#the only PROBLEM. is fucking. MEDICAL AND STUDENT LOAN DEBT

[fastlikealambo]

national anthem:older!steve x black fem!reader

summary: steve harrington is running for president of the united states as the democratic nominee. he's polling well, people like him because he actually intends to keep his campaign promises, he's got great hair and a cute dog.

there's one problem: he doesn't do relationships, he's been seen doing the walk of shame too many times and his campaign manager has had enough. he needs a wife, or a least someone to smile and wave his messy ass through election season before disappearing into obscurity.

that's where you come in.

you're a sweet virgin kindergarten teacher who looks like disney animated birds help you get dressed in the morning. on paper you're perfect for the job and you have student loan and medical debt so you will silk press and laugh your way to the democratic national convention.

here's the thing:

you can't stand his pompous ass and he gets all tongue tied and sweaty when he gets within 2 feet of you.

it's gonna be a long fucking campaign.

bonus: here's two songs that are the background music in this chapter. can you figure out which song goes with what scene? I'd love to know your guesses.

angel - halle bailey

death of me - pvris

chapter one: washington, d.c.

“They’re calling you The Future Slut in Chief, Steve.”

Erica threw a paper in Steve’s lap, pinching the bridge of her nose before sinking into a chair to drink her iced coffee,  the only thing to keep her from reaching across the table and throttling the future President of The United States.

Steve looked down at The New York Post, a picture of him in his boxers leaving someone’s apartment dead center. He shrugged, putting his feet on the table and leaning back in his chair. 

“I look great and besides it’s the New York Post, nobody reads The New York Post, Sinclair. After the speech today no one will give two shits about that, nothing to worry about.” He said, shoving his sunglasses back on his face to block out the fluorescent lighting.

Four more newspapers with nearly identical pictures knocked the sunglasses right off his face and the forty year old nearly fell out of his chair.

“You can’t throw things at me, that’s treason.”

“Not yet.” Erica said sweetly.

“They’re making fancams of you and I quote, ‘ your slutty little waist.” Holly Wheeler said, Erica’s assistant said with a giggle, showing her boss her phone, the same bridge of some Cardi B. song filling the conference room over and over again.

“Send me that to me, won’t you Holly?” Steve said, reaching for his coffee.

“Do not send that to him Holly.” Erica sighed, pushing Steve’s legs off the table before standing up.

“Look Harrington, I joined this campaign because I believed in you. You had feasible ideas, a moral compass, the hair of a Kennedy and so much money I sometimes want to call the IRS for fun.”

“What was that last one-

“Never mind that. Everything about you screams all american but because you don’t have a partner or spouse,  to the general public it also screams ‘I may or may not have people in my basement.’ Nobody likes a single male president.”

“James Buchanan never married.” Steve grumbled.

 Steve Harrington didn’t do relationships, he had his fun every night, came home to his dog and empty apartment and focused on doing some good in his community with the outrageous inheritance his father left him. 

 There was no time for wives or husbands and that’s exactly how he liked it. 

“James Buchanan thought a dime was enough money to live on so maybe not the best example. Steve, you have a chance to be the next leader of this country but doing the walk of shame at your prehistoric age is not going to get the votes you need.”

Erica was absolutely right but Steve would be damned if he said so.

 “You need someone at your side for the last leg of the campaign and I’ve taken care of it. She’s been checked out and briefed, you’ll meet her on stage tonight when you introduce her, I’ve had Nancy edit your speech.”

“What the fuck Erica!” Steve yelled but Erica ignored him.

“She’s smarter than you, beautiful, and most importantly, she’s likable. So if you want to sit in the Oval Office for the next four years, you’ll wear the Tom Ford suit and act like this is the greatest love story ever told. You don’t have to talk to her outside of events if you don’t want to but you will do this. I have yet to fail you so trust that I can do the job you pay me handsomely for. Got it?”

No.

Absolutely not.

There was no way he was going through with this.

“To wrap up my speech so we can all get home safely, I want to introduce you to someone. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me, to this campaign, to this country! I’m so proud to finally introduce my fiancée, let’s give her a big hand!” Steve said with a big smile at the cheering crowd, proud of the fact that he didn’t immediately vomit when the word fiancée came out of his mouth.

The click-clack of your heels coming up a staircase had Steve’s heart in his throat. At some point his clapping was no longer forced as he waited for the worst blind date of his life to appear on stage. 

“Get it together Harrington, turn on the charm for two minutes and get the fuck out of here.” He thought to himself.

He could handle this.

Two seconds later, he was wrong.

So, very, wrong.

If there were words to truly describe how beautiful you were, Steve did not know them. 

How could he?

How would ecstasy describe ecstasy?

Fuck.

Like Erica drilled into him a thousand times before the DC rally began, he reached out his hand to you, now enveloped in the scent of orchids and shea butter, and brought you into his arms for the world’s gentlest and fastest embrace. Your lips met with Steve’s cheek with a sweet laugh that made the crowd go wild as you pushed him forward towards the mic.

But no words came out.

That man was so busy looking at you he didn’t know the closing to his speech, the stump speech he had been giving for months now, the one he could recite in his sleep and accidentally yelled out during sex that one time.

A full ten seconds of uncomfortable silence with a sweaty man had you suddenly in front of the mic.

“I’m so happy to be a part of this once in a lifetime event supporting Steve! We’ve got a lot of work to do to get to the ballot box but we are ready to elevate and encourage our beautiful country towards a brighter future! Good night everyone, drive safe!” You nearly yelled into the mic, applause bursting through the audience.

You were quickly ushered backstage away from journalists, happy to get out as just as quickly as possible but Steve followed right with you.

“I-I had that back there!” Your fiance and future president choked out.

“Oh, so you can talk, wonderful! A thank you for saving your ass or a nice to meet you would suffice. I didn’t know a presidential nominee much less an adult man could drool like an infant but you’re full of surprises Mr. Harrington.” You said, rolling your eyes. 

“I was not drooling!”

“My shoulder’s all wet Mr. President.  Are we done here, can I go now?” You asked, turning your attention to Erica.

“I’m so glad you two are getting along! One more picture for all the socials and then you are free to go, Hopper and your security detail will make sure you get to your hotel safely.” Erica said, grabbing her phone for the picture.

“Big smiles, you two!”

You still couldn’t get over the fact that 24 hours ago, you were crying yourself to sleep wondering how you were going to pay your bills and get back on your insurance and now you’re prom posing with America’s Next Top Leader.

“I couldn’t have possibly drooled on you, you wanna know why?” Steve said through a frozen smile.

“Not really.”

“If I got the next First Lady of The United States all wet, you’d know, honey.” He whispered in your ear. 

Motherfucker.

Next stop: Maryland! I hope you enjoyed this, I’m not too sure if it's any good :)

[demonicintegrity]

Yknow with the fact that everyone my age is like “ah fuck we’re in a recession and the housing market might crash soon” and that General Air, I’ve kinda accepted it might just be a slim chance if I ever have a retirement. Part of it is the career I’m choosing, but part of it is the Everything.

Y’see a normal full time job has you put some money in for your retirement and then they put money into it. And should you be working for them for X years (and the number keeps growing) you can get the partial/full amount of it at age Y (number also fluctuates) and it seems like a lot of my parents generation has/had this. Something they will get if they don’t have it already.

But two problems are now present with the current model of retirement: one being that the money it gives you just isn’t enough to survive anymore. There was no accounting for how the cost of living and inflation would affect how far a dollar can go. So now we see people who had to come out of retirement and work a bit to make up for the difference. And two, how to build your retirement was never really taught in schools. My mother had to tell her coworkers how to maximize their plan in the current job they all have because they just didn’t know and reading legal/economic jargon is just kinda difficult for a lot of people.

Your other option for a/an additional retirement plan is working with someone who can invest your money in a portfolio. Stocks and all that stuff. But as far as I’m concerned that’s fake money earned through wizardry, I have no fuckin clue how the hell that actually does something.

So now say you’re 20/30 something and you wanna try and have a retirement. Your options is actually be able to work full time at a job that offers retirement benefits and actually stick with it for like 20+ years or invest money you don’t have in a portfolio. It’s not new that a lot of places deliberately don’t have you on for full time so they don’t have to pay those benefits. And the only two careers I know of that promise a full retirement in only about 20 years of work is the military and being a cop.

So what do you do? I think the options generally are morbid.

Wait for your parents to die, sue someone and win, or win the lottery.

For me at least, that is the only conceivable way I’ll ever get a large amount of money at once. (And even then, watch most of it go to student loans lmao)

And it’s morbid. Thinking your best bet into have a comfortable to retirement amount of money is your parents dying. And even that is coming from a place of privilege. But I’ve heard it before! Being upset that your parents are dead and it’s stressful planning the funeral but also feeling guilty because that chunk of change feels good to have. It’s morbid and rightfully taboo as shit to acknowledge but getting a significant amount of money when someone dies might actually help you outta a bind.

The second is suing. Americans in particular have a rep for being a lil trigger happy about lawsuits. And I think it’s for two reasons. 1) it’s the only way to truly guarantee someone has to be held accountable and even then it’s a hope and 2) we’ve romanticized getting a lot of money outta it. Because we need it.

Y’know that older but still prevalent joke that “hey if I get hit by a uni bus at least they’ll pay my tuition?” Yeah no they won’t. Not anymore at least. I’ve had several adults working at my college say they won’t, they’ll only cover medical costs from the incident bc it’s happened so much. Apparently you also have much better luck suing the bus company itself than the school. But it is textbook romanticizing a shitty thing because a lot of money would be nice.

Sidenote: maybe if we had a functioning healthcare system that wasn’t driven on profit we wouldn’t have to be entirely reliant on suing someone to have impossible medical debt not kill us

And it’s also because you don’t realize just how slow and expensive the legal process is until you’re in it. And how much of a difference having money to throw at a court case makes. But that’s why settlements outside of court are so so tempting. Again, it’s also a degree of privilege.

So here’s your last option: the lottery. Which is just gambling. It’s 100% gambling and hoping it works. And a 1 or 2 dollar lottery seems relatively low loss on you for a whatever billion win. Whatever that comes out after taxes is still enough to keep you alive the rest of your life provided you don’t blow through it.

(Side thought on the lottery. If the state has like, a lot of money set aside to give to a random lucky person, why not just actually divide it and give it to the people? Or put it towards the roads/a school/whatever program??

The current mega millions jackpot for 10/24 is $114,000,000. $114 million dollars. So that’s not a lot if you split it out to the population, but I still don’t understand why not put that jackpot money into the roads instead of the amount earned with people buying lottery tickets. Idk idk it just feels like the state is dangling money over you head sometimes. Heehoo look at this money that could quite literally save your life come dance for meeee)

So it would seem the only guarantees for getting enough money to live (cuz remember the minimum wage isn’t livable anymore even with full time hours) let alone retire is some combination of privilege and luck. Lucky us.

[thekimspoblog]

I THREW ⭐ THE FUCKING STAR FISH ⭐ IN THE OCEAN! ⭐

I made a one-time $80 donation to ANERA. That's going to have to be enough.

Look, I realize I am not in any position to po'mouth. Any claims that my household is hanging on to the middle-class by its fingernails, could easily be refuted by saying my family should just be more frugal with its expenses. But the reality is I don't have a lot of power to fix the problems in my own county, let alone stop a genocide practically on the other side of the globe.

I have an ageing mother who can't save up for retirement because Wallstreet and my dad both fucked her in '08.

I have a law degree I'm working towards, which I'd very much like to avoid taking out student loans for.

Chronic health problems and medical debt.

I give cash to any homeless people I cross when I'm downtown.

I attend protests when I can.

I call and write my representatives about Gaza and other issues, but most of that falls on deaf ears.

I contribute to Planned Parenthood.

I donate and participate in charities against homelessness.

I donate to the DNC because I don't want things to get worse.

I've commissioned various artists who have rattled their tin cups in my face, many of which never delivered what they promised and I never heard from them again.

I boycott MOST large corporations, even when there's no specific boycott taking place.

You can argue my grocery budget is too high, but you wanna guess why it's so high? Because veganism didn't work for me, and this is what free-range meat costs.

Could I be doing more? Sure! I could shoot myself in the head so people more deserving than me could have my organs. But I'm drawing the line somewhere!

I guess I'm just writing this post to say, there are always going to be people trying to guilt trip you for your brand of progressivism being bougie. Fascists are starting fires left and right, and if you aren't giving away every drop of your own water to extinguish the flames, there's going to be some bleeding heart telling you you're basically Hitler. It's not that the sentiment of "could you be doing more?" is technically wrong even. But it would also be nice if Tumblr considered that shaming people can only get you so far. Closing your eyes and plugging your ears is "callous" but it's also necessary to stay sane.

Gaza is an issue I care about, but it's not the center of my activism. If that means I'm complacent just because I feel my time and energy is better spent on abortion rights in my own country, I guess I'm just going to have to live with that. If I had donated earlier, perhaps people would be alive today who are not. If I had donated more, perhaps I could save more. Considering I have no income right now, $80 is the ceiling on how much I'm going to try to buy my way into heaven on this issue, and you all are just going to have to be okay with that.

[etaleah]

God he is such a pathetic fucking loser.

The thing is, if he really wants to save humanity, he could absolutely do it. Buy everyone a house! Pay off everybody’s student loan and medical debt! Give everyone enough money to cover expenses for a year! Save schools and libraries that are struggling! That kind of heroism would make people love him. Those kinds of deeds actually would give him a nice legacy and ensure his name lived on forever.

But he’s not going to do them because they aren’t the plot of an apocalyptic sci-fi movie and therefore aren’t exciting enough for him. Because he’s a loser like that.

He’s also learning the hard way that there are some things money can’t buy. You can’t buy being good at video games. You can buy the games themselves, the TV and consoles to play them on, and the controllers to play them with, but the skill only comes with time and practice. You can’t buy being funny. That, too, comes with practice and studying comedy and comedians and learning about it. And maybe you can buy a baby boy, but you can’t buy a baby boy who will never want to be a girl instead.

It really shows that he’s a spoiled rich brat who’s never had to do honest work a day in his life. He doesn’t know what to do upon realizing you can’t always just throw money at a problem to make it go away, or wave money as a magic wand to make whatever you want to happen do so instantaneously.

So Elon has decided to skip the imminent disaster of global climate change and just move on to a calamity 5 billion years in the future.

If you ever need to understand Elon's motivations, it's all this.

Okay and a little bit the woke mind virus.

But mostly this.

He wants to get to Mars more than anything. It's why the only thing he can speak intelligently about is his rockets. He has put in the time and effort to learn about them because this is his singular passion.

A lovely Youtube physicist did a video about SpaceX and she said half of the rockets blow up and Elon just wants more money. And it was disappointing to hear her say that because she is a scientist and both things are inaccurate.

SpaceX would be an amazing company without Elon. His leadership is the only thing really holding it back. They have put lots of cool shit into space. Their Falcon program is the most productive and cheapest rocket program in history. They put more stuff into space than everyone else combined.

They had to blow up part of the graph just so you could see the competition. Half of their rockets are *not* blowing up.

Starship is a specific prototype. It has nothing to do with their main rocket business. Starship is Elon wanting to go to Mars. It is basically him trying to send a 3 story building into space. And he keeps blowing it up because that is the fastest way to develop a rocket. He's wasting a lot of money by trying to speedrun a trip to Mars in his lifetime. And these tests are bit more like crash test data than expecting the rocket and Starship to actually function properly. It's a process and they have goals for each launch, and for the most part, they reach those goals. Any success after those goals is gravy to them. But they are pretty certain it is going to end in fireworks at this stage of development.

I don't know if they will get it to work. It would be nice because a functional spaceship that size could do a lot of cool science. But Elon's goals and NASA's goals are going to conflict in a major way at some point in the future. And I'm worried that may damage space exploration.

Starship is very different than their Falcon program. It's a science experiment. Falcons rarely blow up. They get shit to space like the James Webb telescope.

And as far as Elon just wanting more money... sort of.

His personal wealth has not been a huge concern of his for a while. Otherwise he wouldn't have let Tesla fall apart like it has. The wealth he is actually concerned about is not his own. Going to Mars is a trillion-dollar-plus endeavor. Even the richest man in the world cannot raise that much money.

Only a government could fund that.

Elon knows this. He figured it out a while ago. And when he saw an opportunity to get his hands on the government purse strings, he jumped at the chance.

He jumped in the shape of an X like a giant loser.

I'm *positive* Elon thought, "If I could save the government a trillion dollars, they'll give it to me so I can go to Mars."

But it is probably breaking his brain right now after learning he isn't this super genius who can figure out government bureaucracy in a weekend with a bunch of coding dorks.

He got depressed and realized his cool plan to get to Mars was falling apart.

Whoops.

Elon will say anything to get to Mars. He will lie about anything to get to Mars. He will consort with anyone to get to Mars. If you are ever unsure why Elon is doing something, it's to get to Mars. His moral calculus is based on this. In his delusional mind, everything is justifiable to save the human race.

He does have side quests. He wants to repopulate the Earth with his seed. And he uses IVF because you can drastically increase the odds of getting a boy if you pay extra. And he is angry at his trans daughter because he wants boys to continue his mission to spread Musk seed. He spends $50,000 extra to make sure he gets boys and she is messing with the plan.

Oh, and he really really wants people to think he is good at video games. And he wants people to like him. And he wants to kill the woke mind virus because he didn't get the boy he paid for.

But Mars is *almost* all he cares about.

Elon thinks Earth is doomed and he wants immortality from being the man who saved human civilization. He truly believes our existence is dependent on being "multiplanetary." It might be the only thing he believes.

Saving the human race is supposed to be his legacy.

And it is killing us.

[winterspiderpurrs]

Can I request where mob boss tony fucks prostitute peter with bodyguard bucky! Pls

So I haven't written smut before prob would be a while before I get to that point. BUT I wanted to answer the asks and just decided to type up whats leads up to this awesome pairing... Hopefully you still like it!

--------------------------------------

Peter was broke, and homeless. He has been couch surfing for several months now, and even though he worked two jobs as well as attending online school. There just was not any way for him to get out of his student loans and medical debt and afford a place of his own after Aunt May passed.

Which brings us to the point where MJ told Peter about this..... Working boy service. He looks young, nerdy and adorable and does not think he is that attractive but it could work. Sure he has had sex before but nothing anything remotely like this so he isn't sure why he is even going to try. MJ says you can interview, and they will actually set you up with a room if they think you can do the job. Modern day brothel so he wouldn't be out on the streets. Something about how the boss wants to keep his eyes on his property. Peter would get a contract and everything if this pans out for him. Seems a safer option.

After waiting out side of this older but classy restaurant. Peter wearing his best 2nd hand suit, he had put a lil bit of mascara on to make his eyes stand out a bit more and adds a hint of a fem touch to is already soft features. Stands at the hostess stand " Hi, I have a reservation. Meeting uh for umm " he digs into his pocket and pulls out the business card with a scratch name scribbled on it with the time and place " for Winter?"

The hostess eyes widen a little and nods " Right this way, your right on time. He is waiting for you in one of the reserved rooms." Winding their way through the restaurant Peter is lead to a closed door. The hostess, reach out and fluffs Peters hair a little, making his curls go a little messy. She smiles at his inquiring look, she knocks on the door before opening "You guest is here Sir. Please give us a ring when your are ready to order. Thank you" she gently pushes Peter into the room and closes the door behind him. He gulps a little when he hears the locking sound.

Sitting across the room is one of the most intimidating men he has ever seen. He is wearing a leather jacket but with only one sleeve at he spots the metal arm. He looks at the mans blue eyes. He blinks a few times before moving his gaze to a spot on the wall behind the mans head.

The man tabs his cigarette on the ashtray and tilts his head a little looking up and down at Peter. " Your clean. No drug problem. Just broke. Little thin... But not bad off. Friends helping?" Peter blushes a little and nods his head " uh Yes Sir"

The man chuckles, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone. He tabs a few things before holding it up to his ear.

" Hey Boss. We are about to come out the back. Tell Happy to close the partition and for Clint to sit up front."

There is a pause and he smirks " Yes Sir "

He stands to move infront of Peter. He reaches out and grips the back of his neck and pulls him flush against him. Chuckling as Peter gasps. " Call this the interview, Boss likes to watch. If he likes what he sees.... Which I don't doubt he would... He gets a sample as well. And if all goes well and you still want to work, we can talk contract. What do you say Doll?"

Peter stares up at him, trying to fight the blush off of his face. " Sounds... Sounds fine...Sir"

The Winter Soldier aka James " Bucky " Barnes, chuckles and pulls Peter toward the back of the room, a hidden door is revealed and they are standing in the alley behind the restaurant where a limousine is waiting for them. Bucky opens the door and and inside reveals famous Mob Boss Tony Stark. He peers out toward Peter, lowering his red shades and smirks.

" Well look at you all dressed up for an interview. Cute. "

Bucky nudges Peter a little, and then they both get into the car. Tony leans back in his seat, taking a sip of from his whiskey glass " So... Peter... Looks like your going for a ride. Don't worry, old Buck there has the perfect seat for you"

By the end of the night, one ruined back seat, and messy sheets later. Peter does not sign a contract. Peter's debts and his schooling is paid for with in the next 24hrs. And he has been moved into a condo that varied members of Tony's mob stay at.

Peter isn't surprised that his place has two connecting doors. One belongs to Bucky, the other is where the boss stays when he is in the city.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Inequality, not gerontocracy

The received wisdom among economists is that the US’s historical low interests rates are driven by high savings by aging boomers who are getting ready for, or in, retirement.

The idea is boomers have salted away so much cash that banks don’t bid for their savings, so interest rates fall.

But at last week’s Jackson Hole conference, a trio of economists presented a very different explanation for low interest, one that better fits the facts.

In their NBER paper “What explains the decline in r∗? Rising income inequality versus demographic shifts,” Atif Mian (Princeton), Ludwig Straub (Harvard), and Amir Sufi (Chicago) show how inequality, not demographics, is to blame for low rates.

https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/8337/JH_paper_Sufi_3.pdf

The problem with the “boomers have so much in retirement savings that interest rates are low” theory is that boomers are incredibly unprepared for retirement. There’s a small cohort — ~10% — of very well-off boomers sailing into their sunset years. The rest? Fucked.

It’s true that boomers put in most of their working days before wage stagnation kicked in, that they paid hilariously low university tuition, and enjoyed low housing costs and substantial down-payment assistance from their New Deal-subsidized parents.

But! They also were the earliest cohort of workers that were forced to rely on gambling in the stock market for their pension, and their savings were eroded by multiple crashes that revealed them for the suckers at the poker table.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/30/meme-stocks/#stockstonks

Their homes have hugely inflated values, but they’re being liquidated to pay for eldercare, medical debt, and their kids’ and grandkids’ usurious student loans and otherwise unattainable down-payments.

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

So we can’t really say that low interest rates are being caused by an aging population with high retirement savings, because while the US population is aging, it does not have high savings. Quite the contrary.

And, as Robert Armstrong points out in his analysis of the paper for the Financial Times, even in places like Japan, with large cohorts of retirees and near-retirees who do have adequate savings, rates are scraping bottom.

https://www.ft.com/content/256acf1b-5bbb-475b-9df3-6d0b3a59389a

So why are rates so low? Well, the paper says it is being caused by high levels of savings — just not aging boomers’ savings. Rather, it’s the savings of the ultra-wealthy, the 1%, who are sitting on mountains of unproductive capital, chasing returns.

Making the rich richer is terrible economic policy. Wealthy people simply can’t spend all their money — I mean, once Jeff Bezos has bought a superyacht for his superyacht and flown to space, he’s still got hundreds of billions in the bank.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/10/business/jeff-bezos-yacht/index.html

An Amazon warehouse worker’s paycheck immediately enters the economy — it’s spent on groceries, and if the grocer is a local smallholder (and not Whole Foods), that dollar is spent again, on school supplies. The local stationer spends it at the local mechanic, and so on.

Once a dollar disappears into Bezos’s bank account, it is frozen in amber. No matter how many Subzero fridges Bezos fills with vintage Veuve, he’ll barely dent his fortune.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/17/disgracenote/#false-consciousness

Those dollars that pile up in the accounts of the wealthy are like oily rags piling up in the economy’s garage. They can’t be used for consumption, so they’re pumped into assets, causing massive spikes in things like housing, raising the cost of living for everyone else.

But there aren’t enough assets around to gamble on — not even after new, idiotic asset-classes like NFTs and freeport shipping-containers full of fine art hit the market — and so the savings pile up, depressing interest rates.

These low interest rates fuel more borrowing by the super-rich, who can take out loans at- or near-prime, making the money effectively free. These borrowed billions are pumped into asset markets, further inflating them.

Once the oily rags start burning, the flames blow out the economy’s garage door, and more oxygen (cheap money) floods in and causes the blaze to burn higher and hotter.

Just like a fire can create its own weather system of lightning storms that start more fires, the oily rags the super-rich have filled our collective garage with also set off secondary crises.

That was made clear by Propublica’s Secret IRS Files: low rates let the 1% evade nearly all taxation, by allowing them to borrow against assets (tax free) rather than liquidating them (taxed at 20%). So the rich get richer, and the rags pile higher.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

Boomers may be richer than Gen X and Millennials on average, but only because the top 10% are skew the average. The reality is that we are not in the grips of a battle for generational supremacy — rather, we’re fighting a class war.

The rich — old, young and middle-aged — set the world on fire. High savings cause low interest rates, to be sure, but the savings — like all forms of wealth — are in the hands of the rich, not the old.

[veganvampiresdrinktomatosauce]

A Rudimentary Essay(?) About Being Chronically Ill

I have Cystic Fibrosis, which does a number of things, but the bare-bones of it is that my body has problems absorbing salt, and as a result, my lungs, digestive system, and other key parts of my bodily function are, a little wonky, let's say. My entire adolescence and young adulthood has been filled with a variety of health issues and doctor’s appointments that have impacted my school career, and continue to impact my ability to even get to work. It's tiring, both mentally and physically, and on top of that I also have to worry about Cystic Fibrosis Related Diabetes, from the wearing down of my pancreas and endocrine system.

The thing is though, I am intensely grateful I was born when I was. If I'd been born even 20 years earlier, I'm not sure I would have survived to adulthood. See, the thing about lungs is that, if you get a lung infection enough times, or if they deteriorate enough, your lungs can stop functioning. I had a scare when I was 15 because my lung function was down to 50%, and my pulmonologist was afraid I was going to have to get a lung transplant. And, you know, that may not sound too bad. But lung transplants only last about 3-5 years, if you're really lucky, and if you make it past five years, you're basically living on borrowed time, because lung transplants rarely last more than 10 years.

Luckily, I was able to get my lung function up during a two week hospital stay, but that knowledge has always stuck with me. Being a kid and knowing, very suddenly, that your body– your fucked up, annoying body– is probably going to kill you is kind of traumatic. Even now, I get anxious when I start having difficulty breathing, or when I feel mucus catch in my chest and throat. I’ve been in and out of the hospital many times growing up, and each time is just as awful as the last. I have a phrase I use to describe the specific type of depression that is a chronically ill person’s hospital stay, and it is the Hospital Blues.

The life expectancy for someone with CF was 8 years in the 60s, due to a combination of lung infections and malnutrition, I would imagine. It's been steadily rising as more research is done (and I recognize the privilege in having research done at all, chronically ill people rarely get the care they need and that’s a real issue) and more medications are released. Recently, there's been a medication that's changed my life, called Trikafta, and I'm incredibly thankful for it. My quality of life has steadily increased, and my lung function is the highest it’s been in years. But, the absence of the threat of respiratory failure has brought new issues to the front. My decreased appetite, for example. Or my irregular blood sugars. Sometimes, I really do wish I could be rid of these problems. They’re a pain in the ass, and they tire me out, and I never have time or energy to do the things I want to. I mean, it's enough stress thinking about how I'm going to figure out my student loan debt, or drag myself out of my room and spend time making food for myself that I may not even finish. But, that sounds like I want to be able to completely alleviate my symptoms, rather than not be sick anymore, doesn’t it?

I'd like for other people with CF to not have to go through the same things I did, with doctors not realizing that neurodivergency can have an impact on my physical health as well as my mental health, and with the anxiety around my lungs completely failing in my mid-teens, but I don't want someone to magically snap their fingers and make me "healthy". What I do want is to live a fulfilled life. But it’s hard to do that when people talk about “fixing” you, or making you “healthy” without your input. I had a doctor’s appointment recently, and one of the people on my care team assured me that they were working on a cure, and I’m not sure how to feel about that. On the one hand, if it would increase my ability to live the life I want, great! But at the same time…

I’m not actively dying. But I know there are some people with Cystic Fibrosis that are. Trikafta the “miracle drug” came too late for them, or they didn’t have the right set of mutations and couldn’t take it at all. Life for those people isn’t getting any easier, and just because I’m doing amazing physically, doesn’t mean everyone with CF is. It’s… hard, to remember that.

There isn’t any problem with having a gene mutation though. The only thing that makes CF a problem, is that it tends to kill the people that have it. My care growing up was completely focused on keeping my lung function up, making sure I could live as long as I could, keeping me as close to “normal” and “healthy” as they could. And then I went into the hospital when I was 10, and I resigned myself to the fact that my life would never be the same again. I’d had visits before, but never an overnight stay. I was terrified. I thought I was dying. I had no idea what to expect, and over the next few years, IVs became my sworn enemy. They kept bursting my veins, and it was painful as all hell.

As of right now, there isn’t a cure for Cystic Fibrosis. Trikafta works miracles, but I’m still sick. And until my doctor talks to me about something that could completely alleviate my symptoms, that’s not something I can think about. It’s simply not relevant, and I’d like healthy people to stop pretending like finding a cure is all that matters, or that chronically ill people are walking fodder for Five Feet Apart type romantic tragedy movies. (I have a burning hate for that movie. It plagues me to this day.)

A cure doesn’t matter right now. Why not just change society to give people more support, without making them jump through fifty hoops to actually have that support? I don’t want to be fixed, I want help that will actually help me, with managing my symptoms! I want not to be told, for once, that I’m not doing enough, and that I need to do more! I want to be able to live my life the way I want, I want to be able to tell the stories I want to tell, and I want to be able to live for as long as I feel able to!

Not to mention, being trans and chronically ill is its own special brand of hell because of the bureaucracy you're forced to slog through to even change your name in the system. It’s like they’re trying to make it impossible for me to live my life comfortably!

I’m so tired. It’s just the same thing, over and over again, and I’m never going to be free of it. It would be easier, if I didn’t have to do all of this, every day, every hour, every minute. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t matter if it would be easier. This isn’t some alternate universe where I’m healthy and was born without a genetic mutation that fucks with my cells. I’m not a thought experiment, and what you think about me– whether you think I would be happier if I were “cured”, whether you feel sorry for me because of the perceived tragedy that my life is to you– doesn’t matter. I am a human being, I am a person. I have been disabled my entire life, and I will continue to be disabled until the day I die, because there’s no curing me. This chronic illness is part of who I am. If it kills me, then it kills me, but until that happens, I’m going to tell my stories. I’m going to live my life, to the best of my ability, and I’m going love, and despair, and dance, and cry, and I’m going be okay.

I am who I am, and that’s never going to change.

[bustedbernie]

I caucused for Pete in Iowa and I'm young, have minimal student loans because I worked my ass off, and I'm PISSED with leftists thinking we give a fuck about their ivy league law school debt. I'm against forgiveness and think Biden's income-based plan fixes most of the problem. I also think we should have a 2 year service program for people to get free tuition-not just military, but public service. I think there's more people like me than like the Bernie bros and I'm sick of it. (1/)

Most Americans are pretty liberal to moderate, we want common sense reforms, like what I mentioned in the last ask. We don't need handouts or bail outs like the socialists want. If they want to forgive debt, then they should want 50k of medical debt forgiven, not debt THEY AGREED TO AND CAN PAY FOR. And they care about the poor but want to hold up the covid relief for the 15/hr minimum wage? Give me a break. I'm tired of this shit and how their whole philosophy is just virtue signaling. (2/2)

I mean, you may be right that there are more of you than of the Bernie-type. There was a recent poll of Democrats that showed about 70% of Democrats want the party to either “stay the same” or “be more centrist/moderate” and only 30% or so said “to be more liberal/leftwing.” The split was roughly 3 ways each. And it’s been awhile since I’ve seen a public service for tuition plan polled, but I do remember it being polled pretty well. I have also read studies that suggest national service programs can help against political polarization, teach better money management, and create better social skills in young adults before university. But at this point, idk how that would poll, at least among democrats. But it’s an interesting idea, anyhow.

I mean, I support loan forgiveness for pretty selfish reasons. And I do agree that Biden’s reforms as proposed largely would address the issues. But I’m sure most lefties would be okay with forgiving medical debt, or at least they would yell that at your face before they say something facetious. But yeah, I think if we talk about student debt forgiveness we do need to acknowledge that it is more beneficial to white, wealthy people at those high levels. Bidens plan seems to keep that in mind. We will see. 

As for minimum wage, yeah, i think holding the COVID package hostage over it would be a BAD thing for us, both in strategy and everything. They need to propose it as a standalone bill, pass the House, then force Manchin and Sinema to defend their stance on the fillibuster. At a certain point, Idk why we should be allowing popular legislation to be held up. 

But yeah, a lot of their philosophy is virtue signalling and is very performative. 

[bi-furiosity]

maybe this is a me issue but i just. will forever be bitter about the fact that millennials and zoomers only started giving a fuck about the inaccessibility of college when they started accumulating debt for the first time. college has always been inaccessible to our most marginalized community members.

by talking about it as a generational issue and not a class issue, you perpetuate the idea that older poor people do not deserve support to pay off their student loans or to go to school later in life.

i have never known life without debt. my entire life, both of my parents have had student loan debt, both of them were nontraditional students. most of my life we had medical debt. my dad, who was 47 at the time, could not get proper treatment after he had a stroke because his student loans had gone into default and took 20%+ of each paycheck, so he couldn't pay his medical bills.

by centering your anger on the recent hike in tuition and milennial middle-class struggles with it, yall are ignoring the generations of people who have never been able to go to school or who are still in debt from trying. you're literally telling us that it wasn't your fucking problem until it happened to you.

i've had my parents cry in front of me, multiple times, because the way things are going, they'll both die in debt. they are never going to retire. and the reality is that they're still fucking lucky, because they got an education. this isn’t a new issue only milennials and zoomers are experiencing. but the wealth gap has grown in the past 20 years, so now the people who were previously 'safe' have started to give a fuck.

when you want to fight back against that shit, you need to recognize that, yes, you have solidarity with poor people as the working class, but the reality is that there's a marginalization that comes with cyclical, lifetime poverty that you aren't going to understand. the working class isn't a monolith, you're going to have privileges that other people don't. upperclass milennials and zoomers need to step back and acknowledge that poor people are the ones with the most at stake and yall need to be uplifting the voices of poor people first and foremost when you're organizing.

[greenwaterskeeter]

i finally have a coherent personal narrative, and here it is. It’s quite long, but i think of some interest, and might be encouraging!

-Mentions of suicidal ideation, emotional and financial abuse, emotional incest, fatphobia, misogyny, capitalism. Whatever the qpr equivalent of romance is. Ends happily-

I felt for a long time that i should have died when i was 20. Not in the sense that i deserved to, but in the sense that by then i’d accomplished as much as i ever would and was therefore obsolete– taking up resources unnecessarily.

When i was 13, i felt forced to choose between my parents. My bus driver/karate teacher, a kind person who i very much admired, advised me to flip a coin and then, if i didn’t like the result, pick the other. I chose my mother and (privately) pledged absolute loyalty to her (I was obsessed with LOTR at the time and felt that it was the purpose of my life to be a Sam for somebody).

While she was single and struggling to keep the farm and raise my brother (a toddler then), that devotion was used and rewarded. There were times i thought with satisfaction that i might as well be her husband, as well as a parent to my beloved brother. I was proud. I felt righteous. The joy of supporting and protecting her was real. The intermittent anguish of being a minor who could legally only do so much to help was also real. (I believed in laws then).

When I was 17, she remarried (a perfectly nice, wealthy man, as devoted as me and much more powerful) and i went to college. I slowly imploded across all four years, though I didn’t realize that until nearly the end. I think now it was because nothing i could offer her was needed anymore. Every time she treated me like a child instead of the valued partner i had been, i was crushed. Emasculated. i began to feel positively Tortured without understanding why. It sounds like a villain’s origin story, doesn’t it?

When it started affecting my performance, i could only think the trouble was that i was pining for a married professor, as you do. I had fallen in love with him, and made myself his best student (and then his TA, and then began to feel gross about it, quit, and started avoiding where i knew he’d be, all without telling anyone). Once my decline became known and answers were demanded, this was all i could offer in explanation.

I didn’t blame anyone consciously then, but i think now i felt betrayed by how my friends and family reacted. They all thought i must have seduced him (or vice versa if they were generous) to be so torn up. It was too foolish to become suicidal over a crush. They didn’t believe me, or accused me of grandiosity, when i said the professor didn’t even know how i felt. I have always struggled to keep in touch with people, and once my oldest friends gave me the Adultery is Bad talk, it was hard to keep trying.

Everyone did their best and we were all very young. I didn’t understand any more than they did. But still, i can acknowledge now what it would have meant to have just one person who believed in me regardless of understanding. On a deeply hidden level, i felt that my mother, at least, owed me that, after years of faithful service.

But horribly, once it became clear my suicidality was almost entirely passive, she turned on me. She was very frightened. I guess she had also been thanking her lucky stars all that time that i wasn’t turning out like my dad, but here i revealed myself at last to be a freeloader, just like him. I was supposed to go to medical school. I had been the pride of the extended family, the eldest and purest of my generation, a marvel of the local intelligentsia, and i wound up dragging myself back home inept, directionless, cringing, the same as so many unfortunate young cousins and neighbors who’d used to have me pointed out to them as an example. Who would my brothers look up to now?

I endured living at home for a few years. My mom couldn’t keep up the punishment constantly, so although there was no telling when she would start in on me again, or whether she might finally go through with evicting me, there were beautiful things too.

I worked for her husband’s business for no pay, which i understand now was abusive, but i have always enjoyed working with my hands, and when they left me to it, it felt like the old days, like i had a use, even if it was now peripheral. My brothers weren’t sure what to do with me, but we still had fun when we could. The animals comforted me, and it’s special to be able to give affection and gentleness to a creature who depends on you. The woods and mists and early mornings and silent moonlights were still beautiful, and gradually i could appreciate them again. When i was with people, i felt my disgrace abjectly. But on the farm there were many chores to be done alone.

The more i recovered, the more trapped i felt. I even, very alarmingly, spent about two hours one afternoon silently consumed with resentful feelings towards my mother (this hadn’t happened since i was 10). I began to be afraid of losing control and doing something desperate (I totaled two different trucks during this time, on roads i knew well, for no apparent reason). I had given up my spot at a medical school i would not get into twice, and the obvious escape was to reapply elsewhere. I attempted this, and sabotaged it, multiple times.

I got a job at a nursing home, which was hard on my back but full of wonderful people, and was forced to quit when it made me late to my shift at my stepfather’s business too many times. By this i understood that a local job was not getting me out of there. I asked for money to get an EMT certification and was refused. I applied to many online jobs, none of which i had enough time to make money from. I called up one or two branches of the military, and was rejected for being too fat, thank God. I applied to medical school again, and managed to not sabotage it enough that i was accepted into a master’s program instead. It was across the state, five hundred miles away.

And still it might have come to nothing, as i had no conscious plans, actually, of staying away once i was done with this master’s program. The expected thing would be to go on to medical school, but i was only anticipating the first day of being free and couldn’t imagine anything more than a week in the future. I looked at the amount of debt i was taking on for this, knowing in my heart that i would not get a job that could pay it back, and was only relieved that they hadn’t caught onto me and i could still get loans.

There are a lot of things in my story that aren’t what they say is healthy or proper. I shouldn’t have romanticized my own parentification, i should not have had feelings for a 50 year old man, i should have kept trying with my friends, who have good hearts and only made one mistake before i ghosted them, i should have kept telling the truth, i shouldn’t have taken moral injury from things that weren’t my fault, i should have been properly angry with my mother at some point, i should not be grateful that my tendency is to harm myself rather than others.

One person alone should not have been able to save me.

In the second month of my year away, i was in a study group with my roommates and some of their acquaintances, and i laughingly shared some anecdote or other that i thought was harmless. I don’t remember whether anyone else laughed, but one person said: “That sounds kind of fucked up.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed. “Eh, well.”

Nothing more was made of it, and we went on studying. Later, this same person saw me sitting in the cafeteria alone and came to sit with me. We met to study again, just us two, and they showed me a video about white tears and watched me closely for my reaction. We compared ideals and found them the same. We came up with a project to collectivize flashcard-making for our class and had to meet frequently to carry it out. “We’re colleagues,” my new friend said, firmly, when people asked if we were together. We discovered ethical problems with the program and protested them, formally and informally. We were accused of being too insular. We talked about our families, and they said things like: “That’s not okay, you realize that, right” and “I think if more people loved the way you do, I’d have a reason to smile in the morning.” It became normal for my eyes to be sore from crying.

Neither of us got into medical school that year. We got an apartment together after graduation, and worked together too until i was fired (I was new to challenging authority and not very subtle in my distaste for our bosses). My friend’s parents wanted them to quit too, to come home while they reapplied, but they said: “Not without Autumn.” So after some negotiating, we went to live with their folks for a while…

We’ve been together for 5 years now. At first I did the same as I’d always done, but my partner made it clear they don’t want self-abnegation from me. I started trying to have boundaries, paradoxically, to make them happy. I’ve dipped into therapy as money allows. I’ve been reading and thinking and writing. Above all, I’ve been loved.

And all this time, I’ve still been deeply ashamed. I’ve spent the last ten years in some degree of emotional pain 24/7. But somehow, two weeks ago, another thing happened that shouldn’t, and i suddenly knew that i was a human being like any other.

I still feel that I should have died when I was 20, but now it’s in the sense that people say, “You shouldn’t have survived that! What a miracle!” Still existing feels like a bonus. I might live a long time from now and i might not. Either way, I’m incredibly lucky to turn my face to the world and know that i am a creature in it, like other creatures. I am well. It’s good that I’m alive.

[hustlemeanokay]

Warning - this got a little long winded... but it’s something that I just... I get long winded about lol. Also - I’m not trying to rag on anyone in the UK who dreams of living here... though I don’t understand it. It’s just - you should be aware and I don’t see this said enough. Yes, it’s delivered in a very passionate way, because it’s shit that is frustrating for people who live here. And I know the UK is far from perfect but the things that y’all do have down, y’all have it down pat. 

Okay, I get that the US isn’t a completely horrible place to live, currently. Like, we don’t get jailed for saying Trump’s a complete and total fucking moron. See, I can say that and not have my door busted in and be hauled off to some hole in the ground as a political prisoner. 

But when I hear people who live in, like, the UK saying they want to move to America... I swear my left eye twitches just a little bit. Like, I get it - the grass is always greener and all that but... seriously? Are... are they serious when they say that? They... they’re aware of the problems... right? 

Not the social and political problems - those are everywhere. There’s racism and sexism everywhere, there’s corrupt politicians everywhere. That’s not what I’m talking about - yes those things need to be worked on but their virtually identical no matter where you are. 

I’m talking about things like... health care. Paid time off. Employment laws. The cost of college. The cost of retirement. Fuck, the cost of living. Those things. These systemic problems that are just... glazed over. That effect every single person in this fucked up country. Unless you’re of the super rich - every single one of these things are a problem for you. 

Health care. They’re trying to get the whole pre-existing condition thing rolling again. Where, and I’m not even kidding, Trump’s dumbass admin is trying to roll back the Affordable Care Act - which would once again put pre-existing conditions back into play... which pregnancy was considered a pre-existing condition. I wish I was making this up. That’s just a small window into how fucked the system was and could so very easily be again. By the way, the ACA didn’t happen until the mid-90′s. So my generation is the first that was able to actually get pregnancy fucking covered under insurance with no bitch-sessions. And, just for comparison - for the UK peoples out there, we paid over $4000 for the delivery of our son over ten years ago and we had extremely good insurance then that we paid over $800 a month for at the time. That was just his bill, not mine. Just for him. Also - for example... we have insurance, it’s not great insurance but it’s insurance. We pay about $100 a week for it through my husband’s company now. And, to date, this year... we’ve paid... out of pocket, not including the company’s one time benefit of $1500 on an HSA card which is nice but ultimately gone in a heartbeat, so, out of our pocket... not including premiums... we’ve paid almost $10,000 in medical expenses. Only $1000 of it is out of ordinary, for my husband’s procedure that he had to have. The rest has all been RX’s, doctor’s visits, and labs. So yea. There’s that. 

Paid time off. You’re fucking lucky if you get any of that here. That’s why companies tout it as being a benefit. “Oh, this company has good benefits” Good benefits = they actually offer insurance, doesn’t mean it’s good - and you get some semblance of paid time off. Companies here aren’t required to pay you anything extra for working on national holidays and they don’t have to give you any paid vacation or sick days, at all. They are only required to give you maternity leave of 6 weeks or paternity leave, if you request it but none of that is required to be paid either. There’s Family Leave, also not paid time off. And, they will and can do anything to get around paying time and a half for overtime. And, getting into the whole Employment laws thing - companies rely on people not knowing the laws so they can get away with shady ass shit. This happens everywhere, from the corner store and the fucking McDonald’s all the way up to corporate offices. 

College. HA! There are a million bright brilliant people in this country that don’t have a degree because they couldn’t afford to go to college. Or, their parents made just a smidge too much for them to qualify for financial aid and they didn’t want to be burred under a mountain of debt. We’re talking tens of thousands of dollars of debt, what a way to start your life out, huh? Four years at a University? You’re easily looking at $40,000 plus. Easy. Like, wouldn’t be hard to do at all and that’s not even the “best” University either. That’s just like... that one over there. Oh, and student loans? Yeah, interest is charged on those bitches too. Can’t pay them? Oh don’t worry, you can put them on hold for like 36 collective months or something, but they’ll still accrue interest the entire time. And that interest isn’t fixed either, it’s variable. So, good luck with that. 

Retirement? Fuck that. You better hope and pray that social security is still around. For some, even if you do what you’re supposed to and can actually squirrel some away for retirement - you can have some rich fat fuck in an office somewhere decide that he wants your money instead and bam, your retirement is just gone. And that’s assuming you can even afford to have any of your paycheck set aside. Because the cost to live in this country can be insane. True, there are rural places where the cost of living is cheaper but you also don’t get paid shit there either. 

And you still have medical bills when you’re old. What about Medicare, you might be wondering? Oh - you mean medical insurance for the elderly? That shit’s not free anymore. Sure, going to the doctor might be. But if you need an ambulance, you’re still fucked. If you need a prescription? You’d better hope you signed up during that small window for your prescription drug plan, which carries a monthly premium, so you can get your prescriptions. Because, old people never need those, right? And what about care? Well, Medicare will cover some care, like certain kinds of home health care. But not all. And if you need to go into a nursing facility for longer than 100 days? You’d better hope you got buku bucks because Medicare only pays for 100 days. Then, you’d better magically grow younger or some shit. Or, hope you’ve been paying for nursing home insurance. And, hope you’ve been updating that policy to reflect the insane rising costs of those places. Or, if you’re lucky, hope you’ve got family that will help take care of you. To get Medicaid though, you can’t have more than $2000 in assets, at all. That includes life insurance policies with cash values. You can keep your house and like one car but that’s it - and you can’t rent that house out or sell that car once you get Medicaid or you’re benefits can be interrupted because somehow, you can turn $500 into $2000 or something. And - this is the really shitty part, say you are in a nursing home and you do manage to get Medicaid. Medicare still won’t pay a dime to the facility but Medicaid will. But... they’ll also take your entire social security check minus $60 a month. So, if you do still have a house and a car to worry about that you cannot rent out, you’ll have to somehow make that $60 pay for any incidentals you might need (think soap... toothpaste... deodorant... your favorite candies... you get the idea) and for property taxes... insurances... all of that. So... good luck with that. 

Basically... the slogan here is that you can have the American dream if you work hard. But what they don’t tell you is that even if you do get it? You’re probably not going to be able to keep it. 

You can work your ass off your whole life, get that house, build a small business, make it. Not get filthy rich, but do okay. And then you get old and can’t work anymore but it’s okay - you’ve managed to save a little and you’ve got your social security so you’ll be okay. Until you get sick. Or your health starts to go downhill. Then, you’ll watch all that you worked so hard for have to be sold off just to pay your medical bills and go to pay for your care. If you’re lucky, you’ve got kids that can help. But someone, either you or them, is going to have to lose something in order to pay for your care. 

If you aren’t rich, you’ll still not be able to make it. There’s never a break.

For a country that’s all about freedom... you’ll never have a single moment where you’ll be free. 

And for those in the UK starting to go off about VAT. We still pay taxes. We pay sales tax, property taxes, extra taxes added to our gasoline, to the liquor, to the tobacco products, to fucking tampons! We pay licensing fees, renewal fees, tag fees, registration fees, vehicle sales taxes and title fees. We pay federal income taxes, many states pay state income taxes, fuck - some cities have city income taxes. We have toll roads and toll bridges. We still pay taxes on top of all of this. So give me fucking VAT any god damned day of the week if it means I can go to the fucking doctor and not drop $200 fucking bucks just for them to renew the same fucking prescription I’ve been on for years so I can go to the pharmacy and pay $30 for a generic RX for one month. 

[the--social--anarchist]

American Healthcare

American Healthcare is a fucking joke.

I do not have health insurance for a ton of complicated reasons I can’t get into right now. However, my local hospital has a financial assistance program for indigent patients that will cover any big major tests like MRI’s or Echo cardiograms, and sometimes emergency room visits. 

I’ve used the service twice now and each time it has been the biggest hassle of my entire fucking life. They want you to jump through hoops to receive any services at all. Fill out an application. Send in your wage inquiry. Proof of residency. Identification etc. Except my wage inquiry is 8 weeks old and apparently thats unacceptable. Which makes exactly 0 sense because these applications are supposed to be good for 6 months, so what the fuck does it matter??? Fine, I will drive 45 minutes (each way) to pick up this stupid piece of paper that will be identical the the first one. Because that is exactly what somebody receiving multiple brain and spinal MRI’s, who is suffering from debilitating pain and neurological problems should be doing. Whatever. 

Oh but wait, now we need your doctor to send us a “medical necessity” form... You mean the referral? I have the referral, and I sent it in with my application. No, not  referral, a specific document that says you absolutely need this test done. Because apparently doctors order cervical MRI’s for shits and giggles? Why the fuck else would I be having this done if not for a medical necessity? 

These are only the current hoops I’m dealing with. I’ve already dealt with a dozen others. They absolutely make this process unbearably difficult to discourage people from using the service. The process is very demeaning, and everyone treats you like garbage. Like its your fault you got sick, or your fault you dont have health insurance. As if I’m some useless sack of crap who only burdens society.

Well, news flash douche bags. I have worked and paid taxes since I was a teenager. I have never required any form of government assistance until I lost my job in May of 2017 due to very extreme health difficulties. After that I received 6 months of food stamps and that is it. Nothing else. At all. 

And I did file for disability. But after waiting a year for my hearing the main doctor on my case was arrested by the DEA for being a shady drug dealer, and they took all of my records. So I was forced to withdraw my case.

I don’t want a pity party. I don’t want to play the victim. I just want to be treated like a respectable human being with rights and dignity. I just want to be healthy and well so I can finish my degree and go back to work. 

I have exhausted all resources. I have ran up credit card debt, student loans, borrowed money from my mom, and applied for every assistance program under the sun (I qualify for nothing.) But the system doesn’t care. In fact, they will just continue to kick you while you’re down on your knees begging for the chance to survive.

Fuck the American healthcare system.

[beardyallen]

Here we go... (Part 2 of 3)

Alright, so let's talk about April.

[Warning: This is mostly just about my mental health. It’s not super interesting. You won’t learn anything about Beijing. Many of you will probably read this and imagine me sitting here whining. I prefer to call it venting. Feel free to skip this and go directly to Here we go... (Part 3 of 3). It’s where most of the fun stuff is. But...there’s a pretty dope comic about halfway down, so if you also suffer from depression, you should check it out. It’s a good comic. And it makes me smile when everything is gray.]

I generally only talk about my depression with a few people, but I think we could all benefit by having more open discussions about how it affects us. Too many people struggle with this illness, it's stigmatized, and future generations need to know that what they experience is more common than they think. Plus, I imagine that making this beast something that we can talk about will reduce its power and prevalence.

I'm not going to try to talk about the root cause of my issues as I'm not entirely sure where to even start, so I'll just share how it all manifests. And how that's changed over the years. If my mental illness is in fact something that I've been struggling with my entire life, I imagine that it manifested as anger when I was child, usually in response to anxiety around my social situation, exacerbated by end-of-the-semester stress. Why do I think this? Because it seems that I only really got in trouble for acting out in early December or late April/early May. And I was usually retaliating towards a feeling of isolation, invisibility, or worthlessness. It's a pretty strong pattern.

I'm not gonna share any sob stories about how I didn't fit in as a kid, or how moving into a tight-knit community in fifth grade led to a strong feeling of isolation that persisted through middle school and high school. I'm not going to talk about the bullying or harassment. These are things that happened, but they aren't the point. And I'm just as much, if not more, to blame for my circumstances as anyone else.

The anxiety is the point. The feeling that I've had at every stage of my life that I don't matter to the people around me if I'm not always around. That they don't think about me. That if I vanished from their life, they wouldn't notice. That I was replaceable. Or that I was a burden that they would rather shirk off. As far as I can tell, I've felt this way since kindergarten, and all of the anger I felt as a child was in response to stimuli that reinforced this notion.

And in April, the intrusive, invasive thoughts started up again. Yes, of course there were people who wanted to know what was going on with me. There were people who frequently checked in with me to see how I was doing in China. I had every reason to believe that I matter, that my presence was missed, and that I'm still important to people. And in spite of that, it's not how I felt. It even led me to start questioning whether or not my best friend cared about me, which is absurd because of course he does. Life happens. But the voice in my head is a prick.

On top of that, every source of stress in my life spiked. Complications with my teaching assignment manifested, including (but not limited to) issues with my paychecks. Financial reimbursements for my health insurance policy have not been disbursed despite repeated messages to those responsible. Since I'm currently not enrolled in any course credit, my student status was revoked and now those entities which own my student loan debt are looking for payments. My dissertation research stagnated as my collaborator has other super important grad school obligations to deal with, and my Masters Project has been put on hold again for reasons outside my control. It also seems to just get bigger every time I try to make progress. There's also a nagging voice in the back of my head constantly whining about how much more complex my project seems to be in comparison to other Masters projects I've seen from the department. But when the voice pops up, I do what I can to pummel it into submission. I can't live my life in comparison to others.

Beyond that, I randomly wound up with a case of insomnia. For three nights in a row, I laid in bed for hours staring at the inside of my eyelids, watching imaginary scenarios play out as my consciousness jumped from random topic to random topic. In spite of how exhausted I was, I just couldn't get my brain to turn off for more than 30 minutes at a time; during the one or two brief naps, I was privy to some of the most vivid dreams and nightmares that I've had, and my baseline dream/nightmare is already more vivid than most.

So work sucked, minor frustrations related to living in Beijing, no sleep, missing my friends, trying to not freak out about the fact that I'll be effectively homeless all summer (insomuch as I won't have an apartment that I'm officially renting or anything), worrying about the fact that I'm not making as much money as I projected, and just being sick and tired of being sick and tired. April was super fun, guys. Can't you tell?

Mental illness blows. Depression blows. Intrusive thoughts blow.

So I spent an absurd amount of time doing very little. Laying in bed. Reading comic books and rewatching Community. Not writing. Not researching. Being pathetic.

Wondering if I should reconsider my stance on medication. So let's talk about that.

From a philosophical standpoint, I don't much care for the idea of needing a medication to get myself on track. My mental illness is a part of who I am just as much as my intellect and sense of humor are a part of who I am. I'm no genius, but let's consider those individuals who have been described as such and think about just how many of them are suspected to have been depressed or grappling with some sort of mental illness. I'm not going down in history as anyone whose mind is something to admire, but I know that I'm smarter than your average bear. I'm a PhD student studing theoretical mathematics, probability and statistics. I'm simulataneously working on a dissertation related to subgraph density problems and a masters project centered around reconstructing familial networks in forensic databases. These topics are not related, nor has the coursework had very much overlap. Balancing two different graduate degrees is not common among people in my department, but I know that I can handle it.

So if I seek out medication as a means to balance my life, what sort of unforeseen impact will that have on my studies? It is not uncommon for the process of finding "the right medication" to take months, and as your life changes, so too does "the right medication." I have one year left in my program (maybe two if I'm unlucky, and that seems to be how my life goes), my diet is fucked, my sleep schedule has been jacked up for the last few months, and I haven't had regular physical activity excepting the 2 mile walks to and back from Wudaokou several times a week. My work life is tumultuous at the best of times, and all of this is changing in the not-so-distant future. I have been in academia my entire life, living on the same stress-rhythm for the past 24 years. What happens when I'm suddenly a research or data scientist?

Medication is off the table for the time being. I had bi-weekly counseling last semester which seemed to help with my stress levels, but at some point I would like some sort of diagnosis. But before I can seek therapy, I need to be back in the States, with some sort of stable life. That means August of September at the earliest. Probably September. In the meantime, I bounce between feeling like I've got everything figured out and feeling like I'm holding my sanity together with scotch tape. All the while, I question all of the things I thought I knew about how I wanted my life to look as I see more clearly every day just how messed up the world is. Ignorance definitely wasn't bliss, but knowing doesn't feel much better.

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Damn. That was pretty bleak. But I needed to get it out of my head.

Enjoy this dope little comic that I think about every Sunday to help me get through the week.

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Now back to it. I'm open to therapy, I know that it will help. It's part of my long-term plan for mental stability. And I'm open to talking about medication with my future therapist, once the "big issues" in my life that I can control are worked out.

In the meantime, I'm okay. Or at least that's what I'll say whenever someone asks.

Of course I'm not okay. For some reason that I haven't yet worked out, my brain focuses on the negatives waaaaay too much. I do my best to combat it, but generally I've just managed to make this work to my advantage throughout my life, planning for worst-case scenarios, being comfortable with failing when I try to solve a problem, being the skeptic in my research groups. It's made me a better mathematician. It's made me push myself further towards excellence. But it's also inherently held me back.

Before I really had a grasp on my mental illness, I would have periods of numbness. I would get absorbed by these intrusive thoughts and mistake them for my authentic voice. I would see everything around me as gray and conclude that my friendships weren't as wonderful and remarkable as they are, that my relationship is doomed to fail because I don't feel a spark or magnetism anymore, that I'm not actually supposed to be a graduate student and that I'm not good enough and that I've only made it this far as a fluke and eventually everyone will figure out that I'm a fraud. And I've made mistakes because of it. I've let friendships die, relationships fail, and...alright, so I've pretty much been kicking ass at the grad school thing, but I guess my response to feeling like a fraud is usually to push myself super hard until I start burning out. This actually happened last school year when I was preparing for my comprehensive exam, which led to my oral exam, which led right into the end of the semester, with several conferences that I was running and attending, and then a research workshop and then...my seizures came back. Maybe "seizure" isn't quite correct, but I'm not sure what else to call it when my body has a stress-induced reaction that feels like someone swinging an icepick in the back of my skull.

So I'm not okay. But for the time being, that's just going to have to be okay. [Queue i'm ok. by Judah and the Lion]

I could use a nap.

[unrequited-words]

I feel pretty good this morning. I woke up around 4:45 and got ready and about 5:15 I decided to get in my steps this morning. I finally got all 10000 steps in which is great and I'm probably going to take a nap later because my sleep schedule is so fucked up and I'm so exhausted.

I think in the next 6 months I really can lose 50 lb if I really try and I think my focus right now is exercise and getting healthy because my mental health is shit. My psychiatrist took me off of Wellbutrin because of my insomnia and I've been taking Prozac which helps curb my anger and helps with my depression but I noticed the first week I took it I was barely functioning and I'm starting to think I need to start taking Wellbutrin again.

I'm supposed to go see her tomorrow in the afternoon and I'm just like not really looking forward to it because she's always late and I have to really tell her I need something else to help me because this is barely keeping my head above water. I'm supposed to be seeing my psychiatrist tomorrow and as much as I like seeing her I am a little nervous because I don't know what my mental health is. It's gotten so bad that I'm actually Googling symptoms of a nervous breakdown because I don't know

I know it's not a nervous breakdown I just know that I need more medication and I know that Prozac isn't really helping me. And I want to talk to her and ask her should I still continue the Wellbutrin. I've been taking medicine at night which really really really has been helping me sleep but I took it so late last night that I only got 2 hours of sleep when usually I take this medication and it helps me get 6 to 7 hours of sleep

I think one of the main reasons my mental health is so shity is when I started talking to R. I've been saying how I'm cutting him out of my life and how I blocked him but it seems like he always comes back and then he's a nice and then when I say no about certain things he completely blocks me and I'm just like beer in our thirties I'm not interested I just want a friend and this is clearly not the way it's supposed to go I don't know I mean he really opened up my eyes when it came to my degree I'm basically wishing I can give them my degree back because it is not helping me getting into the door in writing and I'm just feel like a fucking failure 7 years ago when I started this journey of higher education I said to myself I don't want a degree that's not going to get me anywhere I don't want to degree to where I owe $50,000 in student loan debt and real life it's a fucking paperweight because at this point I'm starting to think so

And I really think that's part of my problem it's like I tried when my dad died to really improve my life and my life for the last seven years has been nothing but shit. I have struggled with part-time jobs to pay for school and now at 33 on thinking is this fucking really it because I don't have it anymore in me to go get a Masters or to be a fucking teacher I think I'm just so burnt out with everything it just sucks because here I am four classes away from getting my Bachelor's and I regret it I mean yeah people in my family warned me saying I can go in a teaching but I don't want to go into teaching I want to write I want to be in a cubicle creating contact and instead I don't have any of these skills none whatsoever so I don't know what to do I have put thousands upon thousands of dollars in my education and honestly I wish I can go back and just get a fucking trade because this is some bullshit

I don't want to work in a warehouse because it's minimum wage I could get my hands dirty and go into construction if I wanted to Anna maybe I'm thinking maybe that's the road I need to go into because clearly what I'm doing is not making me fucking happy as long as I can get a job that can support me I'll be fine

I just feel really fucking lonely. I've been seeking out people to be friends with, and to chat with and it's nothing it's not even fucking worth it. And I think I just need to escape from it all I don't need people texting me and blowing up my phone saying they're thinking about me and in the next breath I tell them no and they block me

I figured out what it's important and it's not politics and it's not fighting it's not family bulshit it's putting me first it's saying no more often doing what I want to do it's going on a walk when I want to it's not having to answer to anybody and I get that you are nervous when I walk because it's dark and I live in a big city but I mean I still feel like I am a fucking bird and a cage I really feel like I have no free time because I've always had someone to answer to and what's really fucking scary is I'm repeating the exact same life as my mother and I need to find to do something different and I think that's the most scary fucking thing ever

[politicsaccordingtohistory]

The Apparent Wisdom of Bernie Sanders

Well, this probably should have been a direct message to @politijohn, but they took out their comment section. Hoo-rah. Well, might as well say my thoughts.

On January 8th of Current Year + 4 (or 2019), President hopeful Bernie Sanders had tweeted the following:

There's no crisis at the border. President Trump, you want to talk about crises?

-30 million Americans have no health insurance

-Climate change threatens our planet

-Half of older Americans have no retirement savings

-40 million are dealing with outrageous student debt

Well, let's start with the obvious. The Left has been going on about "illegal immigrants internment camps" for the last several months, so by the rhetoric of your own side you're wrong: you DO think there's a crisis at the border. Not to mention the situation that happened on November 26th, when South American migrants rushed the border wall despite the fact that they were being processed for entry anyway.

These people had pushed women and children to the front to use as physical and emotional shields. Nothing moves people's hearts and not their heads like the headline "Children tear gassed at the border." Moreover, let's say we stopped protecting our border. Let the economic migrants in. Do you think those numbers you provided will go down? Or up? "75 million children dealing with student loan debt, nearly half undocumented." Got the right kind of ring to it, eh?

Mentioning student debt, let's talk about that next. College is useless. If everyone has a degree, they become fundamentally useless. But an employer will look at an applicant funny if they didn't get a college degree. Yes, if you're poor and don't want to rack up student loan debt you'll never pay off, you'll be locked out of some jobs that are completely unattached to the high school level "required courses" you had to take to get a bachelor's degree.

Yes I dropped out of college. I have a wife I need to provide for. I have retirement that needs funding (the sooner one starts the better). I have time intensive hobbies; animation, game design, writing, drawing. I refuse to have a debt that's more than a thousand times what I make in a month and grows at the rate of 20%. You want good schooling, go to trade school. It's what I'm going to do once I have some time for it.

Also, college is expensive because the government will pay tuition for a percentage of students. It's why the price has increased a hundred fold over the past 30 years.

Speaking of things that can only be blamed on the choice of the individual, retirement. I'm poor as balls. Because I don't use credit cards, I spend months scraping together funds for something like a game console. But I take $50 out of my biweekly check and set it away in a 401k. I also work Lyft, and half my monthly earnings from that go into a Roth IRA. Now I just keep stashing for the next 40 years and I'll retire on time to a sizeable nest egg.

Besides, Mr. Sanders and @politijohn, the government already tried to fix this problem with Social Security. Which I pay into every month. And will never see a penny of, as that social program is crumbling away over the next ten, twenty years. So thanks for that.

Health insurance. Oh boy the things I have to say about health insurance. Why doesn't the government allow private companies into the health market? Did you know you can't look up how much an x-ray will set you back? An ultrasound? A blood test? Why can't we open it up to a wider market? Competition, more efficient and cheaper products, and I can look around at the prices of everything.

I can make the fucking payments to a place of medical practice, my wife's health is the most important thing to me. I've taken her to a small office already this year, when she was nearly bed ridden because of the stress her job placed on her. I could handle the cost, cause I save up money. I am not a child and the state is not my fucking mother.

And then we come to climate change. That's the one I feel most shaky about. Yeah, I think that the Earth is going through a greenhouse phase. The release of excess carbon into the atmosphere causing uv rays to become trapped makes decent sense to me. On the other hand, consensus is not science. I don't care what percentage of scientists agree, science is a pursuit of reality and not a democracy. And the government regulations that put the boot to the head of every small business owner, oof. Not to mention the yellow vest protests in France. You know, cause the leader of France decided to up the taxes on the poor- I mean, increase the tax on gas that will definitely end with people using other, more eco-friendly means of transportation. Definitely.

[vespaer77]

I graduated from college in 1999 with $19K student loan debt. As a Gen Xer, I'm on that fine line between affordable tuition and what should be classified as criminal activity with regards to how student loan programs have been conducted (because the problem we're seeing today was starting around that time). I'm probably amongst its first number of victims.

$19K is not a lot to pay off. It's a car. It can be done in 72mos. If I hadn't been living in abject poverty as a kid (family of 4 on $18K per year, I know what it means to be hungry and scared - some of our household income was likely drug related), then that $19K would never have needed to have been borrowed in the first place. As a professional, home-owning, tax-paying adult, $19K is a very different thing to me now than it was for my mother then. I had a scholarship because I was a gifted kid, and thank god because it could have been that much worse.

Because somehow. SOMEHOW. SOMEHOW at 43 years old, more than 20 years later, I still owe $36 fucking K.

Someone explain this to me.

I will literally never pay this off. I will be paying $350 a month to this entity until the day I die. This will come out of my social security when I'm 86 and trying to figure out groceries and medications.

What angers me most is that ten years ago I owed $38K. I, to begin with, have never received an adequate explanation for why my balance doubled. My interest rate is only 6.6%, for crying out loud. But what really kills me is that in ten years - TEN - I've only managed to pay off $2000.

At $350 per month.

Not counting everything I've paid between 1999 and 2010.

I don't know what to do. Thankfully today I make a comfortable enough living that my finances aren't terribly impacted. But it's money I could be putting into my retirement. It's money I won't have in my budget when I'm retired.

It terrifies me and I don't know what to do.