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"If they die and others take over" seems like a strange assumption - the number of closed-up businesses I'm seeing suggest that nobody is taking over, because it's simply no longer possible to run a business in that niche any more.
A new analysis of rent prices and homelessness in American cities demonstrates the strong connection between the two: homelessness is high in urban areas where rents are high, and homelessness rises when rents rise.
Mass-scale housebuilding isn’t necessary – there is already enough housing stock. But we need to learn the wisdom of the last century when it comes to landlordism
#Budget #UKPolitics This article by Gary Stevenson is so good, please read every word of it.
“Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it.”
This is what the world is - it is run by a minute elite for a minute elite and the rest of us, the masses, the natural world, we just don’t count. It is a #TragedyOftheNonCommons (will reshare my own piece on this below 1/n)
Whatever Jeremy Hunt says, traders know the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. And they’re paid millions to bet on it, says the author Gary Stevenson
I've just published my first ever blog: "The Tragedy of the Non-Commons"
I wrote it in July, frustrated by a Twitter thread about how the Tragedy of the #Commons continues to be taught at universities. I then left it (it's somewhat experiemental) but with #COP27 and #Twittermigration coinciding this week, I just wanted it to be out there. Would love for it to be shared here on our #digitalcommons and grateful for any comments
The climate and ecological emergency is a Tragedy of the Non-Commons. The fact that most resources and power are in the hands of the few has terrible consequences for us all. The ‘Tragedy of Commons’…
3/n Have decided to turn this into a #FollowTheMoney 🧵, collecting pieces on how money flows in our system- more and more towards those already rich. As Kelsey McKenney, in this piece on #Hollywod, writes:
“The reality is that the people with the most money have devised, at every turn, new and more bulletproof ways for them to make and keep more money, and for the people who make things to make less. This is the eternal story of labor and management.”
You can always tell who in Hollywood has family money by their Instagrams. People like Dakota Johnson, who have a Hollywood lineage deeper than the Mariana Trench, post only rarely.
This is happening in creative industries, in higher education, in literature: the more “content” - a lecture, an article, a role in a film - becomes a commodity divorced from its creators, the less creators themselves are paid and valued; they are workers, labourers like everyone else, the value of whose labour gets extracted by capital.
Capitalism isn’t over, replaced by #technofeudalism as some of claimed; it’s in full swing, in its purest form.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 5/n Adding here a piece a group of us co-wrote at an #anthropology workshop, on “Understanding Growth”. This was experimental - co-writing on the spot! -, but i do come back to it: we distinguish between“Growth rooted in life” from “growth rooted in numbers”. Capitalism is pure number thinking.
Obviously there are many real experts on all this (Marx, Pikkety for a start), this piece is left field! But just thought of it again in this context.
Why should Anthropology engage with Degrowth, and why should Degrowth engage with Anthropology? This blog offers a set of reflections around these questions, based on the contributions to the workshop “Anthropology and Degrowth: Deepening the dialog…
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 6/n This is important: in contrast to most other Central Banks, which simply sit out losses, the Bank of England has an indemnity arrangement requiring the Treasury to cover its losses. This has resulted in £38-£40 billion going in effect from taxpayers to private banks in 2023, and same this year. Adding a second hashtag: #SEEtheOligarchy
FT article only for subscribers, I know (i get it through work). Here screenshots of key passages.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 7/n Now something different - this really is a rag bag, really just adding things as they come along, occur to me, no careful crafting! Just things that enable you to trace and understand how money flows to the rich, how accumulation works. So here, a piece, with this fantastic map, of second homes in the UK, in #Cornwall in particular. Key arena of widening #WealthGap #Inequality
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 8/n Adding here a (somewhat sweary, apologies) Politics Joe interview with Gary Stevenson (see 1/n), talking about the rapid increase in inequality in the UK and the world, and also about how we need to make people SEE THIS. They need to realise that the reason their lives are shit, that they can't get houses, is growing inequality. Because the system is set up to make money flow to the rich. Everyone needs to understand this. #SEETheOligarchy
Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics was Citibank's most profitable trader in 2011 by predicting there would be an increase in economic inequality. Now, he spends ...
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 9/n So far the has been more about who the money flows towards, but now also some posts about who it flows away from. Again, random collection, no comprensive analysis - just snippets of what’s going on!
Yesterday I listened to this really heartbreaking and deeply worrying programme about the rapid rise in bankruptcies in the UK. Of course we see this all around us - all those closing restaurants, Debenhams etc. the #DeathOfTheHighStreet speeding up
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 10/n But note the title ⬆️ - what is going on here? Turns out quite a bit of of the program was about how “Zombie firms”were kept alive artificially for years by low interest rates; that it’s good if they die and others take over. Really struck and appalled by utter coldness, distance and dehumanisation by people who say this - as @PippiPunkstrumpf just said, they really think of others just as numbers (see also our “Understanding Growth” piece above 5/n).
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 11/n Another key area money flows away from are local councils and social services and, therefore, the young and, again, community. In Birmingham, whose council declared bankruptcy in 2023, provisions for children will be cut by £52m in 2024-25 and £63m in 2025-26; youth services by £2.3m; and eleven community centres are being sold off. As John Harris says:
First it was austerity. Now it’s something even worse: the suggestion that people didn’t need vital local services to begin with, says Guardian columnist John Harris
#FollowTheMoney 🧵12/n Of course, things were never rosy for everyone. Nevertheless, key shared assumptions about the #commongood informed post war public spending and that is all eroding now.
“Continuing austerity does not just kill people’s services; it has long since warped most political debates about what we should expect from the state. In lots of places, squalor, mess and festering social problems are now seen as the norm. “ #TheCrumble
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 13/n and i have to mention UK universities too, since I am directly affected myself (see #AcademicVenting).
40% of UK universities are in debt, with major reduncancies right now (incl at Goldsmiths). All in arts, humanities and social sciences. All of this is crumbling, with too little money flowing into it. Another industry, another #CommonGood being eroded. Check out this constantly updated tally. #TheCrumble
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 14/n Just realised the title of this really excellent article by Sam Knight is actually perhaps the real theme of this 🧵:
What Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule have Done to Britain
As Sam says, #Austerity is not even talked about so much anymore, but it has just broken the #UK . Please do read the whole piece, so well written, so damning (and I’ve even managed to ignore an aside criticism of Corbyn - usually makes me hate any writer! 😊)
“The average worker is now £14,000 worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis rates—it is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. “Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this. This is what failure looks like.” “
A Herefordshire case workers has developed a phrase to describe people needing help, “for her paperwork”:
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 16/n Back to who the money flows towards:
Nobody had a better year than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth has increased by more than any other billionaire, up by nearly $113 billion over the past 12 months, to an estimated $177 billion #AI #Meta
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 17/n and here the whole Forbes Rich List for 2024. The planet has a record 2,781 billionaires now who are worth a record $14.2 trillion.
Attached: 1 image
"Spotify’s CEO is now a billionaire but it takes artists 334 streams to make $1. The company just enacted a plan to completely demonetize smaller artists.
This is what I am thinking about now. Not at all the first to say this or even think it myself, but just to emphasise: better not to think of billionaires as evil scheming money grabbers - i mean, they are - but as vessels for money, capitalism itself. Like, sci-fi wise, human bodies that look like humans from the outside but have been taken over by an AI - money itself. And it’s ruling everything!
#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney 🧵 here!)
Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 21/n Suddenly remembered that at the end of 2022 I posted this here. So embarrassing - cringe, as my children would say! That I actually wrote “the new world is almost born”. No it’s not. The time of monsters is in full, full swing, the new world really is not born yet. All we can do is to keep on trying to organise to make it happen one day. #Gramsci
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 22/n Last point and then I will stop for today: saw #Hamilton a few weeks ago and was really struck by how then it was possible to start a revolution, raise an army and WIN! Like, that would just be totally impossible now. The imbalance in military power, just as in wealth (and control over media etc etc) is just so VAST now. It’s impossible to beat. That’s why noone really even tries anymore.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 23/n. Sorry- one more! Just to end on a less bleak note: seeing this toot reminded me that, of course, that billionaire military might AI bleak dystopia is real,IS our world, but there is actually an even bigger reality here every day, in all of us, since forever. Which is that the vast majority of us humans basically just want a simple life, with family, friends, barbecues (ok maybe not perfect example but since it’s here). #FrugalAbundance
Stone cooking supports used to grill skewers of meat by Minoans on Santorini, 3600 years old.
The line of holes in the base supplied coals with oxygen. Many consider modern "souvlaki" street kebabs a direct descendant of this portable food system.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 24/n. Like, watching the blue tits busy building their nest in the box outside our kitchen window, feeding their young, flying back and forth: most of us humans are so much closer to them than to scheming billionaires.
And: this forever (i hope forever- in peril due to other!) reality - of birds, trees, parents hugging children, just enjoying being together - this is perhaps the real reality. Or at least always also there. Mustn’t forget!
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 25/n back to a reality most of us in the UK inhabit on a daily basis: the crumbling public sector. Found this report on NHS dentistry’s struggle for survival really very moving just now. #NHS #dentistry #UKpolitics
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 26/n An outstanding review by Will Davies (my Goldsmiths colleague) of Brett Christopher’s “The Price is Wrong”: about our neoliberal political economy (using a Braudelian distinction btw “the market” and “capitalism” - SO useful) and how this explain why investments in fossil fuels continue to vastly outstrip those in renewables. Key point: Capitalism IS rent-seeking. #ClimateEmergency
#FollowTheMoney 🧵27/n The piece btw contains a necessary critique of my sci-fi “money rules” take a few posts above. Although i still like the idea of all this being a kind of superorganism. But yes, it is about power - political economy, not just economy.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 28/n But honestly, just read this piece - everything in this 🧵 in one brilliant analysis. And, crucially, using to explain lack of climate action. This is what everyone, each one of us, needs to think about! “Ecologically speaking, neoliberalism couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
Here Christopher’s book itself: The Price is Wrong. Why Capitalism Won’t Save The Planet.
RECENT TECHNICAL ADVANCES mean it is typically cheaper to produce electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels. Yet, around the world, the transition to green energy is happening too slowly if it is happening at all.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 29/n Another overlap with #AcademicVenting 🧵- because it’s all of a piece! Because the crisis in HE is a key phenomenon in all this!
This great piece by Jessica Wildfire really needs to be read in full, but this extract most apt here:
“Universities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.”
“A lot of rich people don’t actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.”
Wow. As Bregman says: Stunning graph: the plummeting tax rates of the richest Americans. For the first time in history, billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.
Look at 1980 - I do continue to think that *everything* could have been different if Carter hadn’t lost to Reagan.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 32/n Watched “The Founder” on Netflix yesterday, about McDonalds. Really interesting- would recommend it. Particularly how the real breakthrough came when Kroc, advised by Sonneborn, went for real estate. Checked it on Wikipedia:
“McDonald's present-day real-estate holdings represent $37.7 billion on its balance sheet, about 99% of the company's assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.”
Today an overlap with #ClimateDiary: British farmers are struggling due to climate change, Brexit AND supermarket power:
Most farmers receive less than 1% of the profit made from the food they grow. Of the 20% food inflation experienced by the public a minuscule proportion made its way back to the farmer. Tesco made a £2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear they’ll be out of business before the end of this one.
The climate crisis is making the farming business unsustainable – and without support for us, food security will suffer too, says Riverford founder Guy Singh-Watson
We had a veg box for 12 years from Hankham Organics; 3 weeks ago we suddenly had a note with our box that they were closing, as it wasn’t working financially any more. 😢😢😢
And a fish merchant who we got smoked salmon for Christmas from closed this year too, for the same reasons. Plus Goldsmiths’ woes of course (#AcademicVenting). So many good, small organisations struggling and ending.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 36/n Here a positive, progressive use of money flows:
1400+ Columbia University alumni from its 20 schools have pledged to withhold all “financial, programmatic, and academic support” until school meets demands related to divestment, student discipline, and community safety. Group website says over $63 million of donations at risk. #Gaza #studentprotests
Even though all of us living in the UK know that homelessness is terrible (and has grown exponentially since 2010), it is still shocking to see this graph.
(There are notes on methods: all countries included both rough sleeping and invisible homelessness).
A rare silver lining to severe cuts in local council budgets: for the last few years Eastbourne have stopped spraying our streets and I love this time of year, flowers reclaiming the streets everywhere. #Rewilding #ClimateDiary
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 41/n Ok so the reason for the long pause in this 🧵 was being made rdundant in July, by my lovely (not) employer of 13 years, Goldsmiths University. You can read all about it in this long #AcademicVenting 🧵, tracing the whole sorry saga from first rumblings in Nov ‘23 to the bitter end. But of course, #redundancy is all about money, and I think about money all the time now (I have to), so really should write it about it all here a bit
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse.
Won’t work of course because most of us can’t risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities #AcademicChatter #neoliberalism
#FollowTheMoney 🧵42/n Firstly, I am conscious of my own #redundancy being very much part of the wider hollowing out, draining out of both public services and professional, creative industries everywhere (see many posts ⬆️). I am really scared about this - it’s strange how this is happening but not really talked about; no #unemployment crisis narrative at all, as of course most people, like me, end up not being “unemployed” but doing smaller, precarious jobs; very few of us on benefiso no stats
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 43/n Now of course Elon Musk - having made 2/3 of Twitter staff redundant - has been hired by Trump to head the new “Efficiency Department”. i find this prospect alone deeply, deeply scary - both in terms of public services disappearing and the 1000s who will lose their jobs. As you all know: there is absolutely nothing “efficient” about these kinds of cuts whatsoever. They are deeply destructive, nothing else.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 44/n but also: #Redundancy has made me think deeply (of course!) about the role of money in personal decision making. I may be wrong but it feels like this is something we don’t talk about much, and yet it is is so central to everything! I DO want to talk about it, even if I have nothing insightful to say actually. Just a few observations.
1. Money was at core of my decisions around redundancy. I have two teenage children and a high mortgage.
I could not go for lovely 0.5 offered, or for tribunal; I had to opt for enhanced redundancy. If had chosen tribunal route i would have probably been able to keep my job as the 12 who did (who were able to do so due to different financial circumstances) were all reinstalled in an even lovelier deal btw management and union. (The 64 of us eho accepted enhanced redundancy by deadline did not know this would happen).
2. Money is now also so core to all my decision-making in how to spend my time, what jobs to go for - and balancing the need for money with wanting to do good, environmental work, and things I enjoy and am good at. It is quite strange, I gave a lecture at SOAS in Feb this year on “Doing Work You Believe in and be paid for it”, on the very day the Goldsmiths mass redundancies were announced (will see if I can upload recording here)
This was a combination of two papers: one on unpaid Eastbourne climate activism, one on sustainability professionals in the palm oil sector. It is very strange that I gave that lecture and wrote that paper - this is me now! I am out here in the wilderness, having to make a living, and yes, doing consultancy work. Which, of course, as I am rapidly learning, does not have to mean “selling out “ - my current work for the RSPB is really rewarding.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 48/n here also a link to the other paper on Eastbourne climate activism, i’ve shared it before but doing so again as it has a brief section on what kind of work is rewarded by high salaries, and what isn’t. I still feel this is an incredibly important topic and not really talked about enough in #ClimateAction circles. Maybe we can talk about it more together here?
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 49/n Anyway, just to end for today: a huge, HUGE shout out ❤️ to everyone on here who works “freelance”, going from one projec to another (more on “projects” and projectification later - so important in itself). I am now realising the immense privilege of a secure job (not secure in my case, as it turned out), where you don’t have to think about where your money will come from in 6 months or whatever. It is a fundamentally different state of being. Everything now existential.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 50/n Today adding this excellent video by @RichardJMurphy on how “the City” is not our “Jewel in the Crown”, as Rachel Reeves put it, but a parasite extracting huge amounts of money for self-enrichment. It does not add any value to the economy.
The City of London claims it is the powerhouse of the UK economy. Rachel Reeves has called it our ‘Jewel in the Crown’. But actually, it’s much more like a p...
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 51/n Richard’s video has spurred me on to do a few posts now on #PrivateEquity. Long overdue here, because private equity is at the heart of how our world works!
(Just to state again: i am not an expert, just someone who is trying to make sense of our world by #FollowingTheMoney, in an eclectic 🧵)
To start with basics: what is private equity? I like this clear definition by Justin Robertson
The amount of wealth and assets held by private equity is vast. The biggest private equity firm of all is of course #BlackRock, founded by Larry Fink in 1988. Here is a lovely Statistica chart showing how its “assets under management” grew from $1.31 trillion (i mean, not bad) to $10.41 trillion in 2024. Bloomberg predicts they will hit $15 trillion in a few years
#FollowTheMoney 🧵 53/n I have to go now but over the next few days just want to talk about what this means: it means that so much of the world around us - restaurants, care homes, appartment blocks, student accommodation, etc etc, is all owned by private equity; that there is no escape.
This article is hard to stomach for all those of us currently looking for work, and not finding anything suitable, or anything at all. But it’s good that at least rising #unemployment is recognised now.
My own #redundancy last year and subsequent struggles have made me so alert to all these wider structural changes; I am really scared that this may be just the beginning. Terrible combination of AI and money going only to the rich
“Keri said her father had been “powered by unconditional love” but he felt the government took advantage of the nearly 6 million people like him who care for a loved one, saving the taxpayer at least £162bn a year.”
This reminded of a thought I had a while back: how salaries/wages are directly negatively correlated with love.
When you do something you love, or out of love, this is instantly punished by capitalism.
David Lodge died after being found next to his father and full-time carer Peter’s body. His sister Keri believes the strain of caring and lack of government support contributed to their deaths
- nurses, art gallery workers, conservation NGOs, academics, etc - all these jobs that people do out of love for something/one are poorly paid. Love is exploited. More love = less money.
Only love of money itself and nothing else is rewarded with money (high salaries, bonuses, etc). Maybe not surprising - what do you expect in capitalism - but not much honesty about it. All that neoliberal motivational #Passion talk (“my work is my passion”) - exploitative bollocks.
This LinkedIn post resonates … wanted to share here just in case there are others who are in this situation too.
Also one reason I hardly ever add to this 🧵any more is that, of course, I am literally trying to #FollowTheMoney, or rather, divert some from somewhere to my bank account😄 #JobSearch #FediHire
This week, a friend told me they’d taken a job with lower pay and a smaller title.
“It’s not my dream job,” they said. “But I need the money.”
My heart ached for him.
I think so much about middle class-ness at the moment. More research in news this week how it’s the top 10%, those with incomes over £36,000, who are largely responsible for CO2 emissions; but it’s even more than that; middle-class aspirations shape everything. So conscious of this now as I am so driven in finding work so as not to have to sell our (nice, middle class, highly mortgaged house). Then a friend just sent me this - must read. #ClimateDiary
Meanwhile also, as I am listening to the radio as I am typing this: yet another horrific attack in northern #Gaza. Another 50 killed, after yesterday’s 80. This is our world.
“The wealth of the world’s 3,000 billionaires has surged by $6.5tn (£4.8tn) in real terms over the past decade, according to Oxfam, equivalent to 14.6% of global output”
Capitalism is shit.It is by the rich for the rich and destroys everything else in the process. Let’s keep saying it!
A key dimension to capitalism’s destructivism is, of course, its complete intertwining with warfare. Here more than anywhere it’s crucial to #FollowTheMoney, as Craig Murray does beautifully in this piece.
Dystopia UK: Genocidal RAF Squadron Targeted by Palestine Action is Owned by a Hedge Fund
If you thought RAF jets were owned by the RAF, think again. The RAF squadron targeted for a repaint by Palestine Action due to its involvement in supplying Israel’s genocide, does not in fact belong to the RAF at all.
#FollowTheMoney 🧵63/n Excellent article by Tim White on how across Europe #privateequity has been buying up significant proportions of housing and driving up rental prices. A key dynamic in growing inequality that contributes to alienation and rise of far-right.
We’ve been living in a great experiment: can finance provide basic human rights such as housing? The answer is increasingly no, says researcher and writer Tim White
#FollowTheMoney 🧵64/n The article made me think once again about Monopoly, and how perfectly it captures what the world is like. Originally called “the Landlord Game”, it was invented in 1903 by left-wing feminist Lizzie Magie who wanted to expose how rentier capitalism works through a game. She more than succeeded but - this being capitalist US - never got the credit for it. Interesting piece about it all here.
In 1903, a leftwing feminist called Lizzy Magie patented the board game that we now know as Monopoly – but she never gets the credit. Now a new book aims to put that right
There's also a perverse normativity in the idea that one's job has to be one's passion that blinds people to their actual alienation. They might feel that something is off but rather than blaming their day-job -something external- they blame themselves for not "feeling it", not "trying hard enough", not really "wanting to succeed", not having the right "mindset" etc. Realizing that one's job is not one's purpose can be liberating. But still, better to have choices of course.
Sending a note from the maelstrom of redundancy negotiations. It’s chaotic and you’re right, suddenly the focus on money is acute. Your thread has been so helpful.
the man, the myth, the legend, guy who barely killed PayPal with the efficiency of his management, man who bought his place in already good Tesla and got the subsidies for it through the lies and managed SpaceX for 6 years and became successful only after getting 1.6 billion in subsidies from the government. Man who did not create anything good without government money and supervision now supervises government efficiency. Lovely
very interesting! I wonder what the alternative might have been though... $64 billion or more fairly distributed among the other 90 richest 100? Old-school arms and oil traders or something?
i think this kind of ecological 'regeneration through abandonment' is going to become increasingly common over the next few decades. Entire cities will become increasingly neglected and we know from the example of Chernobyl that this can be hugely beneficial for biodiversity even under the worst conditions.
Whilst I agree on that, the abandonment of the gardens on the front is tragic.
Adoption of a Dutch style grass and perennial scheme rather than old-fashioned summer bedding would certainly make sense but what I saw there was abandonment.
It is difficult to attract tourism but the rot makes it even more difficult. It will create a downward spiral of further deprivation.
Time was, the Parks Department won awards. All that expertise thrown away.
I did write an email response directly to their alumni office (see pic) that my husband (financial engineering msc) and I (earth science PhD) would not be giving a dime (as alumni)
Missing from message is the reality on #columbia campus:: No students Nypd everywhere Kettling barricades everywhere Nypd ID checks w no one in line because so few are being let in
I don’t think so. The wheels were in motion. The neoliberal movement had installed itself inside the institution. If not Reagan 84 and Thatcher 79 then it would have been someone else willing to follow their playbook. Carter himself had already been busy in playing according to their rules (cf. Oreskes & Conway: The Big Myth)
I spent three hours yesterday at a rural Tennessee courthouse with a lot of other people trying to get my property tax assessment changed. Our property taxes went up 50% last year, and everyone's homes in the entire state went up ~40% probably just to get more $ from us. People in line with me said food, health insurance, healthcare, cars, car insurance, homeowners insurance, etc are now unaffordable, and new state taxes are the latest effort to destroy the middle class.
"I know that “capitalists sometimes do bad things” isn’t exactly an original talking point. But I do want to stress how it’s not equivalent to “capitalists are greedy”. I mean, sometimes they are greedy.
I started pointing this out back in the days of #MyopicMaggie . Unrestrained capitalism is doomed to failure. I think of it like this:
"If you let people do what they want, what will they do?"
Answer : "They'll do what they want"
It is literally, as simple as that. The problem now is getting people to understand that 'legislation is a *good* thing' and also how to deal with global level international money-laundering.
it's amazing how little his bet on the metaverse affected him. If I make a business decision that bad, scaled to my own net worth, my life would fall apart, but scale that up and you get to externalize your mistakes to other people's lives, then when you lay them off, your stock price actually goes up and you're even richer. I already know that that's how it works but it doesn't stop me from being constantly awed by it.
Meanwhile, those whose mortgage was paid decades ago make statements like "well the UK has always been a low-income economy", and ask "why did you come here" when pressed about reasons for the decay and what's the plan going forward (at that point they are letting you know they are upset at you). At best, they'll offer a "there's nothing that can be done" and, if taking it personally, "it's not my fault". In private conversations, they may even say, "no more colonies to plunder, so what were the rich supposed to do?"
Perhaps a whole generation needs to retire. But even then their votes will continue to count – in the wrong direction.
I am hoping beyond hope that someone understands the UK economy well enough to come up with a feasible plan, and has the political savvy and clout to pull it off.
@JeniParsons Second homes and holiday lets are a massive problem where I live in Pembrokeshire. Our nearest beach is in one of those eerie villages that is silent outside holiday season
academia is particularly good at divorcing commodity from the creator. Almost no academic gets paid for peer reviewed essays which is published by an industry making billions every year.
The finance sector does not produce anything of value. Its sole purpose is to siphon off wealth from the rest of the economy and allow the rich to gamble for their share of it. This is not capitalism, this is rent-seeking, or "technofeudalism".
@jackofalltrades Look at capitalism from the perspective of the mid-18th century: it's a fantastic way to take the little surplus in society and create a larger surplus. The fact that the surplus is not shared equitably is less important than the idea of making more surplus, because almost everyone is one bad harvest or one new virus away from an early death.
Now it's 300 years later. The planet mostly creates enough calories for our massive population to live without the constant threat of starvation. We've got enough medical care to live most people a decent life span.
Now we can afford to reign in the excesses and transition to something more equitable.
I loved the part of the article that said to "look at the world with your fucking eyes."
When I look around in my upper-middle class bubble I see many people striving to replicate what the rich are doing. Parents of my daughter's school friend just bought (i.e. took a mortgage for, leveraging their credit score) fourth apartment. Colleagues from work are trading bitcoin or otherwise participate in the FIRE movement.
But is this really newsworthy? This has been going on for decades, even centuries. My question is: how to change it? The French (1789) way obviously didn’t work. „Egalite“ had been abandoned shortly after the heads of government came - literally- off. The Russian (1917) and Chinese (1945) ways also failed. Comrades Putin and Xi are no different from Trump/Biden/Sunak/Scholz/… etc. when it comes to sharing the riches of society. Any ideas?
![In 1956, Ray Kroc met Harry J. Sonneborn, a
former vice president of finance for Tastee-
Freez, who offered an idea to accelerate the
growth and investment grade of Kroc's
planned McDonald's operation: to own the
real estate upon which future franchises
would be built. Kroc hired Sonneborn and his
plan was executed by forming a separate
company, Franchise Realty Corp, to hold
McDonald's real estate. The new company
signed leases and procured mortgages for
both land and buildings, passing these costs
on to the franchisee with a 20-40% markup
and a reduced initial deposit of $950. [12][131
The "Sonneborn model" of real-estate
ownership within the franchise persists to
this day, and may be the most important
financial decision in the company's history.
McDonald's present-day real-estate
holdings represent $37.7 billion on its
balance sheet, about 99% of the company's
assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.](https://friendica.eskimo.com/photo/preview/640/7797536 "In 1956, Ray Kroc met Harry J. Sonneborn, a
former vice president of finance for Tastee-
Freez, who offered an idea to accelerate the
growth and investment grade of Kroc's
planned McDonald's operation: to own the
real estate upon which future franchises
would be built. Kroc hired Sonneborn and his
plan was executed by forming a separate
company, Franchise Realty Corp, to hold
McDonald's real estate. The new company
signed leases and procured mortgages for
both land and buildings, passing these costs
on to the franchisee with a 20-40% markup
and a reduced initial deposit of $950. [12][131
The \"Sonneborn model\" of real-estate
ownership within the franchise persists to
this day, and may be the most important
financial decision in the company's history.
McDonald's present-day real-estate
holdings represent $37.7 billion on its
balance sheet, about 99% of the company's
assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.")
Davva
in reply to Davva • • •theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…
The end of landlords: the surprisingly simple solution to the UK housing crisis
Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)