In a non-scientific survey, with a tiny sample of self-selected participants in a left-leaning fediverse (are you still reading?), 65% of respondents still support paying CEOs at least 4x the median salary in a company, and nearly 1/3 support 40x.
Contrary to accusations from right-wing media, this small group of progressives at least isn't opposed to business or to paying CEOs considerably more than regular employees. However …
HOW DID WE GET HERE?
(a thread of threads, quotes, and links)
This is a collection of writings and research concerned with how we got where we are today, which is in fact the story of what has been done to us, and what has been taken from us.
By "us" we're talking about "the 99%", "workers", "wage slaves", all non-owners of private property, "the poor", unhoused people, indigenous people, even plenty of people who swear by capitalism and identify as "capitalist" yet have no capital of their own and no serious hope of ever having any worth speaking of. In other words almost everyone except for the very few who have had the power to exploit us and shape our lives to serve their agenda. We're going to examine institutions and concepts that have deeply altered our world at all levels, both our external and internal realities.
By "here" we are talking about climate crisis and myriad other environmental catastrophes resulting from hyper-excessive extraction, consumption and waste; a world of rampant inequality and exploitation, hunger and starvation; a world of fences, walls, tollbooths, prisons, police, bullshit jobs and criminalized poverty; a world overrun with cars and preventable diseases; a world of vanishing biodiversity and blooming fascism; a world where "democracy" results in being led by some of the worst of humanity; a world ruled by an imaginary but all-powerful and single-minded god: Capital.
Our inspiration and structural framework for this survey is this quote from "The Prehistory of Private Property", an important work from political philosopher Karl Widerquist and anthropologist Grant S. McCall:
"After hundreds of millennia in which all humans had direct access to the commons, it took only a few centuries for enclosure, colonialism, capitalism, and industrialization to cut off the vast majority of people on Earth from direct access to the means of economic production and therefore to rob them of the power to say no. It took only a few generations to convince most people that this situation was natural and inevitable. That false lesson needs to be unlearned."
I’ve often complained that when the US “ended welfare as we know it” (in 1996) no one kept track of what happened to the people who were on welfare. How many lost their apartments? Became drug addicts? Went to jail? Died?
There’s no doubt in my mind all of these things happened as a consequence. But we’ll never know the numbers. People with money and power didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t want to know.
I’ve been awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship! I’m now looking for a PhD student to help challenge inequalities in research feedback for minoritised early career researchers. It’s a fun blend between #openscience#openresearch and #psychology#socialpsych#inequality with a super supportive team!
Advert coming live soon but in the meantime, if you’re interested (or know someone who might) do reach out! Deadline is just a month for a September start!
A group of 18 European Parliament Members have issued a statement officially calling for #Degrowth.
Here is part of what they wrote...
We believe that the current economic model, based on endless growth, has reached its limits.
Firstly, continuous economic growth, especially based on the consumption of fossil fuels, is leading to catastrophic global warming.
Secondly, the infinite pursuit of growth relies on the depletion of natural resources, the destruction of biodiversity, and the accumulation of waste and pollution. This also poses risks to our health, our economies, and our societies writ large.
Thirdly, the current economic model is contributing to social inequality and exclusion. The emphasis on economic growth has not translated into equal distribution of wealth or opportunities. Instead, it has resulted in a concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few leaving many behind.
Fourthly, the current economic model is inherently unstable and prone to crises, as seen, for example, during the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. The pursuit of growth at all costs has created a global economic system that is fragile and vulnerable to shocks.
We need an economic system that prioritises human well-being and ecological sustainability over GDP growth, one that recognises that infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
We also believe we need to find new ways of organising our economies without relying on the continuous exploitation of resources and the constant increase in production and consumption.
We call for more pluralism in economic thinking within EU institutions and for its alignment with the scientific evidence of climate, ecological, and social sciences.
We call for economic models and other decision-support tools to be more diverse, more comprehensive, and more readable for citizens.
We call for decision-making processes to be aligned with our common policy objectives rather than on the basis of the variation of GDP figures.
Names of those who signed on as co-authors: Philippe Lamberts (BE), Bas Eickhout (NL), Ville Niinisto (FI), Manuela Ripa (DE), Marie Toussaint (FR), Ernest Urtasun (ES), Kim Van Sparrentak (NL) — Greens/EFA; Manon Aubry (FR), Petros Kokkalis (EL), Marisa Matias (PT), Helmut Scholz (DE) — The Left (GUE/NGL); Pascal Durand (FR), Aurore Lalucq (FR), Pierre Larrouturou (FR) — Socialists & Democrats (S&D); Sirpa Pietikainen (FI), Maria Walsh (IE) — European People’s Party (EPP); Katalin CSEH (HU) — Renew Europe (RE); and Dino GIARRUSSO (IT) — Non-attached (NI).
8 men control as much #wealth as the poorest half of the world's population, roughly 3.6 billion people.
That's four hundred fifty million people each billionaire must fight to maintain their wealth.
These are very good odds.
I say we go get the motherfuckers.
Joe Biden is planning to resolve the #debtceiling crisis by giving Joe Manchin and the GOP a dirty deal on "permitting reform" - giving oil & gas & coal & mining an even more free pass for destroying our future.
White House climate advisor John Podesta, live now, at the Chevron & Southern Company-backed Bipartisan Policy Center:
“According to a recent poll, more than 70 percent of Britons under the age of 50 are indifferent to the coronation. Even so, a staggering 250 million pounds ($315m) of magicked-up taxpayer money will be spent on this single day even as thousands of nurses, doctors, teachers and other key public workers have been told for months there is no money in the coffers to offer them a meaningful pay rise.”
“People who criticize new technologies are sometimes called Luddites, but it’s helpful to clarify what the Luddites actually wanted. The main thing they were protesting was the fact that their wages were falling at the same time that factory owners’ profits were increasing, along with food prices. They were also protesting unsafe working conditions, the use of child labor, and the sale of shoddy goods that discredited the entire textile industry. The Luddites did not indiscriminately destroy machines; if a machine’s owner paid his workers well, they left it alone. The Luddites were not anti-technology; what they wanted was economic justice. They destroyed machinery as a way to get factory owners’ attention. The fact that the word #Luddite is now used as an insult, a way of calling someone irrational and ignorant, is a result of a smear campaign by the forces of capital.”
@jared
Feels like only half the story if you don't say what England did to them in response:
The plethora of primary sources emanating from the propertied upper classes detail how the mass public hangings at the Luddite trials suppressed the destruction of private property and the perceived threat to “public peace” from the Luddite “disturbances.” http://www.sfu.ca/~poitras/JSR_proof_20.pdf
We can either have a society that tolerates millionaires and billionaires polluting the planet and destroying the biosphere. Or we can have a planet with a healthy biosphere but with fewer millionaires and no billionaires at all.
This is from a recently published peer-reviewed scientific paper titled “Millionaire Spending Incompatible with 1.5 C Ambitions”...
Much evidence suggests that the wealthiest individuals contribute disproportionately to climate change. Here we study the implications of a continued growth in the number of millionaires for emissions, and its impact on the depletion of the remaining carbon budget to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
Our findings suggest that the share of millionaires in the world population will grow from 0.7% today to 3.3% in 2050, and cause accumulated emissions equivalent to 72% of the remaining carbon budget. This significantly reduces the chance of stabilizing climate change at 1.5°C.
The concentration of wealth at the top means that a significant share of the remaining carbon budget to 1.5°C is depleted by a very small share of humanity. This comparably small group is also likely to invest its wealth in ways that further increase emissions.
Continued growth in emissions at the top makes a low-carbon transition less likely, as the acceleration of energy consumption by the wealthiest is likely beyond the system's capacity to decarbonize. To this end, we question whether policy designs such as progressive taxes targeting the high emitters will be sufficient.
Like I said, we can have one thing or the other — but not both.
I posted a version of the toot below late last year, shortly after I started on Mastodon. At the time I had maybe a couple of hundred followers. Now that I have more than that, I’d like people to see this who haven’t seen it before…
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It can be difficult to understand just how un-equal our modern human society really is.
We often talk about the 1% versus the 99%, but that’s not even close to an accurate ratio for the true scale of inequality — because the “haves” in our society (our owners, our rulers) do not possess a mere one hundred times more power and wealth than the rest of us. The disparity is FAR greater than that.
> See the video below for a good explanation of this.
Through consolidation and monopolies and lobbying and bribery and corruption, within the past four decades the wealthy and powerful have achieved complete dominance over us and over the world we live in. It’s not an exaggeration to say they own and control virtually EVERYTHING.
They own the corporations. They own the resources. They own the governments. They own the major media. They own (most of) the Internet.
And what are they doing with all that wealth and power? Simple. They’re grabbing more. And more and more and more. They will never have enough.
In the meantime, while they continue hoarding, our owners are also working to convince you and me that everything is okay, that the status quo is just fine, that there’s nothing to worry about. They want to keep the stores open, the factories running, the airlines flying, and the cruise ships sailing.
The longer our rulers can keep assuring everyone that Business As Usual is the way to go, the more money they will make. And they believe (though it's likely a delusion) that with enough money and enough power, they and their descendants will be able to survive and even thrive in the 3°C to 5°C world of the future.
I’m not sure at this point if anything can be done about all this. It may be too late. But I hope I’m wrong.
Mothers were more likely to lose jobs in 2020 than fathers, and the disparity (and relative decline) was greatest among Latinas. #COVID19#family#inequality
$11.75/hr, 8-10hr shifts, Saturdays as needed, injuries to hands and fingers are common, earplugs and steel-toed boots required, 30F temperature, drug test, no benefits, temporary status. This is a bad job: a temp job at a sausage factory with poor working conditions and low pay.
The US budget that House Republicans adopted yesterday included more “work requirements” for food stamps. That’s a term of art, meaning government money is funneled to wealthy for-profit corporations instead of poor people. In return for the money, corporations force tedious busy work on poor people to stay eligible for food, ranging from attending lectures by rich white men to filling out forms to taking unpaid internships https://www.marketplace.org/shows/the-uncertain-hour/chapter-6-the-welfare-to-temp-work-pipeline/
"Billionaires are outliers that give us a window into flawed social dynamics. And they’re outliers not just in terms of wealth, but often, in terms of greed, an obsession with horizontal inequality, self-selection, illusory control, and, perhaps most fascinating of all, overconfidence.
In short, billionaires provide a window into so much about what is wrong with modern life—and the broken systems of how we allocate wealth and power."
For those having trouble keeping up with their credit card bills (more common now that many people's pandemic government assistance savings has been used up), unexpected interest charges from the vanished credit card "grace period" can be a surprising gotcha: