the company (bad idea – just look at employer provided health care) or the government takes it over.
Increasingly, there is a lobbying drive to treat labor as all contract and freelance, but if that is the way we’re going, then everything involved with a working person staying alive – home internet, car payments or public transportation expenses, groceries, medical care, school, house payments or apartment rental – should be considered a business expense and untaxable. Even so, that will eventually collapse.
However, there is a squeeze especially on poor and working class, to profit from every disadvantage available. Productivity increases but wages remain stagnant – well, then who can afford to buy all those new products? No one, if we’re being honest. Even the billionaires can’t really afford all this crap! Instead, everyone is on credit cards and the hot business becomes selling pieces of growing debt that can never be repaid because we’re not paying people enough to afford it.
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However, there is a squeeze especially on poor and working class, to profit from every disadvantage available. Productivity increases but wages remain stagnant – well, then who can afford to buy all those new products? No one, if we’re being honest. Even the billionaires can’t really afford all this crap! Instead, everyone is on credit cards and the hot business becomes selling pieces of growing debt that can never be repaid because we’re not paying people enough to afford it.
There’s a reason why an increasing number of billionaires are building bunkers in which they can ride out the apocalypse in luxury. I assume it’s all going to end as well as the one in World War Z.
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In the end we still need people to clean toilets, serve coffee, stack the shelves at your supermarket and drive taxis. A country of white collar middle managers and IT consultants cannot function.
I think saw this more clearly during the first months of the pandemic in 2020. Many stores were closed, and the ones that were open had empty shelves. That’s when we learned that among the “essential workers” are the people who stock those shelves, and work the cash registers, and fulfill the orders at the Amazon/Walmart/Tesco centers; and the truck drivers who ship those goods from the warehouse to your front door; and the guy who delivers takeout meals to you; and the bus drivers and train operators who get you where you need to be. Every one of them deserves to earn a living wage, because during those scary days of March and April and May, they literally put their lives on the line to serve you and me. And they’re still doing it.
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My dad is a lifelong republican and he’s often talked about how he worked his way through school. It’s a pretty common conservative argument. But, of course, when my dad was entering college the minimum wage was $1.60 and tuition was around $350 a year. You could work a part time minimum wage job and pay for school while then having several hundred dollars left over for other expenses and recreation. Today if you work a part time minimum wage job then you’ll probably make enough money to still be several thousand short on your tuition costs. Maybe because conservatives desperately want nothing to change ever they’re incapable of seeing/admitting that it has. At the very least they’re unwilling to because it shatters the narrative they’ve built there life around.
Tried having this talk with my dad once and it went poorly. He got super defensive and it became clear that it wasn’t worth continuing.
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Maybe because conservatives desperately want nothing to change
While this is certainly claimed, it is conservatives who have, for the last 40 years, never seen a status quo they couldn’t blow sky high.
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My parents could buy a house and raise two kids on one full time job. I think we need to get back to that.
Except it needs to be two part-time jobs.
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He got super defensive
I have yet to meet a Conservative who doesn’t. it’s pg 1 of conservative playbook.
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My parents could buy a house and raise two kids on one full time job. I think we need to get back to that.
My dad supported my mom and three kids.
You also look back several decades where a high school diploma would guarantee you a job with a good salary. That salary would be enough to support a wife (who didn’t work) with two children, cover expenses and take a moderate vacation once a year. It was wealthy families who sent their kids to college.
We now live in a time where even with a bachelor’s or a master’s degree (and the associated crippling debt), you may be lucky to find some entry level, low paying job in a field completely unrelated to your degree.
Trade schools should be a viable alternative for many people who aren’t going to thrive in college but have the aptitudes to be plumbers, mechanics, etc. Yet, I think they have such a negative reputation as places for “dumb” people and those who are low income. In reality, trade people are highly intelligent and very skilled. And they have the potential to make much more than some with college degrees.
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Except it needs to be two part-time jobs.
That’s part of the problem, isn’t it? I assume when Chris D’s dad was supporting his wife and kids on a single salary, that job also included free health insurance and possibly even a pension at retirement. Those kinds of jobs are rare today, as corporations look to reduce costs by eliminating pensions, making employees pay (at least in part) for health insurance, or reducing the employees’ hours so that they are technically part-time workers not entitled to insurance, paid vacation, etc.
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Johnson’s now claiming everyone will be back in the office in a few months. I think he is deluded – those organisations that have adapted to working remotely are not going to go back to some old ‘normal’.
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The wider hit is to the services that grow up around offices, have they been able to survive the last year with huge reductions in custom?
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It’s a question of how much this has accelerated something happening anyway too. With my last employer they issues laptops to every employee over 15 years ago, then deployed a softphone a while later. When I went to the HQ in the US around 5 years back they had row after row of empty cubicles, pretty much everyone working from home.
Then I found out the banking call centre I worked at in my first job is closing the building in April, all the agents now work from home. That’s a move that may be accelerated by Covid but setting that up to be stable and secure for banking calls would have been several years in the planning.
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Hey, maybe that’ll be the trajectory for the Brexit Party in search of a new cause, campaigning for a many hour commute and five days in the office.
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Ironically, this means that it really doesn’t matter what the wages are. Actually, it may be a distraction. Rather than raising wages, if the government provided housing, vocational education, employment services and universal healthcare – almost any service you can think of to support workers and professionals – then wages could be very low because people would not need as much money to live comfortably.
I think we had something close to this in the Netherlands in the 70s 80s and 90s. If you were unemployed or disabled benefits were easy to get, and housing was affordable. The biggest problems for young people right now is getting an affordable home. I’m not sure how to fix that. Maybe make it a requirement that homes can only be sold to people who actually live in it instead of use it as an investment? Build a lot more public housing? Not sure.
In the end I think it is between a society where people take care of each other and a social darwinist society.
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A second home tax would be a nice start. Labour proposed one years ago under Ed Miliband, but it somehow turned into a “mansion tax” on expensive property, which of course didn’t go down well given a) lots of poor people assume they’re going to be rich one day and b) it probably would have covered everything in London.
I see the stamp duty “holiday” is being extended, as though that’s going to magically boost the economy. The only Labour person I’ve seen actually come out against it is John McDonnell, who pointed out it’s mainly benefited buy-to-let landlords. And Sunak is mooting a tax on deliveries from online retailers to fund it, because making it more expensive for people to use the main reliable part of the economy is really going to help people out.
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I think we had something close to this in the Netherlands in the 70s 80s and 90s. If you were unemployed or disabled benefits were easy to get, and housing was affordable. The biggest problems for young people right now is getting an affordable home. I’m not sure how to fix that. Maybe make it a requirement that homes can only be sold to people who actually live in it instead of use it as an investment? Build a lot more public housing? Not sure.
The headache is that providing social services is supposed to attract investment because of the low cost economy. However, if the government is doing this by taxing business profits, it doesn’t work. Especially if your country does not control its own currency. In England, it seems like the most attractive thing the British has for outside investors is high-priced real estate that corrupt foreign oligarchs or ministers can purchase to launder their ill-gotten gains. I think it’s really going to be very difficult for a Western country that does not produce its own basic goods to take advantage of the low cost economic model and retain the acquisitive country-wide consumerist society.
Honestly, as far as Europe in general, I am intrigued by Poland. It’s economic growth has been a standout in Europe and mixes both Eastern and Western European elements. It would be educational to see if what makes them stand apart is unique or something that can be applied to nations like Greece, Italy and Spain.
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In England, it seems like the most attractive thing the British has for outside investors is high-priced real estate that corrupt foreign oligarchs or ministers can purchase to launder their ill-gotten gains.
It’s a large part of it and of course most of the tax havens globally are connected to the UK. BVI, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Cayman Islands. It’s no secret that some of zeal for leaving the EU at all costs was their planned legislation to curb offshore tax avoidance. Now that can’t be touched.
It is basically Thatcher’s dream come true, manufacturing erased because of the power unions had, financial services and property markets booming. One of the reasons the UK is chosen for those foreign purchases is there are no restrictions to foreign ownership, not even a requirement to know who bought it, you can do so under a shell company.
The question is how sustainable a plan that is. Housing is now priced out of the reach of many people, the Covid crisis has shown problems with over-reliance on imports. There’s some luck that biomedical R&D is one area the UK does excel at but the largest producer of the AZ/Oxford vaccine is in India. The UK has no British owned steel production any more, the last remaining plant is owned by Tata – another Indian company. Next to no controls on ownership means almost every success story is sold to direct most of the income abroad. ARM who commanded the market in chips for mobile phones was sold to the Japanese, even the free market lovers of the USA will embrace protectionism a lot more. The US public sector demands its computers are US owned, they’ll buy HP and Dell and not Lenovo and insist their phone calls are answered in the USA. Nothing of the kind exists in the UK so computer manufacturing, big in the 80s, died.
The Conservative Party dresses itself in patriotism and the flag but it is only loyal to the markets.
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Alex Jones on Leaked Video: ‘I Wish I Never Met Trump’
Before multimillionaire conspiracy theorist Alex Jones riled up Donald Trump’s fans with lies about a stolen election, he privately expressed revulsion over the 45th president, a video leaked to Hatewatch reveals.
“It’s the truth and I’m just going to say it. That I wish I never would have fucking met Trump,” Jones said on camera in January 2019, while shooting a documentary in Austin, Texas. “I wish it never would have happened. And it’s not the attacks I’ve been through. I’m so sick of fucking Donald Trump, man. God, I’m fucking sick of him. And I’m not doing this because, like, I’m kissing his fucking ass, you know. It’s, like, I’m sick of it.”
According to Caolan Robertson, a filmmaker Jones hired to shoot a propaganda film called “You Can’t Watch This” that produced this outtake, the conspiracy theorist’s comments disparaging Trump are emblematic of his cynical business model. The leaked footage contrasts starkly with Jones’ public rhetoric about Trump. Jones’ talk show Infowars promoted and idealized Trump daily, throughout both the 2016 presidential campaign and the former president’s time in office.
Robertson also shared with Hatewatch a screenshot of text messages he claimed to have exchanged with Jones. In them, the Infowars host appears to ask him to discard comments he made from the final product of the film. Robertson told Hatewatch that the comments Jones made were him expressing his disgust with Trump.
“Please don’t put me bitching in the film. I don’t do it a lot. But when I do look out,” Jones writes across three messages, according to the screenshot Robertson shared.
Robertson, whom far-right figures hired to shoot a number of propaganda films, leaked the footage and messages to Hatewatch to back up his claim that Jones is motivated by a desire to exploit Trump’s fans. Robertson told Hatewatch that during the same shoot, Jones bragged to him off camera about making $60 million in 2018. (Although Jones is a noted fabulist, he testified in court under oath to bringing in $20 million in revenue in 2014.) Robertson told Hatewatch that Paul Joseph Watson, a far-right internet performer Jones hired to produce content, who also appeared in the propaganda film, allegedly told Robertson the Infowars founder paid him $16,000 per month for his work – or a salary of close to $200,000 annually.
Robertson also told Hatewatch that off camera, Jones took delight in belittling his own audience, suggesting he could sell them “dick pills” and claiming they would “buy anything.”
“Alex Jones doesn’t care about most of the stuff he professes to,” Robertson told Hatewatch over Skype from his home in London. “It just shows he doesn’t care about anything he talks about. He doesn’t like Trump but then goes on camera talking about how Trump is the savior.”
Robertson has disavowed the far right and told Hatewatch he is working to undo the damage he did while producing propaganda for extremists such as Jones. In August 2020, he also shared evidence with Hatewatch that One America News Network correspondent Jack Posobiec interviewed a white supremacist following a march in Warsaw wherein participants, including neo-Nazis, allegedly chanted, “White Poland.”
Hatewatch reached out to Infowars for this story but never received a reply.
Jones’ alleged exploitation of Trump’s base extended to boosting the lie that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. In Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, Jones hyped up crowds of Trump supporters before some of them stormed the Capitol building in an unprecedented attack that left five people dead.
“We have only begun to resist the globalists. We have only begun our fight against their tyranny. They have tried to steal this election in front of everyone,” Jones shouted on the night of Jan. 5. “I don’t know how this is all going to end, but if they want to fight, they better believe they’ve got one.”
The Washington Post reported on Feb. 20 that the Department of Justice and the FBI had opened a probe to determine the degree to which Jones and Stop the Steal leaders Roger Stone and Ali Alexander may have influenced the insurrection attempt on the Capitol building on Jan. 6. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier in February that Jones donated $50,000 to a Jan. 6-related event in exchange for access to a headlining speaking slot to address Trump’s fans.
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It would be educational to see if what makes them stand apart is unique or something that can be applied to nations like Greece, Italy and Spain.
European countries all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I doubt what works in Poland could easily be transplanted elsewhere.
Poland has received a lot of investment from Germany and other countries. Warsaw has transformed into a modern city with a distinct American look. I wonder if they benefit from the geography, the proximity of Germany and the Baltics and Scandinavia across the water. Baltic countries have also been doing well. It is the question though wether Poland can sustain it, the leading political party is scaring off investors. They started to nationalize a bunch of stuff a couple of years ago.
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Mike Pence Is Back And He’s Lying About Election Security
In his first public remarks since President Joe Biden’s inauguration, former Vice President Mike Pence is pushing falsehoods about election security in an op-ed he authored for The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Of particular ire to Pence is Democrats’ first major bill of the 116th Congress, the For The People Act. The legislation contains reforms surrounding voting rights, elections, campaign finance and ethics designed to expand voting access, curb the influence of dark money, and limit partisan gerrymandering.
Or, as Pence characterized it: an “unconstitutional, reckless, and anti-democratic bill that would erode [free and fair elections] and could permanently damage our republic.”
In making his argument, Pence began with the lie, repeated ad nauseam by former President Donald Trump and his followers, that the 2020 election was marred by “significant voting irregularities.”
There’s zero evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. Trump and his allies filed more than 60 election lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results on that basis. All were dismissed for lack of merit. An inquiry by Trump’s Justice Department also concluded there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election.
Yet the falsehood continues to serve as a rallying cry for much of the Republican Party ― one that Trump used to goad his supporters into violently attacking the U.S. Capitol and democracy itself on Jan. 6.
Pence briefly referred to that day in his op-ed, describing it as “tragic.” He failed to acknowledge that members of the mob were chanting “hang Mike Pence” as they roamed the Capitol Building, apparently looking for him to violently persuade him not to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Instead, Pence lamented that the violence “deprived the American people of a substantive discussion in Congress about election integrity in America.”
That sets the tone for the rest of his column, which uses Trump’s election lies to argue in favor of new laws disenfranchising voters that Republicans are pushing across the country in the wake of their 2020 defeats.
Pence also called for unity and urged “our nation’s leaders to help America heal.” Notably, he doesn’t mention Trump, or acknowledge his own role in four deeply divisive and antagonistic years in U.S. history.
Mike? You LOST! Deal with it!
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Also his former boss tried to have him hanged.
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The Chancellor unveiled the 2021 budget yesterday, which is generally considered a pretty big deal as it’s going to directly affect the finances and lives of everyone in the UK.
Lead story on the BBC web site this morning: the completely irrelevant Meghan Markel says something or other.
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The Chancellor unveiled the 2021 budget yesterday, which is generally considered a pretty big deal as it’s going to directly affect the finances and lives of everyone in the UK.
Lead story on the BBC web site this morning: the completely irrelevant Meghan Markel says something or other.
Live coverage of the budget also got bumped from the BBC’s main news programmes yesterday in favour of live coverage of Nicola Sturgeon testifying.
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More of Ted Cruz being a clown:
Ted Cruz’s Dr. Seuss Tweet Has People Scratching Their Heads
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Wow. Priti Patel. Must be great having a boss willing to blow £340,000 to protect her, as has been done on the Rutnam case.
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Also his former boss tried to have him hanged.
Well, killed, not necessarily hung or lynched.
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So “hang Mike Pence” has a different meaning?
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Wow. Priti Patel. Must be great having a boss willing to blow £340,000 to protect her, as has been done on the Rutnam case.
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So “hang Mike Pence” has a different meaning?
Trump didn’t specify hanging, he didn’t care about the method, his followers took it upon themselves to use that method.
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Are we really quibbling over the exact method of murder here? Like it makes a difference.
Anyway, it’s not something I really want to get into myself. I have been very happy that Trump has invaded my thoughts so little over the past month and a half. Long may it continue.
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You keep going down that rabbit hole Kalman.
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Are we really quibbling over the exact method of murder here? Like it makes a difference.
I prefer using the guillotine, myself. It just adds a little bit of class. Like “champagne” versus “sparkling wine.”
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Conservatives willful ignorance of their own blatant hypocrisy somehow never ceases to amaze me.
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