And has it yet been noted that "involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime" is hunky dory? If thousands upon thousands of ag workers are deported, guess who's going to pick up the slack?
Or even better for the oligarchs, illegal entry starts being routinely prosecuted & the ag workers end up forced to work- mark my (horrifying) words kids.
A non-profit I worked for was paying disabled people as little as three cents an hour. Meanwhile, the President and COO were making $250,000 and 190,000 disrespectfully.
Only slightly off topic - I recently wrote to my congresscon, Nick Langworthy, about protecting SNAP. He wrote back, "That being said, SNAP should provide a pathway to lift individuals up, rather than trap them in a permanent state of dependence."
I responded with the fact that many SNAP recipients are elderly and disabled. And what was his pathway to life them up, and please be specific. I now wish I had the wage question on my mind, so I could have added it in to my response.
No, I haven't heard back. He rarely does when I ask him to be specific.
If I ask a definite question, and request a reply, I usually get one, although I doubt they are directly from the congresscon. Astonishingly enough, I do get an occasional response (canned) when I have signed a petition from the Episcopal Church = to explain why we are wrong, I suspect. Again, probably not from himself.
I'm a dirty commie, and I believe in Universal Basic Income. I think the idea that all people have to work in order to eat and have a place to live is baloney, and 'the dignity of work' is largely propogated by people who have never had to work a day in their lives. That said, I have a very hard job, and I work very hard at it, and I would like more money please because living paycheck to paycheck fucking sucks.
**not actually a dirty commie. washes hands and showers regularly**
Not just clean commies can tell when something is cheaper and easier to do than to not do.
If we just give people money so they don't cause us problems, it's cheaper and easier, not to mention more humane; than not doing it and dealing with the problems that causes.
Simple as that. Math. Dollars and cents, or sense.
I believe the two main bugbears about UBI are 1) perverse incentives, and 2) inflation. No? About the first, I don't think that's a real worry. The second - I don't know. Hard to measure that in pilot programs.
Nobody even understands the concept of "Opportunity Cost."
For instance, suppose we pay the homeless guy to not stay in the library all day and smoke fentanyl in the bathroom and freak out and trash a shelf of books (my wife's day at work yesterday). Let's say we gave him $50 yesterday for that.
That cost $50.
His freakout cost over $1000. Not to mention the violation of every other patron of the public library.
But moral experts are worried we're giving him the wrong incentives, and spending too much money.
In this specific, true, case; the cops don't show up for this sort of thing and he's not incarcerated. He is banned from the Downtown St. Paul Central Library for 60 days. The staff is small enough they all recognize him and will have to decide what to do when he does inevitably come back. Probably not today, but maybe tomorrow or next week.
The huge shelters within a block or two won't allow people using drugs or alcohol, and it's getting really cold; so here we go.
I feel like those are details, the kind of thing that can be worked out and tweaked as necessary. I feel like the core concept of UBI is intollerable to the core American psyche, kind of like athiesm or sex for pleasure.
I have another idea - Universal Basic Housing (UBH), at least in cities. If not money, then why not decent shelters guaranteed available for the homeless? A bed, a locker, shared laundry & showers. A 'floor' for living standards. No one dies on the street, unless they literally run out into the cold and refuse to come inside.
Love that photograph! The fellow in the bowtie that Frances Perkins is giving such a look is Sen. William King (D-UT).
According to https://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrsign.html, "King was a conservative Democrat and member of the Senate Finance Committee. King expressed persistent opposition to many features of the bill as it was being considered, and his support of the legislation was in doubt until the last possible minute. In the end, he voted for passage of the Social Security Act. (Senators King and Harrison have often been confused in the signing photos, including, we are embarrassed to admit, in SSA's own OASIS magazine. Clue: King has a bowtie, Harrison has a regular long tie.)"
One of my brothers-in-law is profoundly autistic. He's about 55 years old. My MIL has had to jump through hoops all his life to get him the care he needs, and to navigate the labyrinthine rules of programs that can help him if they're forced to.
He lives in a residential setting, in a "group home." Mostly he watches action movies where things blow up. He can't work. He is in a "day program," where he, at least legally, has a job. He gets paid less than a dollar per hour. If he does an actual hour of work, well; I don't believe he can. He's too disabled. Great guy; I've known him over 30 years; but seriously, he's really profoundly developmentally disabled.
He's a ward of the state. His mother has some legal guardian status. When she dies, that goes to my wife. His dad died when he was a toddler. He still gets some survivor benefits from his civil service pension (!). He gets SSDI. He gets Medical Assistance, Medicaid, etc.
I believe as a part of where he lives, and all the various programs he's in, he is required to participate in the day program. He's been medically adjudged to be capable of it, I believe. However, if he makes more than, I believe, $60/month, he's ineligible for the aid he needs to keep his Medical Assistance. Anyone with serious developmental disabilities in their mid-50s has a very complicated medication scenario; lots of interactions; can't communicate. Translation: Expensive. Very. Uninsurable.
I think the day program is good for him. Gets him out and about, something else to do. Sometimes he tantrums and is violent. Sometimes he has a great time. Sometimes he's completely non-responsive. I couldn't say, if pressed, that what he's doing is "working."
I'm not saying paying him sub-minimum wage is morally or ethically OK.
I am saying that my brother in law can't really work, and that there's no single coherent program or set of guidelines to help him and people like him survive. The programs don't make sense. The rules contradict each other, and following one rule to the contradiction of the other can lead to family bankruptcy in about a month.
So this is more complicated than just the wage issues.
While Republicans would like to point to all that as the inefficiency of government, I'm sure most of those contradictory hurdles are in place because of Republicans focus on preventing ineligible people from accessing the aid.
Agree, sibling works in a program with disabled kids. They get work so they can train for sheltered workshop jobs. We'll now we have $15 minimum wage and all those kids lost their jobs.
Wow, that sounds like a nightmare. Also, a little OT BUT watching the PBS Newshour report of severe health issues brought on by living around petrochemical plants in LA. The gov'nuh was asked about it and jumped right on the "vaccines cause autism" these days but these other allegations are bullshit.
I guess he never met an autistic person over 12? Apparently there was no autism before this recent spate of vaccinations.
Not OT much at all, as it happens. When my brother-in-law was about 6 months old, in about 1968, he got the standard set of 4 or 5 vaccines in a single office visit, among them the MMR and DPT, which were known for the very strong immune responses the vaccine formulations in use at the time prompted.
I got them, and my mother says I was quite sick for a day or two. My younger siblings got them, and I remember one of them having febrile convulsions, spiking a fever of 104Β° F and when my mother called the small town clinic/hospital; the nurse talked to the doctor and they both said that didn't happen; my mother was lying; they knew she had a lot of kids and if she persisted with the lies, they'd notify Child Protective Services to make sure we were moved to a safe place.
Anyhoo; my MIL says my brother in law got very sick from the horse-dose of vaccines, and it was only after then that they noticed the onset of unmistakeable symptoms of Autism.
However, my own mother and my MIL are of the educated classes. My MIL has pursued a PhD in clinical psychology, which she achieved in her 70s. She can read medical studies.
She read that one study tying Autism to vaccines, and really wanted there to be something to it; but she said it was the most obvious unscientific horseshit she'd ever seen in print, in that scientific language.
So to your point, the Gov. of Louisiana is either A Idiot, or Very Corrupt And Owned by the Petrochemical Industry.
And it might be both.
Too bad the medical and pharmaceutical industries lied so much. Had they told moms the truth, maybe a lot of this would have been avoided. My mom, and my MIL, would still have vaccinated all us kids. Because they are not A Idiot.
It just would have been helpful for them to be told to expect a bad day with some perhaps-scary responses; which were a helluva lot less dangerous than Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Diptheria, Pertussis, or Typhoid.
We have a family Bible going back to the 1820s. An ancestor recorded, over 18 months in the 1840s, the deaths of his wife and 4 of their 6 children. All from diseases we don't get anymore, because of vaccines.
Risk is inherent in life. I will almost always take the apparently safest course, but I know there are risks anyway. I expect things to go wrong.
I need to be told the truth so if something does go sideways, I can be prepared and respond.
When corporate interests decide to withhold that information, it harms me immediately, and destroys my willingness to trust them when they are telling me the truth.
I have all my shots. I made sure my kids got all their shots. I also forced our doctors and nurses to acknowledge the truth about risks, by having looked up data and mentioning it first out loud. We're of the class that becomes doctors if we decide to. We get vaccines, and we know how to assess and balance risks.
I'm sorry to hear about your dad. My family has lost several old folks who appeared to be just fine, cruising along, until they had what seemed like routine medical treatment and...Bam. If I get past 85, as seems likely, I might consider noping out on healthcare at all; we'll see in 30 or so years...
What they need is labor-intensive. Labor costs money. When trying to increase, or at least maintain, profitability percentage trends; the easiest way is to cut costs. The largest cost is labor.
This is why healthcare is the system that is collapsing first in America, as the trade in buying and selling money and debt ("Finance") takes over the economy and drives out every other enterprise. Because healthcare in all its forms; like education; is mostly labor.
Lincoln was absolutely on target when he said labor is the superior of capital. Capitalists of course disagree, as they have cause and effect problems.
I was once struck by inspiration, while drinking beer with a guy who didn't get this.
I picked up two beer bottlecaps. I put one on the floor in front of his foot, and put the other in the palm of his hand.
I asked him, "Which bottlecap has more value to you?" He said, "Well, neither one is worth anything to me, really." I said, "Well, let's pretend it is. Which one is more valuable to you?"
He said, "I guess the one in my hand, because I don't have to bend down and pick up the other one."
I know the propaganda methods behind making a villan out of Hunter Biden and pointing the five minutes hate target on his back. I also fully get he was made to be a proxy for impeaching Joe Biden and theyβre all mad because that failed entirely because Joe Biden did nothing wrong.
But Iβll never understood why your average boob on the street cares about any of this. I hate Trumpβs spawn and in laws because they all worked in his cabinet and used their connections as civil servants to enrich themselves at the expense of a dismembered journalist or two.
Hunter Biden never worked for the government and got busted with unpaid taxes and an unregistered firearm.
And has it yet been noted that "involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime" is hunky dory? If thousands upon thousands of ag workers are deported, guess who's going to pick up the slack?
Or even better for the oligarchs, illegal entry starts being routinely prosecuted & the ag workers end up forced to work- mark my (horrifying) words kids.
This is why, when I have things to contribute, they never go to Goodwill.
ππ―π₯ πΈπ©πͺππ¦ ππ©π’π΅ ππ’π― π€π°πΆππ₯ π¬πͺππ π΅π©π¦ π³πΆππ¦ π’π―π₯ π΅π’ππ¬ π΄π©πͺπ΅ π’ππ π©π¦ πΈπ’π―π΅π΄ π΅π°, π©π¦ π΄π΅πͺππ π€π’π―βπ΅ π΅π¦ππ πͺπ―π₯πͺπ·πͺπ₯πΆπ’π π΄π΅π’π΅π¦π΄ πΈπ©π’π΅ π΅π° π₯π°.
Doing things on the state level is just about the only option left to us.
The possible end result, of course, is secession.
Is there any possible way to add a reasonable valuation for human life to newly issued FASB regs?
Nice, now lift the asset limit from $2000 for those who receive SSI.
A non-profit I worked for was paying disabled people as little as three cents an hour. Meanwhile, the President and COO were making $250,000 and 190,000 disrespectfully.
Probably thought they were overpaid...
Only slightly off topic - I recently wrote to my congresscon, Nick Langworthy, about protecting SNAP. He wrote back, "That being said, SNAP should provide a pathway to lift individuals up, rather than trap them in a permanent state of dependence."
I responded with the fact that many SNAP recipients are elderly and disabled. And what was his pathway to life them up, and please be specific. I now wish I had the wage question on my mind, so I could have added it in to my response.
No, I haven't heard back. He rarely does when I ask him to be specific.
All I ever get is a canned form email in return. Sometimes I wonder if an actual human ever puts eyes on what I send.
If I ask a definite question, and request a reply, I usually get one, although I doubt they are directly from the congresscon. Astonishingly enough, I do get an occasional response (canned) when I have signed a petition from the Episcopal Church = to explain why we are wrong, I suspect. Again, probably not from himself.
We have a company where I live that does this!
It's despicable!
The reality here is that all those disabled people lost their jobs before COVID and haven't gotten them back. True story.
I'm a dirty commie, and I believe in Universal Basic Income. I think the idea that all people have to work in order to eat and have a place to live is baloney, and 'the dignity of work' is largely propogated by people who have never had to work a day in their lives. That said, I have a very hard job, and I work very hard at it, and I would like more money please because living paycheck to paycheck fucking sucks.
**not actually a dirty commie. washes hands and showers regularly**
Washing hands regularly definitely puts you one up on Pete Hegseth.
Not just clean commies can tell when something is cheaper and easier to do than to not do.
If we just give people money so they don't cause us problems, it's cheaper and easier, not to mention more humane; than not doing it and dealing with the problems that causes.
Simple as that. Math. Dollars and cents, or sense.
I believe the two main bugbears about UBI are 1) perverse incentives, and 2) inflation. No? About the first, I don't think that's a real worry. The second - I don't know. Hard to measure that in pilot programs.
Yeah, those are the two things one hears.
Nobody even understands the concept of "Opportunity Cost."
For instance, suppose we pay the homeless guy to not stay in the library all day and smoke fentanyl in the bathroom and freak out and trash a shelf of books (my wife's day at work yesterday). Let's say we gave him $50 yesterday for that.
That cost $50.
His freakout cost over $1000. Not to mention the violation of every other patron of the public library.
But moral experts are worried we're giving him the wrong incentives, and spending too much money.
In this specific, true, case; the cops don't show up for this sort of thing and he's not incarcerated. He is banned from the Downtown St. Paul Central Library for 60 days. The staff is small enough they all recognize him and will have to decide what to do when he does inevitably come back. Probably not today, but maybe tomorrow or next week.
The huge shelters within a block or two won't allow people using drugs or alcohol, and it's getting really cold; so here we go.
I feel like those are details, the kind of thing that can be worked out and tweaked as necessary. I feel like the core concept of UBI is intollerable to the core American psyche, kind of like athiesm or sex for pleasure.
I have another idea - Universal Basic Housing (UBH), at least in cities. If not money, then why not decent shelters guaranteed available for the homeless? A bed, a locker, shared laundry & showers. A 'floor' for living standards. No one dies on the street, unless they literally run out into the cold and refuse to come inside.
"are there not workhouses", say the fascists
or is it bologna?
Mortadella.....
only when saying 'phogna-balogna'.
America loves its slave labor.
Love that photograph! The fellow in the bowtie that Frances Perkins is giving such a look is Sen. William King (D-UT).
According to https://www.ssa.gov/history/fdrsign.html, "King was a conservative Democrat and member of the Senate Finance Committee. King expressed persistent opposition to many features of the bill as it was being considered, and his support of the legislation was in doubt until the last possible minute. In the end, he voted for passage of the Social Security Act. (Senators King and Harrison have often been confused in the signing photos, including, we are embarrassed to admit, in SSA's own OASIS magazine. Clue: King has a bowtie, Harrison has a regular long tie.)"
There's a lot more to this.
One of my brothers-in-law is profoundly autistic. He's about 55 years old. My MIL has had to jump through hoops all his life to get him the care he needs, and to navigate the labyrinthine rules of programs that can help him if they're forced to.
He lives in a residential setting, in a "group home." Mostly he watches action movies where things blow up. He can't work. He is in a "day program," where he, at least legally, has a job. He gets paid less than a dollar per hour. If he does an actual hour of work, well; I don't believe he can. He's too disabled. Great guy; I've known him over 30 years; but seriously, he's really profoundly developmentally disabled.
He's a ward of the state. His mother has some legal guardian status. When she dies, that goes to my wife. His dad died when he was a toddler. He still gets some survivor benefits from his civil service pension (!). He gets SSDI. He gets Medical Assistance, Medicaid, etc.
I believe as a part of where he lives, and all the various programs he's in, he is required to participate in the day program. He's been medically adjudged to be capable of it, I believe. However, if he makes more than, I believe, $60/month, he's ineligible for the aid he needs to keep his Medical Assistance. Anyone with serious developmental disabilities in their mid-50s has a very complicated medication scenario; lots of interactions; can't communicate. Translation: Expensive. Very. Uninsurable.
I think the day program is good for him. Gets him out and about, something else to do. Sometimes he tantrums and is violent. Sometimes he has a great time. Sometimes he's completely non-responsive. I couldn't say, if pressed, that what he's doing is "working."
I'm not saying paying him sub-minimum wage is morally or ethically OK.
I am saying that my brother in law can't really work, and that there's no single coherent program or set of guidelines to help him and people like him survive. The programs don't make sense. The rules contradict each other, and following one rule to the contradiction of the other can lead to family bankruptcy in about a month.
So this is more complicated than just the wage issues.
While Republicans would like to point to all that as the inefficiency of government, I'm sure most of those contradictory hurdles are in place because of Republicans focus on preventing ineligible people from accessing the aid.
It very much is. And there are thousands like your brother-in-law.
Agree, sibling works in a program with disabled kids. They get work so they can train for sheltered workshop jobs. We'll now we have $15 minimum wage and all those kids lost their jobs.
Wow, that sounds like a nightmare. Also, a little OT BUT watching the PBS Newshour report of severe health issues brought on by living around petrochemical plants in LA. The gov'nuh was asked about it and jumped right on the "vaccines cause autism" these days but these other allegations are bullshit.
I guess he never met an autistic person over 12? Apparently there was no autism before this recent spate of vaccinations.
Not OT much at all, as it happens. When my brother-in-law was about 6 months old, in about 1968, he got the standard set of 4 or 5 vaccines in a single office visit, among them the MMR and DPT, which were known for the very strong immune responses the vaccine formulations in use at the time prompted.
I got them, and my mother says I was quite sick for a day or two. My younger siblings got them, and I remember one of them having febrile convulsions, spiking a fever of 104Β° F and when my mother called the small town clinic/hospital; the nurse talked to the doctor and they both said that didn't happen; my mother was lying; they knew she had a lot of kids and if she persisted with the lies, they'd notify Child Protective Services to make sure we were moved to a safe place.
Anyhoo; my MIL says my brother in law got very sick from the horse-dose of vaccines, and it was only after then that they noticed the onset of unmistakeable symptoms of Autism.
However, my own mother and my MIL are of the educated classes. My MIL has pursued a PhD in clinical psychology, which she achieved in her 70s. She can read medical studies.
She read that one study tying Autism to vaccines, and really wanted there to be something to it; but she said it was the most obvious unscientific horseshit she'd ever seen in print, in that scientific language.
So to your point, the Gov. of Louisiana is either A Idiot, or Very Corrupt And Owned by the Petrochemical Industry.
And it might be both.
Too bad the medical and pharmaceutical industries lied so much. Had they told moms the truth, maybe a lot of this would have been avoided. My mom, and my MIL, would still have vaccinated all us kids. Because they are not A Idiot.
It just would have been helpful for them to be told to expect a bad day with some perhaps-scary responses; which were a helluva lot less dangerous than Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Diptheria, Pertussis, or Typhoid.
I have noted on this site...about my dad at age 86 or so
Got multiple shots on Monday. He drove until Wednesday. Wasn't able to standby Friday night/ Sat morning.
He was quite active , swimming a few times a week, weightlifting, etc.
He caught a rare virus, probably along the Epstein-Barr series.
We're not against vaccines,... just space them out to be safe.
We have a family Bible going back to the 1820s. An ancestor recorded, over 18 months in the 1840s, the deaths of his wife and 4 of their 6 children. All from diseases we don't get anymore, because of vaccines.
Risk is inherent in life. I will almost always take the apparently safest course, but I know there are risks anyway. I expect things to go wrong.
I need to be told the truth so if something does go sideways, I can be prepared and respond.
When corporate interests decide to withhold that information, it harms me immediately, and destroys my willingness to trust them when they are telling me the truth.
I have all my shots. I made sure my kids got all their shots. I also forced our doctors and nurses to acknowledge the truth about risks, by having looked up data and mentioning it first out loud. We're of the class that becomes doctors if we decide to. We get vaccines, and we know how to assess and balance risks.
I'm sorry to hear about your dad. My family has lost several old folks who appeared to be just fine, cruising along, until they had what seemed like routine medical treatment and...Bam. If I get past 85, as seems likely, I might consider noping out on healthcare at all; we'll see in 30 or so years...
Thank you for this response. Interesting history.
Warehouse them. Only solution a capitalist society can come up with.
What they need is labor-intensive. Labor costs money. When trying to increase, or at least maintain, profitability percentage trends; the easiest way is to cut costs. The largest cost is labor.
This is why healthcare is the system that is collapsing first in America, as the trade in buying and selling money and debt ("Finance") takes over the economy and drives out every other enterprise. Because healthcare in all its forms; like education; is mostly labor.
Lincoln was absolutely on target when he said labor is the superior of capital. Capitalists of course disagree, as they have cause and effect problems.
I was once struck by inspiration, while drinking beer with a guy who didn't get this.
I picked up two beer bottlecaps. I put one on the floor in front of his foot, and put the other in the palm of his hand.
I asked him, "Which bottlecap has more value to you?" He said, "Well, neither one is worth anything to me, really." I said, "Well, let's pretend it is. Which one is more valuable to you?"
He said, "I guess the one in my hand, because I don't have to bend down and pick up the other one."
I said, "Ah, but how did it get into your hand?"
He said, "You put it there."
I said, "Get it now?"
Holy shit.
Thank you for this.
OH NO!!!!
19th Century Fox has footage of...
HUNTER BIDEN SMILING AFTER HE WAS PARDONED!!!!
GASP!!!!!
https://bsky.app/profile/calltoactivism.bsky.social/post/3lckzl74hkc2e
I know the propaganda methods behind making a villan out of Hunter Biden and pointing the five minutes hate target on his back. I also fully get he was made to be a proxy for impeaching Joe Biden and theyβre all mad because that failed entirely because Joe Biden did nothing wrong.
But Iβll never understood why your average boob on the street cares about any of this. I hate Trumpβs spawn and in laws because they all worked in his cabinet and used their connections as civil servants to enrich themselves at the expense of a dismembered journalist or two.
Hunter Biden never worked for the government and got busted with unpaid taxes and an unregistered firearm.
Oh no this will certainly re-ignite the hair of our professional political tongue waggers.
Cruelty is the point.
βsubstandard workers,β
Why not just cut the crap and go with subhuman?
I swear, bureaucratese is its own circle of hell.
My Downs niece didn't get a needed kidney because they didn't believe she was worthy so...yeah....
How fucking awful!
That is absolutely inhumane.
Jesus!
Fuck
...
brb. gotta scream.
We lost her in January. I am not over it. I will NEVER be over it.
May her memory always be a blessing.
Thank you. She was a blessing that none of us took for granted the 48 years she walked this planet.
There are simply no words. Just blind, red-hot rage.
Yes.