#Neoliberalism leads to internally untenable levels of #inequality such that it ultimately gives way to either fascism or #socialism. The Democratic Party did its best to make sure socialism would never appear to be a real alternative. As a consequence, we're now getting the fascism treatment.
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#Child begging livestreams are actively promoted by TikTok's #algorithm and #TikTok profits from the #content despite having policies against begging
The Guardian · ‘Profiting from misery’: how TikTok makes money from child begging livestreams
#Portland 's richest men are working to roll back voter-approved Preschool for All cuz *God forbid* working mums get a god damn break in this veil of tears... #education #voting #inequality
https://www.wweek.com/news/city/2025/04/04/portland-business-moguls-discuss-poll-to-test-repeal-of-preschool-for-all/
Replied in thread
US & UK 1980s was stage 1 of the squeeze out. We're now in stage 4, where the middle class are the only asset holders left that the owner (upper?) class can squeeze.
Once there's nothing left of middle class assets, and they're not even creditworthy any more, the only remaining method of squeeze-out left to the upper class is stage 5 - war against each other for assets. This is basically pre-WW2 history returning.
No Globalization Without Representation: U.S. Activists and World Inequality
Paul Adler
University of Pennsylvania Press
"How consumer and environmental activists became significant players in U.S. and world politics
Amid the mass protests of the 1960s, another, less heralded political force arose: public interest progressivism. Led by activists like Ralph Nader, organizations of lawyers and experts worked "inside the system." They confronted corporate power and helped win major consumer and environmental protections. By the late 1970s, some public interest groups moved beyond U.S. borders to challenge multinational corporations. This happened at the same time that neoliberalism, a politics of empowerment for big business, gained strength in the U.S. and around the world.
No Globalization Without Representation is the story of how consumer and environmental activists became significant players in U.S. and world politics at the twentieth century's close. NGOs like Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen helped forge a progressive coalition that lobbied against the emerging neoliberal world order and in favor of what they called "fair globalization." From boycotting Nestlé in the 1970s to lobbying against NAFTA to the "Battle of Seattle" protests against the World Trade Organization in the 1990s, these groups have made a profound mark.
This book tells their stories while showing how public interest groups helped ensure that a version of liberalism willing to challenge corporate power did not vanish from U.S. politics. Public interest groups believed that preserving liberalism at home meant confronting attempts to perpetuate conservative policies through global economic rules. No Globalization Without Representation also illuminates how professionalized organizations became such a critical part of liberal activism..."
#Globalization #Activism #Inequality #Neoliberalism #AlternativeGlobalization #NAFTA #WTO
https://www.pennpress.org/9780812253177/no-globalization-without-representation/
University of Pennsylvania PressNo Globalization Without Representation – Penn PressHow consumer and environmental activists became significant players in U.S. and world politicsAmid the mass protests of the 1960s, another, less heralded pol...
Income #inequality is, unfortunately, nothing new. First-second century CE major empires were nowhere near as rich as modern ones and even more unequal ( #Gini index > 0.5) around the seat of power.
(For reference, EU's Gini is ~0.3, USA's ~0.4, South Africa's ~0.6)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58581-0
Probably don't need to reiterate it on lefty Mastodon, but the #Trump tariffs are not so that the working class can get back something stolen from it by #globalization but so that the #rich & #oligarch class can avoid having what THEY have stolen reappropriated from them. #Protectionism may have a role in a just #economy but that isn't what this is about. It's dividing the international working class to stop it uniting against the super rich
Continued thread
(continued from previous post on thread)
This topic is very apropos in the current market. We may be about to enter another recession, perhaps a depression. 401K's are down. So the claim that we could do better investing on our own is uncertain, but is again certainly going to test a lot of ordinary citizens, postponing their ability to retire.
And I emphasize that the choice f when to retire is not just a whim. Even ignoring age discrimination, age wears on a person, and some people do physical jobs (read: ACTUAL hard work, as opposed to metaphorically hard work done by rich executives) that leave them depleted. So delayed retirement is not just an inconvenience, it is in some cases torture and in some cases impossible.
But even as we are potentially entering a depression, the billionaires are salivating. They are looking forward to "buying low". They're treating this roller coaster as a buying opportunity. They plan to get rich on this depression. Even as others suffer and probably many die. They are gleeful.
This is the time when Social Security should be doubling down and assuring people it will increase benefits to cover rising costs (although it wouldn't be terrible if we just impeached the President who's causing those rising costs artificially with tariffs that really no sane business people think are a good idea). Because Social Security is again a contract with the population about what our priority is. And if we need more money, we should be bumping the tax on those gleeful about what a great buying opportunity this is.
They, the rich, would probably whine that this singles them out. That people are jealous. No one should stand for such rhetoric. The ones making the noise did not get their power by dealing honorably with us citizens. This is not jealousy speaking, it is a desire for justice. Be glad I'm not suggesting (as some are) that we just eat the rich and be done with it. Proper taxation of accumulated wealth (not just income) works for me.
No one needs that much money anyway. It's CLEAR from their observed behavior that one can only buy so many gold toilet seats before one starts to wonder what the point of excess riches is, and really it seems the only thing that one can find to spend such wealth on is buying governments. And then, apparently, running them badly and cruelly. No, I'm not going to feel sorry about suggesting taxation.
2/2 (probably the end)
I often hear people say that Social Security should be eliminated, that we'd do better with our own 401K's.
There are a lot of problems with that argument.
First, it turns us into gamblers. The argument is that people could invest their money better. Maybe. But they can also invest their money worse. So it's a very uneven policy. And that is ultimately cruel. That's just gambling, and experience shows that gamblers are often a lot more confident than is warranted.
The sociopaths among us often say, "Too bad. Individuals should take responsibility for their lack of saving. It's not my fault that some people don't plan." Those same people, though, are telling us that we should eliminate the minimum wage, that if the market doesn't want to pay someone enough to even live, why should it have to. So exactly where is the savings supposed to come from? On the one side, people work hard for hardly any money. On the other side, they're told their failure to save is a moral failing. Where is the discussion of moral failing in having more money than God and still being unwilling to help raise people out of poverty? That seems the biggest moral failing.
Moreover, a lot of what makes the difference in who succeeds or fails is one's parents. Dynastic fortunes. Better schools. Better connections. Sometimes even just better health or better clothing. The narrative is spun that the rich worked hard for their money, but in my experience, poor people work much harder for the scraps they are thrown than rich people ever do, and the notion of "meritocracy" is nonsense because the people who get ahead are just those who get to start ahead of the others.
But while on the topic of morality, let's also look at the structure of Social Security itself. People like to compare it to a 401K, but it's not like that. It's not a bank account. It's a very different beast.
As an example, you become suddenly unable to work, it kicks in right away, even if you didn't pay for a long time. That's very different than a bank account. If you live a long time, it continues to pay you.
There may be issues with cost of living adjustments, but the only reason we don't do those more often is that the aforementioned rich sociopaths insist it's better to give tax breaks to the wealthy. They'll tell you that Social Security is intended only to supplement your retirement, not to be the full amount, and yet they'll back penalties for trying to draw money out of Social Security if you're also getting other income. That's not really how supplements work, and it's a disincentive to additional work.
But my point is that the contract is not for a specific quantity of money. It is a social contract, that you pay into it while you're able and you are paid when you're not able. We could do better on the getting paid part, but the point is for it to keep you from falling into poverty, to add dignity.
It's worth noting that Social Security did not arise in a vacuum. While people COULD invest their money, a lot of people didn't, or else were losers in that gambling. Before Social Security, in the 1930s, the elderly poverty rate in the depression was something like 70%. So there is an objective way to understand what this did for the public. Some have called it the most successful anti-poverty program in the history of the US.
And if we were really worried that investing in the market were a better bet, we could arrange for the Social Security trust fund to do that. That's just an implementation detail and has nothing to do with the overall social promise. If DOGE wanted to do something HELPFUL, instead of aggressively dismantling all of the US government's ability to provide value to the public, they could analyze whether there are better ways to manage the funds.
But, ultimately, government is not a business and social security is not a profit & loss center, even if it's popular for some who don't like it to portray it that way. It mostly pays for itself, but from a moral point of view, its real purpose is to say that we as a society need to have a commitment to our sick and elderly, to assure they are taken care of, BEFORE we declare a profit. If we as a nation are able to give tax breaks to rich citizens only by cutting social programs, then the rich are preying on the poor. The health and welfare of all citizens is our first priority as a nation. We should not be preferencing the already-preferenced before we have attended to that.
1/2 (continued next post)
"Mangione in many ways embodies exactly what MAGA hates: an Ivy League graduate who had “learned to code” and whose rhetoric about the healthcare system could have been ripped from the pages out of a Bernie Sanders speech. (In fact, the University of Pennsylvania from which Mangione graduated, just had $175 million in funding suspended by President Trump, who takes issue with its policy on transgender athletes.)
Bondi says that Mangione’s alleged act involved “substantial planning and premeditation,” another criteria that creates the aura of terrorism, rather than just conspiracy.
Then comes the most absurd claim of all, with Bondi saying that because there were “bystanders nearby,” Mangione’s actions “may have posed grave risk of death to additional persons.” (Mangione reportedly decided against using a bomb for the explicit purpose of avoiding harm to anyone else.) Under this logic, the government could choose to prosecute any arsonist or perpetrator of road rage as a terrorist. It’s hard to think of any violent crime that doesn’t hypothetically endanger bystanders.
Charging individuals with terrorism or labeling them as terrorists is inherently a political decision on the part of the government. Currently there are only three individuals in American jails awaiting execution for crimes labeled terrorism:"
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/luigi-mangione-becomes-a-political
Ken Klippenstein · Luigi Mangione Becomes A Political Prisoner
No, you don’t want the US to collapse. Too many countries depend on it, and a sudden breakdown would create chaos. If you come from the Global South, you might feel more empathy for those harmed by American foreign policy for several decades. But if the world’s most powerful military and economy slides into dictatorship - or worse - the consequences will hit everyone, especially weaker economies and vulnerable people.
Delighted to see a new book review on ‘The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia’ by Dr Mitja Stefancic just out in the 50th Anniversary issue of Network, the magazine of the British Sociological Association. Link to the full issue 
https://www.britsoc.co.uk/publications/network/network-current-issue/
Continued thread
Doctors urge government to fight poverty after rise in patients with Victorian diseases https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/03/doctors-urge-government-fight-poverty-victorian-diseases #Infectiousdiseases #Medicalresearch #Microbiology #Inequality #Doctors #Society #Science #Poverty #Health #UKnews
The Guardian · Doctors urge government to fight poverty after rise in patients with Victorian diseases
This shows in a very visual way that our normal brains don't really understand exactly how rich the global tech-oligarchs are https://eattherichtextformat.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/ #inequality #orderofmagnitude #datavisualization
eattherichtextformat.github.ioWealth, shown to scaleWealth inequality in the United States is out of control. Here we visualize the issue in a unique way.
Fresh data on Finnish wealth inequality came out. The poorest 50% of the population owns 4% of the assets, while the richest 10% owns 52% of the assets:
stat.fiVarakkaimman kymmenyksen osuus nettovarallisuudesta yli 50 % vuonna 2023 | Tilastokeskus
Here's Virtual Capitalist's chart on where High Net Worth Individuals reside...
what is interesting (for us, here in the UK) is that while the UK ranks 7th in number of HNWI (and around the same for headline GDP), when you look at GDP, per capita the UK ranks in the mid-20s, which gives you another way of seeing the levels of economic inequality in the UK right now...
[Yes, one might also expect the Hong Kong figure to be included in the Chinese total!]
Continued thread
Continuing my own mini-filibuster inspired by Booker's unbelievable one, I want to add also my thoughts on the issue of deregulation of consumer protections.
In a 2009 essay, I made an argument that credit cards, especially the high rate ones, are a safety net of last resort, available to the poor who are ABANDONED by public safety nets, but who are forced to rent a second government that DOES offer a safety net. Those high interest rates are the TAX they pay to that privately rented government that offers them a lifeline. But the tax is not deductible. So they are double-taxed in a way rich people and businesses would never stand for. That's overly brief, but maybe you see where I was going. See the essay for more detail.
Credit Cards: A Tax on "Being Poor"
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/01/credit-cards-a-tax-on-being-poor.html
netsettlement.blogspot.comCredit Cards: A Tax on “Being Poor”Seeing credit cards as double-taxation: a non-deductible private tax paid to a private government to get a private safety net.
Continued thread
Continuing on a parallel commentary with Booker's AMAZING ongoing speech, I just want to inject by way of solidarity...
It's not just about stopping the bleeding, and there ARE surely people who are literally bleeding (or worse), it's about insisting on a better morality.
One of the issues is this whole issue of taxation, just as a general proposition.
I do not side with those who think that everyone should be taxed. I've heard some say "everyone needs skin in the game". To that I say, being poor IS having skin in the game, it doesn't need us to add insult to injury.
I think we should tax the rich, not as a punitive thing, but because we live in a society where our morality should be that no one succeeds without bringing others along. We should tax legit surplus, in other words. And we should have a society where people ASPIRE to be wealthy enough to pay tax.
That we have created a society in which the rich can claim injury due to taxation but the poor cannot claim injury for having safety nets removed is a SERIOUS breach of morality.
You can read more detail on that in my 2009 essay Tax Policy and the Dewey Decimal System.
https://netsettlement.blogspot.com/2009/02/tax-policy-and-dewey-decimal-system.html
netsettlement.blogspot.comTax Policy and the Dewey Decimal SystemA look at how to structure tax policy through an unusual lens: how the Dewey Decimal System used by libraries is arranged.