#peoples policy project

[berniesrevolution]

Periodically, I release a report on the Starbucks unionization drive (May 2022, June 2022, July 2022). In past reports, I have relied upon data from the NLRB and More Perfect Union. But in preparing this report, I found that the NLRB data has fully caught up with the More Perfect Union data and so I am relying solely on the NLRB data.

Union Elections and ULP Charges

The Starbucks Union has been filing a steady stream of unfair labor practice charges against Starbucks starting around the end of March of this year. On the average month between April and September, the union filed 43 ULP charges, more than one per day. The charges generally allege that Starbucks has engaged in retaliation against workers attempting to unionize.

In October, the Starbucks Union filed 95 ULP charges against Starbucks, more than three per day.

(Coninue Reading)

[the-paris-of-people]

The past couple days online have been... interesting. I consider myself a leftist, think capitalism is corrupt, and think that it needs to be seriously reformed/overthrown. I admit that while I've thrown around phrases and terms like "burn it all down" and "the revolution needs to come" out of frustration without actually thinking about what a revolution entails: excellent organization, unity, and strategy to defeat the United States, the world's largest military superpower which has inflicted political and social destabilization across the majority of countries around the world. There also needs to be superb infrastructure and community to support the disabled, elderly, and poor populations who rely on government assistance and programs, healthcare, and accommodations while this so-called revolution rages on.

All I've received from the far leftist movement are lectures from condescending intellectuals who rattle off academic citations regarding ideological theory rather than practical, tangible steps to advocate for change in our local and regional communities. I have not seen one of them actually discuss conversations they've had with their friends, family, or Americans about what they want to see reflected for the future of the country. I have not seen one of them discussed how destructive, detrimental and traumatic a Trump presidency was for social prejudice and morale in the United States. I understand that for many marginalized groups they've been living in a facist state for centuries so the possibility Project 2025 doesn't galvanize them to see the two parties differently, but I don't think it is fair to white leftists falsely equivocate the election of both parties for the entire American population at all??? Or like at least specify the issues you're referring to in which you view both parties as the same????? Literally one TikTok creator who I used to follow talked about how true leftists are so much better than liberals because they aren't waiting for a presidential candidate to save the world NOW due to the accelerated apocalypse due to climate change but when asked how to change the world they suggest sharing ideas of your future utopia with other leftist groups. How the fuck is sitting around talking about living in a walkable community is great considered "saving the world now"? How are you going to dismantle and restructure American infrastructure to create these communities? How are you going to remove existing racial and social tensions to create a community where everyone lives happily side by side? Do people not consider reality at all?????

And is it not wrong for people to have a fucking sliver of optimism and hope at incremental change that's achieved within the corrupt bipartisan system of American politics, even if they know it's propaganda??? Is it wrong for people to have a singular fucking moment of relief in feeling like their values, beliefs, and lives will be better protected and THEY can advocate for change better??? Is it wrong when there's a couple months until the most pressing election in recent history for people to make the choice they feel will reduce the most amount of harm???

[shiryawashere]

I'm sorry to my USAmerican moots but I lost every shred of hope I had for your people today

[aro-culture-is]

Fandom aro culture is wanting to be obnoxious about your arospec headcanons but the idea of anyone coming after you for them makes you want to scream

.

[ignisgalaxia]

I made the mistake of looking into project 2025

I have never been more enraged and afraid

[snugstones]

I hate the rhetoric people seem to have about how if Trump loses the election everything will be fixed.

[deliciousdietdrpepper]

It’s weird that my family can recognize that I’m doing much better since starting T, but still have that “we can agree to disagree” thing going on. The cognitive dissonance involved is wild.

[harlequinfrog]

probably finalized design of my landsknecht-inspired oc Marco (she/her + he/him)

[lycanthrology]

Food banks are incredible resources but the fact that a lot of them require proof of income before accessing is so fucked. i genuinely cant understand how ‘everyone should have permanent unconditional access to food’ is still considered a radical stance. especially with all the chat around food poverty rn

[mantisgodsdomain]

"oh, yeah," we think, "we could probably cross this over into Li nked Uni verse if we actually draw out the canon for long enough, smacking different versions of the same character into each other is always fun especially when it has the potential for massive cultural differences and shit like running into things where the thing that has been forgotten has significance beyond the things that are remembered. Hey, we should probably check the comic in order to comply with the six-month rule, we don't think we ever finished-"

We return from the reference images. We have remembered why we didn't finish looking into the base comic.

[berniesrevolution]

PEOPLE’S POLICY PROJECT

PART I:

Relative to its European peers, the United States spends virtually nothing on benefits for families with children.1 This dearth of family benefits leads to two cruel outcomes: it denies many people the ability to have the families that they want and inflicts financial ruin on many of those who go through with parenthood despite the lack of social support.

The prevalence of financial problems among families with children causes many would-be parents to have fewer children than they would prefer and causes some to forego parenthood altogether. A recent survey found that one-fourth of people between the ages of 20 and 45 had fewer or expected to have fewer children than they wanted.2 The most common reasons were economic: 64 percent said child care is too expensive; 44 percent said they can’t afford more children; and 43 percent said they waited too long because of financial instability.

When people do have children, they often struggle to afford child care, pre-k, and even everyday expenses. The effects of this social neglect are felt most severely by those on the bottom of our society. Twenty-one percent of American children live in relative poverty—a higher percentage than that of any European country.3

Current policy discussions around benefits that help families with children are fractured in strange and unhelpful ways. Ideas to expand child care and pre-k services tend to get grouped in with education policy or stand alone under the heading of “early childhood education and care.”4 Programs that provide public health insurance to children are categorized as healthcare policy.5 Paid leave proposals almost always seek to bundle leave for parents with leave for medical reasons and then wind up classified as women’s policy.6

These issue-area assignments are not wrong in an objective sense, but they create a muddled and rudderless policy framework. A more effective approach would be to bring all these policy ideas under the heading of family benefits and then pitch family benefits as having a simple unified purpose: making parenthood easy and affordable for everyone.

In Section One of this paper, I lay out a general theory that explains why having and raising children is so difficult in a laissez-faire capitalist system. In Section Two, I introduce the Family Fun Pack, a suite of family benefits that solves the problems identified in the first section. These benefits include free child care, free pre-k, free healthcare for children, and a child allowance, among other things.

Progressive candidates looking for a fresh platform would be wise to consider adopting the Family Fun Pack agenda. It is a coherent set of programs that conveys a simple message. These programs, which are common throughout the world, are extremely effective at reducing the burden of parenthood and especially effective at reducing child poverty.

The first problem, which I call the mere addition problem, is that adding children to a family unit increases the amount of resources and time needed by the unit, but our current economic system does nothing to address this need. Similar workers receive the same wages and time off even though some have to pay for diapers and child care while others do not. Because income is paid out to the factors of production without any regard for its final family-level distribution, families with children wind up in dramatically worse financial circumstances than families without children, even when the families are otherwise identical.

The best way to understand the severity of the mere addition problem is through a concrete example with realistic figures. So, imagine two married middle-class couples, the Smiths and the Johnsons. Both families earn $80,000 per year, but the Smiths have a son and a daughter when they are in their mid-20s while the Johnsons never have kids.

According to the latest figures from the usda and the Current Expenditure Survey, the Smiths will spend $233,970 out of their own pockets getting each of their children to age 18.7 That’s $467,940 for both kids. The Johnsons, being childless, will spend $0 over the same period. If both of the Smith’s kids attend a four-year public college, that will cost the family another $116,720, bringing the grand total with college to $584,660 versus the Johnson’s $0.8

Despite working the same middle class jobs, the Smiths are much worse off than the Johnsons. By merely adding two children to their family unit, they find themselves half a million dollars in the hole. This dynamic opens up huge inequalities between families with different numbers of children and causes many lower income families to drown under the financial burden.

In the above example, the Smiths earn $80,000 per year and therefore can probably absorb the extra costs of raising children without going broke. But for lower class families, the story is much more bleak. Retail workers, food service workers, and others with low incomes often find themselves completely crushed by these expenses. Without a robust set of family benefits available to offset child-rearing costs, these families frequently wind up in poverty.

Indeed, because of the mere addition problem, the presence of children is one of the leading causes of poverty in American life. In social statistics, poverty is a function of family income and family size. When children are added to a family, the family’s size increases, but the family’s income does not. This necessarily pulls a family closer to the poverty line and plunges many families below that line.

In 2017, 158 million Americans lived in families with children.9 Over 28 million of those people lived below the poverty line, and that’s even after counting transfer programs like food stamps and the Earned Income Tax Credit.10

If these children did not exist, then obviously there would be no child poverty. More interestingly, if they did not exist, then half of the poor adults who currently live in families with children would no longer be poor.11 That’s right: half of poor adults who live with children are only poor because of the expenses of raising children. It is thus the presence of children in these households that is driving the adults into poverty. Based on this analysis, children directly or indirectly cause 36 percent of all the poverty in America.

Since children increase the amount of resources families need to maintain their standard of living, a society that fails to match that need with public benefits will generally wind up with high levels of interfamily inequality and high levels of child and child-adjacent poverty.

The second problem, which I call the lifecycle income problem, is that peak childbearing years occur in early adulthood when individuals are working entry level jobs and therefore receiving entry level pay. As workers gain experience, they generally receive promotions and raises that increase their incomes, but much of this money comes too late to help with the punctuated costs of raising children. This mismatch between peak earning years and peak childbearing years drives up inequality and poverty in society.

People generally have children in their late 20s and early 30s. The average age of first birth is 26.6 years old.12 The birth rate, i.e. the percent of women who have children in a given year, peaks at 11 percent around age 30.13 The percentage of adults living with children under the age of 5 peaks at 35 percent around age 33.14 The percentage of adults living with children under the age of 18 reaches a high of 66 percent at age 39.15

Yet adults receive their highest levels of income in their 40s and 50s. Median personal earnings peak at age 44; median family income peaks at age 49; and median equivalized family income, i.e. family income adjusted for family size, peaks at age 59.16 The result of this lifecycle income pattern is that family incomes are lowest right around the time people start having children, increase gradually while people are raising kids, and then reach their peak after kids have moved out.

(Continue Reading)

[ardentperfidy]

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[lordofthestrix]

Tristan informs me that for the record Lucien gets the phantom of a right to complain about whatever personal perspectives he chooses to include in his own tags the day he stops harassing some of his most loyal employees whenever he is not around.

@kingmakercastle

[vague-humanoid]

At the California Institute of the Arts, it all started with a videoconference between the registrar’s office and a nonprofit.

One of the nonprofit’s representatives had enabled an AI note-taking tool from Read AI. At the end of the meeting, it emailed a summary to all attendees, said Allan Chen, the institute’s chief technology officer. They could have a copy of the notes, if they wanted — they just needed to create their own account.

Next thing Chen knew, Read AI’s bot had popped up inabout a dozen of his meetings over a one-week span. It was in one-on-one check-ins. Project meetings. “Everything.”

The spread “was very aggressive,” recalled Chen, who also serves as vice president for institute technology. And it “took us by surprise.”

The scenariounderscores a growing challenge for colleges: Tech adoption and experimentation among students, faculty, and staff — especially as it pertains to AI — are outpacing institutions’ governance of these technologies and may even violate their data-privacy and security policies.

That has been the case with note-taking tools from companies including Read AI, Otter.ai, and Fireflies.ai.They can integrate with platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teamsto provide live transcriptions, meeting summaries, audio and video recordings, and other services.

Higher-ed interest in these products isn’t surprising.For those bogged down with virtual rendezvouses, a tool that can ingest long, winding conversations and spit outkey takeaways and action items is alluring. These services can also aid people with disabilities, including those who are deaf.

But the tools can quickly propagate unchecked across a university. They can auto-join any virtual meetings on a user’s calendar — even if that person is not in attendance. And that’s a concern, administrators say, if it means third-party productsthat an institution hasn’t reviewedmay be capturing and analyzing personal information, proprietary material, or confidential communications.

“What keeps me up at night is the ability for individual users to do things that are very powerful, but they don’t realize what they’re doing,” Chen said. “You may not realize you’re opening a can of worms.“

The Chronicle documented both individual and universitywide instances of this trend. At Tidewater Community College, in Virginia, Heather Brown, an instructional designer, unwittingly gave Otter.ai’s tool access to her calendar, and it joined a Faculty Senate meeting she didn’t end up attending. “One of our [associate vice presidents] reached out to inform me,” she wrote in a message. “I was mortified!”

[errata-ad-absurdum]

Project Esther can fuck all the way off

Your false cries of anti-semitism does real harm to Jews who suffer under true anti-semitism. And your opposition to freedom of speech is a historically losing position. We've seen this anti peace, anti progress bullshit before. Namely in the fight for Civil Rights for black and brown people.