#Poverty's Paradise

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Naughty By Nature released their fourth album Poverty’s Paradise May 30, 1995

[tha-wrecka-stow]

[juhnkit]

Motivational Music in the Morning … Naughty by Nature, Feel Me Flow (Official Audio Track) … from the Album: Poverty's Paradise (1995) #MMitM1

[hxroic-wxlls-fxrever]

@paradise-in-k4 said: Selene can only utter a singular “Ouch” in response to

“ The fact he won isn’t even what annoys me… It’s that I can’t tell if he cheated… “

He didn’t. Luigi’s just been gambling since he was baby.

(Off screen, of course.)

[doublebilled]

The Vampires of Poverty (1977) dir. Luis Ospina and Carlos Mayolo

Aliwan Paradise (1992) dir. Mike De Leon

[al-islam]

يا رب، تولَّ أمرَهم، وكُن لهم عونًا ومعينًا، ونصيرًا وظهيرًا. اللهم، اغفرْ لنا تقصيرَنا تجاهَهم يا رب، بدِّلْ خوفَهم أمنًا، وذُلَّهم عزًّا، وفقرَهم غِنًى، وأحزَانَهم فرَحًا، وتقبَّلْ شهداءَهم في عليين

Ya Allah , take charge of their affairs, be their helper and supporter, their aid and defender. Ya Allah, forgive us for our shortcomings toward them. Ya Allah, replace their fear with security, their humiliation with honor, their poverty with wealth, and their sorrows with joy. Accept their martyrs in the highest ranks of Paradise.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar

THIS WEDNESDAY (October 23) at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

One of the most consequential series of investigative journalism of this decade was the Propublica series that Jesse Eisinger helmed, in which Eisinger and colleagues analyzed a trove of leaked IRS tax returns for the richest people in America:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-secret-irs-files

The Secret IRS Files revealed the fact that many of America's oligarchs pay no tax at all. Some of them even get subsidies intended for poor families, like Jeff Bezos, whose tax affairs are so scammy that he was able to claim to be among the working poor and receive a federal Child Tax Credit, a $4,000 gift from the American public to one of the richest men who ever lived:

https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trove-of-never-before-seen-records-reveal-how-the-wealthiest-avoid-income-tax

As important as the numbers revealed by the Secret IRS Files were, I found the explanations even more interesting. The 99.9999% of us who never make contact with the secretive elite wealth management and tax cheating industry know, in the abstract, that there's something scammy going on in those esoteric cults of wealth accumulation, but we're pretty vague on the details. When I pondered the "tax loopholes" that the rich were exploiting, I pictured, you know, long lists of equations salted with Greek symbols, completely beyond my ken.

But when Propublica's series laid these secret tactics out, I learned that they were incredibly stupid ruses, tricks so thin that the only way they could possibly fool the IRS is if the IRS just didn't give a shit (and they truly didn't – after decades of cuts and attacks, the IRS was far more likely to audit a family earning less than $30k/year than a billionaire).

This has become a somewhat familiar experience. If you read the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, Luxleaks, Swissleaks, or any of the other spectacular leaks from the oligarch-industrial complex, you'll have seen the same thing: the rich employ the most tissue-thin ruses, and the tax authorities gobble them up. It's like the tax collectors don't want to fight with these ultrawealthy monsters whose net worth is larger than most nations, and merely require some excuse to allow them to cheat, anything they can scribble in the box explaining why they are worth billions and paying little, or nothing, or even entitled to free public money from programs intended to lift hungry children out of poverty.

It was this experience that fueled my interest in forensic accounting, which led to my bestselling techno-crime-thriller series starring the two-fisted, scambusting forensic accountant Martin Hench, who made his debut in 2022's Red Team Blues:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865847/red-team-blues

The double outrage of finding out how badly the powerful are ripping off the rest of us, and how stupid and transparent their accounting tricks are, is at the center of Chokepoint Capitalism, the book about how tech and entertainment companies steal from creative workers (and how to stop them) that Rebecca Giblin and I co-authored, which also came out in 2022:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

Now that I've written four novels and a nonfiction book about finance scams, I think I can safely call myself a oligarch ripoff hobbyist. I find this stuff endlessly fascinating, enraging, and, most importantly, energizing. So naturally, when PJ Vogt devoted two episodes of his excellent Search Engine podcast to the subject last week, I gobbled them up:

https://www.searchengine.show/listen/search-engine-1/why-is-it-so-hard-to-tax-billionaires-part-1

I love the way Vogt unpacks complex subjects. Maybe you've had the experience of following a commentator and admiring their knowledge of subjects you're unfamiliar with, only have them cover something you're an expert in and find them making a bunch of errors (this is basically the experience of using an LLM, which can give you authoritative seeming answers when the subject is one you're unfamiliar with, but which reveals itself to be a Bullshit Machine as soon as you ask it about something whose lore you know backwards and forwards).

Well, Vogt has covered many subjects that I am an expert in, and I had the opposite experience, finding that even when he covers my own specialist topics, I still learn something. I don't always agree with him, but always find those disagreements productive in that they make me clarify my own interests. (Full disclosure: I was one of Vogt's experts on his previous podcast, Reply All, talking about the inkjet printerization of everything:)

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brho54

Vogt's series on taxing billionaires was no exception. His interview subjects (including Eisinger) were very good, and he got into a lot of great detail on the leaker himself, Charles Littlejohn, who plead guilty and was sentenced to five years:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/charles-littlejohn-irs-whistleblower-pro-publica-tax-evasion-prosecution

Vogt also delved into the history of the federal income tax, how it was sold to the American public, and a rather hilarious story of Republican Congressional gamesmanship that backfired spectacularly. I'd never encountered this stuff before and boy was it interesting.

But then Vogt got into the nature of taxation, and its relationship to the federal debt, another subject I've written about extensively, and that's where one of those productive disagreements emerged. Yesterday, I set out to write him a brief note unpacking this objection and ended up writing a giant essay (sorry, PJ!), and this morning I found myself still thinking about it. So I thought, why not clean up the email a little and publish it here?

As much as I enjoyed these episodes, I took serious exception to one – fairly important! – aspect of your analysis: the relationship of taxes to the national debt.

There's two ways of approaching this question, which I think of as akin to classical vs quantum physics. In the orthodox, classical telling, the government taxes us to pay for programs. This is crudely true at 10,000 feet and as a rule of thumb, it's fine in many cases. But on the ground – at the quantum level, in this analogy – the opposite is actually going on.

There is only one source of US dollars: the US Treasury (you can try and make your own dollars, but they'll put you in prison for a long-ass time if they catch you.).

If dollars can only originate with the US government, then it follows that:

a) The US government doesn't need our taxes to get US dollars (for the same reason Apple doesn't need us to redeem our iTunes cards to get more iTunes gift codes);

b) All the dollars in circulation start with spending by the US government (taxes can't be paid until dollars are first spent by their issuer, the US government); and

c) That spending must happen before anyone has been taxed, because the way dollars enter circulation is through spending.

You've probably heard people say, "Government spending isn't like household spending." That is obviously true: households are currency users while governments are currency issuers.

But the implications of this are very interesting.

First, the total dollars in circulation are:

a) All the dollars the government has ever spent into existence funding programs, transferring to the states, and paying its own employees, minus

b) All the dollars that the government has taxed away from us, and subsequently annihilated.

(Because governments spend money into existence and tax money out of existence.)

The net of dollars the government spends in a given year minus the dollars the government taxes out of existence that year is called "the national deficit." The total of all those national deficits is called "the national debt." All the dollars in circulation today are the result of this national debt. If the US government didn't have a debt, there would be no dollars in circulation.

The only way to eliminate the national debt is to tax every dollar in circulation out of existence. Because the national debt is "all the dollars the government has ever spent," minus "all the dollars the government has ever taxed." In accounting terms, "The US deficit is the public's credit."

When billionaires like Warren Buffet tell Jesse Eisinger that he doesn't pay tax because "he thinks his money is better spent on charitable works rather than contributing to an insignificant reduction of the deficit," he is, at best, technically wrong about why we tax, and at worst, he's telling a self-serving lie. The US government doesn't need to eliminate its debt. Doing so would be catastrophic. "Retiring the US debt" is the same thing as "retiring the US dollar."

So if the USG isn't taxing to retire its debts, why does it tax? Because when the USG – or any other currency issuer – creates a token, that token is, on its face, useless. If I offered to sell you some "Corycoins," you would quite rightly say that Corycoins have no value and thus you don't need any of them.

For a token to be liquid – for it to be redeemable for valuable things, like labor, goods and services – there needs to be something that someone desires that can be purchased with that token. Remember when Disney issued "Disney dollars" that you could only spend at Disney theme parks? They traded more or less at face value, even outside of Disney parks, because everyone knew someone who was planning a Disney vacation and could make use of those Disney tokens.

But if you go down to a local carny and play skeeball and win a fistful of tickets, you'll find it hard to trade those with anyone outside of the skeeball counter, especially once you leave the carny. There's two reasons for this:

1) The things you can get at the skeeball counter are pretty crappy so most people don't desire them; and ' 2) Most people aren't planning on visiting the carny, so there's no way for them to redeem the skeeball tickets even if they want the stuff behind the counter (this is also why it's hard to sell your Iranian rials if you bring them back to the US – there's not much you can buy in Iran, and even someone you wanted to buy something there, it's really hard for US citizens to get to Iran).

But when a sovereign currency issuer – one with the power of the law behind it – demands a tax denominated in its own currency, they create demand for that token. Everyone desires USD because almost everyone in the USA has to pay taxes in USD to the government every year, or they will go to prison. That fact is why there is such a liquid market for USD. Far more people want USD to pay their taxes than will ever want Disney dollars to spend on Dole Whips, and even if you are hoping to buy a Dole Whip in Fantasyland, that desire is far less important to you than your desire not to go to prison for dodging your taxes.

Even if you're not paying taxes, you know someone who is. The underlying liquidity of the USD is inextricably tied to taxation, and that's the first reason we tax. By issuing a token – the USD – and then laying on a tax that can only be paid in that token (you cannot pay federal income tax in anything except USD – not crypto, not euros, not rials – only USD), the US government creates demand for that token.

And because the US government is the only source of dollars, the US government can purchase anything that is within its sovereign territory. Anything denominated in US dollars is available to the US government: the labor of every US-residing person, the land and resources in US territory, and the goods produced within the US borders. The US doesn't need to tax us to buy these things (remember, it makes new money by typing numbers into a spreadsheet at the Federal Reserve). But it does tax us, and if the taxes it levies don't equal the spending it's making, it also sells us T-bills to make up the shortfall.

So the US government kinda acts like classical physics is true, that is, like it is a household and thus a currency user, and not a currency issuer. If it spends more than it taxes, it "borrows" (issues T-bills) to make up the difference. Why does it do this? To fight inflation.

The US government has no monetary constraints, it can make as many dollars as it cares to (by typing numbers into a spreadsheet). But the US government is fiscally constrained, because it can only buy things that are denominated in US dollars (this is why it's such a big deal that global oil is priced in USD – it means the US government can buy oil from anywhere, not only the USA, just by typing numbers into a spreadsheet).

The supply of dollars is infinite, but the supply of labor and goods denominated in US dollars is finite, and, what's more, the people inside the USA expect to use that labor and goods for their own needs. If the US government issues so many dollars that it can outbid every private construction company for the labor of electricians, bricklayers, crane drivers, etc, and puts them all to work building federal buildings, there will be no private construction.

Indeed, every time the US government bids against the private sector for anything – labor, resources, land, finished goods – the price of that thing goes up. That's one way to get inflation (and it's why inflation hawks are so horny for slashing government spending – to get government bidders out of the auction for goods, services and labor).

But while the supply of goods for sale in US dollars is finite, it's not fixed. If the US government takes away some of the private sector's productive capacity in order to build interstates, train skilled professionals, treat sick people so they can go to work (or at least not burden their working-age relations), etc, then the supply of goods and services denominated in USD goes up, and that makes more fiscal space, meaning the government and the private sector can both consume more of those goods and services and still not bid against one another, thus creating no inflationary pressure.

Thus, taxes create liquidity for US dollars, but they do something else that's really important: they reduce the spending power of the private sector. If the US only ever spent money into existence and never taxed it out of existence, that would create incredible inflation, because the supply of dollars would go up and up and up, while the supply of goods and services you could buy with dollars would grow much more slowly, because the US government wouldn't have the looming threat of taxes with which to coerce us into doing the work to build highways, care for the sick, or teach people how to be doctors, engineers, etc.

Taxes coercively reduce the purchasing power of the private sector (they're a stick). T-bills do the same thing, but voluntarily (they the carrot).

A T-bill is a bargain offered by the US government: "Voluntarily park your money instead of spending it. That will create fiscal space for us to buy things without bidding against you, because it removes your money from circulation temporarily. That means we, the US government, can buy more stuff and use it to increase the amount of goods and services you can buy with your money when the bond matures, while keeping the supply of dollars and the supply of dollar-denominated stuff in rough equilibrium."

So a bond isn't a debt – it's more like a savings account. When you move money from your checking to your savings, you reduce its liquidity, meaning the bank can treat it as a reserve without worrying quite so much about you spending it. In exchange, the bank gives you some interest, as a carrot.

I know, I know, this is a big-ass wall of text. Congrats if you made it this far! But here's the upshot. We should tax billionaires, because it will reduce their economic power and thus their political power.

But we absolutely don't need to tax billionaires to have nice things. For example: the US government could hire every single unemployed person without creating inflationary pressure on wages, because inflation only happens when the US government tries to buy something that the private sector is also trying to buy, bidding up the price. To be "unemployed" is to have labor that the private sector isn't trying to buy. They're synonyms. By definition, the feds could put every unemployed person to work (say, training one another to be teachers, construction workers, etc – and then going out and taking care of the sick, addressing the housing crisis, etc etc) without buying any labor that the private sector is also trying to buy.

What's even more true than this is that our taxes are not going to reduce the national debt. That guest you had who said, "Even if we tax billionaires, we will never pay off the national debt,"" was 100% right, because the national debt equals all the money in circulation.

Which is why that guest was also very, very wrong when she said, "We will have to tax normal people too in order to pay off the debt." We don't have to pay off the debt. We shouldn't pay off the debt. We can't pay off the debt. Paying off the debt is another way of saying "eliminating the dollar."

Taxation isn't a way for the government to pay for things. Taxation is a way to create demand for US dollars, to convince people to sell goods and services to the US government, and to constrain private sector spending, which creates fiscal space for the US government to buy goods and services without bidding up their prices.

And in a "classical physics" sense, all of the preceding is kinda a way of saying, "Taxes pay for government spending." As a rough approximation, you can think of taxes like this and generally not get into trouble.

But when you start to make policy – when you contemplate when, whether, and how much to tax billionaires – you leave behind the crude, high-level approximation and descend into the nitty-gritty world of things as they are, and you need to jettison the convenience of the easy-to-grasp approximation.

If you're interested in learning more about this, you can tune into this TED Talk by Stephanie Kelton, formerly formerly advisor to the Senate Budget Committee chair, now back teaching and researching econ at University of Missouri at Kansas City:

https://www.ted.com/talks/stephanie_kelton_the_big_myth_of_government_deficits?subtitle=en

Stephanie has written a great book about this, The Deficit Myth:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/14/everybody-poops/#deficit-myth

There's a really good feature length doc about it too, called "Finding the Money":

https://findingmoneyfilm.com/

If you'd like to read more of my own work on this, here's a column I wrote about the nature of currency in light of Web3, crypto, etc:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

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/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

[todayinhiphophistory]

Today in Hip Hop History:

Naughty By Nature released their fourth album Poverty’s Paradise May 30, 1995

[avelera]

I adore Silco and think he’s one of the most fascinating complex characters in the whole show, but let’s not flatten the complexity of Zaun vs. Piltover plotline by pretending he was a saint or doing anything to help the common people of Zaun while he was alive.

Silco’s goal for Zaun was self-governance, independence, which is a laudable goal. Especially once Piltover stopped caring about the Undercity entirely because of the Hexgates, it was frankly criminal to consider them subjects and to neglect them as much as Piltover did, an injustice that Jayce recognized and IMO was the tipping point for him accepting Silco’s terms.

But Silco flooded the Lanes with Shimmer, which was developed directly by him, as part of his operation. He used it to personally enrich himself, to give himself power, and to win loyal followers to his cause specifically using substance addiction. His actions are monstrous. He tore apart families, the poverty has skyrocketed while he was in power, people like Huck were abandoned and left to rot unless they were of use to Silco then he gave them more Shimmer and pointed them at his battles to die for him.

A real argument can be made that Jayce should have turned down Silco’s proposal for the Undercity’s sake. Handing it over completely to Silco and his oligarchy of Chem Barons is a dubious decision at best, made only marginally the lesser of the two evils because of Piltover’s abuse and neglect. Yes, Zaun deserves to self govern, but does it deserve to be governed by Silco, and Renni, and Finn, and Smeech without any other recourse?

Piltover and Zaun are not democracies. They are two oligarchies run by the wealthy of their respective cities. Silco wasn’t proposing a democratic paradise for Zaun, he was proposing a second mirroring oligarchy for it, a personal fiefdom with himself in charge on the nominal argument that he’d treat it better than Piltover did, when we’ve seen what he did with most of that power already, which is flood the place with drugs to morph it into his own personal army and screw anyone small or powerless enough to not be able to fight on his behalf.

An argument can be made that Silco’s Zaun, without Vander to check his worst instincts, wouldn’t have been the AU of Ekko’s journey but a horror show and a nightmare. In the end, we don’t know if Silco was telling the truth about winding down Shimmer operations or if he truly intended to become a just and fair ruler of his people once they had independence, but we do have as an example what he has already done with similar power, enough to cast doubt on his honesty and good intentions in that moment.

Silco is a phenomenal character, a complex revolutionary and a villainous crime boss, a loving father who deliberately, methodically turned his beloved child into a weapon against his enemies, the would-be father of a nation and a monster who poisoned and destroyed his own people to achieve it, and I’m so tired of all of that being forgotten in order to simplify that Zaun vs. Piltover discussion into an easy good vs evil story.

[astudyinfreewill]

it's very fork found in kitchen of me to assign yet another narrative foil to adam "the man of a hundred narrative foils" parrish but i have been thinking about him and blue in that respect. i guess in true blue sargent fashion she's not precisely a foil as much as she is a mirror. adam and blue being from the same town and of a similar social class, thus ostensibly sharing some experiences, and yet their backgrounds are different enough for blue to notably think that her kind of poverty is not like adam's kind of poverty, thank you very much. adam and blue being from the same henrietta fields but adam trying his level best to fade into the background - sepia toned, hair the color of dirt, always observing from the outside - while blue makes a conscious effort to stand out and be the vivid-est, most colorful bird of paradise around. both of them want OUT but for such different reasons that their drives to run away never intersect at all. both of them desperately envying the other in a way that makes them both resentful, because they don't GET how the other person could be envious. adam is envious of blue because she grew up poor in money but rich in love; blue is envious of adam because he's got the academic success and determination that will lead him far away from henrietta, whereas she feels trapped there. blue is like well you're leaving (leaving me behind) because she wants to run towards something; adam is like why would you want to leave since you have nothing to run from? how could blue feel trapped and stuck when everybody loves and wants her there, while adam is only leaving behind a handful of dust and a shoebox of bruises? they're two characters looking at each other and - for a certain amount of time at least - wanting each other badly but not really knowing what it is they want, because they're not really seeing each other as much as their own desires projected onto the other. blue as a way for adam to find some joy in his grueling, thankless life. adam as a way for blue to rebel against fate, in a household where rebelling is kind of the norm. they understand each other perfectly and not in the slightest.

[lurkingshan]

I’ve seen a lot of posts about The Paradise Of Thorns but none of them told me that this movie is actually about how poverty and inequality forces differently oppressed people to fight each other to the death for scarce resources and any tiny shred of dignity. There are parts of this film that I don’t think quite worked but that overarching message is a banger.

[hxroic-wxlls-fxrever]

@paradise-in-k4 said: Joon’s already claimed this one I see

“ Jo’on, now, let’s empty his pockets. “

[pmamtraveller]

JEAN DELVILLE - THE CYCLE OF PASSIONS, 1890

This artwork marks a transition in Delville's career from a focus on social realism to a more spiritual and idealistic approach. His earlier works dealt with themes of poverty and despair, but around this time, he began exploring idealism, which was inspired by literature and symbolism.

Inspired by Dante's "Divine Comedy," the painting deals with the human experience of passion, possibly in a transformative manner, reflecting the journey through various states of emotion akin to Dante's journey through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The work is described as a study for a much larger piece.

The title itself suggests a journey through human emotions, which in Delville's context, can be interpreted as stages of spiritual development. This mirrors the idea found in many spiritual traditions where human emotions are seen as a path to spiritual awakening, similar to the soul's journey in Dante's "Divine Comedy" which Delville was influenced by.

The painting was part of a preparatory study but did not receive much enthusiasm in the contemporary press when it was displayed at L'Essor in 1890. This indicates that the larger work that inspired the drawing was also met with criticism or at least a lack of favourable response from art critics and the public at the time.

[smoulderingocean]

I think Nick's conversation with Rita was a really telling one. His words of safety said so much about his mindset. It wasn't just him reassuring her about New Bethlehem or about his position that she felt clear discomfort with, it was a statement of why he is where he is: Safety is what matters most. He might come across as light in this interaction, but at the end of the day Nick craves safety and stability for himself and those he loves.

Nick has not felt safe for the vast majority of his life, nor has not felt that way for his family. It is only recently that he's had any semblance of feeling safe and even then those feelings are conditional upon compromising his morals which mean he is still not truly safe in a whole sense.

The United States wasn't safe for him as he had a difficult father (implied to be abusive) and an addict brother who disappeared for weeks on end which forced Nick into dangerous situations to find him. Nick not only had no help for this, he suffered under an uncaring capitalist system that saw him as worthless for caring for his family. Poverty itself can be a dangerous thing as it limits your options, your ability access true help (government help is awful and the gaps are often filled by religious groups which are also awful), and keeps you in bad situations. As a working class man of colour, Nick was in a particularly vulnerable position with the dual impacts of racism and classism that compounded upon each other, along with the anxiety and depression he was clearly struggling with.

Nick also did not feel safe in Gilead proper, particularly as a low-status driver. He knew that it would be all too easy to find himself on the wall, even with his secret work as an Eye. Being a junior commander in Gilead afforded him a little more safety due to the power the position has, but he was still fairly low down on the chain and vulnerable to being taken out in power moves while being watched more than he ever was a nondescript driver. Being a moderate status Commander in New Bethlehem, a place that, for now at least, is free of rapid fire executions, handmaids, and child brides and where he is working with a very powerful man to keep it that way has to basically feel like paradise for someone who has never felt truly safe before.

Which is why it's bound to all come crashing down. It's notable that Nick first says NB is the safest place to be, followed by a Commander being the safest thing to be. First, NB will become unsafe for people to be (likely due in part to choices Nick has to make followed by Wharton's destruction of it), and then being a Commander will become unsafe for Nick (likely due to a combination of Tuello outing him and Nick deciding to make choices against Gilead more directly than he has before). And that will kick off his story of being so deep underground he needs a breathing tube. This in turn will allow for Nick to be safe in the way that he's truly seeking out: emotionally. He may not have physical safety after going against Gilead, but his soul will be safe and when his soul is safe, he will feel happy for the first time in a long time.

[maykitz]

reading an article about underage prostitution in a german city that is incredibly bleak and features an interview by young trans girl who was pimped out by her family, translation under the cut. i cropped several parts but it's still a bit long. be mindful of heavy subjects ahead, ofc.

The man picks Maxi up in a Mercedes. Drives her through the night. In the middle of a forest he parks in front of a mansion, kisses Maxi on the mouth. "What's wrong?", the man asks. "I've never done this before," says Maxi. The man smiles from ear to ear.

In the bedroom he gives Maxi a glass of water. Tastes weird, Maxi thinks. The man grabs a remote, puts on a porno. Disgusting, Maxi thinks. Then the man starts undressing her. T-shirt, pants, boxershorts. "Lay down on the bed, I'm giving you a massage," the man says. Disgusting, Maxi thinks again. She's 15 years old.

[...]

Germany was nothing like Maxi expected. She grew up with a foster family in Romania. When she turned 14, her mother took her in at her home in Dortmund. She was excited to get to live with her mom and siblings for the first time. It went fine for a year- then she came out. "I said: Mom, I like boys," Maxi tells us. "She beat me up badly."

[...]

Maxi is very familiar with the [child prostitution] scene, particiapted herself for years. It all started with her outing. Her mother, Maxi says, threatened to kick her out of the house. She wasn't allowed to attend school anymore, one some days not even to eat. "Faggot," was how her siblings referred to her.

First she became an outsider to the family, then a source of income. "My mother saw me dress and move very femininely," says Maxi. "Then she had an idea: she could sell me to old men." Her mother, who had herself worked as a prostitute, explained "how it's done" and promised that bringing home money would earn her her family's love.

[...]

In 2010, a 28-year-old woman from Dortmund received a sentence for child sexual abuse, forced prostitution and human trafficking. She had approached the parents of her eventual victim, a 13-year-old girl, in Bulgaria, her country of origin. She promised to provide the girl an education and a job as a waitress.

For a child growing up in poverty, this life sounded like paradise. What actually followed was hell. From the summer of 2007 until October the woman forced the girl into prositution, selling her to male clients. Resistance was punished with beatings.

Authorities only became involved when the perpetrator's own brother helped the girl escape. Together with another young woman they were on their way to the Netherlands when a routine check at the border became suspicious of the group.

In 2017, a whole trio of pimps stood trial. Over the course of several years the three young men forced young Bulgarian women to prostitute themselves in Dortmund and Hamm. The investigation only began after one of the women, who had been forced into prostitution since 2009, contacted the police years later. When she first was made to enter the red light district, she had been 15 years old.

In 2019, a woman was sentenced for aiding in human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation and for aiding in forced prostitution. In her home country of Bulgaria, she had established contact with an impoverished woman suffering from cancer. In a "woman-to-woman talk", as the ruling puts it, the defendant promised that she would find work for the ill woman's daughter in Germany. She spoke of "normal work", such as becoming a cleaner or lunchlady.

For as little as 100 €, the 15-year-old daughter was then sold to the defendant and her husband, who brought the girl to Germany in 2006. What was lined up for her there was not a well-paying job however, but a brothel. The defendant - who had herself been forced into prostitution by her husband - instructed the girl in various sexual practices. The husband, who was senteced as well, defined the prices: 30 € for sex, 20 € for oral sex and 40 € if she allowed the men to touch her during the act. On her first night she was delivered to eight different men. From then on she was made to meet with five to six Johns, every day.

The victim says she had no idea what was going on when she left her home in Bulgaria. "I didn't know what I was supposed to do in Germany. I only got into the car because my mother told me to," she testified in court. Her passport and papers were taken from her, as well as all of her payments. When she ended up getting pregnant by one of her clients, the couple sold her to him - for 400 €. All of these cases share a similarity: not once did any of the men who molested the children stand trial.

Maxi will probably never forget her first client. "I still feel his hands on me," she says. After about 5 to 10 minutes it was over. "Go shower," he said. Blood ran down her legs as she cried in the shower.

Besides this man there are two others whose faces won't leave Maxi's head. "One client noticed that something was wrong. I had bruises, acted weird. When he wanted to kiss me I closed my eyes," Maxi tells. She remembers the conversation vividly.

"He said: 'You don't want this, do you?' I replied: 'No.' He was surprised. Then he said: 'Should I take you home? I'll give you a little money so your mother won't get mad at you.' What I know is that he was a politician. Another time a police officer took me. He knew I didn't want it. It made him enjoy it more."

We're not able to vouch for whether what Maxi tells us is true. But the social workers we spoke to [the ones taking care of Maxi who facilitated this interview, I cropped this out earlier] confirm the details of her life and say that Maxi is one of many examples. They're familiar with these stories from many cases. Oftentimes boys are even younger when they're entered into prostitution. 12-year-olds, 13 or 14. Many clients are looking for those as young as possible.

How many men abused her in total, Maxi can't say. Sometimes it was six or eight per week. All of them had been very old, wealthy, and specifically searching for children and adolescents.

According to Maxi, her family turned her into a business. "Everyone knew: Grandma, uncle, just everyone. They were happy with the money they received from me." Her Johns were paying several hundred Euros for each meeting. "Everything went to my mother, every last Cent. She used it to build a house for herself in Romania."

Many of the victims of child prostitution stem from Romani families. This is not a coincidence to the social workers. Selling your body has been one of the few ways to make money for the Romani people for generations. Throughout centuries of discrimination and marginalisation they've been denied access to education and the labour market.

In Bulgaria and Romania, where the Romani people constitute about 10 % of each population, many live in slums at the edges of society. No plumbing, no heating, rarely any electricity. Money is earned from hand to mouth. Some try their luck as farmhands or panhandlers in other EU-states.

One social worker trying to offer assistance to leave prostitution visited these Romani slums in Bulgaria. She describes "unimaginable" living situations. A local organisation shared the results of a recent survey with her: "They'd found that nearly 80 % of Romani girls and boys see their future in prostitution." A paradox: The subject of sex is heavily tabooed to many Romani. Few speak about it openly.

Maxi remembers the first time her mother woke her up in the middle of the night to meet a client outside. A German man, much older than 60. Maxi barely knew any German, but understood enough of the conversation: "My mother told this guy: 800 € for a few hours with me. She didn't say I'm her son."

[...]

[A] social worker shows us the street where the boys who meet with her wait for clients. The older ones teach the younger ones where to go. Their uncles, their own brothers sometimes. "They're recruited by older ones in the community. They say: 'If you get into that guy's car, you'll make 20 €.' Many kids just go along with it. They don't know what's waiting for them."

She herself has driven up and down these streets, any time of day and night, she says. But even though she knows countless affected boys and finds that childhood prostitution is "shockingly normal" in the area, she has never once managed to see any of the Johns. "It's just so frustrating. We know it happens, but we can't stop it. The men just get away with it." [...] The boys, too, do everything in their power to not get caught. "The kids are like little foxes. They know every unmarked police car, spot them at 10 km away," she says. "The kids are gone in a flash."

[...]

After four months of being made to meet with men who raped her after paying her mother, Maxi decided she couldn't take it anymore. "I ran away from home, through the window. I just started running for my life," Maxi recalls. Eventually she reached a highway. "There was this older Polish woman. Spoke no German. I just repeated: 'Police, police!'"

She was driven to a hospital first to receive stitches for an injury left by a client. Then she told the officers everything. [...] Maxi left her mother that day, but not prostitution. She continued working on the street in Dortmund, keeping the money for herself now.

At 16, she was older than the others. "One time I met a boy who had just turned 14. He showed up with make-up on and said 'I want to make money to get away from home.' I asked him why, he said: 'My dad is an alcoholic, we have no money.' I told him where to find help, that I ran away from home too."

Maxi spends time watching the Johns. How they attempt to lure in boys with chocolate or coffee. How they photograph them, hang around for hours. "There was this guy, I told him: 'Leave him alone, he's still a child,' He just replied: 'That makes it hotter.'"

[...]

Social worker Thomas Franke has spoken with countless boys, he says. He plays with them, cooks with them. After a while, they confess the way they earn money. Some even had photos or videos showing their friends or cousins getting into older men's cars.

These situations are hard to bear for the social worker. "A child tells me: this is happening to me. But please, don't tell anyone. So what am I supposed to do now? I want to tell. But if I do, if I get someone involved, I lose their trust. It's a heavy burden."

[...]

What frustrates social workers: Prostitution is heritable. Many seem to see no way out. Many of the abused children grow into troubled adolescents and young adults struggling with addiction. To keep affording the drugs they turn to crime, continued prostitution or pimping out younger kids. "And then they're no longer seen as the abused children, but as asocial, criminal Romani."

Prostitution is a taboo topic anywhere. And a community with sexual morals as strict as the Romani has even less room to talk about it. "-but I'm not gay," is the first thing the children tell him, says Franke. The parents often react the same way. Rather than "Help, my kid was molested!" the first response tends to be "Help, is my child gay?!"

Still, the social worker sees working with the parents as the only way, trying to convince them to report to the police. He's never been successful, however.

People like Maxi share their story to lift the veil of silence on childhood prostitution. Maxi now wants to live as she really is, as a woman. She's known that she was born in the wrong body since she was 6 years old, she says. But only since cutting ties with her family can she be true to herself. Therefore we write "she" instead of "he" from this point onward. [note: the article uses male language for Maxi until here to do this reveal, I've chosen to change that because I find it pointless and obfuscating the way transmisogyny played a part beside homophobia.]

For our interview the now 20-year-old is wearing black leggings, a black T-Shirt and a black sports jacket. She's carrying a jeans purse with little rhinestones. Maxi lives in an apartment provided by the youth office, frequently visited by several social workers. She has no friends, she says. "I don't really want any. I don't want anyone getting close to me, I don't like it."

Maxi is battling depression, has attempted suicide three times in the past. She's currently "on break" from prostitution, she says. "It's not good for me." If she could imagine quitting for good? "I don't know. If I marry a rich sheikh from Dubai, maybe life will get better," she laughs. A little too loud, a little too long.

Two things are giving her hope, she says towards the end of our meeting. She's on a waiting list to receive gender confirmation surgery. And she's working on compiling information to report her mother to the police.

[vefania]

So, as I said before, based on Panem's map we see on TBOSAS... guess which state is in D4? Yup, California.

And guess which state has the largest Mexican population? That's right, California again.

What does this mean for my delusion? That's right, Mexican roots, this time most centric-southern and coastal.

So, drop the navy blue, finnick odair 2.0, pirate, aesthetic we usually see and hear me out:

Light cotton clothing in light colors with some typical embroidery from Oaxaca or Veracruz.

Fruit carts and stands, something very typical of tourist coastal beaches: tropical fruits such as watermelon, pineapple, papaya, cucumber, jicama with chamoy and tajín

Altars for Día de Muertos (since now we're talking about a centric mexican influence) more minimalist but with the essential things: candles, fruit, water, cempasúchil and things from the sea like scallops, clamshells, swirling conchs and scattered starfish; perhaps a new version of copal since it is not native in California.

Seafood prepared semi-raw with lemon and chili for this sour-spicy flavor, to mark a difference with the american part where seafood is steamed and buttered, fried, and served with creamier sauces

Crafts with sea creatures, pens, keychains, paintings, bags—all handmade with sea things.

What I'm saying is to maintain this aspect of the real beaches in my country that are based on tourism and from states from which people migrate to California, more south-central. And yes, fishing may be the main industry but District 4 also serves as a "vacation paradise" in the Capitol's propaganda.

I picture it kinda like:

Again, you might say the poverty and oppression are missing and I'm sorry, maybe I'll make another moodboard where is more obvious.

But anyway, give it a like and comment what you think, if I'm crazy and should spend a few days obsessing over something other than THG 😺😺😺😺

fun fact: I had such a hard time trying to understand how you guys classify types of shells because my Mexican vocabulary: caracoles, conchas y caracolas, was just translated as shell, shell, shell. 😭