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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
#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! 😊)
#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
“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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵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 🧵 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.
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).
#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
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
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).
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.
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)
#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 🧵 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 🧵 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 🧵 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
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.
- 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.
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.
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
“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!
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?
but more than thinking, “I should have less,” I prefer to think, “they should have more,” and the 1% should have less. We could all be flourishing but instead our governments and cities are falling apart for their wealth. That’s my understanding
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.
having worked at Twitter, up until Elon Musk was coming, I can confidently say he destroyed Twitter with the layoffs. The only reason it continues to function is because of the work that was done before his time.
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
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
To play devil’s advocate, capitalists often cite ‘creative destruction’, which is an analog for decay in the non-economic world.
So, although I’ve often done this myself, I think it’s wrong to characterise ‘growthers’ as advocates for ‘limitless’ growth. For me, the key factor is the externalisation you cite. And externalisation is a drug that fuels the pursuit of power
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.
@aral@mastodon.ar.al it’s the only place capitalism has left to turn.
When the global north has created the conditions for the global south to pursue the expansionism it ‘profited’ from and, due to the instant mass comms tech it has created, it is …
#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
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 🧵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
FWIW, Private Eye has been covering this and related privatisation nonsense over the years, but mainstream media seems to have no interest in it.
BTW, will it become a criminal offence in the UK to use the #PalestineAction tag once the terrorist-group designation order is laid before Parliament by the Home Secretary tomorrow? Asking for a friend…
![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)