#capitalization rate

[josephcampercom]

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[is-the-thing-actually-jewish]

are Hanukkah sweaters a Jewish thing? i've seen them before but 90% of the time, they're people trying to make christmas displays more "inclusive." so are they legit Jewish or no?

Rating: Capitalism.

Hanukkah sweaters are a prime example of what I previously characterized as "capitalism's tendency to tepidly repackage any Christmas symbols in literally or metaphorically blue-and-silver wrapping paper to appeal to a Jewish market." As the "ugly sweater" phenomenon has grown more popular, retailers saw an excellent opportunity to widen their market by having "Hanukkah" versions.

That said, there's a wide range of Hanukkah sweaters out there, some of which are more problematic than others. Ones that are literally just recolored Christmas designs with a couple Jewish-y things tacked on, like this "Shalom Gnome" design or this "Oy to the World" design are more problematic than enthusiastically tacky designed-from-the-beginning-to-be-Jewish ones. The former says "Hanukkah! It's Christmas for Jews! Jews! They're just Christians without Santa or Jesus!" while the latter says, "Oh, you're going to walk around with an eyesore sweater full of tinsel and actual little jingle bells as though anyone could possibly forget that it's Christmas season in this country? I see you, I see you, and I'm just going to casually wear this sweater with a menorah and candles that actually light up because Judaism rocks, that's why."

Then there's a whole genre of Hanukkah sweaters with, let's say, more adult content, and people's mileage may greatly vary on how they feel about them. Personally, I find the ones riffing off more secular aspects of the holiday to be largely harmless, such as this "You Spin Me Right Round, Baby" design with dreidels. On the other hand, while some may find it amusingly subversive, I find ones making fun of the religious part of the holiday (i.e., the actual hanukkiah/menorah) to be in poor taste at best. There are a plethora of "let's get lit" Hanukkah sweaters like this one that genuinely annoy me. (For one thing, Hanukkah isn't even a drinking holiday! If you want a drinking holiday, we actually have those but Hanukkah isn't it!) Ones like this that make it into a creepy pick-up line actively disgust me. And this "gelt digger" one is genuinely antisemetic, given the stereotypes about Jews and money.

I would be remiss not to mention what I personally think is the best of the Hanukkah sweater subgenres: animal puns. My fiance owns this Meowzel Tov sweater with a truly garish design. What does "mazel tov" have to do with Hanukkah, you may ask? Absolutely nothing, but hey, cats! Can't be upset about Jewish cats! Similarly, llamas? Not Jewish at all! But Happy Llamakka? Okay, cute pun, cute graphic, I'm reluctantly charmed. Your Menorasaurus would not be kosher for actual use as the candles are all different heights, but you know what, that actually makes me smile.

So, basically: If you get joy out of being loudly Jewish during a season where everything is yelling about Christianity all the time, go ahead and wear your ridiculous ugly sweater to the company party. Just take a close look at the design to make sure it's not actually full of Christmas trees, not pretending something extremely Christmas is Jewish because it's a pun now, doesn't use Charedi men as a cartoon stand-in for anyone Jewish, and doesn't makes being Jewish primarily about not being Christian.

In sum: RIP my browser history, I'm going to be getting such terrible ads for the next several weeks. Click the links at your own risk.

~Mod Leora

[balkanradfem]

Do you think that low birth-rates are a problem?

I think they're the opposite of a problem :)

[nando161mando]

All employees got this email today from admin…

[phoenixyfriend]

Ko-fi prompt from @kayasurin:

Please lay out, in the most simple, basic terms, what progressive taxes (I think that's the name for them) are and how they work so I can eventually win an argument, thanks!

Personally, I still think this cartoon at @thenib explains marginal taxes better than anything else I've seen.

This is the wikipedia image for progressive tax rates, comparing taxation in 1970 in three countries (UK, US, France) to the same countries in 2005. (article)

The above illustrates how, ideally, people will be paying a greater amount of their wealth to the state if they have more wealth than a person should have. The actual details of it are a bit more complicated, since it deals with wealth percentiles instead of straight income amounts, so we'll move on.

Let's imagine that the margin is $50k/year, because that is the livable wage pre-tax for wherever we set this. Under the $50k, you pay 20%. Anything past that $50, you pay 70%.

If you make $25k/year, you pay 20% on it, and that's the end of it.

If you make $50k/year, you pay 20% on it, and that's the end of it.

If you make $150k/year, then you pay 20% on the first $50k, and then 70% on the remaining $100k.

If you make a a million, you still only pay 20% on the first $50k, but then 70% on the remaining $950k.

On a moral level, the idea here is that everyone should pay taxes, but nobody should face an undue burden. If you make at least $50k, then you are left with at least $40k after taxes, no matter how much more you make, which should be enough to live off of without trouble. If you make more after that, good for you! You have to pay a higher tax on that portion, but not on the previous $50k, so you will still have that livable wage of $40k post-tax. In the context of our setting, any money you make that is more than $50k is, in theory, a surplus. Not just disposable income, but extra-disposable income, the kind where a person asks "okay, you are making so much money that a lot of your surplus must be coming from someone else not getting paid enough, so let's just get that from you now to make up for the difference."

Buuuuuut there's still a difference between someone who makes $55k, someone who makes $250k, and someone who makes a million a year.

So the above explanation does greatly oversimplify. Part of progressive tax rates is that it's not just "people under this high wage get this tax rate, and everyone above it gets this other tax rate." It's not just the two categories, but a set of steps.

Let's look at this chart from Wiztax.

If this chart stresses you out to look at, don't worry. I'll explain.

(I believe 11k is approximately where the official poverty line sits in NYC right now, and 44,725 is about a living wage for someone with roommates and no kids.)

If you take a look at the second line, $11k-44,725, it tells you that the amount you pay is $1,100 plus 12% of the amount over. That $1,100 is the 10% of under 11k from the first line, and then you pay 12% of the rest.

Next line down, $44,726-95,375 looks wild in comparison. Your flat base for everything 44,725 and under is $5,147! Which is...

1,100 + 0.12*(44,725-11,000)

You pay the tax rate for that specific margin all the way up. You pay 10% for the first 11k, 12% on the next 33,725, 22% of the next 50,650, and so on.

It's chunks, and steps, because our tax code does (sometimes, if we're lucky) understand that all this exists on a spectrum. You do not get taxed out of your nose if you make one cent above that $44,725. You just get taxed a bit higher for the next 50k.

Here is a truly horrible little illustration of how it works, if that's easier:

[f0x-meets-w0lf]

i've been working too freaking much to have time for actually anything outside of tattooing, but i swear to god i haven't forgotten about y'all (or yet-to-be-completed my 911 gotcha for gaza prompts, omg). i've been doing a lot of cool pieces lately but damn are they keeping me freaking busy!! i miss being a little gremlin on here lmao

[hella1975]

so there's a reason my new job got back to me so quickly about my application and that's bc it's an absolute fucking shambles like actually perfect timing for me to decide to rewatch the bear bc i have never more felt like ive been thrown into a broke on-its-knees establishment trying to crawl its way up the ladder where i am somehow a godsend to them. my old job was crazy and shambolic in the sense that the industry is just Like That but this one?????? insanity. every 5 mins i am questioning what im doing with my life. ive already had a walk-in fridge moment

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[mxjackparker]

If the minimum wage for under-18s in the UK hadn't been £3.87 per hour when I was 17 (it's now £6.40, not fucking high enough), I never would've started sex work. Working full time, I still wasn't earning enough to survive on, because the under-18 minimum wage here assumes that teenagers have their parents paying their bills.

Teens are regularly put in positions where they have to take on adult responsibilities and bills, yet they're paid less for doing the same work as adults who may need money less than they do!

[stuckinapril]

You guys don’t know how much yearning for Baghdad takes up of my mental real estate

[kingmintyreturns]

i could go into how tumblr promotes OCD tendencies for hours but i'll address one thing: the ethics of media consumption. for some, pirating media by problematic creators and being critical of the source material is not enough.

almost as if the source itself will lead to moral decay by merit of its problematic elements or creators, consuming verboten media is said to be a reflection of the consumer's morality. in psychology, we call this emotional contamination--a symptom typically associated with OCD.

this is often reflected in "X fans DNI". i don't know about you, but the idea that someone can be labeled as complicit in violence and therefore untouchable simply for engaging with certain media in a critical manner without supporting the creators is a tad frightening.

[nacrelysis]

shove over mo ran, it's my turn to wait five years for chu wanning

[solarpunkani]

I hate needing backup jobs for my backup jobs

Like. Animation industry is kinda a bust rn. Local library and USPS branch aren’t hiring (unless I learn how to fix up cars and trucks REAL quick). Freelance writing implies I have articles out already, which I don’t. Anything I can find so far thats mildly naturey either pays 13 bucks an hour, involves chainsaws and bears, or both.

Like. What the fuck else do I do? Rot? *Retail?*

100 more reasons why capitalism sucks. How the hell am I supposed to get years of experience if no one’ll hire me and a MASTERS degree isn’t worth shit? How am I supposed to improve my portfolio if 75% of the jobs I apply to won’t even answer back? Why do I HAVE to have a job in order to even survive, let alone get my own place with a nice garden? And why is going back to school a near-impossible option because ~debt~ and ~loans~?

Why can’t we just have nice things

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Contrary to what neoclassical economists claim, there are no neutral market forces that allocate income in proportion to productivity. Instead there are only ideas and the power to implement them. In other words, people have ideas about what their income should be (and also what other people’s income should be). And they have the power (or lack thereof) to make these ideas a reality. That’s it.

Blair Fix, How Interest Rates Redistribute Income

[nando161mando]

Brought to you by the people who always complain about low birthrates