#commies don't understand economics

[beardedmrbean]

MEPs approved new fiscal rules for the EU during a plenary session on Tuesday despite an ongoing campaign by trade unions to prevent "austerity 2.0" from passing through.

"This reform constitutes a fresh start and a return to fiscal responsibility," said co-rapporteur Makrus Ferber (EPP – Germany). "The new framework will be simpler, more predictable and more pragmatic. However, the new rules can only become a success if properly implemented by the Commission."

The regulation passed with 359 votes in favour, 166 against and 61 abstentions, with conservatives, liberals and socialist groups helping to get the text over the line.

Advocates of the reform say it heralds a return to fiscal control after a more lax approach during the Covid-19 pandemic. Member States will now be required to keep budget deficits at less than 3% of national GDP. In addition, countries with excessive debt will be required to reduce it on average by 1% per year if their debt is above 90% of GDP, and by 0.5% per year on average if it is between 60% and 90%.

'Straitjacket'

European and Belgian trade unions have led a long campaign denouncing the reforms as a "Europe-wide return to austerity".

According to ETUC General Secretary Esther Lynch, 18 Member States including Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Poland would be unable to meet the required minimum level of investment in housing, healthcare and education under the new rules. In addition, only three Member States – Sweden, Ireland and Denmark – will be able to meet the social and climate investments required of them.

"This agreement, forced by the austerity approach of some European capitals, will require member states to reduce their debts rapidly and in ways that are economically and socially unsustainable," ETUC stated on the eve of the vote. "This will mark a return to austerity. At the same time, the new rules will also act as a disincentive to invest towards the social and climate objectives EU member states have agreed upon, by limiting the marge of manoeuvre of public deficit."

Similarly, Belgian MEP and President of the European Greens/EFA group Philippe Lamberts (Ecolo) drew attention to the social and environmental cost of tighter economic measures. "These new budgetary rules will impose a straitjacket on all EU Member States," he said on Monday. "It will deprive governments of the financial resources needed to guarantee a thriving economy, social services and climate action."

Other political groups in the European Parliament acknowledge that the reforms are imperfect, but necessary nonetheless. "There is no doubt that this deal is much better than no deal and going back to the old rules or having no rules at all," said co-rapporteur Margarida Marques (S&D – Portugal).

Right-wing and far-right political groups welcome a more stringent approach to EU budgetary rules. "There are a number of Member States who have gone too far in debt financing and this is a potential danger which can't be justified nationally or EU-wide," said MEP Johan Van Overtveldt (ECR/N-VA – Belgium). This echoes positions of "frugal" countries such as Germany, who fear another bail-out in the worst-case scenario.

Tax the rich

Tuesday's vote has not stopped the opposition campaign in its tracks. ETUC, the trade union leading the fight, has now emphasised the need to "tax the rich" as a solution to the EU's budgetary difficulties.

"Working people who have suffered a historic drop in living standards as a result of the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis simply don’t have anything left for politicians to take," stated Lynch in a press release published in the wake of the vote. "Instead politicians who supported these fiscal rules should have the decency to meet them through taxes on the corporations which registered record breaking profits which fueled inflation."

The vote on the budgetary reforms is one of almost 90 to take place during the Strasbourg plenary this week. This is the last time MEPs will convene before the end of the mandate and there is a palpable sense of urgency to deliver to voters before European elections on 9 June.

[dasha-aibo]

A big rant about the Russian opposition

Well, you said you wanted it, so here it is.

Be warned: this will be long, rambly and unfocused. But I will try to split it into several parts.

Where it all began. The 90s.

Following the collapse of the USSR, Russian opposition was left in a weird state. Big Soviet-era opposition figures like Yeltsin now held all the power, yet, at the same time, the government was full of ex-Soviet party members. See, ol' Boris didn't want to do a lustration. I don't have his exact motivations, but, if I was put at a gunpoint and forced to guess, it was because Russia, even without all the states that left was a BIGHUGE country and needed people who knew how it all worked. And all of them happened to be party apparatchicks.

Yeltsin also left the KGB eseentially untouched. This is not well-known, but KGB were actually supportive of the fall of the USSR. Now, late-Gorby KGB is not the same as KGB during Stalin or even Khruschev. They were de-fanged and forced under too much supervision. Which they didn't like. So they were allowed to change their name, had some reshuffling and re-emerged as FSB. Ostensibly, just there to fight crime and protect the state, no disappearing people allowed anymore.

This is important to understand as we go forward.

90s were, overall, a time of terrible, terrible poverty and unimaginably, unprecedented freedom in Russia. If you knew what to do and was willing to do it, you could become a millionaire overnight. If you didn't have a particuarly marketable set of skills or was just unwilling to adapt, you'd be on the brink of starvation. And that's me not even touching the organized and disorganized crime which was absolutely rampant.

Then there was the privatization. Essentially, Yegor Gaidar, the prime minister during Yeltsin's first term decided that the best course of action was to take this lumbering 70-yo communist system and crash it head-first into capitalism. It was even called "shock therapy".

Now, in hindisght, we can say that his policies very much saved Russia and lead to economic prosperity later on. But man, shit was HARD for regular people. Especially hordes of state workers.

His most infamous project, however, was the privatization. Essentially, since EVERYTHING in USSR was state-owned and we were moving towards a capitalist system, someone needed to become the owner of all this state property. Privatize it, so to say. Of course, regular people could privatize their cars and apartments, which most everyone did. But the big bucks were in all the factories and natural resource mines. And this was done in the most ass-backwards way possible. People with connections got to bid on very lucrative property in the dead of the night with only one announcement in the local newspaper nobody read. Shit like that.

Everyone disliked that.

This is how Russia became saddled with it's giant oligarchy class.

I promise all of this is relevant.

Another really important thing happened in the 90s: the 1996 election. Yeltsin wanted a second term and he REALLY didn't want commies, his main opposition, to win. So he played dirty. Unlike what many later said, he didn't outright steal the elections. He did, however, do everything in his power as a prez to ensure a victory.

Everyone disliked that. Which is how we got Putin.

But 90s also saw the rise of several important opposition figures. And there really was actual freedom of speech and very little crackdown on opposition and protests. It still happened, don't get me wrong, but it was so minor compared to what's happening today, that it's barely worth mentioning. Anyway, back to opposition figures.

I will note three main one. Boris Nemtsov was the biggest - he was a favorite of Yeltsin's, was even a Deputy Prime Minister at one point and was considered as Yeltsin's heir at the same point. Things didn't work out. But he was the big face of liberals and democrats of the era. A guy who's "against everything bad and for everything good".

Then there was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. An oligarch and a philantropist, he was genuinely interested in the future of Russia and making it a big important country on the world stage through education and commerce.

Lastly, Gennady Kasparov. Yeah, the chess guy who lost to a computer. He wasn't really political in the 90s, but I still consider him part of the "old guard".

Part 2 in a reblog, because this is getting unreadable.

[bogusfilth]

I guess I'm going to passively @edwad on this because it was originally sort of supposed to be an ask for him only because. idk. as a tumblr commie he's our collective econ-theory advice columnist i guess. but i couldn't keep it short enough and it's more about me just talking to myself anyway. but I'm sitting here reading Skidelsky's edited Essential Keynes volume and it gets to the selections from the Tract on Monetary Reform. and Keynes says something about the natural interest rate and I'm trying to dredge something up from my brain about Sraffa's argument against a natural interest rate and end up falling down the rabbit hole on that a little bit and Wicksell's idea vs Hayek's idea of said concept. and I'm thinking about how every time I try to handle these ideas their concepts of things like "rent" and "interest" seems very slippery over time. and maybe I'm just broadly not well read enough. and how long it took me in high school even just to understand a substantialist value-concept from reading the opening chapters of capital.

but like what I really don't understand is the relationship of Marx's Critique taken more in its status as Critique to the conceptually related but still heterogeneous traditions of economics that come after him, in a way that isn't just attempting to rehabilitate the classical approach, or something like Ben Fine's critique of the explosion-implosion of the assumptions of marginalist theory, or like. idk Eatwell's constant insistence that modern macro is built on sand because of the Cambridge Capital controversy or whatever. those feel like attempts to say "the way we're doing economics is wrong" but is that warranted or useful if we're trying to say that the real insights of Marx are the places where he's doing something beyond just "these guys are doing economics wrong." Given the whole thing about the "categories of bourgeois economics" in the section on commodity fetishism, do we not have to follow the shifts in those categories, rather than say "well only the earlier categories were actually right."

in any case. re: the glorious-revolution posting from User @'ed Above I think it's interesting to look at this pivot to examining maybe something like more concrete a) financial technologies and b) policy as something important and like. idk I guess i've been personally meaning to tackle something like broader longue durée history. and I would really hope to end up with something like world-systems theory but more informed by a more critical approach to the economic concepts involved.

[48787]

I've learned just how much I appreciate "Decentralization" Not the shitty fucking crypto bro "Yooo dude if we just do the fetishization of capital harder it'll surely be decentralized, surely we just need to do it harder bro" kinda shit But the idea that like, even if the systems that maintain the standards that maintain social power/value of certain things we care about goes under (Whether through bankruptcy, lack of resources, lack of userbase, etc) I will still be able to maintain the personal value I find or have already found through relying on those systems. So it would be better if those systems were more easily able to be opted out of to make that transition smoother if/when it happens and so I can maintain my own personal standards!! (Not fetishizing individualism, just saying that I am an individual person who wants to be able to force my own standards to be applicable to my own life. This very much is in support of giving power to the workers forced to use these systems the power to more easily destroy the systems they work within if they need to and force their own social standards to become the new system. All my posts are attempts at corrupting your mind with commie brain washing, you must understand this because once you do you might begin to accept this as well)

I've been thinking about swapping from Discord over to Matrix for a little while now for this exact reason but didn't know just how far reaching it applied. It contextualizes why I wanted to swap over to firefox much more aptly rather than just doing it because I simply hated chromium. I wanted more. It also makes be better appreciate tumblr, and why I felt so able to actually commit to a social meda for once. It's because the blog is my own and I always have the export button right in front of me. If I don't like my blog, I can make a new one. If I don't like tumblr I can leave tumblr and still have my blog (just without the value of being able to reach a wider audience... which I didn't even want to begin with!!! I just wanted an audience and I already have that with my friends and current mutuals!!! I don't care about audience growth, I'd rather deeper entrench the social investments I already have made in the social entities I enjoy). And since I'm no longer worried about this being my entire being (No longer fetishizing social media), I am no longer worried about this being my own shot at having a blog, I can take more risks!!

I can see posts my wife sends me where she's like "I don't know if I can reblog this or not" and say "No you totally can if you want, in fact I want to so I'm going to reblog it right now" and it pushes both me and her to be more honestly depraved with each other, which is lovely!! It lets me show off that honest depravity with people who are okay with seeing it more easily too!! It's just super liberating and I would only be able to feel this way if escape was possible and I have a safety net insuring I can make sure that net continues to exist and continues to widen. Sure, it requires a certain amount of tech literacy, a certain amount of economic literacy, a metric shit ton of political and class literacy, and at least one other person willing to help me, but hey I have all those things so I know my net will work for me!! Anyway, this was just more agency-posting. If you are empathizing, sympathizing, or are envious I'd recommend starting by figuring out what you want your safety net to capture, why you want that to be able to be captured, what happens if you're wrong (not if you're wrong, just what would happen first), and then whether or not your current net actually does or doesn't already capture what you want it to so you know where to put your focus into!!

And if you want advice for where to start on that I highly recommend at least skimming Das Kapital (Or just Capital or Capital: A Critique of Political Economy or whatever you know it as, labels are meaningless beyond the meaning we want them to have, as long as you know that I'm talking about Marx's economic analysis book that's fine) and coming to an understanding of what value is and what money is and how they are not linked. That's what allowed me to get this far, and I think if more people were able to not only unlink their personal value from money but also take steps to limit their own desires and pursuing of capital to better focus on their "real" value more and more people would be able to be "this far" as well!

[commajade]

hi, this is a really stupid question but i was wondering if you could help me understand why that one tweet about a squid game meme on twitter (by the user thenormalspark) is so bad? is it the tweet itself or the meme in question?

i know that asking this can be burdensome and tiring + that you also don't have an obligation to explain, so i wanted to thank you and also apologize in advance.

this tweet is from a korean person (my mutual on korean commie twt) who is saying that the meme is funny but in a nasty way because south korea is the capitalist hellscape that it is because of the complete US military occupation and economic control over south korea. the US military forgives debts so people can murder people in their own homes. the US military presence in south korea kills people.

[papirouge]

The Nazis who killed millions are no longer around, Germany has renounced Nazism. The scene of their crimes remain to educate the future generations on the evil that took place. Society will never again accept Nazis. "Nazi" is derogatory nowadays.

The millions killed by communism is swept under the rug in Western education, ignoring the countless souls lost to the Chinese Communist Party currently in power in one of the most powerful countries on Earth. Genocide by the communist party is happening RIGHT NOW. The Uyghurs are being rounded up, held in camps, and God knows what happens next. "Communists" don't want to own the Uyghur genocide, they don't want to own North Korea, they don't want to own Che Guevara being a racist, homophobic, murderer, they don't want to own the failures of communism, they don't want to own the tens of millions killed by communism. I've spoken to survivors of communist take overs, let me tell you, they don't take kindly to this white-washing of communism by those who have never witnessed the horrors they have.

"The millions killed by communism is swept under the rug in Western education, ignoring the countless souls lost to the Chinese Communist Party currently in power in one of the most powerful countries on Earth" IDK what lacklustre school you attended but mine educated me about the atrocities of Communism regime. I will NEVER get this weird obsession of acting like Communism was somehow more threatening today than Nazism : Communism is DEAD, been dead, for a couple of years now.

Today's China is a weird mix of filthy economical capitalism and social communism. But China isn't here threatening the world to military & politically advance its "Communist empire" like the Nazi did.

All this anti-Communism charade is a joke bc you know damn well you aren't personally threatened to end up in a gulag for bitching about communism governments. This is performative slacktivism. Which is funny bc the rightoids with an obsessive hate boner against Communism and proudly claiming being "anti commie" were the ones a few years ago clowning "anti nazi" liberals, saying it was a 'phantom menace'. Well, so does being "anti Communist" in 2022.

The genocide perpetuated by China on Uighurs has nothing to do with communism, but rather cultural/religious authoritarianism. The USA does the very same thing to plentiful of countries they bombed, for being Muslim AND resisting to USA imperialism (Liban, Irak, etc.) and I've yet to see anti-communists clutch their pearls and whine about capitalism/liberals being a threat for humanity and trying to shut down any discourse painting these political regimes positively.

Saying that Communism achieved good things doesn't absolve the fact that some Communist figure were POS ; idk why Communism should be above reproach for people to support it. USA imperialism bred some of the biggest war criminals and yet people still brag that US capitalism is still the best regime in the world. Don't be shook that people feel entitled to do the same with Communism.

In the end of the day, I don't need no white washing of Communism to choose a commie over a Nazi ANY DAY lmao. Communism ideology is not saying I'm from an inferior race because I'm not a blue haired blood Aryan. Communism, as much of a bloodshed trainwreck it turned out to be, didn't aim killing people for simply existing/not being of the 'right' race. There's a reason it exported so well in third world countries, unlike Nazism who was peak White people madness. Whites will NEVER understand that. That's why they get so pissy at non Whites preferring communism to Nazism. But they need to get over themselves and grasp that other demographics have just a whole different perspective on History.

[conceptsformyowner]

I've always wanted an extended versions of those bios listing things you are. I want to make a really long really random and extensive unnecessary one. So here you go, in no particular order, numbered for convenience, I am:

Trans

Non-binary

Disabled

Neurodivergent

A commie moving towards anarchism (if you know about it, I'm happy to learn)

An artist

An environmentalist

A computer science student against crypto

Vegan

A sub. A toy. (You may call me toy)

Not your sub or your toy. (You may not call me your toy)

Not a woman.

Not a man.

Agender.

Not confused about my lack of gender.

Cute.

Pretty. (Always)

Beautiful. (when helplessly restrained).

Gorgeous. (when helplessly restrained for a long time)

A musician.

A writer.

Pro-sex work.

An atheist.

Jewish.

Latinamerican.

White.

Poor.

A filmmaker.

Anxious.

Pro-abortion.

Anti-punitivist.

Ambitious.

A mess.

Anti-intellectualist.

Anti-racist.

Anti-ableist.

A believer in change.

A great communicator.

Awful at understanding unspoken or vague things.

Awful at dressing myself.

Trying to learn how to draw.

Trying to learn how to cook. (New things)

Trying to learn how to love myself. (Without arrogance)

Trying to learn to help others, and not only not to judge them or to verbally support them.

Succeeding at learning to take care of myself first.

Succeeding at learning to set boundaries.

Failing miserably at getting economic stability.

Good at making friends.

Bad at not getting overwhelmed by the amount of people I start conversations with some days when understimulated and not kept in check.

Awful at finishing projects.

Great at planning projects.

Not scared to ask things.

Terrified of asking for money.

Incredibly insecure of my art.

Disproportionately proud of my ideas.

Been learning how not to be arrogant for the last 10 years.

21 years old.

Hilarious.

Someone who's not as funny as they think.

Someone who can always make you laugh no matter what, very easily. (If you happen to be myself).

Very annoyed at the existence of genitals and their permanence.

Deeply frustrated when someone starts making shit up once they run out of arguments.

Someone who used to make shit up when they ran out of arguments.

Obsessed with truth.

Someone who doesn't really understand the severity of the word obsessed.

Tired of celebrities.

Tired of post-truth.

Tired.

Terrified by transphobia.

Terrified by homophobia.

Terrified by the climate crisis.

Trans, gay, and young.

Kinkysexual.

Figuring out if aromantic.

In need of economic independence.

A teacher.

An impostor syndrome champion. Or, well, someone who thinks they might be suffering from that, but is not very sure, I mean, other people probably have it worst, right?

Entrenched in a community of marginalized people who need help and have isolated themselves from the outside of the community as protection and coping mechanism against the reality of an incredibly hostile world, and from that isolation, try to only get help from each other, which is to say, more harmed and helpless people in an infinite cycle of trying to care for yourself and your community, and trying to ask help from it that enlightens anyone walking by with the realization that the reason we don't survive is because living in a world of hurt and needy people as a hurt and needy person is one of the most exhausting and frustratingly unfair ways a person can be made to live.

Someone who gets random moments of eloquence.

Someone who writes things in a needlessly complicated way because they were taught the rules of language very thoroughly and believe that as long as they follow them everyone will understand them.

Someone who doesn't believe there's such a thing as the rules of a language.

A musical theatre performer.

A bingewatcher.

An animator.

A whovian.

[pinkcadillaccas]

Being patronised by my cousin because she thinks I don't understand basic sociatal structure because I said I didn't like that we have to offer economic motivations to get people to care about social issues, I'm not an idiot I'm just a commie please stop talking to me

[mornington-the-crescent]

Random commie on Tumblr: economics is astrology for men!! Me, a woman studying economics: so do I have make privilege now 👀 also I'm sure most people who say that either failed/don't understand econ or are commies (that's basically the same thing twice tbh)

It’s more that they don’t understand it. Most of them have never actually encountered an economic argument in the wild. For most of them, their understanding (and I use that word in the loosest sense possible) of economic issues comes from hearing it repeated by someone who heard it repeated by someone who didn’t actually understand the argument in the first place. If there were any more straw in the arguments they repeatedly attack and “refute”, then California would seek to ban them.

[uncanny-tranny]

Part of me wonders if knit, weave, and to an extent, crochet have been deemed "women's work" not only because it was the only option for women (besides childrearing and whatnot), but also because they could own the things they make from that labour. I can absolutely imagine myself being wrong, but it makes me wonder just how deep it runs when people feel undervalued, unappreciated, and, even, exploited. Things like knit, I can imagine, are great not only because it can be economical and a necessity, but also because of the way you interact with labour and ownership as a result of it.

Not to be a dirty commie, but while I don't think the crafts are going to save the working class by itself, I think it's genuinely a stepping stone for many people to truly start understanding what labour and time mean. We (general) understand it in the scope of how we labour for a company, corporation, or whatever else, but I think less people understand what labour truly means.

One of the great things about fiber arts (at least to me) is that... you outright own the things you make. It's hard for me to comprehend actually owning something, and that's that. The item you have created doesn't need to come with strings attached (pun intended).

In a world where you are constantly buying things but not owning any of it, truly, it's such an odd experience to actually have ownership of your labour, time, and love like that.

[edwad]

Wad, how do I be a good commie without reading 6 hours a day? My brain is shit and I don't understand half of that stuff, I don't understand Capital or the difference between Leninism and Maoism and Stalinism and whatever else, but I believe in the labourers right to their work product and all that. Like you don't have to get economics to be a capitalist, do you have to be an academic to be a communist?

do you really think that any of us are spending 6 hours a day reading tho. most of us have shit for brains and i include myself in this

[endtaxation]

More proof commies don't understand basics economics https://t.co/RXdbEze9j4

More proof commies don't understand basics economics https://t.co/RXdbEze9j4

— End Taxation (@EndTaxation) April 13, 2017

from Twitter https://twitter.com/EndTaxation

[totallymotorbikes]

Whatever: Moto Inequality A few MO commenters are always encouraging me to keep my politics to myself, which I do as much as I can because I understand people want to read about motorcycles and look at pretty pics when they come here to get away from it all. The problem for me is that if you’re paying attention to your life, including motorcycles, politics can’t be avoided any more than you can just ignore the family of bears who just decided to share your campsite. Politics affects my bottom line. Stop me if I’ve already addressed this topic before, but what got me onto it again was people lamenting the other day how the motorcycle industry is dying off because the kids don’t want to go outside and ride; they just wanna sit in a sensory deprivation hyperbaric chamber all day and take selfies and play video games. It’s their parents’ fault, they also say, for not exposing them to the Great Outdoors as children. Personally, I think what’s wrong with the millennials is this: None of them are buying motorcycles because none of them have any money. So, fine, let’s not talk about politics: Let’s talk about economics. The Motorcycle Diaries is a pretty fun film about a couple of guys whose clapped-out Norton causes them to become Commies. I might be willing to go along with the millennial bashers if I didn’t have my own dog in the fight (my son), and if he didn’t have a bunch of friends in the same holey boat. To begin with, if we Boomers had had Playstations, “Call of Duty” and VR headsets, you can be damn sure that the Indulgent Generation (children of the Greatest Gen) would’ve been all over that action, and just like the current one we would’ve grown eventually tired of those toys, too. I can’t remember the last time I saw mine (now 23 years old) shooting up the forces of evil from my couch. He does have his nose in his phone a lot, but every time I expect to find him playing Candy Crush or looking for Pokemons, he’s reading something for a school assignment or doing homework. I do wish we’d spent more time camping and hiking and doing Great Outdoors things when the kid was growing up, but with his mother and me both working full-time and then some, there never seemed to be enough energy or money, for much of that on the weekends – though for years we did pack up the Ranger (the kid’s still driving it with almost 180,000 miles showing) nearly every weekend for a trip to one of the local MX parks, none of which were nearer than a two-hour drive. Not like when I was a kid, where you could ride your minibike all kinds of places not necessarily legally but nobody much cared. And I don’t know anybody who packs the kids up in the station wagon every summer for a two-week vacay anymore like we used to do (on one income), though I do know a few people (mostly on Facebook) who are constantly checking in from Monaco or Hawaii or a really expensive restaurant. Their big garages, already groaning with collectible Ducatis, are always gaining new bikes and expensive cars. I manage not to be too bitter mostly because my MO duties sometimes have my own garage stuffed with great motorcycles, but that wouldn’t be the case if I was having to pay for them. And my son, who was kind of soured on bikes there for a few years after a couple of frightening RM85 mishaps involving gravity, is back into motorcycles now in a big way, so we do have that going for us. We Burnses are simple peasant stock who don’t need much. If he hadn’t had me for a role model, though, I don’t know that my kid would’ve ever caught the motorcycle bug in the first place. What I see in his generation isn’t a lack of enthusiasm for letting the good times roll, but a much greater and earlier awareness of the harsher realities of life than we Boomers had: Faced with the high cost and need for education, and the expensiveness of lots of things we took for granted (a garage, healthcare, Rolling Stones tickets), I see a frugality that’s more in line with my Children of the Depression parents (save that aluminum foil!) than with my own. A buddy in Solvang who was looking for new digs sent me this Craigslist: $1450 / 2br – 400ft2 – 5th Wheel on 15 acres (Full Hook-ups) (Solvang) That kind of overarching worry about finances had them wondering the same thing: Why would you ride around on a vehicle that’s 38 more times likely to get you killed than a nice sensible Pontiac Bonneville? A lack of money creates a cautious worldview that excludes things like motorcycles, which are both dangerous and toys to outsiders. Google “millennial earnings” to find tons of stories like this one at Forbes. In the ’60s, we bypassed our parents’ concerns because the world was our ever-expanding oyster and bell-bottoms and bongs were in; shooting guys to the moon was also a dangerous thing with no real economic payoff, but we all got behind it anyway. And the astronauts got Corvettes! In that era, a lightly-used Camaro or Mustang was not out of reach of the average 20-something; neither was a decent middle-class living for just about anybody who worked 40 hours a week. Homelessness wasn’t yet a thing, not where I grew up anyway. The future, in short, looked rosy, and motorcycle sales, especially cheap Japanese ones, soared. A quick run over to Chevrolet.com informs me that the cheapest new Camaro with a V-8 starts at $37,295. It’s not like there’s not still plenty of money sloshing around in the economy. The problem is very little of it is leaking down into the pockets of people who buy motorcycles anymore, which used to consist mainly of young males. For a while there the Occupy Wall Street movement gained a little traction complaining about things like the CEO-to-worker pay ratio, which has climbed from 42-to-1 in 1980 to its current level of 335-to-1, according to the AFL-CIO. GlassDoor has it at only 204:1. Either way, we’ve moved on to more pressing concerns like transgender bathrooms and walling off Mexico. Do Americans buy motorcycles when they have money? I think this little chart from webbikeworld.com is worth a thousand words. One man’s “wealth redistribution” is another man’s “tax reform,” but lately both terms are code for even less disposable income for those just launching themselves into the job market. We worship the wealthy in the U.S. Nobody has a problem with the six heirs to Sam Walton’s Walmart having a net worth greater than the bottom 42% of Americans combined, but make no mistake their six fat straws are drawing from the communal milkshake. Good for them and Sam Walton; I don’t begrudge them their wealth at all. I do know the country was better off when the top tax rates were a bit higher. I was there. I seriously doubt that the small percentage of us who gravitate toward motorcycles has grown any smaller; blaming the youngsters for a faltering motorcycle industry is a classic case of blaming the victim (even if E-i-C Duke deduced in this editorial that fewer kids today are riding bicycles, creating a bigger hurdle to riding a motorcycle one day). Meanwhile, the people who do have a few bucks continue to keep Harley-Davidson, BMW and other builders of upscale motos afloat. Ducati and its Scramblers are one bright spot among several, but my intel is that the average Scrambler buyer is 47 years old. (And that’s not even a bad thing if said 47-year old trades in a nice, clean bike for a disadvantaged youth to pick up on the cheap.) I’m almost ready to throw up my hands and not care anymore, really, since it looks like my own offspring, after taking only five years to secure his four-year degree, appears to have landed a jay-o-bee after he graduates in a few months where he’ll make more than his dear old Dad right out of the chute. I couldn’t be prouder and when it comes to pass, I think it means he’ll be giving back my old R1 – and maybe even the old Ranger truck. First thing he wanted to know when he called me with the news, was ‘what’s up with that new Ducati Supersport anyway?’ He thinks he needs one. I think I’m going to offer him a smoking R1/Ranger package deal and see if I can finally achieve the Buell XB-9S of my dreams, then pull up the prosperity ladder behind me. I’m glad we’re able to have this discussion without getting into politics. What’s a nice pre-owned RC213V-S down to now? Maybe I’ll get one of them… Whatever: Moto Inequality appeared first on Motorcycle.com.

[cherokeefrank]

Well fictional authority came to my dms and was being a cunt, insulting, making demands, acting like they are somehow in authority or have some sort of control over me. So I'll say this for everyone.

My post is about how people claim to be educated and yet are so wrong about so much. I'm tired of the appeal to authority. "I HAVE A PHD" yeah in feminist theory, not economics. And they use bullshit big words to try to sound smart, when they are just puking up word salad to say in an hour when they could say "I want you dead and I want your stuff".

Typically this is commies. I'm not talking about any particular group, I mean spoiled brats who's never really worked in their life any kind of labor. Another word would be yuppies.

So I made the point, I'm tired of people trying to sound smart and like they have any authority when they don't. Country saying I'm sick and tired of people acting like hot shit in a wine glass when they are cold diarrhea in a Dixie cup."

And I added a meme for the giggles.

If anyone thinks it's any deeper than that, that's on you, not me. I've had my fill of drama, I'm much more ready to use the block button these days. If you want to talk, cool, we can talk. Keep it civil, that's really all I ask. Can't do that much, a fucker will get blocked.

Now for folks who got a little rise out of all this, if it applies to you, yeah lace that boot up and wear it. If it doesn't, move along, it ain't for you.

Anyone else thinking my post is overly aggressive, I just had to deal with a razor back cunt, I'll apologies but understand why.

Pissed off the ancaps. Oh noooo I made the marxists mad again

[shoujoboy-restart]

> "is based on what happened before"

Its been 93 years since the great depression and companies are still firing people like nothing after massive production.

It's been 14 years since the 2008 crisis and companies are still being given absurd unilateral subsidies with no real responsibility, THEY JUST GOT SOME LESS THAN 2 YEARS AGO DURING THE HEIGHT OF THE PANDEMIC and even were able to convince people that actually the inflation is at fault of a single 2k payment for some citizens while corporations got billions they could just hoard it without investing it back to society.

Like half of what is happening these days has already happened DOZENS if not hundreds of times before, and then economists come up with made worries like "buh buh if we raise the minimum wage inflation is gonna happen!" WHEN ITS BEEN ALREADY HAPPENING EITHER WAY.

Say what you want about Marx, but any economist that actually wants to understand economics will bend the knee and admit they can only do so trought Marx's methodology, which is just studying the objective and material happenings of financial interactions within society, like actual science is done.

"OH GOW DARE THAT FILTHY COMMIE THINK SURPLUS VALUE IS BAD" ok...but is his description and definition of it wrong? You may not agree with his motivation and conclusion as to what should be done about surplus value, but his definition and study of it is not wrong.

And I use that as a example because is like the number one tantrum I see ancaps and their ilk get mad at, were instead of trying to debunk Marx's and other socialists/communists solutions for surplus value they just straight up try to deny it's Not A Thing™ and legit debunk the idea of surplus value being a thing at all, or just whinny and mad at it demanding you to just accept is totally stable for someone's to produce 100k in profit but only get paid maybe 2k for it, just assuming because someone's from a ideology they don't like came up with something with a certain intention then it simply means we should all just throw it all away.

The 4 day work week is been proven to work the same or even better.

Many companies already have 4 hour work days also working perfectly.

Multiple companies have taken the equal division of profits from the highest CEO to the beginning janitor method successfully too.

There's a reason so many socialists and communist enter the field of economics with the explicit intention of shaking shit up and demand scientifical and fact based propositions instead of "I feel like" theories and catastrophising any methodology and narrative outside of profit seeking and infinite growth.

Economists be like "yeah we are a science! We have no proper theories, no consistent fact based methodology, no material analysis and our field is open to interpretation based of anything that is narratively convinient to whatever biases a individual may have as long as it's capitalist and conservative, but we are so science and facts and logic guise please take us seriously"

[villainessbian]

Okay so you don't understand how opening with "careful not to say" works, how communism works, how capitalism works, what communism is, you don't know who you're talking to but you're sure I "pretend things about boogeymen", and you think communism "had a downfall" as opposed to it being a theoretical societal organisation that never was put into place. A monopoly held by the same people who have institutional power is not what this theory is about and you're obviously just spouting US high school USSR scare stories so just grow up because literally nothing you say holds up to history or economics. Also I made it crystal clear I'm opposed to indentured servitude and inhumane (with an e) treatment, so you going "WELL I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO'S FOR IT BECAUSE I HEARD COMMIES ALSO DID IT IN A CLASS SPONSORED BY MISTER OILBARON" is nothing but a tell on your loose ethics and ignorance.

I am a legend. The human pet guy got his twitter account suspended over a weird trans hucow indentured servitude fantasy of his. He then made another account so I just egged him on to recount it again. It worked. Enjoy the thunder lash of instant karma