#''capitalism is when i have to pay for something''

[mercury-waters]

This is a really good post, but I just want to add that, economically speaking, exploitation is not about a specific number.

it's an important observation that someone making $200k a year is still far and away from the actual ultrawealthy. But where's the line, who gets to draw the line, and what does the distinction represent? Especially across countries and cultures, where that line will tend to vary wildly! That's a really reasonable question, and there's a good answer.

This was Karl Marx's central work, basically. He wrote Das Kapital setting out to explain some recurring features of capitalism as the system was growing, developing, and taking over the world: that it tended to accumulate wealth at the very top, that it tended to have a major crash every ten or so years, and some other features.

What he was able to show - and that was pretty definitively accepted by other even pro-capitalist economists at the time - is that capitalism is exploitative in an economic sense, meaning that an 'owner' of a business made money off of someone else doing work.

For example, I worked for a guy named Gary who owned a pizza shop. I was paid $14 an hour, but each pizza cost $8 plus tax. I would make between 20 and 50 pizzas in an hour, depending on the time of day, so across my four-hour shift I made $56 (before tax lol), but I made the business $160-$400. Some of that money after I'm paid goes to buying more ingredients, some of it goes to pay off the building's rent, but everything else went to Gary, who did nothing except steal from our tip jar.

Gary probably made somewhere to the tune of $150-$200k a year, off of me and my high school coworkers slinging pizzas all day next to an 800-degree oven.

In contrast, a dude I knew named Nick made between $150-200k every year as an ironworker and dockworker. He was paid well, but he wasn't taking from anyone else's livelihood - in fact, he still made more money for the construction company than he took home.

Gary was, in an economic sense, exploitive. Nick wasn't. And Gary is who socialists have a problem with. This is the distinction between "working class" and "owning class", not a number. And it's an issue not just because it's frankly an antisocial, cruel way to organize society, but because it actually causes crises.

This was another thing Marx figured out. The reason that capitalism tended to crash, over and over, was because of the accumulation of wealth. With successful businesses under capitalism, Gary keeps making more and more money -- I and my coworkers keep making $14/hour or only marginally more. Eventually, that means I cannot buy a pizza at the place I work, or much of anything else for that matter. When that happens, people stop buying what they used to, profits crash, and capitalism has a crisis.

Understanding this is what class consciousness is. Your class is not the number on your paycheck, it's whether or not someone is taking part of your paycheck from you, or you're taking from someone else's labor. It's applicable in America where you're talking about median incomes in the tens of thousands of dollars versus billionaires, it's applicable in countries where people are living on just a few dollars a day; the system that oppresses us is international and revolutions have to target the real exploiters, or risk failing to transform society into something better.

Okay, so, friends. Occasionally I see an American post on here about “guillotine the rich,” and it turns out that “rich” means “anyone making over $50k.”

We need to clear this shit up REAL fast, because otherwise it’s gonna wind up like the French Revolution, where more middle class and poor people were killed for being “class traitors” than actual nobles. (Did you know that France has more nobles today than during the French Revolution? While there were a few showy executions, many nobles did just fine or experienced minor setbacks.)

If someone makes $60,000 a year, they are making about twice as much as a full time worker making minimum wage in California, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, or Washington State.

Brian Thompson, the CEO of United HealthCare who was just assassinated in New York City, earned $10 million a year, which means he earned 333 times minimum wage in those states. Basically, he cleared an annual minimum wage salary in just over a day. And that “rich” person making $60k/year that you want to guillotine? He made their salary in a bit over two days of a year.

So he was rich, right?

Well. Tesla is trying to give Elon Musk a pay package of $101 billion. That is 10,100 times what Brian Thompson earned and 3,366,667 times more than a minimum wage worker. (Tesla hasn’t been successful yet because of a complicated lawsuit from a shareholder, but they’ll get there.) If you are a minimum wage worker, Elon Musk makes more every SECOND than you do in a year. And that “rich” person who you want to guillotine? He makes their salary in about 1.6 seconds. Even when he’s sleeping.

Now, remember. The Muskrat also is the head of SpaceX, the Boring Company, X.ai, and X.com, so this is just ONE pay package for him.

What I’m saying is — you have much more in common when it comes to economic grievances with someone earning $60,000 (or even $200,000) than the ultra wealthy that have real power. They are not the people you should expend your energy on.

[matrixrry]

relying on advertisers = changing your content to meet sponsors' demands. THAT'S what "we want to rely less on advertisers" is about. it's literally part of detangling creativity and art from capitalism by saying no, we're going to make this according to our vision, not according to what's palatable to companies with massive advertising budgets.

[bandzboy]

there needs to be nuance in this situation it’s so obvious that the media is jumping on yoongi because they saw an opportunity to join a smear campaign of a bts member and i wanna preface by saying this nobody is saying what he did wasn’t wrong and i know that’s what is going around a lot. dui is wrong and i think everyone can agree on that. in this situation, he didn’t injure anyone else and fell on his own while being drunk and he did acknowledge this TWO times at this point but obviously using this situation to cover up other news in south korea will come in handy

hybe is nothing doing anything to ease any of the damage and when this came out initially, bang pd was caught in LA with girls half his age who people found out later on were cam girls and so that’s why they used yoongi’s situation to protect him and the company because, if there’s anything this situation showed once again is that companies will do ANYTHING to protect their image and would never do the same for idols in fact, they would throw idols under the bus to do so

this situation is going too far and it’s getting ridiculous to the point he had to apologize twice and honestly what else can he do in this situation? when he probably will face the consequences and know what he did is wrong. people are asking for more when there’s nothing else to explain here when the facts were given and people still wanna make up their narratives because they hate bts. it’s just all seems insane to me atp

[tipytap]

yknow maybe i could focus on reading articles for school if they were dramatically read by jonathan sims

[arnold-layne]

im such a loser it hurts. i’ve gained a lot of weight over the last year and it makes me hate my body. my job sucks and pays so little i feel ashamed just thinking about it. my grades are bad and my writing is mediocre and devoid of meaning. why do i even exist

[tellthemhowihopetheyshouted]

[ifyourereadingthisblinktwice]

conflict of sticking with my environmental planning degree plan and a potentially more stable/well paying job vs wanting to go for an arts degree in literature analysis and writing and history and culture because i love it so so much but know it wont be considered ‘useful’. FIGHT

[yuribalisms]

Essentially what it is all boiling down to is I have fully realized I am bad at being a person, that will always be true, and I don’t know how to handle that

[anndramarama]

I can speak to this as a teacher who tries to train my middle school students to write to us semi-professionally. We try to prepare them to write to strangers, prospective employers, admin at different schools, or even just send semi-polite messages to each other, and it is not easy to do!

They don't like to capitalize, not even the first and last letters of their own names, and then trying to get to an understanding of how/why we should be polite when writing to strangers is another hurdle, but most of them get there in the end and are able to use the simple format above -- greeting, body, closing, signature -- with a little practice.

I'm a stickler about capitalization and I explain it like this: capitalization, especially in names, shows respect to the recipient, and using capitals in your own name shows that you respect yourself and take the interaction seriously.

That response above about a full paragraph in the subject line is something I see every year without fail, by the way, and it's frustrating. I tell them that the subject line shouldn't be blank, and to think of the subject as the title of their message. It should be short and sweet, 3-4 words maximum.

My students are young kids who just don't have experience with email even if they text or use snapchat or other social media, and I find that providing as must context as possible, along with multiple examples of how an email should look and what they should avoid, does help, but it's important for them to be able to practice this skill before they have to do it for real and inevitably fail in a setting where there are negative consequences for failure.

Very much agree that saying "just do it, it's not hard" is not going to help anyone regardless of age if they don't have experience sending professional email, or if email isn't accessible to them without modifications.

Keeping in mind that we use gmail, here are some things that help my students:

Exemplars as above

Speech-to-text as an option, especially for longer messages

Text-to-speech to listen to a message before sending

Practice using sentence frames for message body *and* subject line

Set up a signature (kids like this part)

Set up message templates (same function as sentence frames)

Use additional in-browser assistive tech like Read&Write (not free but many organizations, including schools, either subscribe to it or will pay for it if you ask)

For teachers: have your students send you a correctly formatted email as an exit ticket occasionally. The first few times I do this, and I don't do it too often, I make it easier by sending the class a message and their reply has to answer a question (single complete sentence with correct spelling and punctuation) *and* their reply must be formatted as a professional email. Later they have to compose a message/exit ticket and I reply. I've had them write to their elementary school teachers with me cc'd and that's a fun activity too, and they can observe how we (the teachers) reply to each other as part of a thread, which provides more and varied examples of correct formatting in context.

I try to make it fun for kids because they're bored by this stuff, and sometimes I lose them if they know they have to write a single sentence, but it always gets better with practice. It's also important to note that following some formatting rules makes our communication more accessible too.

not to sound like a boomer, but I need some people to learn how to write emails in a semi-professional (at the very least) format so you're not cold emailing a business/potential employer/any other stranger about formal matters in the exact same way you'd DM a close friend on instagram

the formality/language can loosen up in the email chain once you've established a rapport and you match the other person if they're being less formal, but please don't have the very first email you send a stranger be written in all lowercase ultra-casual sms slang with no greeting or signature and a billion emojis

[deux-jared]

the worst thing capitalism ever did was monetize time. because you can get rich as all fuck. enough to kill the world ten times over. but every second you relax you will still feel the sand grain falling with a resolute beat. there’s barely time to sleep anymore because god forbid you’re not using that time for self improvement. reading a good book ? maybe you should also be working out on a treadmill too. like this movie ? okay yeah but there’s emails to send while you watch. who’s got time to live when there’s an economy to run. and running this economy sure as fuck ain’t living. you go to school and go to work and go shopping and tell yourself that this is life. you can stop on all the scenic roads and take all the pictures but you’ll still have to put in a vacation request to do it. i don’t even want to do it on the company’s dime anymore, regardless of what my boss and i are earning. i want to be fucking free.

[jesusinstilettos]

I’m about to save you thousands of dollars in therapy by teaching you what I learned paying thousands of dollars for therapy:

It may sound woo woo but it’s an important skill capitalism and hyper individualism have robbed us of as human beings.

Learn to process your emotions. It will improve your mental health and quality of life. Emotions serve a biological purpose, they aren’t just things that happen for no reason.

1. Pause and notice you’re having a big feeling or reaching for a distraction to maybe avoid a feeling. Notice what triggered the feeling or need for a distraction without judgement. Just note that it’s there. Don’t label it as good or bad.

2. Find it in your body. Where do you feel it? Your chest? Your head? Your stomach? Does it feel like a weight everywhere? Does it feel like you’re vibrating? Does it feel like you’re numb all over?

3. Name the feeling. Look up an emotion chart if you need to. Find the feeling that resonates the most with what you’re feeling. Is it disappointment? Heartbreak? Anxiety? Anger? Humiliation?

4. Validate the feeling. Sometimes feelings misfire or are disproportionately big, but they’re still valid. You don’t have to justify what you’re feeling, it’s just valid. Tell yourself “yeah it makes sense that you feel that right now.” Or something as simple as “I hear you.” For example: If I get really big feelings of humiliation when I lose at a game of chess, the feeling may not be necessary, but it is valid and makes sense if I grew up with parents who berated me every time I did something wrong. So I could say “Yeah I understand why we are feeling that way given how we were treated growing up. That’s valid.”

5. Do something with your body that’s not a mental distraction from the feeling. Something where you can still think. Go on a walk. Do something with your hands like art or crochet or baking. Journal. Clean a room. Figure out what works best for you.

6. Repeat, it takes practice but is a skill you can learn :)

[walkerrenee]

guess i'm actually not coping well rn seeing as i just cried in one of my bosses office today 🤠

[drafty-castle]

As an autistic, the poem is somehow less opaque than the actual fucking tests. I always fail them and lose out on a job every. damn. time. And people tell me I have to lie, tell them what they want to hear. But even that is a trap depending on the place.

Like:

“Do you believe people are generally honest?”

▪️ Yes ▪️ No

If I say yes, then I’m not looking out for thieves and am a liability. No job.

If I say no, then I am the thief and a liability. No job.

There’s no winning.

this is for a part-time job as a barista

[eyrieofsynapses]

y'know, I'm chill with other people smoking/vaping/etc. it's absolutely not good for you, but bodily autonomy is a thing for a reason, we all only live once, some people find that it helps with other issues etc. etc. it's like doing just about anything that's bad for you, which is, you know, a lot of things. not getting enough sleep is bad. eating too much processed food is bad. hell, just sitting on our phones all the time is awful for us.

what absolutely pisses me off--what makes me want to shake people by the shoulders--is everyone who does it in an indoor space where others live without asking if it's okay. because here's the thing: when you smoke by yourself, you consent to all the stuff it'll do to you.

but. everyone else? did not consent to the culprit fucking up their body. it's the equivalent of punching them repeatedly in the jaw. except that is, at least, blatant, immediate pain. secondhand/thirdhand smoke and vape? that is fucking insidious. that's carcinogens, and chemicals that sit and build up inside your body, slowly but surely screwing you over. it may be decades until the consequences unfold. or it might only be a few months, if you're sensitive to it. might make everyone in the house feel sick within a day or two, if they're sensitive at all. and, of course, there's everyone with asthma and other chronic conditions for whom this becomes even worse, for whom it does not merely irritate but suffocates.

back when we didn't know how bad cigarettes could fuck us up--back then, there was an excuse. but now? now everyone knows what this shit does. hell, plenty of us have family members who died of lung cancer. so there is no excuse, now. now, you know you're hurting people when you do it, that every poisonous puff is worming its way oh so slowly into everyone else's cells, bodies, lungs, blood.

some people struggle with addiction. I'm not targeting that. sometimes you know how bad a thing is, and you do everything you can to stop, and you just can't. (doesn't make you less culpable--but it isn't all carelessness, at that point.) I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about all the damn generation Z people (my peers) I run into lately who display a ridiculous lack of caring for others' health. and you know, I'm just... impressed, really. at how anyone can justify that to themself. at how you could possibly call yourself a good person and still do that.

our generation grew up with endless, endless messages explaining exactly what cigarettes do to us, exactly why we needed to avoid secondhand smoke like the plague it is. I know kids of smokers who deal with the ramifications of it even now. how the hell, how the living bloody hell, could you possibly learn all of that, know people who went through that, and still justify exposing other people without a care in the damn world?

[xcziel]

.

[transsexula]

Something super special about fixing ur resume, applying for six jobs, AND getting responses from a handful of said jobs all while ur working a shift because you did the math and realized you aren't getting paid nearly enough for the work you do