Idk not to sound like a whingey bitch, but the current watcher situation is reminding me of how people just Expect underprivileged people to take exclusion with grace. This happens with disability as well. Whenever something isn't accessible, people crack down on disabled people who express disappointment or pitch a fit because "oh well, not everything is capable of being accessible, stop ruining our fun!" Similarly, the stupid fucking Watcher streaming service is only For fans who can afford 6 dollars a month. Most of us can't, but we're expected to bow out with grace because... we don't have the privilege to be here anymore??

"Oh, you're all 'artists deserve to be paid for their work' until they actually ask for money!" I cannot give them 6 dollars a month for 4 fucking youtube videos. It's not reflective of myself or my moral standing that I can't fucking afford that. They have been funded through other means so far. It's not like they were getting Nothing just because I wasn't paying out of my own pocket.

It's frustrating because in most cases, including people would be easy. Watcher's content used to be free and funded through various means. Just add characters of color to your line-up. Just add more body types to your pictures. Fucking add image descriptions to your fucking posts already. I'm sick of people punishing marginalized people for not taking "hardship" with a smile when we're fucking excluded all the time for no fucking reason.

Ben Jennings

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is enough.” —Dr. Wess Stafford

Capitalism kills.

Today I got called extra high-maintenance because I bake fresh bread twice a week... I'm sorry I'm poor?

Quiet quitting is one of the most bizarre things to me to be discussed in 2022. 

It’s mostly bizarre to me, because of the entitlement older generations have towards younger generations and the ignorance they enforce upon my generation, especially in Germany, where I grew up.

You have older generations, usually the generation of my parents, calling us lazy, unable to work well under pressure, etc. I’d like to give insight into the fact that our school system was designed to recreate a work-like state from the age of six. You go to school, learn stuff, go home, do unpaid labor, called “homework”, which has to be good, otherwise you’re labeled as stupid and unable to keep up and have to repeat a year in school. I partially had a workload of 12 hours per day, not because I was poorly structured, but because I had four school subjects per day, with four different kinds of homework which all required at least 30, if not 90 minutes of investment, to do homework properly. Add to that my dyslexia and you get at least 30 minutes more than others. But even non dyslexic students sat there for hours doing homework. I even had my mother do my homework for me, because the work load was too much. Let that sink in.

Then you have a system that rewards pupils who are never sick, by pointing out how there is one kid in class with the most sick days, as though it is their fault that they get sick. Meanwhile you have underpaid and overworked school staff who cannot handle instances of bullying accordingly, resulting in pupils being more sick, especially mentally due to continuous bullying. You create a place that is literally designed to be hostile to human nature, by forcing people to sit still for multiple hours a day, move during breaks to „prevent health problems“ in the future, but give so much homework that hobbies and personal interests can barely be done, and usually if one performs bad at school they have to quit their hobbies because they need to focus more on school or they have their parents cancel their hobbies for them (if they could afford a hobby to begin with), resulting in more stress, because of less possibilities to destress. Then you have heavy school bags that literally fuck up people‘s backs for life, because they have to carry like 10-20kgs of books and folders per day (this was my reality, I kid you not). Then we had no proper food at our cafeteria (for the first four years we had no cafeteria at all, but had to go to school until 3 or 4pm, with no proper food). 

Then you have weird power dynamics with teachers who bully you and abuse their power and give you bad grades, just because they think a person with dyslexia should not get the chance to go to university, thereby giving them bad grades, by not answering any of their questions during exams (also something that happened to me and other students as well). And if it’s not dyslexia there is another aspect that a teacher will hate about you and mock you for and treat you like you’re less than a human being than others.

Then we entered a school system that was changed by graduating one year earlier to go to university sooner in Germany, but the school books were not ready for that so we had to carry two books per subject at times, because the subjects we discussed required two books of two school grades. We had no coherent teachings and had to read a lot of stuff at home, by our selves, because the curriculum to teach us properly was not yet developed. And we were asked to understand it all and there was never time for any questions.

Then we finish with a degree, have terrible payments, cannot afford a reasonable lifestyle and are forced to suck it up. Then we have shortages in almost every area, a pandemic we went through a financial crisis, a war that effects the economy and destabilizes a lot in other countries, we have a climate crisis which no politican seems to take seriously enough to do proper change, basically my generaiton in Germany will not have any rent and no positive prospects for the future. Far right extremism seems to be on the rise world wide.

I had my first burn-out in fourth grade and had to go to therapy, because school life was so tough and nobody did anything. I had a parent at home who created immense pressure and guilt if I failed, who regularly assaulted me verbally.

And now our “generation is just lazy”? That shoe just doesn’t fit.

Debt Ceiling

I hate this country.

I’ve been reading a bit of analysis of the autumn statement, and I’m deeply concerned.

The Tories, ideologically, are against government borrowing, and don’t want to increase it. Hunt effectively made up fiscal rules for the autumn statement, so he could say he met them and appease the markets (or try to). In order to meet these fiscal rules, he effectively needs to propose more cuts, and limit public sector pay and other spending.

But there’s a problem. He’s done nothing to bring down inflation, and nothing to bring down interest rates. For most UK household, their biggest cost is housing- high interest rates mean high housing costs. High inflation means the costs of energy, food and other necessities will continue to rise. The average household is expected to have increased costs of £4000 over the next 12 months, according to some estimates.

The Tories will protect pensioners, because that’s their voter base, and the very rich, ideologically.

They’ve also announced increases to national living wage and to benefits, which are in line with, or just below inflation. I genuinely think they’ve done this because the alternative would be mass scale theft, homelessness, starvation or food riots. It’s probably not going to be enough to keep people comfortable, but it’s just enough to put off national unrest.

But, here’s the issue- very roughly working people/households with incomes between 30%-70% aren’t going to get any sort of help/protection. They will have to absorb rising costs, and these are the households facing the £4000 (and remember, that’s just an average) in increased costs. The treasury hopes that people will dig into their savings in order to do this- but not all households in this income bracket have savings of any kind. Many, many people towards the bottom of this income bracket have no savings at all and live pay cheque to pay cheque. And savings are all well and good, but they don’t last forever.

So, what happens when savings run out? Well, people have to borrow. People will extend their mortgage terms, or use credit cards, or take out loans, or use finance to buy a new car when theirs packs up, and so on. And that’s shit- to ask ordinary working people to take on debt, so the government doesn’t have to.

But it gets worse- because some of these people won’t have access to the credit they need. If they rent, their housing costs will likely go up, and their wages won’t, and that will impact their ability to get credit. And at some point, for some of these people, their income will exceed their outgoings.

What the Tories hope is that this will happen slowly. They are, in effect, kicking the can down the road. Hoping they can hold out until the next election, before the shit really hits the fan. That things will somehow get better.

They also hope that they can push the blame onto individuals, if their lives go tits up. They shouldn’t have taken on a mortgage they couldn’t afford. They should have managed their spending better. They shouldn’t have gotten into debt. They should have known the cheap credit would run out... (you know the lines, you remember then from 2008).

It is very easy for governments to borrow money, to spend it, to improve the economy. (This is what Labour should be advocating, by the way). But the Tories won’t do it, because they are against it ideologically. So instead, they will ask ordinary working people to pick up the slack.

Over the next year or so, it’s very likely a lot of traditionally “middle class” professions will strike or take some form of industrial action. The media will say that these people are well paid, that they don’t need pay rises, that they’re just being greedy. But, among other issues, these people are now, effectively, being asked to take on debt so the government doesn’t have to.

Anyway, this country is really, seriously facing an economic crisis- and it’s clear that we need to do something as soon as possible to try and prevent it. OR look for a different way altogether.

Surviving in 2022

l art: BomboTimmy l title: _figensezgin

The world is in debt for millions & billions of dollars and they have no way of paying it back.👇

Can you say "Everything is going to crash?🤔

By Sharon Black

What is at the heart of these crises, including the threat of worldwide war — the unmerciful and grotesque genocide taking place in Palestine — the utter destruction taking place on the Ukrainian battlefield and, for that matter, the planet and every aspect of oppression that keeps us up at night?

At the heart of capitalist crises is capitalist overproduction and, at a more micro level, production for profit.

Karl Marx described it, and Lenin expounded on it.

In Turkey, the economy is on a dangerous slope - inflation is exploding, the Turkish lira is plummeting and the signs of impoverishment of the population are multiplying. At the same time, GDP and growth are increasing.

by @LM_enCartes

millennials will be like "I'm keeping a close eye on the back-yard-shed-some-guy-converted-to-a-tiny-home market and I finally own a tent, so things are really looking up for me."

“Whether for good or ill, the door of one era of American governance—a stupendously profligate one—is rapidly closing, and a new dawn for our nation and people will soon be upon us.”