wish my life was like a 90’s movie where all my friends work in record stores and bookshops and coffee shops and we see really cool bands in small little clubs and get breakfast together and like hang out on roofs and shit
Not to be that guy on this post but whenever I see it it stresses me out. I know it’s supposed to be a fun aesthetic but there’s a reason things are not like that anymore. There are no record stores left in my town. There are no bookstores left in my town. There is one terrible gentrified cafe in my town. There is no where for the cool little bands to perform in my town. There are no more cool little clubs in my town. Hell we don’t even have a bowling alley anymore. All of these things got bought up and knocked down and replaced with a Dunkin’ donuts or some garbage and now we all just stay indoors instead of hanging out on rooftops. Capitalism took these things from us. We’re not just romanticizing the ‘90s, we’re romanticizing life before social media and COVID and the current stage of hyper capitalism we find ourselves in.
This past Sunday, 1/16/22, Oxfam international released this must-read new report title, “Inequality Kills’’, ahead of the World Economic Forum’s Davos Agenda. You can explore the link here for the full report findings which show with stark clarity the extremely dangerous and deadly state of worldwide inequity.
I first heard of this today on ABC’s Start Here, and have just been exploring the report myself. (That link is a good one to explore if you want to hear the highlights instead of reading them, go to the ep titled “Pacific Explosion from today, 1/18.)
Here are some standout data points to be aware of:
While the wealth of the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled (increasing from approximately $700 billion to $1.5 trillion between March 2020 and November 2021) the incomes of approximately 99% of people around the globe fell during that time.
More than 160 million people have been newly forced into poverty.
The richest men were Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault & family, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Ballmer and Warren Buffett…if these 10 richest men in the world were to lose 99% of their wealth, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on this planet.
Worldwide, economic gender parity is a further away dream than it was just a year ago. In fact, the pandemic has set gender parity back from 99 years to 135 years. Thirteen million fewer women are at work now than in 2019.
Inequality is contributing to the death of at least 21,000 people each day, or one person every four seconds.
Meanwhile, a new billionaire is created every 26 hours. Furthermore, billionaires are making the roughly the equivalent of a whole year of someone’s labor at the current US federal minimum wage in just 1 second.
While none of this "shocks” me (because I understand what’s been going on for years) it still horrifies me to see this evidence so plainly and to watch the inaction of the US government and many others worldwide. The rich continue to increasingly profit off the suffering of so many and capitalism continues to empower this.
It wasn’t boomerswho made it impossible to survive on a librarian or gardener’s salary - it was rich people.
Plenty of boomers work as librarians, teachers, gardeners, and so forth, and are finding that as the cost of living skyrockets and corporations take over more and more of the world, that their salary is no longer able to support them.
And thus you have boomers - who understand how much you want to be a librarian because they also work as librarians - going bankrupt, losing their homes, drowning in debt, and dying because of unaffordable healthcare. And they get why you’re becoming an IT specialist instead of a librarian - because they! Know! That you can’t survive! On a librarian’s salary anymore!
On the flip side, the rich people sucking money out of every service and person they can! Aren’t! Always! Boomers! Tons of them are Gen X! And an increasing number are millennials! I haven’t seen a Gen Z billionaire yet but I’m willing to bet there’s a couple by now!
Oh, and it’s not like they “don’t know” how much people want to do these sorts of jobs - they do! That’s how they justify underpaying people, because it’s your passion, you don’t ~need~ to be paid a living wage for your passion.
You have more in common with poor boomers than you do with Kylie Jenner (born 1997). Go and talk to them. Organize with them. You’ll find they have a lot to offer once you stop dismissing them as rich old folks who ruined the economy.
I was just thinking earlier how awesome it would be if drinks were all sold in multi-colored glass bottles do you know how neat and shiny that would be
You’re most powerful when you honor your own rhythm. If your circadian rhythm is nocturnal, don’t follow those “waking up at 4 am changed my life” routines because they’re not for you. If you function best when you focus on a single task, single job, single goal, then working half a dozen sidehustles may not be for you. Honor your own rhythm, work with it instead of against it, and you will achieve so much more than if you blindly follow what’s considered “correct” by social conventions of the time.
