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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month ago

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Everyday homeowners are human shields for Wall Street’s Internet of Shit slumlords

The American Dream, such as it is, used to be two dreams, one based on work and solidarity, the other on asset appreciation and disconnected individualism. We killed the first one.

As the New Deal gave way to the post-war social safety net, Americans discovered two paths to social mobility: they could join a union, and they could buy a home. Joining a union meant that your wages would rise with productivity, and that the democratic ideal that you were meant to approach once every two years at the ballot-box could follow you into the building you spent more waking hours in than any other: your jobsite.

Labor unions used their political power to win labor rights, so that even workers who weren't a union couldn't be arbitrarily fired, or maimed on the job with impunity, or harassed or abused. And while the labor movement was mired in the same racist legacy that every American institution brought forward out of genocide and slavery, where racialized people started unions of their own or demanded representation from the unions who nominally represented them, they thrived.

Then there were houses. On the one hand, owning your home insulated you from the petty tyranny of the landlord, the threat of eviction, rent hikes, indifferent or dangerous building maintenance, and all the other miseries that arise when you think of a building as your home and someone else thinks of it as an asset, and the board is tilted so that they win every argument.

But homeownership wasn't just sold as a way to get out from under scumbag landlords: it was primarily sold as a way to build intergenerational wealth. Your house wasn't just a place to live: it was an asset, and it appreciated.

And if the dividends of labor protection were unevenly distributed between white people and racial minorities, the dividends of home ownership were almost entirely hoarded by white families. Federal policies – redlining – combined with racist lending at the local level, meant that Black families and other racialized groups were stuck in tenancy, while white families build wealth thanks to federal subsidies:

https://web.archive.org/web/20170220005558/https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/Asset%20Value%20of%20Whiteness.pdf

Those were the two American dreams: a good job and your own home. We killed the first one, and the second one devoured us whole.

Without a strong labor movement, wages stagnated. Corporate power waxed, and with it, the power to pollute, to poison, to maim and to defraud. The labor movement wasn't strong enough to stop Reagan from killing free UC tuition when he was governor of California. It wasn't strong enough to hold back spiraling health care prices. It wasn't strong enough to block the business lobby from neutering antitrust and ushering in four decades of market concentration, market capture and corruption. Workers couldn't save their defined benefits pension and were railroaded into market-based 401(k)s, forcing them to play the stock casino against their bosses, ever the sucker at the poker table.

With stagnant wages and out of control medical, educational and end-of-life bills, homeownership – the thing you do as an individual, where your gain is someone else's loss – became the American secular religion. Your house wasn't just a place to sleep and keep your photo albums: if it appreciated enough, you might be able to liquidate it on your deathbed and pay off your eldercare, your healthcare, your kids' college debt, and leave enough left over for your kids' downpayments.

And so every American who had a home became the enemy of every American who didn't – including one another's children. Every home built threatened your own property values. The racist, batshit American school funding formula, which sees schools funded out of property taxes, meaning the richest kids get the best schools, turned out to be a great way to increase your property values.

Protections for tenants, meanwhile, threatened the entire American way of life – the American dream itself. Every protection a tenant got – protection from eviction or rent hikes, the legal right to a safe and well-maintained home – reduced the value of every home in town.

After all, the better a landlord has to treat their tenants, the less money a landlord can make from a rental property. The less money a landlord can make from a rental property, the less they'd bid on a house like yours if it went up for sale.

And since anyone planning to buy your house to live in it has to outbid a landlord who might want to rent it out, giving tenants any protection threatened everything – the one asset you owned, which was your plan a, b and c for paying off all that health, education, and assisted living debt:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Today, the house-as-asset scam is breathing its last. There are millions more people who need homes than there are homes available. Sure, homelessness is a fantastically complex problem, but you could address every aspect of it – addiction, mental illness, joblessness – and millions of people would still be homeless, because there aren't enough homes for them to live in:

https://headgum.com/factually-with-adam-conover/myths-about-homeless-people-with-dr-margot-kushel

70% of all inflation in 2024 came from the cost of housing; a quarter of that came from illegal collusive behavior by landlords to hike rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/up-to-a-quarter-of-rental-inflation

Wall Street landlords have raised gigantic war-chests and are buying up homes at a rate never before seen, converting every available single-family home in many cities from an owner-occupied home to a rental. Private equity and hedge fund landlords have elevated charging junk fees to an absurdist theater project: you pay a "convenience" charge for paying your rent in cash. But also for paying your rent by direct transfer. Oh, and also for paying in cash. When Wall Street is your landlord, your home is a slum, dangerously undermaintained, sometimes lethally so:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Capitalists hate capitalism. The best thing to sell is something your customer can't live without, and that no one else has for sale. That's why "the market" loves private prisons so much:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

The vast sums Wall Street is putting into buying up all of America's available housing stock is a bet that they can establish regional monopolies over having a home, and charge all the market can bear.

That's the plan at Invitation Homes, a company that was just targeted by the FTC for a slate of eye-watering crimes against the tenants in the 80,000 single-family homes they've acquired:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/09/ftc-takes-action-against-invitation-homes-deceiving-renters-charging-junk-fees-withholding-security

Invitation Homes purchases homes as they come on the market, and they're also a leading customer of the "build-to-rent" housing industry, a fast-growing segment of new housing starts.

Writing about the FTC's enforcement action against Invitation Homes, Matt Soller brings in Starwood Capital Group, who manage Invitation Homes properties, and own 14,000 more homes in the sunbelt. Invitation and Starwood hate the anti-monopoly movement, and Barry Sternlicht, Starwood's billionaire CEO, really hates FTC Chair Lina Khan:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-corporate-slumlords

The FTC complaint lays out a suite of just comically sleazy things ways that Invitation abuses its tenants, starting with false advertising. The company lists its houses at relatively low rents, then charges a large fee to apply to live there. When you pass the application process, you're told the rent is actually much higher, and if you walk away from the deal, you forfeit your application fee. That scam's netted Invitation $18m since 2019.

Stoller really hates junk fees, calling them "convenience fees without any convenience, service charges without any service performed." He lays out Invitation's long list of junk fees, which honestly sound like a list that Chatgpt would spit out if you prompted it for fifty junk fees that wouldn't pass the giggle-test: "utility management fees" "Lease Easy bundle fees," "air filter delivery fee," "smart home technology fees," etc etc.

"Smart home technology fee?" Yeah, Invitation's gone in hard for Internet of Shit smart home tech. The SVP who oversees Invitation's smart home fee program was ordered to "juice this hog" (you guys, juice doesn't come from hogs).

After decades of recruiting everyday American homeowners to demand anti-tenant policies that benefit giant corporations, American tenants have few rights on paper and even fewer in practice. That's left the door wide open for Invitation to abuse their tenants in a myriad of dismal and unimaginative ways: stealing their deposits, trashing their credit reports to retaliate against complaints, illegal evictions, busted appliances, mold, vermin, insects – the whole slumlord playbook.

As Stoller writes, there's a twist: "this landlord isn’t just a random slumlord, it’s one of the biggest Wall Street players in housing."

There are vast fortunes to be made in converting the human right to housing into an asset class, but those fortunes end up in the hands of a very small number of billionaires. On their own, they wouldn't have the political power to dismantle protections for tenants.

Realistically speaking, most kids who grew up in their parents' owner-occupied homes are going to end up tenants, thanks to undersupply and housing inflation. But those kids' parents have spent decades demanding policies to make their homes as valuable as possible – including mortgage tax breaks (but not rent tax breaks!), looser eviction laws, and less enforcement of what few protections tenants have.

Middle class homeowners are the useful idiots and human shields of the billionaires who are determined to force every American under 40 raise their kids in a rented slum full of spiders, ratshit and black mold, which will still cost 60% of their take-home salary.

That's why the FTC's action against Invitation Homes is such a big deal. And as Stoller points out, Chair Khan is really just implementing Kamala Harris's campaign promise to get Wall Street out of the landlord business.

Wall Street's raid on your bedroom and kitchen has inspired a generation of "finfluencer" copycats who buy and flip apartment buildings, sucking ever-larger amounts of cash out of them until they're unfit for human habitation, with mountains of rat-infested garbage ringing their crumbling walls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/22/koteswar-jay-gajavelli/#if-you-ever-go-to-houston

Any future worth living in is going to get housing right. We need to stop thinking of housing as an asset and realize that it is, first and foremost, a human right. That's the premise of my 2023 solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which just came out in paperback:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865946/thelostcause

You can't protect yourself from rising seas or rising healthcare bills through individual home-ownership. Solidarity – the kind of solidarity that once powered the union movement, and that is powering it again – is the only way to defeat the housing profiteers. The New Deal wasn't perfect, which is why whatever we do next has to be bigger, further reaching, and more inclusive than what FDR did almost a century ago.

The only minority that should be excluded from the next New Deal is billionaires.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/01/housing-is-a-human-right/#rentier-tech

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

Carlos Delgado (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_Street_-_New_York_Stock_Exchange.jpg

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic

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tieronecrush · 1 year ago

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꒰ა ONLY ANGEL ໒꒱

javier peña x f!reader

chapter one: sweet temptations

series masterlist

rating: E (18+ only, MDNI)

summary: After his return to the US, Javier is trying to settle back into a normal life without the pressures of Colombia and the DEA, but he finds himself feeling isolated with no one to spend his nights with. Now a newly appointed criminology professor at Texas A&M, he is drawn to you, a post-grad student in one of his classes. You’re intelligent and witty, sweet and kind, and he can’t get you out of his mind. To cope with his growing loneliness and to rid himself of thoughts of you, he signs up for an “arrangement service” to connect him with somebody—a sugar baby—he can care for. After he is matched up with Angel, he finds himself developing feelings quicker than he ever expected, but what happens when he finds out Angel is really you?

series warnings: power imbalance (prof and student), sugar daddy/sugar baby relationship, discussion of money, criminal activity, judicial systems, graduate school, smut, daddy/papí kink, praise kink, degradation, self deprecation, discussion of self worth, multiple sexual or romantic partners, sex work, cursing, use of spanish, likely more warning so read at your own risk!

word count: 3.8k

a/n: first chapter AHHHH!!! hope you all love, i am not sure if i am doing a taglist yet cause it’s a lot of work tbh so will keep y’all posted <3 and a special thanks to bestie @northernbluess for helping me with this brainchild and always screaming about javi with me. love ya sister wife <3

“Professor Peña! Welcome back, sir. So glad we have you on for another year,” the voice of the Dean of Faculty, Jim Banks, booms in the empty hallway of the Sociology department, a cramped space on the top floor of one of the, luckily, newer buildings on campus. With a large donation made to the university last year, specifically directed to the Sociology department for their ‘advancements in the field and hiring top talent’, the department was moved out of the basement and into a space that actually saw the sunlight. And had a decent view of the quad, too.

Javier stops in his tracks in the middle of the hall, turning over his shoulder and giving the man approaching behind him a strained, polite smile. He hikes the strap of his chestnut leather messenger bag further onto his shoulder, the itch of his brand new button-down scratching against his skin.

“Dean Banks, good to see you,” he sounds clipped, but Javier has always had a hard time hiding his impatience and annoyance.

“Please, Peña, like I’ve said, call me Jimmy! No need for formalities, buddy.” The dean slaps Javi’s shoulder when he reaches him, and Javier clenches his fist at his side. The whole buddy-buddy Southern thing never roped him in, and certainly not after he was made privy to what a boys’ club the academic world was.

Javier has been a professor for 6 months at Texas A&M University, based at their San Antonio campus, and has taught primarily undergraduate classes for the first semester and summer session that he was on the faculty roster. Hired into the Sociology Department after job-hunting for something to fill his time after retiring. Well, he technically resigned after the nightmare that was Cali, but he negotiated to keep his extremely cushy government pension. Never needed to work another day in his life, but damn he was getting bored. Even his Pop nearly kicked him out to get him to do something other than roaming the field of the ranch and camping out to watch the boats.

Those damn boats.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Dean Ba—Jimmy?” He takes one step back, out from under the man’s hand on his shoulder, and straightens up, grip tightening on the strap of his bag.

“Well, I do gotta favor to ask you, Peña. See, Professor Harrison has had some…extraneous circumstances that have kept him from coming back to the department this semester, and likely next semester. So, I was coming down here to ask if you would be willing to take on his graduate-level course for the semester, and possibly his next semester too. It’s Sociology of Deviance, and by god, you were the first person I thought of to fill in, ya deviant!” Banks gets a good laugh out of his own joke, the effort falling flat for Javier. He waits out the man’s reaction to his own humor, clearing his throat to attempt to egg him on and end the conversation earlier.

“So, what d’ya say, Peña? Think you can manage instructing that course? Syllabus and everything is already planned, just have to have someone actually teach the material and grade everything.”

“Uh, yeah, that would be fine. I’ll check in with Beth at the department’s front desk to get access to Professor Harrison’s material for the course,” he nods to the dean and starts to turn away, ready to retreat to the peace of his private office when Banks’ voice catches his attention again.

“Can’t thank ya enough, Peña. And, uh, try not to get yourself into any of those extraneous circumstances that will be on the class roster, yeah? Don’t want to have to replace you too. We can’t have A&M losing the Big Man on Campus, hey?”

His brows furrow as nods in response, calling out a ‘yes, sir’ as he finally starts toward his office again, stopping at the front desk of the department and requesting the materials for the graduate course, complimenting Beth’s nails with a playful wink.

At the click of his office door, he sighs and sets his bag down on the desk, turning around to face the large window overlooking the campus quad with his hands on his hips.

What the hell kind of extraneous circumstances was Dean Banks getting at? Javier’s a professional, his days of bending the rules in his career are over.

The morning goes by quickly and suddenly it’s two o’clock, fifteen minutes until the new lecture he’s been assigned to instruct. He gathers the syllabi that Beth had dropped off an hour earlier, taking his bag with him as he weaves through students in the halls and slips into the lecture hall, descending the wide stairs at the side of the rows of seats. At the start of every class, he prefers to spend the minutes before gathering his thoughts and laying out everything he needs to get covered. Today’s an easy day, the only goals are to hand out and review the syllabus, and to have the students introduce themselves.

At the prompt time of 2:15 pm, Javier clears his throat and quiets the chit-chatting down, looking up for the first time and meeting a set of eyes that dry his throat immediately. Soft, supple lips are quirked up into a smile, tendrils of short bangs framing her face. Her skin looks like velvet, with baby pink rouge on her cheeks, and a swipe of gloss across her bottom lip. His eyes combed down to her open chest, the scoop-neck baby tee emblemed with some band’s name that he didn’t know. When you smile at him, he feels his heart pound and his cock jump, suddenly grateful for the pretentious podium that he is standing behind.

So those are the extraneous circumstances Dean Banks was getting at.

It was the second semester of your two-year Master's program, and you were honestly excited for the first day of classes. Over the summer session, you had taken a couple of courses to get ahead and worked as a Teaching Assistant for one of your old undergraduate professors. It was about four years ago that you graduated, working in Corporate America before deciding to go back to school and pursue your found passion in Criminal Psychology. The Teaching Assistant job paid pitifully, as you should have expected, so you had turned to an external opportunity that quickly, and easily, became profitable for you and allowed for you to quit TA-ing and focus on your studies for this semester.

The first class of the first day is Sociology of Deviance, a class that is scheduled for Monday and Wednesday afternoons. When you registered for the course, the instructor was listed as “To Be Determined” but as a required credit for your degree, you signed up for this semester anyway.

And holy shit, you’re glad you did.

A few minutes after two o’clock, the lecture hall door opened and slowly shut, the man in a baby blue button-up and tailored slacks stalks down the stairs to your right, headed for the desk in front of the green chalkboards. Underneath the tiny laminate surface that swings out from your chair, you cross your legs and sit up, eyes trained on your professor. His dark hair is clean cut, but not too cropped, swept to the side and up away from his face. A strong, full mustache adorns his upper lip, perfectly groomed along with his clean-shaven, sharp jaw. Wide, expansive shoulders strain under the material of his shirt, the top button near the collar undone and his tie slightly tugged down. The silver belt buckle sitting at his waist glistens in the fluorescent lights, one glance given down his legs and then to his muscular arms when he turns around to write his name on the board.

Professor Peña.

No fucking way, you think to yourself, immediately more engaged than his looks had you. The Javier Peña was teaching one of your courses, a name buzzing around campus over the summer, one that you had read about over and over for the last few years while focusing on the World News section of the paper. The DEA agent not only had a part in taking down Pablo Escobar, but he was also the agent who found and arrested Gilberto Rodriguez, a godfather of the Cali Cartel, and eventually took down the rest of the whole organized crime family.

Finally, someone who actually had some experience with crime outside of a courtroom.

Uncapping the ballpoint pen laid in front of you, you tap it against your chin as you listen to Professor Peña recount his philosophies in teaching. According to him, he prioritizes ethical and principled practices in the field, noting personal experiences he had with the opposite. You vaguely remember a story from the Miami Herald about his involvement with Los Pepes during Escobar, and you could never forget reading about the corruption of not only the Colombian government but the US government during the Cali days. That case — that scandal that he exposed was a big reason you dove back into criminology. You wanted to be a person who would better it for the people under the jurisdictions of the judicial system, as naive as it may sound.

A thick, stapled stack of packets gets dropped onto your desk, eyesight zoning back in to look to your side and face your professor standing next to your chair. He gives a tight smile, nodding his head to your left.

“Please pass these down that way after you take one for yourself.”

Even from that simple statement, his deep, raspy voice has you sucking your teeth, shaking your head to yourself as you pass on the stack of syllabi, and turning your attention to the outline of the semester. As you study the required readings, Professor Peña returns to the front. Another clearing of his throat turns your eyes up, sitting up straight again as you watch him lean back against his desk, crossing his arms over his chest.

“At the beginning of each semester, I like to have everyone go around and introduce themselves. Now, I know you’re all adults and probably don’t want to do this, but it helps me to remember you when I’m grading all your shit,” he gives a closed smile to the room as a rumble of gentle laughter erupts and quickly fades.

“Anyone want to volunteer to go first?” Professor Peña scans the room, interrupted by a brunette guy that looks to be around your age, an eager smile on his face.

“I’ll go first, Professor. My name’s Alex, I’m in the first semester of my first year of law school. Planning to focus on Criminal Law. I went to UT Austin for undergrad. Go Longhorns!” The exclamation gets some applause, you note the lack of reaction from Professor Peña and smiling to yourself.

Thank god he isn’t one of those insufferable college sports obsessed men.

A handful more of your classmates take their turns, and you politely pay attention to each of them, but unable to shake the feeling of eyes on you. One glance toward the front and you catch Professor Peña’s eyes, darting away toward the student speaking and his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows hard.

If you could read his mind right now, you surely would be dropping the class. Javier can’t seem to keep his eyes off of you, entranced by every angle of your face that he’s given, your head turning to face each of your classmates as they speak. It’s endearing how engaged you seem in learning about your peers, and it snaps him out of the daze for a moment when he realizes that he is really the one that needs to be paying attention to the names being spoken.

The only reprieve he seems to get is when you take your turn to introduce yourself, giving your name to the room and each detail you offer, he automatically categorizes into his brain to remember. In those thirty seconds that you are solely speaking, his gaze is trained on you, watching the pout of your glossy lips as they move together and apart, your tongue hitting behind your teeth and the softly shadowed eyelids that crinkle at the sides when you smile. Something you’ve said makes you laugh a bit, the sound ringing in his ears and pumping his heart faster.

The focus moves from you to the next student to volunteer, but Javier can’t help the lingering of his eyes across your collarbone, sloped shoulder and pen bouncing in between your fingers.

Enamored. Infatuated. Bewitched, even.

God, he shouldn’t be thinking about his student this way.

But you are so fucking gorgeous. And clearly kind, with the way you focus on everyone speaking, gentle smiles given to everyone. You have to be intelligent, pursuing a Master’s degree. And you seem so delicate, so sweet.

What do you taste like?

Nope, not going there Javier. Sure, he’s lonely, but with a student? After another professor just got caught with one, allegedly?

Before he knows it, every student has given their name and random facts about themselves, and he can finally turn his back to the room to begin writing out the required, upcoming assignments and go over the material that will be covered over the next few months. In the blink of an eye, class is wrapping up and he lets out a long exhale, longing for about two fingers of the whiskey that is sitting in the bottom drawer of his desk.

He leans over the table in front of him, shuffling the extra syllabi together and organizing them into his briefcase while the students funnel out of the lecture hall. Brows furrowed, he sighs when he hears footsteps approaching, glancing up to see that little band t-shirt he noticed before, now the view of a dark evergreen, black, and hints of yellow plaid and pleated skirt with legs extending from the mid-thigh hem, and suddenly he’s standing up a bit too quickly to acknowledge your approach.

“Excuse me, Professor Peña?” you ask, saccharine and well-mannered.

“How can I help you?” he responds, not managing to hold back the grin that ticks up one side of his mouth.

“I wanted to properly introduce myself to you,” you give him your name with your hand stretched out, “I know it sounds kiss-ass, but I am really excited to be able to take a course from you. It’s cool to have a non-lawyer professor in criminology courses.”

“I appreciate that,” he slips his palm against your outstretched hand, shaking it and noting your firm handshake, “Hopefully, I live up to your expectations as a professor. Not sure if I will have as good of a grip on the material as Professor Harrison would’ve, this is my first time teaching this class.”

You drop his hand and wave off his concern, a smile still plastered on your face. It’s not forced, by any means, he can see it’s a genuine expression which has his insides stirring again.

“I’m sure you will exceed expectations, especially if the reviews from my graduate cohort have told me anything.” The statement is punctuated with a faint laugh, echoed by Javi as he tilts his head in questioning.

“Glad to hear that I am… well-liked?”

“You could say that, Professor Peña,” you raise your eyebrows with a curl of your lips, nodding slowly, “Well, I should let you get back to your office. Looking forward to the semester.”

“Nice to meet you,” he repeats your name, “And be sure to read your syllabus.”

You turn around as you climb up the stairs of the lecture hall, wide smile, “Oh, I always do my homework, Professor Peña. You don’t have to worry about me.”

Luckily during syllabus week, Javier’s workload is light enough to stay on top of his emails and be able to plan ahead for the next few weeks when things will start to ramp up and assignments will be due.

In his office the next morning, he’s in the midst of slowly working through his short to-do list before his class at one o’clock. With a familiar chime from the clunky machinery on his desk, he turns to the screen and clicks open the tab with his university email address. A new message is in his inbox, one from a student. He starts to skim the message to look for questions asked, thinking to himself as he shakes his head with a disbelieving scoff.

A student already emailing? It’s the first fucking week, c’mon kid, let up and have a little fun during syllabus w—

Oh, wait, it’s you. From his graduate course yesterday afternoon. The student off to the left, with the sweet smile and doe eyes, tight t-shirt and juicy lips.

What would they look like around him?

Jesus Christ, Javier. Get your shit together. A student. That is what you are, and all that you can be.

At least until you graduate.

Shut up, Peña!

He argues back and forth with himself, the angel and devil on his shoulders both making convincing arguments. Physically shaking himself out of the thoughts, he focuses back on your actual message, fully reading it now and chuckling to himself when it’s simply a message about a mistake in the syllabus.

One of the readings is listed with the wrong author, but of course, with how amiable and courteous you are, it’s phrased as a question rather than flat out telling him it’s wrong. Something along the lines of “Sorry Professor, but did I get this wrong…”

He’s not offended, he didn’t write the syllabus, and even if he did, he still would feel no qualms about being corrected where it was due.

There’s a flash of something in his chest, the smallest bit of anger when he thinks about you drafting this email to him, likely nervous you’d get a shitty response back. He knows the type of shit his colleagues say to their female students, and it grates on him every time. Typing up a reply to you, he answers the question concisely. The cursor blinks for a minute on the screen, deciding whether or not to finish off the message with some words of encouragement or not.

Quickly, he adds ‘And please, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Clearly you know your stuff, and I could use some help with navigating this new course.’ Adding his signature, he hits send before he can give it another thought.

Exiting out of the window, an ad pops up onto his desktop. Javier moves his mouse to hover over the ‘X’ button, the baby pink banner catching his attention.

Sweet Temptations.

Curiosity gets the best of him and he clicks through to the website, licking his lips when he’s greeted with a logo design that features the silhouette of a woman as the ‘T’.

Javier is lonely.

He moved away from Laredo, where his father resides on the family ranch, the only familiar piece of the US that he was eager to return to. That excitement for the slow life burned out quickly, angst settling in and keeping him on edge — those damn boats.

Chucho encouraged the move, the job, the lifestyle change. Something busier to keep his mind and body occupied, left active enough to forget about the news from over the border, the runs happening right behind his family’s land.

Sure, Laredo is a short drive away, but the distance from family and the few friends he has at home, plus no informants to spend his evenings with, Javier has become decidedly lonely. And these days, he is open to any means of companionship.

For a few minutes, Javi pokes around the site, reading about the matching process for men “seeking arrangements” that “avoid the complications of traditional dating”.

From what he can gather, it’s a place to find a sugar baby. And as a man who was — honestly is supportive of sex work (if this even counts as sex work?), he isn’t above paying for an arrangement that will work for him. Traditional dating hasn’t given him much luck, too many expectations put on him upfront, and too big of a jump to be made that he isn’t quite adjusted for.

All of this logic is leading him to the sign up tab, filling out his information. He creates a new email address for this purpose, choosing a simple ‘[email protected]’. The rest of the form is a simple questionnaire, looking to get the gist of what he’s looking for out of this arrangement and what kind of woman he typically goes for.

He hovers over one question: ‘Are you looking for a relationship that will be sexually active?’. It’s a check of ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and suddenly the back of his neck is burning with a hint of shame as he selects ‘yes’.

After the rest of it is answered, he submits it.

If this goes nowhere, hey, at least he tried.

In the exact same spot a week later, Javier is slumped in his chair at his large desk, the sleeves of his button up rolled up to expose his forearms as he does the reading for his own class, preparation for Sociology of Deviance tomorrow afternoon.

Last week, at the second meeting of the cohort, he was impressed by your analysis of the first reading assignment, joking with you after you hit all the key points that ‘you could come up here and teach and give him a break’. That same jolt of energy from last Monday passed through him when you smiled bashfully at him, actively listening for the rest of the lecture. Before he could pull you to compliment you again, you were up the stairs and out the door, a tiny piece of notebook paper left behind. He stalks up to the desk you were at, picking up the scrap and grinning to himself when he sees a doodle of yours. It’s him, it has to be with the prominent ‘stache and eyebrows, his characteristically accurate head floating on the page. He tucks the drawing into his pocket and leaves for the day, stowing the art piece in the top drawer of his desk.

Today, he flicks the paper around in between his fingers, studying the fluid line work when his computer sings again with an incoming email. With nothing in his work inbox, he checks his new personal one, greeted with an excitable subject line:

YOU’VE GOT A MATCH!

JaviP & TheOnlyAngel

tagging some peeps that requested it but not sure if i will have a taglist for this series lol: @northernbluess @swiftispunk @joelsversion @mrsquill @yazsos @cartoon-garbage04 @sugadolly @ilovepedro @lovers-liability @deathwife @walkingintheheartbreaksatellite @undrthelights @atticrissfinch @ramblers-lets-get-ramblin

#javier #writing #only angel #javier peña x reader #javier peña x female reader #javier peña x f!reader #javier peña smut #javier peña series #javier peña fic #javier peña fanfiction #javier peña fanfic #javier pena fanfiction #javier pena fic #javier pena x female reader #javier pena series #javier pena x reader #javier pena x f!reader #javier pena smut

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allthecanadianpolitics · 8 days ago

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Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Tuesday he will work with the other opposition parties to bring down the Liberal government after Ottawa failed to deliver what he wanted: a pension hike for some and further protections for supply-managed farm sectors. After the NDP pulled out of its deal to prop up the Liberals, Blanchet stepped into the mix, saying he would back the Liberals on non-confidence votes if it passed two Bloc private member's bills that hike Old Age Security payments for people between the ages of 65 and 74 and exempt dairy, poultry and eggs from future trade negotiations. He gave the government a deadline of Oct. 29 to pass both bills into law. Today's the day and the bills aren't law, so Blanchet is pushing ahead with an alternative plan: trying to topple this minority government.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

#bloc quebecois #parliament #liberal party of canada #ndp #ottowa #cdnpoli #canadian politics #canadian news #canada

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hunterssm00n · 1 year ago

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Brighter Than the Sun / part 2 /

Lex is starting to feel like herself again after the events on Bouvetoya Island... with a little help from a tall, dreadlocked knight in shining armor at her side! | Lex/Scar |

part 2 of 3

my Scar & Lex series on ao3: here

*no cw, just humor and fluff*

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆��₊✧‎♡‧₊˚

Lex managed to get herself up and out of bed by ten in the a.m., which was actually pretty impressive considering she hadn't gotten home from her tour until around two in the a.m. Right now, she was still living in her little cubby in the Adirondacks. It was a bit chilly, since it was still winter in upstate New York (and by a bit chilly, she meant cold as hell). Lex had always liked the cold, and Bouvetoya, whilst colder than anything she'd ever experienced (in more ways than one), had done nothing to diminish her love for the crisp air. She knew that her intergalactic friend from the stars wasn't very keen on the cold, and this fact made her realize even more that he indeed had a soft spot for her; she suspected he wouldn't willingly come to this icebox for just anyone.

After dressing, she unhurridly began making breakfast. She had the day off, and she planned on doing absolutely nothing. Recently, she had started taking steady work again, and it was such a relief to be back at her game again. She loved her job; loved the self-fulfillment of it, as well as showing other people the beauty of the world. Her tours were continuing in the mountains right now, and she had taken a big group on a long hike yesterday that had tired her out. It had also taken a lot of her night up, which she had expected. That was why today, she was going to park her sore butt on the couch, and kick back with some junk food and movies.

As she was eating her pancakes and bacon on the couch, flipping through tv channels, she found her mind wandering to her alien pal yet again. It was funny to think those of those two words in one sentance: alien pal. Who ever in a million years would've thought? Lex had never really been one to believe in any of that anyways. She hadn't discounted it entirely - she knew, being a partial scientist, that many things were indeed possible, and didn't always have explanations. Truthfully, she had just never really thought about humanoids existing from other galaxies. Life on other planets, sure. Like water, and plants, and organisms that had capability of movement. But a seven foot tall, scale covered dude with dreadlocks and a pension for violence? Hell no.

This had to be the farthest thing in the universe away from how she thought her life would turn out. And there was still more to come. Lex wondered, as she often did, what was awaiting her in the future. Would this relationship - friendship she had with this extraterrestrial continue? Would it escalate? Would he grow tired of her, and how very different she was from his race? Her brow furrowed at the thought; she didn't want to consider that.

A knocking sound came from her front door, and, mouth full, she turned her head towards it. Who would be visiting her at eleven a.m. on a Tuesday? Swallowing, she placed her plate on the couch cushion beside where she had been sitting, and rose to investigate. Pulling her sweater more tightly around her body, she crossed the short walk towards the entry to the house. Reaching one hand out, she peeked out the curtain, more of that bright sunlight streaming in through the window pane, making her squint to see who was at her door. A blonde woman, pretty face, waved excitedly back at her. Karen. Holy shit. Lex had completely forgotten that she had invited her friend over to her home that morning for coffee; she hadn't seen the woman in weeks, and Karen was finally back in the area after a brief vacation to the Bahamas.

Smiling back, Lex opened the heavy oak door and met her friend with open arms. "It's so good to see you! I'm so sorry, I totally forgot; I feel like the worst friend ever!"

Squeezing her tight, Karen didn't sound the least bit upset, a smile in her voice as she replied cheerily, "Oh, no worries, you've been busy as all hell! I'm just glad you're here - it's been way too long!"

Apologizing again for having pajama's on, Lex invited Karen into the warm house. She decided to make more pancakes and bacon for her friend to share, as well as turning on her coffee maker, while the two engaged in idle, pleasant chit-chat. Karen and Lex hadn't been as close as they normally had been lately. But to be fair, Lex had never really been close with anybody - she didn't have a best friend. And the friends that she did have, she grew even more distant from after everything had happened in Bouvetoya. She looked forward to talking with Karen more often; it was always refreshing to get together and just hang out with a friend, talk about life, recent experiences, etc.

There was one recent life experience, though, that Lex planned on keeping to herself. Karen probably wouldn't take too lightly Lex talking about aliens after knowing about her supposed 'unstable' mental state since the events on the frozen island. Though nobody else but herself knew that aliens were the cause of that misfortune, but she planned to keep everything to herself just the same. For her own safety, and for Scar's.

A little while later, Lex and Karen were sitting on her couch, coffee mugs in hand, talking about another one of their friends, Mariah, who had recently gotten engaged. Lex had been so disconnected from everything, that she hadn't even known Mariah had met someone. They were laughing about past dating experiences when there came a sudden thud from the roof. Lex, eyes wide, swallowed her coffee noisily in realization, and Karen jumped. "Oh, Jesus, Lex, that must scare the shit out of you every single time! That's the problem with living under the trees: once the snow comes crashing down, it sounds like an avalanche!" she giggled. Lex laughed with her, trying very hard to discern whether or not it was actually snow, or if it was something else. Someone else. For a few moments, there was no other noise besides Karen speaking, continuing their subject from before, and Lex was just about to relax when the scrabbling of feet (claws) on her roof made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Worst. Timing. Ever.

Lex had grown to really like Scar, but she had no idea how she was going to explain this one to Karen. Crap.

"Man, that stuff's really coming down!" Karen exclaimed, looking up at the ceiling, "Do you think my car's okay out there? It's under one of those giant pine trees,"

"Um, yeah, you know what? I'll go check on it." Lex stated, setting her coffee down on the table a little too forcefully, so some sloshed over the rim and onto her coffee table.

"Oh, I'll come wit-"

"Oh no, Karen, it's fine, really! It's cold out there, you stay in here where it's warm, I've got it, don't worry!" Lex said in a rush, practically running towards the door. Karen gave her a puzzled look before shrugging it off and sipping at her warm beverage.

Lex practically threw her coat around her shoulders, not even zipping it up before she was out the door, slamming both of them shut in her haste. She had closed them just in time, too, because as soon as she did, a huge creature that seemed to fall straight from the sky (or rather, her roof) landed heavily on two feet in the snow right in front of her porch. Straightening from his crouched position, Scar stood to his full height, chittering in greeting at her.

"Scar, hey buddy, um, listen -" She barely made it off the porch before she was swept up into those massive arms and squeezed against that brick wall of a chest in a giant bear hug. "Ow, Scar, can't breathe..." She patted him on the back in greeting as he set her down on her feet, holding a hand on her shoulder to steady her. Swaying as she gazed up at him, she once again tried to explain the situation to him. "Hey, can you come back in, like, two hours? I, um, someone who doesn't know about you is h-"

"Lex?" Came a faint voice from behind her, growing louder as a creak preceded the door opening, "Are you alright? I hear voices." Lex swung around towards her female friend, wondering how on earth she was going to explain the massive being in front of her. Well, this is going to be just great.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧‎♡‧₊˚

AN: I do not own the Alien vs Predator franchise or any of it's characters. Karen is an OC made up by me. I also do not own the song 'Brighter Than the Sun' by Colbie Caillat.

part 3

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slettlune · 5 months ago

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every summer in norway they arrange an ultra-accessible nationwide location-based game called Stolpejakten ("the post hunt"), sort of like geocaching except you use a free app to log QR codes from wooden posts you locate via GPS or the in-app map. some of the posts are spread along traditional hiking routes but the majority are wheelchair accessible (green posts) and meant to encourage people to explore their local areas. new posts are set up every year.

i went post hunting today and even here in the city, in a country where people are NOTORIOUSLY shy and avoidant of strangers, i chatted with all sorts of people (pensioners, adults, families with small children) out post hunting. suddenly we were norwegians in hiking mode, ie "common mountain sense means being generous and friendly with other hikers in case you break your leg and need help later"

#today the posts revealed to me a public playground only a few streets away (which i should bring my sister's kids to)#AND a really nice lushly green shortcut i've never seen before despite living here for more than a decade

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msfbgraves · 7 months ago

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Well, the Netflix password sharing ban has reached the Netherlands. Quick survey says that there are several workarounds, but my mom is not tech savvy enough for that level of trickery, so I'll advise her to change her subscription to only one screen.

Count that as two near instances of screaming rage at corporations in two days.

And no, that's not about being unable to live without Netflix. It's the relentless trickle of shittery they keep pulling.

My bank raising its fees just because, and I would have switched but I am on this family arrangement so I can't.

My bank app deciding my phone is too old for it.

Another price hike in the supermarket.

The fees for my building's upkeep have been raised by €5 a month for shits and giggles.

A tax hike of €2 a month for my car and don't get me started on paying more than €2 for a litre of petrol.

An insurance price hike and I can't switch because of a misunderstanding with the building upkeep company. Seriously it's the only way of beating constant price hikes, constantly switching.

The ticket prices for the train have been raised.

On and on it goes. And my main problem is that this could easily all be outlawed. But it isn't. Because higher prices on everything also means more tax revenue, as that is a percentage of the total, not a flat fee.

The Netherlands have already protest voted the Nazis in, and the party that calls itself "New Social Contract" means by that, that the whole country should function like the Dutch Bible Belt: with strong solidarity among neighbours instead of state intervention and also trans people are evil. If the government does not try to further the wellbeing of all its citizens, against exploitative corporations, who tf is it for? Like, I know who it's for, it insanely favours capital, but shouldn't there at least be a pretense of something else?

I find it fascinating that government always goes "This is fine" until there are physical mobs outside of their gates. They don't do anything an hour before.

I don't really understand why they keep pushing people to the brink of that. Whom does it help? Nobody. Every revolution simply ushers in a new elite, only that first, a lot of people die - some rich, most poor. The poor mostly stay poor. I'm not saying don't riot, because the revolutions, if survived, often cause a minor uptick for the starving, but not half as well as a government that ensures a high standard of living for everyone.

And make no mistake. They're literally having people starve. Because they can. Either on no food, or on food that is so substandard it causes disease.

It only took 40 years.

Why are they so stupid? People may not understand nft's, or substandard loans swaps, or whatever they come up with next to cheat pension funds, but they do understand being able to afford heating your house, being able to afford to keep a roof over your head, or "I can't afford dinner."

But what do I know. I simply studied humanities.

#Late stage capitalism #capitalist hell #I simply don't like the feeling of living on an active vulcano

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year ago

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General Motors (GM.N) on Thursday made a counterproposal to the union representing its U.S. hourly workers in a bid to avoid a costly strike, but United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain called the offer "insulting."

The largest U.S. automaker said it offered workers a 10% wage hike and two additional 3% annual lump sum payments over four years in its offer to the union ahead of the Sept. 14 contract expiration.

Last week, Ford said it had offered a 9% wage increase through 2027 and 6% lump sump payments, much less than the 46% wage hike being sought by the union. The UAW has said 97% of members voted in favor of authorizing a strike if agreement is not reached.

Fain, who represents 146,000 workers at the Detroit Three, said GM's offer was "an insulting proposal that doesn’t come close to an equitable agreement for America’s autoworkers.... The clock is ticking. Stop wasting our members’ time. Tick tock."

GM shares were down 1.3% in mid-day trading.

GM said the wage hike is the largest proposed since 1999. It is also offering a $6,000 one-time inflation-related payment and $5,000 in inflation-protection bonuses over the life of the agreement, along with a $5,500 ratification bonus.

Chrysler-parent Stellantis said Wednesday it planned to make a counteroffer to the UAW this week.

GM said that under its offer, current temporary employees will receive a 20% increase to $20 per hour wage and it would shorten the time it takes to get to the maximum wage rate for permanent employees - mirroring proposals from Ford.

GM President Mark Reuss said in a video posted on Thursday "we need a fair contract that both rewards our employees and protects the long-term health of our business."

A UAW strike that shuts the Detroit Three manufacturers could cost carmakers, suppliers and workers over $5 billion, Michigan-based Anderson Economic Group estimated.

With new car inventories tight, consumer experts have said that could translate into higher car prices - an important component of inflation.

Last week, the UAW filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against GM and Stellantis saying they refused to bargain in good faith.

The union's demands include a 20% immediate wage increase followed by four 5% annual wage hikes, defined-benefit pensions for all workers, 32-hour work weeks and additional cost of living hikes. GM is proposing to give employees an additional paid holiday.

The UAW also wants all temporary workers at U.S. automakers to be made permanent, seeks enhanced profit sharing and the restoration of retiree health-care benefits and cost-of-living adjustments.

The UAW said Ford's profit-sharing formula change would have cut payouts by 21% over the last two years.

J.P.Morgan on Thursday said supply chain disruptions from a potential UAW strike would cut new vehicle production, drive up used car prices and put pressure on margins in the personal auto insurance business.

#us politics #news #reuters #2023 #united auto workers #general motors #Shawn Fain #working class #worker's rights #Detroit Three #Stellantis #Mark Reuss #Anderson Economic Group #National Labor Relations Board #unfair labor practices #collective bargaining #j.p. morgan

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banglakhobor · 1 year ago

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ন্যূনতম পেনশন ৭,৫০০ টাকা! ২০ জুলাই বড় সিদ্ধান্ত, সরাসরি প্রভাবিত পেনশনভোগী

Pension News Update: যাতে মাসে কমপক্ষে ৭,৫০০ টাকা মিনিমাম পেনশন করা হয়ে থাকে ৷ একই সঙ্গে বেশ কিছু দাবি নিয়ে দিল্লিতে বৃহস্পতিবার অনশনে বসছেন ৷ প্রতীকী ছবি ৷যাতে মাসে কমপক্ষে ৭,৫০০ টাকা মিনিমাম পেনশন করা হয়ে থাকে ৷ একই সঙ্গে বেশ কিছু দাবি নিয়ে দিল্লিতে বৃহস্পতিবার অনশনে বসছেন ৷ প্রতীকী ছবি ৷ Source link

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 2 years ago

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David Horsey

* * * * *

What Robert Hockett writes here comes pretty close to a consensus view among constitutional scholars I've read on the subject. An important read.

"The deadline for a debt ceiling hike is only weeks away, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen saying the U.S. could run out of money to pay its debts by June 1. Some Republicans, whether serious or bluffing, seem ready to go to the brink of default — if not actually default on the U.S. national debt. Debate has intensified over whether President Biden might sidestep the debt ceiling so the nation can keep paying what it owes. There are powerful legal reasons and arguments for him to do so.

These include the 14th Amendment, which prohibits questioning what we already owe, and the so-called later-in-time rule of statutory construction, which basically means that Congress’s most recent budget legislation trumps any earlier legislated ceiling.

Given the stakes, it’s important to explore the likely consequences if Mr. Biden ignores the debt ceiling — how doing so would affect our economy and the markets, our retirement savings and even our constitutional system. There is encouraging news for the president and those who follow our first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton, in believing we must pay our legally incurred debts. We are far better off doing so, even if it means short-term chaos should Mr. Biden allow the June 1 deadline to come and go.

First, consider the consequences if the United States stopped paying its debts and defaulted on June 1. This would undo what Hamilton and his successors sought to ensure: a national credit rating beyond cavil or reproach. We would see a great tottering — if not worse — of U.S. banking, U.S. financial markets and the world’s capital markets. For one thing, U.S. Treasury securities, valued at over $24 trillion (by far, the largest asset market in the world), are the primary safe asset held in banking, pension fund, mutual fund and other business portfolios. Our present regional bank crisis involving Silicon Valley Bank and others is occurring in response to a relatively slight, temporary drop in the value of low-yield Treasuries largely because of the Fed’s interest rate hikes. An outright default would leave us nostalgic for the comparable placidity of this troubled moment.We would also probably see a rapid plunge in the value of the dollar worldwide as a global reserve asset.

Our currency’s value in relation to others’ is rooted primarily in global demand for dollar-denominated financial assets, since we have relinquished our primacy as a goods exporter to China. Since Treasury securities are by far the most voluminous asset, their slide would be the dollar’s slide. This would quickly render imports, on which we continue to rely, far more expensive. Inflation could look more like that of Argentina or Russia 20 years ago than that of the present or even the 1970s.This is to say nothing of our subsequent incapacity to maintain our military bases and other assets abroad and to pay thousands of U.S. military personnel. Only China would be a world-bestriding global superpower, abetting the moves it is already making with Russia, Brazil and other nations to displace the dollar as what Valéry Giscard d’Estaing once called the United States’ global “exorbitant privilege.”

Finally, even the serious prospect of U.S. default would quickly raise debt-servicing costs, rendering our deficit larger than it currently is — a consequence dramatically at odds with Republicans’ professed concerns about tying the debt ceiling hike to massive budget cuts."

It almost makes you think that fiscal responsibility isn’t what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s caucus really wants.

[New York Times :: This Is What Would Happen if Biden Ignores the Debt Ceiling and Calls McCarthy’s Bluff]

#NY Times #Robert Hockett #David Horsey #debt ceiling #off a cliff

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Washington State's capital gains tax proves we can have nice things

Today (June 3) at 1:30PM, I’m in Edinburgh for the Cymera Festival on a panel with Nina Allen and Ian McDonald.

Monday (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Washington State enacted a 7% capital gains tax levied on annual profits in excess of $250,000, and made a fortune, $600m more than projected in the first year, despite a 25% drop in the stock market and blistering interest rate hikes:

https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/06/01/lessons-from-washington-states-new-capital-gains-tax/

Capital gains taxes are levied on “passive income” — money you get for owning stuff. The capital gains rate is much lower than the income tax rate — the rate you pay for doing stuff. This is naked class warfare: it punishes the people who make things and do things, and rewards the people who own the means of production.

The thing is, a factory or a store can still operate if the owner goes missing — but without workers, it shuts down immediately. Everything you depend on — the clothes on your back, the food in your fridge, the car you drive and the coffee you drink — exists because someone did something to produce it. Those producers are punished by our tax system, while the people who derive a “passive income” from their labor are given preferential treatment.

The Washington State tax is levied exclusively on annual gains in excess of a quarter million dollars — meaning this tax affects an infinitesimal minority of Washingtonians, who are vastly better off than the people whose work they profit from. Most working Americans own little or no stock, and the vast majority of those who do own that stock in a retirement fund that is sheltered from these taxes.

(Sidebar here to say that market-based pensions are a scam, a way to force workers to gamble in a rigged casino for the chance to enjoy a dignified retirement; the defined benefits pension, combined with adequate Social Security, is the only way to ensure secure retirement for all of us)

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

Washington’s tax was anticipated to bring in $248m. Instead, it’s projected to bring in $849m in the first year. Those funds will go to public school operations and construction and infrastructure spending:

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/was-new-capital-gains-tax-brings-in-849-million-so-far-much-more-than-expected/

That is to say, the money will go to ensuring that Washingtonians are educated and will have the amenities they need to turn that education into productive work.

Washington State is noteworthy for not having any state personal or corporate income tax, making it a haven for low-tax brain-worm victims who would rather have a dead gopher running their states than pay an extra nickel in taxes. But places that don’t have taxes can’t fund services, which leads to grotesque, rapid deterioration.

Washington State plutes moved because they relished living in well-kept, cosmopolitan places with efficient transportation, an educated workforce, good restaurants and culture — none of which they would have to pay for. They forgot Karl Marx’s famous saying: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

The idea that Washington could make up for the shortfalls that come from taxing its wealthiest residents by levying regressive sales taxes and other measures is mathematically illiterate wishful thinking. When the one percent owns nearly everything, you can tax the shit out of the other 99% and still not make up the shortfall.

Meanwhile: homelessness, crumbling roads, and crisis after crisis. Political deterioration. Cute shopping neighborhoods turn into dollar store hellscapes because no one can afford to shop for nice things because all their income is going to plug the gaps in health, education, transport and other services that the low-tax state can’t afford.

Washington State’s soak-the-rich tax is ironic, given the propensity of California’s plutes to threaten to leave for Washington if California finally passes its own extreme wealth tax.

There’s a reason all these wealthy people want to live in California, Washington, New York and other states where there’s broad public support for taxing the American aristocracy: states with rock-bottom taxes are failed states. All but two of America’s “red states” are dependent on transfers from the federal government to stay in operation. The two exceptions are Texas, whose “free market” grid is one nanometer away from total collapse, and Florida, which is about to slip beneath the rising seas it denies.

Rich people claim they’d be happy to live in low-tax states, and even tout the benefits of a desperate workforce that will turn up to serve drinks at their country clubs even as a pandemic kills them at record rates. But when the chips are down, they don’t want to depend on a private generator to keep the lights on. They don’t want to have to repeatedly replace their luxury cars’ suspension after it’s wrecked by gaping potholes. They don’t want to have to charter a jet to fly their kids out of state to get an abortion.

This is true globally, too. As Thomas Piketty pointed out in Capital in the 21st Century, if the EU and OECD created a wealth tax, the rich could withdraw to Dubai, the Caymans and Rwanda, but they’d eventually get sick of shopping for the same luxury goods in the same malls guarded by the same mercenaries and want to go somewhere, you know, fun:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

We’re told that Americans would never stand for taxing the ultra-rich because they see themselves as “temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” It’s just not true: soak-the-rich policies are wildly popular:

https://balanceourtaxcode.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/WA-State-Wealth-Tax-Poll-Results-3.pdf

The Washington tax windfall is fascinating in part because it reveals just how rich the ultra-rich actually are. Warren Buffett says that “when the tide goes out, you learn who’s been swimming naked.” But Washington’s new tax is a tide that reveals who’s been swimming with a gold bar stuck up their ass.

It’s not surprising, then, that Washingtonians are so happy to tax their one percenters. After all, this is the state that gave us modern robber barons like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. And then there’s clowns like Steve Ballmer, star of Propublica’s IRS Files, the man whose creative accounting let him claim $700m in paper losses on his basketball team, allowing him to pay a mere 12% tax on $656m in income, while the workers who made his fortune on the court paid 30–40% on their earnings.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/08/tuyul-apps/#economic-substance-doctrine Ballmer’s also a master of “tax loss harvesting,” who has created paper losses of over $100m, letting him evade $138m in federal taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/24/tax-loss-harvesting/#mego

These guys aren’t rich because they work harder than the rest of us. They’re rich because they profit from our work — and then, to add insult to injury, pay little or no taxes on those profits.

Washington’s lowest income earners pay six times the rate of tax as the state’s richest people. When the wealthy squeal that these taxes are class warfare, they’re right — it is class war, and they started it.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

[Image ID: The Washington State flag; the circular device featuring George Washington has been altered so that it is now the head of a naked man clothed in a barrel with two wide leather shoulder straps.]

#pluralistic #steve ballmer #irs files #washington state #soak the rich #capital gains #taxes class war #euthanasia of the rentier

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