#polistat

[azspot]

For younger American families, the classic American dream — a home of your own! — has become an ongoing nightmare. Some 20 percent of young American men between 25 and 34 lived with their parents last year, 12 percent of young women. America’s multigenerational household population, the Pew Research center notes, has quadrupled since the early 1970s.

What explains these stats? The simple story: Fewer and fewer American young people can afford a home of their own. Overall, an Amherst Group analysis has found, some 85 percent of renting households cannot “qualify for a mortgage.” America’s most typical first-time homebuyers last year, adds the National Association of Realtors, had already turned 36 years old. Young people a generation ago were becoming first-time homebuyers in their 20s.

The economic reality behind all these stats: the shrinking share of America’s wealth that belongs to average Americans. Back in the mid-1990s, America’s “middle class” — the middle 60 percent of U.S. households by income — held double the wealth of the nation’s richest 1 percent. Last year, Fed Reserve researchers calculate, top 1 percenters held more wealth than our entire middle 60 percent.

And America’s richest aren’t just enjoying that turnaround. They’re exploiting it — on a wide variety of housing-related fronts.

[dracwife]

You have been challenged by Katodosian Champion Ichor !!

[ he/they ]

more about him below !

"Ichorus -- or just Ichor -- is something of a mystery. He is not from any known region, rather a thousand year old empire, known as 'Katodos' that spanned what he describes much of modern day Kalos and beyond, from a town known as 'Polistat.' He speaks a strange dead language, but it is similar enough to Kalosian to communicate effectively; He has seemed to learn the nuances of the local language well enough, too.

An advisor and guardian to the emperor-to-be, he was in charge of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of the royal family's lineage. In addition, he strived for a closer connection between Pokémon and their partners, or 'trainers' as is the modern term. He often sought out wild Pokémon -- a dangerous task, as they were often aggressive -- as he was talented at taming and raising them, and attempted to study them and care for them as a peace offering to the great Cerneus (the almighty god of Katodos) and its brethren. It was not long before the gods rewarded him: A beautiful deer-like creature sent to watch over him, the protector of all creatures human and Pokémon alike.

When Katodos fell to the great disastrous eruption Mt. Vestibus, Ichor was spared, put into an indefinite sleep by his own Pokémon, and that angel sent to watch over him. They say a beautiful tree grew at his resting place to protect his body.

Now, he has awoken. With great tales of places and people long lost to time, he is an interesting subject to study. I do not know if all of his stories are true, but that day I found him wandering lost in the forest, I couldn't help but believe some part of him truly was from centuries ago. After all, that story does line up rather eeriely with what we know of Xerneas, and beyond that, there have been sightings of it since Ichor's arrival...

I can ask as often as I'd like any questions, but his answers leave much to be desired; He is not much of a talker. I do wish he was less aloof, he seems to think he still owes some duty to Katodos and its emperor. I believe somewhere in him lies a carefree, kind soul however. I can see it in his eyes, and the careful way he handles all the Pokémon he comes across, even if it is with great fear -- he is used to them attacking -- and in those few moments of longing and sadness he displays when he believes himself alone. But he learns quickly, and with fascination. I almost admire him...And his curiosity to learn about this new world."

-- Augustine Sycamore's notes, scrawled across a lab notebook.

. . . . .

erm, basically....i don't think im very good at stylizing my art so i took a risk and tried something new for my pkmn s/i :3 he's kissing prof. sycamore, obviously. i am not immune to pretty french scientists ........

[endymionstudies]

to do list for tonight!

do laundry

polistats paper outline

ir presentation notes

dishes 😓

gym

exam study plan

clean the room

[azspot]

By about 2 to 1, Americans want popular vote, not Electoral College, to decide who is president

[azspot]

Consider these findings from a 2014 study: Asked what they view as an ideal pay ratio between CEOs and unskilled workers, Americans pointed to a ratio of 7-to-1. The real ratio at the time? 354-to-1. Meanwhile, Americans thought that the actual ratio was more like 30-to-1, about an order of magnitude off from reality.

Media That Benefit From Inequality Prefer to Talk About Other Things

[azspot]

[azspot]

Ignoring Covid will go down as one of the single greatest, though unacknowledged mistakes a president has ever made. The silence on everything from masks and clean air to Long Covid has only emboldened the far right, ceding them a vast territory to blame the rising tide of heart attacks, strokes, and neurological problems on "the jab." Their continued insistence on vaccines instead of broader mitigations has made that problem worse, given their short windows of efficacy and relative ineffectiveness against Long Covid.

Masks Have a Higher Approval Rating than Joe Biden

[azspot]

The Christians Who Matter Most in this Election (Hint: It’s Not White Evangelicals)

[azspot]

The registrations of young Black women have almost tripled compared with the same period in 2020. The registrations of young Hispanic women are up by 150%.

Heather Cox Richardson

[azspot]

Unions had a flat 2023

[azspot]

The Seeds of Social Revolution: Extreme Wealth Inequality

[azspot]

Link Rot and Digital Decay on Government, News and Other Webpages

[azspot]

[azspot]

You know what aren't scarce in the United States? Cars. You know why cars aren't scarce? Because we build 16 million of them per year. You know how many homes we build per year? About 1.4 million. Don't tell me the United States is a country. We're a car company.

Matthew Lewis

[azspot]

The most basic measure of the economy is how much it grows. The official data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) are clear: After inflation, real GDP has grown at a 3.4 average annual rate since Biden became president, while Trump trails badly at an average 1.8 percent growth. Trump allies aren’t wrong when they complain that the 2020 downturn wasn’t his fault, so we’ll give him a pass for the year. The result still shows more robust growth under Biden: From 2017 to 2019, the economy grew an average of 2.8 percent per year, a rate still 18 percent slower than under Biden.

Biden’s stronger growth wasn’t by happenstance: He and congressional Democrats actively promoted it with the American Rescue Plan, the March 2021 stimulus enacted over united Republican opposition, and the November 2021 infrastructure act that Trump talked about but never delivered.

Biden beats Trump not just in overall growth: Based on investment rates, American business has preferred Biden’s economy: Since January 2021, real fixed business investment has increased at a 5.4 percent annual rate, twice the 2.7 percent average rate under Trump. And here, too, Trump lags Biden even with his pandemic pass for 2020: Real business investment increased on average by 5.0 percent per year from 2017 to 2019, compared to Biden’s 5.4 percent annual rate.

Based on spending, consumers also prefer Biden’s economy. From 2021 to 2023, real personal expenditures increased an average of 4.5 percent per year, versus Trump’s record of 2.6 percent from 2017 to 2020. In this case, a pandemic pass for Trump increases Biden’s advantage: Real consumer spending grew 2.0 percent per year from 2017 to 2019, an annual rate that trails Biden by 55 percent.

On employment—on top of growth, investment, and consumer spending—Biden puts Trump’s record to shame. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that since Biden became president, the number of Americans with jobs has increased by 14.3 million—versus a net loss of 2.7 million over Trump’s term, the first decline since Herbert Hoover.

There’s a reasonable argument that a more accurate picture of job creation under Trump and Biden should set aside the collapse in employment during the early pandemic and the bounce back from that collapse in 2021. Even so, Biden beats Trump handily. Under Biden, from January 2022 to December 2023, employment grew at an average annual rate of 2.4 percent compared to a 1.5 percent rate under Trump from January 2017 to February 2020. That’s another Biden win, this time by a margin of 60 percent.

[azspot]

Social media traffic to top news sites craters