I worry that folks boil class down to simply dollars and cents & not about access, privilege, snobbery & condescension. Class is a much bigger deal that involves access & precarity. Not financial precarity alone, but access to circles & opportunities. In particular opportunities.
People born on third base thinking they hit a triple and all the underlying assumptions & elitism that goes with it... The lottery of birth & the blessings from the Ivory Tower that allow some to be absolute assholes yet simultaneously get away with it because of that privilege.
It skews social mobility more so than financial mobility. It is a gate keeping system that really collects privilege whilst simultaneously bludgeoning those not in the club, silencing them from the same opportunities & stations afforded to privileged people. No idea how to fix it
To be gifted into roles and groomed vs those who had to white knuckle it and never get the opportunity.
It's a club most of us will never be worthy of entering. And somehow they believe they inherently simply deserve to be promoted because of their birth rite.
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There is something that's been eating me inside and out and I have not been able to articulate this until now, but I am gonna try because I think it is very important. At least to me it is. The sickness of our neoliberal world impacts both the middle class and the poor.
When you see generational poverty, it is easy to see it outright. It's extreme. It's often hopeless to the individual. It's bleak and the political space uses poverty as a political tool. One for explaining "bad choices" and one that exploits it as "immoral". But it's a veneer.
It's used as a political football. Two angles: you are a bad person and undeserving or my goodness this is so tragic we must save you with a pittance... Charity ... Hand outs... No structural change... No real change.
FYI lockdowns only hurt the people economically becuz people believe the government is broke & the Neoliberal assholes in office allowed that ignorance to be a rally cry. When you know what could be done to make people whole & still keep the vulnerable safe, it changes everything
Psst Federal Programs are absolutely NEVER paid for with tax dollars. All government spending is newly created money. Every single time. Not something someday.. happening at this moment and always.
In fact your tax dollars come from the Federal Government. Just like concert tickets are not required to fund the concert but they are for redemption. And just like the concert hall doesn't need those stubs to fund new concerts...
Get it? #MMT
Cash used to be burned in colonial times, now it is shredded and deleted. The government doesn't need your money. It just needs us to need it to pay taxes so it can provision itself.
Modern Monetary Theory is a description of macroeconomic operations. Like the manual. It describes what happens when various levers are pulled. There is not country "doing MMT" because MMT describes the good and the bad of a modern money economy. 1/x
If a country adds extra rules that serve no purpose but they do it anyways that doesn't change a thing. They have created a self imposed rule or ritual. It impacts results sure... But it is both unecessary and often stupid and unproductive.
If a neoconservative government with neoliberal beliefs towards markets and globalism comes to power, they appoint their people to "man" the levers. Just because the results are absolutely abhorrent doesn't disprove MMT. It shows what happens when a hammer is given to a murderer.
Funny thing... We spend all this time trying to think of how to frame economic messages for those who are still not convinced of #MMT or have no understanding. 1/x
But when a movie comes out targeting the outlandish avoidance our MSM goes thru to keep us happy, laughing, depressed and struggling but always distracted, people have a fit... Not left enough, no class awareness... Not enough xyz... Not global enough... Too American... Whatever.
.. Fact is the people we need to reach are not always going to be able to have a full class analysis as the word class has been tainted and people expect you to trot out Trotsky or some other boogiemen that propaganda has fed them thanks McCarthy and the intelligence community.
So if something is already the way it is but people don't know, then that means an education is required.
Nothing need be implemented... just education.
Why does this matter?
1/x
If you see someone pouring gas in the windshield wiper fluid, or transmillion fluid in the gas tank, you might want to inform them they are about to trash their vehicle... or at least show them the proper place to pour those fluids.
Same with economics.
When you see someone saying they need to raise federal taxes to pay for things, you know they are pouring antifreeze into the transmission.