Not exactly the tweet, but dropping this again here because of the title.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. … A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. … But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.
Fun napkin math fact: If we divvied up the top… 5 wealthiest billionaires net worth… that’d get every living man, woman, and child on earth a cool $250 ish.
Sure - its not very much but it certainly does make you think. What if…
Why not divide up ALL of their wealth?
The idea of wealth redistribution is in stripping power from the very rich. If you are rich, you influence politics in a way that benefits you by not caring about others.
The problem with Bill Gates’ poly vaccine in Africa is not in the fact that it didn’t save children, in fact it did. The problem is that measles takes more children’s lives in Africa by an order of magnitude and measles vaccination would’ve saved much more.
Now add to the picture the recent decisions: internet surveillance (age verification), ignoring the Paris agreement, data centers built everywhere. I guess a lot of people would oppose these, but their voices are not heard.
I mentioned this a moment ago as a different reply but your observations are all examples of a feedback loop perpetuating itself. Its certainly correctable. This isnt the first time it happened nor will it be the last. Its a product of some of the uglier parts of the human condition.
Absolute power corrupts - and those in power will not only seek to keep that power bit increase it. They consolidate it. Less people with power: less opposition. But this has diminishing returns… and has reset trap baked in. How? Numbers. Power moves people. As you concentrate power - you have less people to move and more people opposing that movement.
1 billionaire, 8 billion people. What do you do to maintain that power? Surveillance. Draconian rules. Control the narrative and paint yourself as necessary. The power dynamic is reaching a tipping point. Unrelated: I recall there seems to be an uptick in bunkers being built by the ultra wealthy. Puzzling.
Sound familiar? It should. History is littered with example after example.
The system breaks in the same way - every time. These aren’t deitites - they aren’t special. They are just another meat bag running on 80% lizard-brain firmware that is purely focused on ITS survival alone. In the end these twats engineer their own destruction. Now, while the all for one trait certainly is consistent in its consolidation of power: it still consistently maintains its loss record to the group. I’d like to think of that as an immune response to a foreign entity. In a weird way that sorta gives me hope.
And that’s not at lot…for people in the US, like a month of groceries for 2 adults. Not touching other actual bills.
But in developing countries, $250 could rival a large percentage of their monthly wages.
Money and value are interesting topics. Many of the oddities surrounding expense vs need exist as a result of scales being unfairly influenced. Billionaires aren’t the root of the problem - they are the symptom of the problem. If billionaires didnt exist: that would likely be because wages, costs, and services are more fairly balanced. Less disparity - less resources to leverage to create it… and likely a much higher cost to apply that leverage. We are simply in a feedback loop in a sick system. Cancer doesn’t just go away with thoughts and prayers.
In Zambia, average monthly wage is 130$.
Most of that would be in stocks you can’t sell at once or they immediately lose value.
While yes, my napkin math may have simplified things to produce a workable ish value:
The numbers purpose was to provide perspective - which I feel worked reasonably well.
Waiting for busses isn’t a poverty problem, it’s a policy problem.
It’s both.
In fact, poverty itself is a policy choice of forced deprivation.
You know what’s also wild?
Paying Elon Musk for a blue checkmark.
Giving No Kings vibes.
Time poverty is a totally real and utterly overlooked hindrance
One example I can think of is in the woodworking/DIY work I do. A common frustration of DIY projects is you often end up making many many trips to hardware stores. Often they’re not even big runs, you just need an item to continue the project. You absolutely need it, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve already been the the store twice today.
One way to reduce this problem is to buy more than you need. I once built a dust collection system out of PVC pipe and fittings. When starting, I went and bought way more parts than I knew I would need. I can afford to do this, and I knew that I would end up returning a good number of them. And I made sure to buy from a place with easy returns. But when working on a big project, I’ll happily by 20-50% more of something than I’ll need, just to reduce the number of emergency trips back to the hardware store. Saves so much time to just buy way more than you need and then return all the extras at the end of the project.
It’s ruinning my friendships. I can’t even fully be there for peolle, and they resent that.
It’s expensive being poor
Being poor is super expensive. When you don’t have enough money in your bank account they’ll charge you a monthly fee. When you’re too poor to have an account, you have to go to a check cashing place and pay to get paid. Too poor to have awesome credit? You have to pay higher interest fees and larger deposits.
I’ve never understood check cashing places.
I thought people only went to them because they didn’t want to wait for checks to clear, or they didn’t want a paper trail on a checking account, because it would get automatically garnished for child support.
Are you saying that someone could actually be so poor that a bank will refuse them from opening a checking account? What risk is there to the bank if it goes empty?
Ive cashed paychecks at one point using these placss. I dont think I had a bank account at the time. To open an account you have to deposit money. I couldnt afford to just leave money in an account in any given week, so I didnt have one. So I used to cash them at Stop n Shop, a grocery store. They would do it for a small fee. Then one day, they said they wouldnt cash my checks anymore, because my credit was bad? It made no sense to me at the time.
So for about a year, I used the local sketch ball check cashing place. I think they took 8% or something. Later in life, there was a time I just cashed them at walmart. Damn, there was a time in my life I was too broke to have a bank account. oye.
One thing is financial literacy.
A lot of people come from a cycle of poverty where no one around them can explain why it’s a good idea to have a bank account.
Also, there are predatory banks that demand minimum amounts to start any account. If you don’t have $200.00 to start an account it’s hard to start an account.
Back in the day, banks encouraged little kids to start bank accounts with just a few dollars. I had a bank book when I was 12. Those days are long gone. I went to Bank of America with a check from a BOA account and they wanted to charge me. I could wait to get to my own bank, but other folks wouldn’t have that option.
We also used to have a 70% wealth tax in those “good ol days” pre Reagan
Reagan was a good family man who believed in small town values and honesty.
He threw away his wife for a bimbo after moving to Hollywood.
I understand your comment to be snark. From what I remember:
Reagan was a commie scare guy who blacklisted his enemies in the screenactors guild if they didnt share his conservative viewpoint.
Reaganomics was flatly stupid or a con job, take your pick-- just tax cuts for the rich that were supposed to trickle down and never did, and massive swathes of dergulation, including environmental rules. His deregulation of the banking industry caused the savings and loan crisis that cost a lot of people their life savings, and destroyed the US economy for a good long time and caused a recession.
Iran Contra happened on his watch (although he claims he knew nothing about it). The CIA were literally flying pallets of cocaine into florida air force bases on private cargo planes and selling them on our streets to make money. I find it hard to beleive that a single lowly colonel could have run all of it, using the presidents CIA.
He was a bad B-list actor. His movies sucked really bad, even back then.
He was reportedly a closetted bisexual (with Howard cook before he was married) whose shame steered him to slow walk AIDs treatments for 6 years while his surgeon general screamed for him to allow it, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands who needed treatment during an explosion of AIDS.
The only good thing about him was that he wasnt under AIPAC’s thumb. But he still gets an F on policy and basic decency, although republicans and dems both adored his grandfather-leader BS act. The man was a complete idiot, as are his followers.
Oliver North 'American Dad"
never seen that one, pretty good!
Banks have a separate system, like the credit rating system, they use just for depositors. Credit scores reflect the risk to lend money to you. But the banks keep other scores and lists of depositors. Too many overdrafts or transactions their AI considers suspicious? You can be blacklisted from opening an account at any bank.
Credit Unions for example require a share purchase usually so while it’s usually quite small some people can’t afford to loose even $5.
Sometimes it’s also debt, guy owes his normal bank a fuckload of money so uses the cash checking to cash his check, he might lose a bit in fees but it’s probably less than what the bank would of taken. I’ve seen alot of contractors in this situation.
They don’t want to risk people overdrafting and just changing banks.
Then don’t give them overdraft? I bet a lot of them don’t even want it and would rather it just reject any payments that would put it in the negative because they charge extra for using overdraft, too.
You don’t understand. They WANT to de-bank poor people.
Nah I understand, showing some problem has a simple solution that gets ignored shows that that problem isn’t the real problem.
There’s not a high risk of making much money off then, so it’s considered a waste of time and resources
Same with being disabled, growing up I thought disabled people just got helped by everyone in society with everything. Turns out most of the time it’s “do what you were doing before except harder.”
Or if you’re too mentally ill and in so much pain that working is hard but society deems you worthless
The secret is to already have a job that doesn’t notice you’re not working
Capitalism deems them unexploitable, they still have worth in society
<3
Waiting for buses and other public transport especially. In college I had no car and continued working a part time job that I previously borrowed my parents’ car to commute to. My options were: spending an hour and a half to commute taking a bus with a reasonable schedule but I’d have to walk over a mile alongside a busy road to my job, or spend three hours to commute due to how two route schedules matched up to drop me off at the entrance to the shopping center.
Each of those options was one way, and this was before smart phones. I wasn’t getting anything done in that time besides listening to music and maybe reading a book while on the bus itself.
And then I learned that on Saturdays, over half the time the bus just didn’t fucking show up at the stop where I got on, and the support phone line would just fucking lie about it.
Plus, if I had a vehicle, the commute would have been only 20 minutes in bad traffic.
Will say, the regular distance power walking helped keep me in great shape though.
Ive run into this too. How many times Id just walk to work for the 1.5hours instead of taking the bus that took just as long, but would drop me off at work either 2hours early, or 15mins late. so Id just walk it.
It was glorious the day I finally got a bike.
I don’t know your distance for commuting. But I consider the bicycle the most superior form of commuting for distances below 10 miles(16km) (personally would even cycle more than double that).
It’s even cheaper, keeps you healthy and often is even faster than a car, considering parking, traffic lights/jams etc… I also enjoy doing that so another advantage.
Depends on geography
In a more mountine town ive lived in with a bike you can be very fast downslope
Upslope?
20 min for 2km and you will be sweaty as hell at the end
10 and sweaty as hell if you are fit
I wonder how infrastructure would change if companies were required to reimburse valid claims of mileage or time spent (not the bus/train fare, but paying your wage for the time spent to get to work).
While the intent is good, as written it would probably have the unintended consequence of making it harder to get a job if you happen to live far away from the workplace, which I don’t think is the way to go
I knew as I wrote it that it would be far more complex than just setting a single law down. But the fact that such cost of time and money just to get to work exists suggests the burden isn’t balanced well. The case you mention of distance to a job is more a symptom of the problem of not being more localized for everything. Not just an American problem, but definitely something we deal with outside of a few major urban areas. A pay adjustment doesn’t fix that, it just is a rough patch that wouldn’t work for some.
In all honesty I think it’s connected to the housing crisis bleeding into basically every other political issue, because of how damn massive of a problem it is
This could be a fantastic idea, and maybe a hammer blow to the “return to office” bullshit.
Sure, I’ll go into the office. Pay me 25% more to account for the travel time.
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According to a video I’ve seen, actors get paid for their commutes
Only outside the TMZ, which is why basically everything in LA is filmed within it.
An interesting little quirk for sure
Yes he was a fascist. Also our buddy Epstein was involved in Iran contra https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-iran-contra-planes-leslie-wexner-pottinger-leese-arms-weapons-smuggling
over here it’s very common to not be able to afford a personal vehicle. 1 hour commutes each way, while standing in a crowded hot bus is not only normal but even sorta decent.
at least we have shitty broken sidewalks.
This is what I point out whenever someone tries to tell me, “The only fair thing in life is everyone gets 24 hours in a day.”
That doesn’t mean shit when someone with a private jet can be on a different continent in hours.
“We all have the same 24 hours in a day”
I fucking hate that saying so much. I’ve started telling people just because you and everyone else at the marathon might have the same 23 miles to go, when 9/10 of you are shackled to a heavy steel ball, and at least half are dragging 2 or 3, then that distance means fuck all.
A marathon isn’t that hard. Just buy a car!
I like to use a private jet. I can be so much more productive!
Someone to prepare your meals and do your shopping and run your kids around. All of these things take time that adds up in a week.
A brief personal report about fried chicken prices in America…
- 2025: $24-$26 dollars for 24 pieces.
- 2026: $26, $28, and now $31 dollars.
Also, I am seeing many items suffering from shrinkflation. Terrific. 😒
tangent, I recently remembered I can make fry chicken.
Got a family pack of chicken on sale, those god aweful giant breat pieces that are not natural. One breast, pounded out to like three sandwich sized pieces. Five chicken pieces pouned out thin- was a lot of Fin chicken. Marinated them for 20 mins in (low sodium) soy sauce. Dredged in a layer of corn starch, knocking off any extra startch so it is a thin coat. And fried em in a combo of canola/avocado oil.
then you can put any sauce you like on em. Absolutely fire. It takes some time to do this yes, but it was so much chicken. The work to me, justifies the calorie bomb fried chicken is. Its still healthy/better than fast food chicken.
why spend $30 when you can spend $15 and use up all your corn startch and the better part of an afternoon? lol ;)
tanget /end
The SiFi movie “In Time” staring Justin Timberlake is meh quality wise, but the premise is really interesting… That the currency of that universe is the time someone has left to live. They do an interesting job playing with how wealth inequality changes behavior of people with and without time to spare
That’s a marker of the upwardly mobile. At some point they reach a threshold of wealth where they can be paying other people for their time.
Those who stay poor might look at them like they’re spending money recklessly to pay for the help. They don’t realize the financial crossover that’s happening.
Oh we do
