Guaranteed basic income to every citizen, whether or not they are employed to ensure their survival and that they live in a dignified, humane way, preventing poverty, illness, homelessness, reducing crime, encouraging higher education and learning vocations as well as helping society become more prosperous as a whole.
Wow. Forget raising the minimum wage. This is much much better idea.
The minimum wage could actually drop if we had basic income.
But Americans would never go for it. Miserably slogging through 12 hour days and having businesses open 24/7 is too engrained in our culture.
“BUT WHERE WILL THE GOVERNMENT GET THE MONEY?” screamed Joe Schmoe, slamming a meaty fist onto the table and getting mouth-froth all over the front of his greying tank top. “You libt*rds all think money grows on TREES!! HAHA!”
“But where will people get the incentive to work?!” Mindy Bindy cried, flapping her hands in front of her face. She’d had a fear of the unemployed lollygagging about ever since she was a child and her mother told her to be afraid of the unemployed lollygagging about. “You think people should get paid for nothing? I work hard for my money!”
“But who will serve me?” grumbled Marty McMoneybags. “Who will make me feel important? Who will do my laundry and cook my food and stand in front of me wearing a plastic smile while I take out all my stress—because I do have a lot of stress, you know, being this rich is stressful—on them?” He paused and straightened out the piles of hundred dollar bills on the desk in front of him, then raised his two watery, outraged eyes up to the Heavens. “Lord, if there are no poor people, how will I know that I’m rich??”
I laughed. This is perfect! Well said!
The thing is, while I’m sure you could scrape up a few people who’d be willing to just float by on a guaranteed minimum income? For most people the choice to work would be a no-brainer. “Hmmm. I can get by on 33k a year, or I can take that part time job and make 48k… enough to move to a better apartment, maybe take the family on vacation. Sold.” Hell, most people would want to work simply because it gives one a sense of dignity and something to do with one’s time. (Speaking as someone who’s been unemployed, on extended sick leave, etc. in her time, the boredom and sense of isolation that comes with not having a job is almost as bad as the humiliation of having to depend on other people for one’s survival.)
And with this system, part-time jobs and “non-skilled” jobs would be much more readily available because nobody would need to work two or three jobs just to stay afloat!
Which would ALSO mean that employers and customers couldn’t shamelessly exploit employees the way they can today, because if losing a job weren’t necessarily a financial disaster, more people would be willing to walk out on jobs where they weren’t being treated with dignity.
And if this also applies to students (and it should) then student loans would become much less of a problem, and fewer people would flunk out of school because of having to juggle studies and work.
Far fewer people would be forced to stay with abusive partners, parents or roommates because they couldn’t afford to move out.
And the thing is, all those people who suddenly had money? They’d be spending it. They’d be getting all the stuff they can’t afford now - new clothes, books, toys, locally-produced food, car repairs - and with each purchase money would flow BACK to the government, because VAT, also income tax.
The unemployed and/or disabled wouldn’t need special support any more - which would also mean the government could fire however many admins who are currently engaged in humiliating - *cough* making sure those people aren’t getting money they don’t deserve. Same for medical benefits and pensions. And I’m no legal scholar, but I somehow imagine less financial desperation would lead to less petty crime, and hence less need for police and security everywhere?
TL;DR Doomie thinks this is a good idea, laughs at those who protest.
reblogging for more top commentary
They tried something like this out in Canada as a sort of social experiment, called Mincome. What they found was that, on the whole, people continued to work about as much as they did before. Only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less hours.
But wait, there’s more. Because parents were spending just a little more time at home and involved with their families, test scores increased. Because teens didn’t have to work to support their families, drop-out rates decreased. Crime rates, hospital visits, psychiatric hospitalizations and domestic abuse rates all dropped, as well. More adults pursued higher education. Those who continued to work reported more job flexibility and more opportunity to choose employment they preferred.
Basically, now you can go prove to your asshole family members that society won’t collapse without poor people for you to feel better than.
Is there a link or something where I can read more about Mincome?
Oh god, if only. There were times when this would have saved me from untold stress and grief–and I would still have been working once I was old enough to work, I just wouldn’t have been in such mortal terror about it. (For years I felt intense reflexive nausea whenever I checked my bank balance. I still fight panic about money stuff, even when I’m doing very well. It is a source of occasional stress in relationships.)
The argument that I would somehow have been lazier and less worthy if I hadn’t been terrified does not move me.
Kevin Allen, a 36 year old black man, has been shot and killed inside a library. A library of all places. What would it take for everyone to see that the cops are actually coming for black people?
He was described as a quiet man who frequented the library and liked to watch videos and listen to music at the computer stations. He was shot around 1:35 PM and taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
How are the racists gonna justify this? Black people getting killed shouldn’t ever be some commonplace occurrence we should just have to accept. This is an epidemic. This can’t be the world we live in.
Cops would kill black people for buying (allegedly stealing) cigarettes, wearing a hood, jaywalking, being in a library, playing with a toy, sleeping, the list goes on and on.
It’s as if white people just want black people to stop existing.
I knew there was evil in the world, but I would’ve never imagined anything like this explosion of racism since August 9th could ever be possible again. And the sheer fact that white people are not only ignoring and disregarding this genocide, but they’d even go to great lengths to justify it.
How does it feel, looking for reasons to justify murder? Aiyana Jones was only seven. Tamir Rice, only twelve.
Racism is far from over. Kevin Allen, along with the thousands of innocent black people killed in less than one year, never deserved to be forgotten.
This is unjustifiable.
How in the hell can you even fabricate a cause in a library?
his calculating face is practically screaming with “how do i fit my talking points into this? changing my position would be horribly inconvenient. can’t have that.”
A simple project that will help thousands of students to get out of debt & purchase over $500K of student loan debt in 2015. But we need your help to get started.
Dear axe, your ad is horrible. Let me explain how:
1) It objectifies women. 2) It tells young men with female friends that they are not “real men”. 3) It tells young women that “real” men don’t want to be their friends, they only want to “tear” their clothing off. 4) It insults men with braids. 5) It is advertising a crappy body spray.
Okay, that last one was just my opinion. The others are facts.
If you’re not ready to buy a home , renting an apartment is usually your best bet. According to a new report, these are the minimum hourly wages you need to earn in each state in order to rent an average two bedroom apartment.
im putting together a couple of scottish folk mixes bc that’s what i do and im honestly curious if anyone in my country has ever been unequivocally happy about anything ever
scottish trad music genres:
Everyone I Love Is Dead
The English Have Stolen All My Sheep
You Want To Be My Boyfriend? First You Must Answer These Riddles Three
The Protestants Have Stolen All My Sheep
I Love You A Lot But You’ve Left Me And It’s Raining [fiddle solo]
The Sea Is Treacherous, Just Like The English
One Time Bonnie Prince Charlie Punched Me In The Face And It Was Awesome
The Fairies Have Stolen All My Sheep
We have of course the traditional Irish music genres to go with them:
* Everyone I Love Is An Allegorical Representation of Ireland
* The English Stole My Farm And Put Sheep On It
* You Were My Boyfriend But Now You Won’t Even Come To The Window To Look Upon Me And Our Dead Infant Child (In The Rain)
* Whack Fol Too La Roo Umptytiddly Good They’ve Stopped Listening Now Let’s Talk About Revolution
* Something In Irish, I Think It’s About Fairies, Or Maybe A Cow
oooo can I add to this? don’t forget Appalachian folk balladry, the American cousin of Scottish and Irish traditional music and just as uplifting as its Anglo-Saxon highland forbears!!!
genres include:
I Left Everyone I Love Back Home In The Holler To Be With This Guy Who Doesn’t Wear Shoes Or Have Teeth But He Plays A Mean Jug
The English Told Us Not To Move West Yet, We Ignored Them, My Entire Family Was Killed
You Were My Boyfriend But You Tied A Sack Of Rocks To My Petticoats And Threw Me In The Creek (And My Baby Too)
Mama Loves All 14 Of Us A Lot But She’s Weary Of Our Shit And Now She’s Dyin’ (Gather Round)
The McCleans Stole A Firewood Log From Our Pile So We Won’t Rest Until The Last Of Their Male Kin Is Laid In The Cold Ground
We Knew The River Would Rise But We Still Didn’t Fix The Levee
The River Rose, The Levee Broke, Everyone Died, It Was Just As We Reckoned (dulcimer twang-a-lang)
When The Rebels Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Southern Man And I Feed Their Horses My Best, When The Yankees Come A-Marchin’ I’m A Northern Man And I Feed Their Horses What The Rebels Left
The Tennessee Valley Authority Killed All My Sheep Somehow
Don’t forget that old standby “The Mine Collapsed and Everyone Died”!
I think someone needs to put in a word for the English folk tradition though:
I Met a Girl and We Went Hunting (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl and We Caught Some Birds (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl and We Found Her Lost Pet (It Was a Metaphor for Sex)
I Met a Girl By Staying At Her Parents’ House and She Made My Bed (It Was an Especially Thinly-Veiled Metaphor for Sex)
I Am a Girl and I Regret Engaging In Metaphors for Sex Because Now I’m Pregnant
I Met a Girl and Bribed Her Into Sex But She Stole My Horse and Ran Away With It
I Met a Girl At an Inn and We Had Non-Metaphorical Sex But She Stole My Stuff The Next Morning and Now I Have Syphilis
Your Fiance Died Either at Trafalgar or Waterloo, Let’s Get Married, I’m Glad You Said No Because I’m Really Him In Disguise
Lord Nelson Sure Was Awesome
The Press-Gang Dragged Off All the Important Men in My Life (And Now They Are Dead)
Farm Laborers Are The Salt of the Earth And Are Never Grindingly Poor
Begging Is a Completely Viable Career Option With Flexible Hours and Unlimited Access to Alcohol
i hate when i go up north and go to restaurants and the waiter comes to take my order and im like “do yall have sweet tea??” and theyre like “no sweetheart but we have unsweetened iced tea and we can give you some sugar packets!!!” llike no you fucking yankee because now the tea is already cold so the sugar wont dissolve in it and itll all just sink the bottom and be nasty learn basic fucking solubility this is 9th grade chemistry thats why sweet tea exists in the first place you fucking heat the tea up to make it and then while its still hot you add the sugar and then you chill it and its sweet fucking tea i bet you pronounce pecan like peecan too you four seasons-having piece of shit
i hate when i go down south and go to restaurants and the waiter says “we dont serve gays”
Can we not fucking pretend that shit doesn’t happen in the north? Like have you BEEN to Indiana? FFS. At least in Georgia I can get sweet tea with my homophobia.
Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on the original series):”Whoopi Goldberg, she’s just marvellous. I had no way of knowing that she was a Star Trek fan. When I finally met her it was her first year on the Next Generation.
She loved the show so much and she told her agent she wants a role on Star Trek. Well agents go ‘Big screen, little screen, no, you can’t do that’. Well you can’t tell Whoopi ‘You can’t do that’.
And so they finally asked, and they had the same reaction at Star Trek office, specifically Gene. And she said, ‘I want to meet him and I want him to tell me to my face. If he tells me he doesn’t want me and why, I’ll be fine.’
Knowing Gene he had to take that challenge, and so he met with her. She said, ‘I just wanted you to tell me why you don’t want me in Star Trek.’
Gene said, ‘Well, I’ll just ask you one question and I’ll make my decision on that. You’re a big screen star, why do you want to be on a little screen, why do you want to be in Star Trek?’
And she looked at him and she said, ‘Well, it’s all Nichelle Nichols’ fault.’
That threw him, he said, ‘What do you mean?’
She said, ‘Well when I was nine years old Star Trek came on,’ and she said, ‘I looked at it and I went screaming through the house, “Come here, mum, everybody, come quick, come quick, there’s a black lady on television and she ain’t no maid!”’ And she said, ‘I knew right then and there I could be anything I wanted to be, and I want to be on Star Trek.’
I know I’ve reblogged this before, and I will undoubtedly do it again.
It matters. And no amount of saying that we’re post-racial or that racism isn’t a thing or that “they just chose the best actor for the role” or otherwise trying to cover up for it will make it okay to keep relegating actors of color to secondary roles, villain roles, stereotyped roles, or no roles at all, and it sure as hell won’t make it okay to keep whitewashing CHARACTERS of color out of the story by casting white actors to play then.
I said “Dr. King, thank you so much. I really am going to miss my co-stars.” He said, dead serious, “What are you talking about?” I said, “I’m leaving Star Trek,” He said, “You cannot. You cannot!”
I was taken aback. He said, “Don’t you understand what this man has achieved? For the first time on television we will be seen as we should be seen every day – as intelligent, quality, beautiful people who can sing, dance, but who can also go into space, who can be lawyers, who can be teachers, who can be professors, and yet you don’t see it on television – until now….”
I could say nothing, I just stood there realizing every word that he was saying was the truth. He said, “Gene Roddenberry has opened a door for the world to see us. If you leave, that door can be closed because, you see, your role is not a Black role, and it’s not a female role, he can fill it with anything, including an alien.”
At that moment, the world tilted for me. I knew then that I was something else and that the world was not the same. That’s all I could think of, everything that Dr. King had said: The world sees us for the first time as we should be seen.
It matters, man. It honestly does. It mattered then and it still matters.
Some great anecdotes which bear much repeating.
That moment when someone reblogs your reblog and you’re all like “I’M REBLOGGIN’ THIS AGAIN”
At just fifteen years old, Vancouver high school student Nicole Ticea developed an early-stage HIV test that’s as easy to use as an over-the-counter pregnancy test. Unlike current rapid response tests which rely on testing antibodies, Ticea utilized a technique known as isothermic nucleic acid amplification, making it possible to detect the virus as early as one week after infection. The disposable device does not rely on electricity, provides results in under one hour and should cost less than $5.00 to produce.
“Nicole’s
work really made me realize what a big difference a fast
easy-to-administer test for early stage HIV infection could make in
prolonging, if not saving, thousands of lives in developing countries,” said Gursev Anmole, the graduate student mentor who assisted Nicole on her research at Simon Fraser University.
Ticea was recently awarded the 2015 Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award for her groundbreaking work. After starting her own company, she received a $100,000 grant to continue developing this technology in the hopes of bringing it to low-income communities in need.
This is amazing!
Yes for women doing groundbreaking shit! Yes for YOUNG women bettering the world! Yes for Canadian women! YES FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCES!!! YAAASSSSSSS!!!!
Ground control to top space man
Ground control to top space man
Take your small food rocks and put your head-safe on
Ground control to top space man
(ten, ten less one, ten less two, seven,
Start the numbers-down, big fires on
six, five, four, three, two, one, up-go!)
Check the start thing and may God’s love be with you…
This is Ground Control to top space man,
you’re really first in class
and the papers want to know which person’s shirts you wear
now it’s time to leave the space-house since you’re there
This is top space man to Ground Control,
I’m stepping through the door
and I’m relaxing in the air and it’s weird
and the stars look very different today
For here am I sitting in a lunch box, far above the world
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do
Though I’m past five hundred hundred hundred hundred feet,
I’m feeling very cool
And I think my space car knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much — she knows
Ground Control to top space man,
your talk line’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, top space man? Can you hear me, top space man?
Can you hear me, top space man?
Can you….here — I’m relaxing in my lunch box
Far above the space night light ball
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do
Voting matters. Though many Americans believe that voting is either useless or merely a civic duty, in reality it carries huge consequences for the decisions of politicians. There is overwhelming evidence that politicians are more responsive to the preferences of voters than non-voters, and that votingaffectsgovernment policy. These facts have key implications for policies that disenfranchise individuals who would otherwise vote. Indeed, America’s racialized voting practices continue to disenfranchise the poor and communities of color, robbing them of billions in public funding.
ok so i am neither bi nor monogamous but like…yall bi folks in exclusive het relationships. whats up. why is ur “identity” such a big deal. isnt all that’s saying like…”whenever i leave my partner now, i might not be having sex w ppl of their gender!” isnt that kind of…rude to ur monogamous partner. “just letting you know that in case i break up with you or cheat on you, my options are more open!”
like why is this nebulous idea of u having an Immutable Innate Sexual Identity more important than the things you’re actually doing?? like i understand why a liberal would think that but like….one of the basic tenants of radicalism imo is that Things are more important than Ideas and Actions are more important than Intentions. that’s how privilege and oppression work…
i’ve been seeing a lot of this particular kind of biphobic excrement recently and i always feel so hurt and angry when it comes up
like if i somehow happen to cross paths with a dude who is not a shitstain and i am able to put aside all my own issues with men enough to trust and love him
according to op i ought ALSO to put aside my ENTIRE LIFE STORY of growing up and realizing that i am also interested in people who are not dudes. i need to put aside all the girls and women i have been attracted to, that i crushed on and hooked up with and loved. i need to put aside all the times i admitted to myself that i was bi and then took it back because i was afraid, all the times people called me gay to hurt me (when what they meant was i was ugly/unfeminine/unloveable/undateable) and how shitty i felt because they weren’t entirely wrong, all the times straight people and gay people tried to tell me what i actually meant and what i actually wanted, all the times i struggled to assert myself and explain myself and justify myself and identify myself
i need to put aside how i learned to call myself bisexual while looking other people in the eye, and how i kept changing and growing after that and now ‘queer’ feels like my home instead. i need to put aside how amazing it was to discover queerness not as a thing to ~accept~ about myself but a thing i could celebrate. i need to put aside how important and nurturing and strengthening my friendships with other queer women have been. bye queer community! i need to put aside how it felt like i ended a 20+-years-old lie when i ~officially~ came out to my mother
i need to put aside the biphobia i have come across from EVERYBODY. i need to put aside how the entire world gaslights us into believing that we DON’T EXIST
if i ever date a dude, i need to put aside a huge part of who i am, inextricable from the rest of who i am, because apparently all i am and all i will ever be is a woman who dates a dude and my queerness won’t inform THAT relationship at all
and in the end what’s REALLY important is that some fuckface who isn’t bisexual and who also completely lacks compassion for other human beings gets to lead a simple life where they never have to experience the apparentl unbearable confusion of sharing space with a queer person who’s dating somebody of a different gender, because that must feel as bad as BEING a queer person who’s in a relationship that ~looks het~ and putting up with this nonsense on the reg
also like FUCK YOU we can’t fucking win, if i date a dude exclusively and DON’T tell people i’m queer then i’m closeted and/or i was just some poser all along who only said she was bisexual for attention or was just USING women to EXPERIMENT (a favorite war-cry of the biphobic lesbian, as though there is no indignity worse than having dated a woman who is now dating a man); if i date a dude exclusively and i DO tell people i’m queer then i guess that means i’m a big fucking slut who won’t stop looking for women to cheat with and why do i need to just ANNOUNCE that shit all the time, if i’m not ACTIVELY FUCKING PEOPLE OF DIFFERENT GENDERS SIMULTANEOUSLY then my sexuality defaults to whoever i happen to be getting naked with in a given moment because that’s how THAT works apparently
why can people not just fuck the fuck off: questions for the ages
Humblebragging is notoriously obnoxious. But sometimes, it feels necessary. For example, in a job interview, we’re often told to answer the dreaded “what’s your biggest weakness” question with something sly, like, “I’m too much of a perfectionist.” People see through this. It’s better to either be honest about your bragging or be open about your weaknesses.
There’s a vicious double standard. If you’re an untrained civilian, and you’re approached menacingly by an armed police officer, and you fear for your safety, you’re supposed to remain completely under control, not do anything to make the officer nervous, and not overreact. Especially if said civilian is a black teenager, whose history of treatment by police officers is NOT GOOD, to say the least.
But if you’re a trained, armed police officer, and you fear for your safety, you have license to overreact and shoot anything that moves.
How is it that we expect higher standards of untrained civilians than we do of trained, armed police officers?
