#class warfare

simonalkenmayer:

queergoblin:

dancinbutterfly:

olddukeofficial:

kelila-rivka:

templepriest-motherfucker:

Say it with me folks:

• “Eat the rich” means 1%ers and billionaires
• middle class is closer to poverty than being a multimillionaire
• “The rich” does NOT include children of billionaires (come on we’re at least slightly better than the plagues of Egypt)
• Upper middle class children SHOULD NOT feel guilt over having money
• Being aware of privilege and using your privilege to help others IS NOT a guilt trip
• Constantly feeling guilty helps no one
• Billionaires, however, should feel guilty over hoarding wealth.
• Upper middle class is NOT rich
• Black Lives Matter
• Trans rights are human rights

My uncle was one of the top surgeons in the country. He was upper middle class definitely. When he got cancer, his insurance didn’t cover all the treatments he would need and after 5 years he drained his savings on cancer treatments (while still working most of that time) and eventually died because he couldn’t afford the expensive treatments that might have saved him.

If you are upper middle class and you get sick, it will likely bankrupt your family. It’s fucked.

For all of the idiots in the notes ^

Honest to god - even if you make 6 figures a year? you’re closer to poverty than true wealth. Check your shit and remember who your real allies and enemies are guys.

A 6 figure income is a lot right?
That’s say: 223,000 dollars a year
Which is 112 dollars an hour.
Most people would consider that upper middle class. That’s enough money to have a nice house, go on fun vacations. That’s slight more than the average doctor makes.

223,000 dollars is what Jeff Bezo makes in a minute

the well-off and the rich are not the same. 

There was a wonderful study done about 15 years ago I think, that shows that people cannot accurately identify their income bracket. Most people who own a home think they are upper middle class when in fact they are closer to the poverty line. Even people living well below poverty often identify as middle class. The wealth gap is even worse now. I wonder if anyone actually knows their financial standing.

paxamericana:

Elon Musk’s regulatory woes mount as U.S. moves closer to recalling Tesla’s self-driving software

-Bernie Sanders will win the election

-The Imperial-Corporatist government of the United States will continue its unchecked reign of terror and tumult throughout the Middle East

-Unarmed black people will continue to be slaughtered by state terrorists without any legal recourse

-American women will continue to be arrested for simply attempting to exercise the same rights as American men

-The rich will continue to amass their billions in blood money, and the poor will continue to adjust their sense of “normality” to new lows and blame themselves for their disparity

-People will experience a galvanizing moment of tragedy–one that could unite all peoples against their worldwide oppressors–but cowardice and wage slave mentality will cause them to abandon the call for direct action and call for “hopes and prayers” instead

-Things will continue to get worse

-People will continue to look forward to 2017 (a NEW year), when things will somehow magically get better on their own

marzipanandminutiae:

neviditelny:

marzipanandminutiae:

in case people didn’t know this

the Met Gala funds the Met Costume Institute. meaning, basically, the Met’s clothing collection

from what I’ve read, it is the main source of funding for the Institute, which houses over 31,000 garments and accessories from the 17th century onwards

as for why the Costume Institute needs a separate fundraiser from the rest of this vast world-class museum with many high-profile donors…I have often wondered that myself. in the same breath as wondering why the Met has so few and sparse costume exhibits in any given year, and why some pieces on their collections website are outright misdated

but that’s the situation, so. that’s what the Met Gala is for. it’s not just rich people parading around in couture for fun. it keeps a huge museum collection of historical clothing preserved, so people can learn from and be inspired by those garments for years to come

(via ticket sales to the aforementioned rich people parading around in couture. and, in the case of guests who attend for free, the designers who make said couture and pay for tables for their celebrity models as publicity)

I’m not affiliated with the Met or the Met Costume Institute, but I am in graduate school and work in a museum with a substantial clothing and textile collection, so I will take a stab at it:

Storage: Clothing and Textiles (C&T) take up A LOT of space. Garments are usually stored by laying them flat in drawers or by being hung. You can’t fold them, you can’t store them on mannequins long term. They require space and (like all museum collections) sympathetic and specialized storage materials like acid-free tissue and boxes. That stuff is expensive.

Conservation: to put older garments on exhibit, you often need to bring in specialized textile conservators to just prep the garments for exhibition. Some historical pieces are too fragile to go on a mannequin (we have an AMAZING beaded 1920s flapper dress that lives in its drawer because the straps aren’t strong enough to hold it up on a mannequin and the skirt is approximately 600 billion seed and tube beads that need pinned in place). A lot of historic garments need conservation and/or restoration work before going on exhibit ( I spent MONTHS repairing the bodice of a 1950s gown, including recreating the beadwork). One of the common materials from the late 19th century was weighted silk; weighted silk has been treated with lead and other metallic salts. This means it literally breaks down over time. Chunks fall off. It shreds. You have to make sure the object can stand up to the rigors of exhibition before going on exhibit.

Exhibition is stressful for objects. Light is extremely damaging to most museum objects, and exhibition means extended periods for days on end. People coming in and out of the gallery means that the temperature and relative humidity is going to fluctuate, also causing damage to the objects. Just being on a mannequin, and out of its dark, safe, controlled environment is stressful for garments. My museum is talking about putting an exhibit of out 19th century clothing in the next year or so; our C&T curator needs to bring in a conservator to guide the process because we have to make sure the garments can handle it.

Also, textile conservators are expensive and highly sought after. Most museums don’t have one on staff. I don’t know if the Met does. Work on historic garments takes a long time, especially since most of it has to be done by hand.

Mannequins are also expensive. Many historic garments can’t go on adult mannequins; the mannequins are too big and the garments are too small. When C&T in my museum has exhibited 19th garments, we have to break out the kid-sized mannequins, and even then, they’re sometimes too big. Plus you have to store the mannequins when they’re not being used, which takes up mire space.

People: C&T is traditionally underfunded. It often doesn’t draw in the big donors. For things like quilts and other fiber arts, it’s often not seen as art the way paintings are. It’s women’s work, and women’s work is traditionally undervalued. Our C&T curator is constantly trying to raise money for her position’s endowment, to ensure that when she retires, another curator will be hired. There’s a museum about 2 hours north of where I am; they have a large C&T collection, but haven’t had a curator in years.

I don’t know how the Met’s budget is laid out, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Costume Institute’s budget was one of the smaller ones.

sharing this again because, as a museum worker myself, I deeply appreciate you adding all the related info!

and as for C&T being underfunded. it’s so true.

one of the museums I work at, a 19th-century historical house, has a collection of amazing period garments and accessories. we have a general curator, but guess who’s the primary person on staff with specialist textile/dress history knowledge?

me

the tour guide/admin assistant/museum tech with no graduate degree who learned textile conservation from working with antique dolls

(fortunately I have a lot of field experience and do independent research, so I do know enough to keep the collection stable, mount garments for temporary display, etc. but still. before me, we had no C&T person at all. after me, we likely won’t have one again. and that’s normal)

this is a huge area of museum work with precious few resources to spare. and it’s not like museums have pots of cash to throw around in general. so sometimes, we have to let donors peacock a bit to get their money

I’ve been going back and forth about saying anything on this post and topic because I don’t want to sound like I disagree w/ the cultural value of supporting things like the Met Costume Institute in general. But I keep thinking about this post since I read it two days ago so I figured I’d just say what I want to say, WHILE specifying that I am in no way against the value of efforts like this.

But I am VERY anti-gala style fundraising and philanthropic fundraising happens to be my personal area of expertise. So step with me for a moment into that world. First, let me get my credentials out of the way just to make it clear that I do have a legitimate niche knowledge base. I’ve work in nonprofits since 2005 and in fundraising specifically since 2012. I have a Master’s degree in nonprofit management and philanthropy from a so called top-tier institution in the field and I’m a Certified Fund Raising Executive credential holder.

Gala style fundraising is the LEAST community centric and MOST blatantly donor focused way you can raise funds. My main gripe with it is that the process inherently involves and relies on EXTREMELY high cost of overhead that is 100% focused on the wealthy donor class having a super fun evening and not at all about the actual need or issue they are “supporting.”

What I’m saying here in plain language is that, if you pay $30,000 for a Met Gala ticket and $10,000 (estimate/made up figure for illustrative purposes) of that cost covers allllll the stuff of putting on the event and all the attendee goodies and perks, you’ve taken $10,000 that WAS available for the cause from donors w/ that level of disposable income and diverted it right back into their own pockets by way of attending and enjoying the event itself.

So many other fundraising vehicles might have been able to receive that $30,000 and put a much MUCH higher percentage of it right back into their actual mission work. (Disclaimer: as a nonprofit fundraiser, I am in no way saying there should be 0 overhead costs because we obviously have necessary expenses of doing the work, but overhead that benefits the rich patrons themselves is what I’m really pointing out here.)

If the reaction to my point here right now is, “Well the fancy rich people and celebrities who do this stuff won’t pay the $30,000 donation unless they can attend the event w/ the $10,000 in perks” then THANK YOU because that’s exactly what I’m actually speaking to as to why this situation is fucked up. We’re being told their circus is necessary.

“Philanthropy” like this broken…its been colonized within an inch of its life and the people who have the resources and means to make giant donations are doing so because they can selfishly get a good old fancy, publicized time out of it. And further more, with the case of many, many galas beyond the Met, the supporters attend them because it’s a way that they are able to use their extreme wealth to support nonprofit “”“”“"causes”“”“”“ that they like and enjoy all year long (typically the arts, things like opera tickets, ballets, etc.) Those arts are wonderful and I’m not saying they shouldn’t exist, but they dominate this fundraising space while the smaller, typically social service or human service organization in the same community that is serving people inherently seen as less valuable (aka the poor; think of food banks, shelters, etc.) are not able to even tap into this world or space.

Some ultra rich donors support a diversity of causes. But I know with full certainty that some of the donors who have their names all over theatres and archives and collections to show off for their friends don’t give a cent to the causes serving their fellow community members who are not millionaires.

Again, the wider point being made on this thread is that these cultural artifacts should be protected and cared for and I fully agree. And the idea that the Met Costume Institute is depending on the Gala is undoubtedly true…but what I’m really trying to highlight here is that IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. This was a choice that mostly white wealthy elites made–on both sides of the equation: the fundraisers AND the funders. We’re being fed an idea that this type of fundraising NEEDS to exist for these causes when that’s actually another symptom of the sickness of white supremacy that has permeated ever level of the philanthropic sector. It’s especially disturbing when you consider how many ultra high net worth people became that way through exploitation, harm, slavery, etc. That $30,000 that COULD have been theoretically donated to any cause was given to the Met because of the upper class hoopla fancy social media #goals driven keeping up with the Joneses class warfare nonsense. But tracing the money back to its roots, it shouldn’t have even been in the hands of the people making these decisions in the first place.

Obviously this is a beast of a long post about my subsector, so if anyone actually read it THANKS!

TLDR; The Met Costume Institute existing? COOL! The Met Galaexisting? Sorry, I find it incredibly fucked up and if I’m being real honest, it does fuel my guillotine themed dreams.

whatbigotspost:

Inequality Kills

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.

ericvilas:

agentumbls:

hyperparasitoid:

landlords arent bad because theyre “lazy” or “parasites”, theyre bad because they take advantage of poverty and manipulate housing availability for financial gain. you people have GOT to stop framing your critiques of the bourgeoise the same way eugenicists talk about the disabled

I was going to sneakily reply to this with “but they’re also parasites” but

I did some introspection and you’re right. While landlords do suck up value without giving any back, the idea that every individual needs to “contribute something” to capital is an inherently manufactured take.

What should be criticized is the coercive nature of the transaction between rentiers and their tenants; the artificial scarcity employed to maintain the power imbalance between the landed and those without; an ideal world is not one where we retributively attack the gentry but find a way to make them irrelevant.

Framing landlords as “they’re bad bc they’re lazy parasites” actually opens you up to further attacks! Several are in fact not lazy, they sometimes do stuff like act as professional middlepeople (“something is broken, it is their job to find someone else who will fix it”). And so they might say “actually, managing property is quite a bit of work therefore landlords aren’t all useless, just the bad ones, therefore we deserve to exist, ha!”

But that’s not the point! The point is that they manipulate a massively necessary need (housing) for their own gain, raising prices while threatening people with homelessness! That’s what’s bad, not the fact that they’re “lazy”. You could have the most hardworking landlord in the world, and it would still contribute to harm.

If you rent, you probably think of your “landlord” as the person who collects rent, organizes repairs, and evicts people from the place you live in. They have all the power. For many people, getting rid of landlords means owning the place you live in and arranging your own repairs.

That works for single-family structures, sure… but that’s the model of housing that contributes to urban sprawl, car use, and the disappearance of wilderness and agricultural land. Environmentally, it’s better for us to create high-density urban areas that are walkable or efficiently served by mass public transit.

But that means multi-family buildings, where problems aren’t usually localized to a single apartment. It isn’t just my roof that leaks, it’s our roof that leaks. Into the floors below us. Some entity has to act for the building as a whole.

(Single-family housing is also less financially accessible to people like me. Being disabled, I can’t shovel my own snow nor afford to pay the full price of someone making the trip to my house and shovelling it every morning for me. I can afford to live in an apartment that includes a fraction of snow removal cost in my individual rent. Houses designed for wheelchair users are few and far between, and retrofitting to make them halfway accessible is very expensive. Apartment buildings designed and built to have elevators and wide hallways—maybe even, knock wood, wheelchair-accessible suites!—are much easier to find.)

And right now most multi-family residential projects are built and designed to be as profitable as possible, meaning either luxury condominiums, or cheaply-built rental units. Tenancy laws are mostly informed by what landlords need to be profitable. And as for how they’re run…

The biggest landowners have practically no contact with the properties they own. It would be logistically impossible. The “landlords” who collect the rent and repair broken toilets are usually caretakers employed by property management firms that are paid a monthly fee to cover the costs of their services, while the profits the building earns flow directly to the landowner. If their buildings are unprofitable—if they are too forgiving of tenants who can’t pay rent, or if they spend too much money on repairs or improvements—the management firm will fire the caretaker, or the owner will fire the management firm, and replace them with someone who’ll be willing to evict more and repair less.

There are several alternatives, from buildings owned by nonprofit housing societies or charities, to housing co-ops, to condominiums, that can make sure housing is run in ways more beneficial to the people who live in it. Though honestly, until we change mortgages and a debt-based economy and real estate law and banking regulations, we won’t be able to change some of the really brutal economics at the base of things.

I am especially wary of socialist proposals to nationalize land and create centralized authorities to assign housing, because uh… that’s been tried, guys. How did that go? So far as I can see, that’s how you get shitty apartment blocks built for ease of police surveillance, and better housing assignments used as, or being procured by, bribes. I notice the great critiquers don’t tend to turn their gazes to Soviet social housing or rural collectivization in the PRC to see what they’d do differently.

People need to quit fantasizing about “revolution” as though killing a bunch of people will fix the problem. We need an overturning, a reformation, a deep investigation into the whys and wherefores, the allocation of resources and the support of labour. We will need to change the deep structures and conventions of society as much as the shapes and sizes of our cities and countrysides.

So frankly, if you want to kill all landlords, you need to prove to me that your system will be any fucking better than what we’ve got going currently. And the best way you can do that is getting off your ass and caring about housing and rent control and social policy right fucking now.