please, my $2,000,000 home, she is very sick
here's free advice for these middle class people:

switch to public schools and move your toddler to a less chi-chi daycare.

boom, i just saved you about four grand a month, or way more than the average US individual income.

And you get to keep paying your $8800 house payment!
I know, I know, sending your kids tp *public school* doesn't feel *rich* enough.

But on the other hand, fuck you.
If I suddenly had an extra $4000 a month, to spend on whatever I liked because all my other present and future needs were already covered, I'd feel pretty damn rich, thank you very much.
Here's the thing: the vast majority of their outlay is overspending on things where the "value" is in feeling like you're upper class: house, school, etc. They could cut back on those and have more money to spend on actually living it up if they wanted.

And yeah, parents, I GET IT, childcare is EXPENSIVE.

But I couldn't care less about a family who follows this budget complaining about the price of daycare when the vast majority of working families making far less ALSO face those costs.
If you think your local public schools are so awful that you wouldn't send your kids there, first you've got to ask yourself if you mean too poor and too not-white, and then you've got to take action to improve your public schools so you're not maintaining inequality.
the offending article that wants you to feel bad for this poor little rich family:

cnbc.com/2020/10/06/bid…

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More from @richterscale

6 Oct
A SCOTUS decision in a religious freedom case that goes against the petitioner is not "anti-religion," any more than one that upholds a claim to religious freedom is "pro-religion."

This phrasing feeds the idea that civil secularism is anti-religion.

thehill.com/opinion/judici…
I don't know if you've heard, but the line on the right for quite some time has been that the liberal courts are attacking religion every chance they get, and anything short of "do what thou wilt, evangelicals" is evidence of an atheistic hatred of all religion.
Which is why the primary goal of the right over the past four years has been to pack the federal bench with the most conservative judges they can find--it's to SAVE JESUS FROM THE HORRIBLE, GODLESS SECULARISTS.
Read 4 tweets
6 Oct
This is so true--Gen-Xers grew up with casual racism and sexism EVERYWHERE in our world, but because it wasn't wearing a hood, we* could ignore it.

It was so bad that when we all become "enlightened" in the 90s, Friends seemed like an IMPROVEMENT.

(*those of us with privilege)
The Clinton years gave white liberals a sense of extreme smugness, a dust-off-your-hands, stand-back-and-look-at-the-completed-work feeling of having fixed the country, and maybe even the world!

Gen-Xers coming of age in this era became complacent if they could afford to be.
The Boomers did the same thing--many a 70-year-old will tell you that the civil rights movement fixed racism, so what do "they" have to complain about now? (70yo in question likely spent 1968 in a crewcut wondering why "they" were rioting.)
Read 6 tweets
6 Oct
Years ago when I was still on Facebook, I hated to see so many of my gen-x classmates from my suburban Seattle high school ossifying into a simulacrum of their parents' boomer lifestyle and attitudes.
Thinking of all Gen-Xers as ironic, cooly detached, and disaffected authority-questioners is about as useful and accurate as thinking of all Boomers as hippies, war protestors, and civil rights marchers.
It's not the Gen-X "mentality" that leads them to support Trump more than other generations; it's the relative privilege and financial security of a large proportion of the cohort.
Read 4 tweets
6 Oct
Surely, not a single very online capital-A Atheist will use these statistics to argue that movement atheism doesn't have serious problems with sexism and racism and that they don't still have to take those issues seriously.
This is a very odd assumption to make about the FFRF--that the only commonality among its members is "a disbelief in God." FFRF is an organization with a clearly defined political purpose; it's not just a club for non-theists. They're gonna have stuff in common.
Precisely because it has a clear mandate, FFRF has remained relatively free from the more reactionary New Atheist tendencies, compared to other groups like American Atheists or Center for Inquiry. It's not surprising that its members would express these positions.
Read 5 tweets
5 Oct
How, in 2020, does Pew use "belief in God" across all religious traditions?

Capital-G "God" is *quite* the term to use when describing the object of belief in both the United States and, say, India.

And no, the report does not address this.
You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the 79% of people in India who answered yes to this question think of the word "God" in a significantly similar way to folks in Sweden, Turkey, or the US.

But that doesn't even occur to Pew???
The really irritating thing is that underneath this clumsy terminology is an important question: whether a society assumes that morality is tied to an essential, transcendent source. That's a serious question with real-world effects. But don't conflate it all with Christianity.
Read 4 tweets
4 Oct
I watched Lindsey Fitzharris's "Curious Life and Death of" on the Smithsonian Channel, and oh wow is there some irresponsible "history" being done here.

Her "verdict" on Lizzie Borden was that she did it, evidenced by living as she wanted once she controlled her own finances.
Setting aside the "science lab" nonsense and other THE REAL STORY BEHIND THE HISTORY UNCOVERED foofraw, Fitzharris's argument for Borden's guilt was fundamentally misogynist and rooted in 19th century assumptions about women's ability to manage their own lives.
See, Lizzie Borden was known to be dissatisfied with the rather humble appointments of her father's house, given his substantial wealth. So, Fitzharris argues, the fact that when she inherited her share of his estate she moved to a fancier part of town proves she murdered him.
Read 9 tweets

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