@profwolff
Half of all renters in the US make major, long-lasting sacrifices to afford housing. A basic failing of US capitalism. Many millions suffer so a small minority - landlords - profit. The system is the problem.
Source: https://twitter.com/profwolff/status/1776718498519003278
Isn’t this “the great jahe shall not be defeated” IIRC because I’m nor sure if I’m remembering the title correctly
Probably? I’m not familiar with the template source, but this specific cartoon was from a series of posts about “Jahy-sama” I read occasionally on Reddit before I started to really dislike Reddit’s policies and left in favor of Lemmy. I think if you search “daily Jahy-sama post” you’ll find a lot of them from last year and earlier. I saved some of the ones I liked.
Meh, violence isn’t it. It will spin out of control, guaranteed
We’re already there.
Those, Press the button to get $100, but everytime you do, someone dies. challenges are literally being spammed by the 0.01% at this very moment.
2 wrongs.
Tax em to hell and back
Paint a spot of nail polish on the back of captured mice before you release them. When you realize you keep capturing the same one, time and again, you’ll understand the inherent flaw in live-capture mouse traps.
We The People are empowered to establish a law making it a criminal offense to hold more than 100,000 times as much wealth as the bottom 1%. We The People are empowered to make violation of this new criminal statute a capital offense, enforceable by guillotine.
You want to be a billionaire, you better make sure the bottom 1% has a net worth of at least $10,000.
Lol, this is exactly it. If you start writing capital offenses it won’t end with billionaires. It will spiral out until “undesirables” of many sorts are dying too.
Violence is not a political tool. That’s tankie shit. Authoritarians always come in proclaiming to “get rid of” the group of people you wish would be gone, but they never stop there.
In your example, if society has determined that someone has far too much wealth, they should just be taxed such that they are no longer in violation.
Violence has always been a political tool, but there will be no violence. They won’t even be incarcerated. They will voluntarily relinquish their excess wealth long before they ever see a guillotine.
Leave it as a civil offense to attain and retain that much wealth: you give them a billion reasons to fight, and zero reason not to. Making it a capital offense gives them just one tiny reason to stop and think about what they are doing. One small, tangible consequence of their actions.
Authoritarians
Authoritarians only understand authority, and billionaires believe themselves to be the ultimate authorities. Imposing the authority of We The People against them is the only way to to disabuse them of that notion.
That we the people stuff makes you sound like a sovcit.
Police brutality sends their regards. Violence to keep the poor in line and out of the rich’s sight. Violence to disperse big protests and demonstrations demanding action against them.
Yeah that’s fucking wrong (as in, that is A wrong, that should be corrected)
Never had a vacation gang, rise up! If we can afford the time off work!
(Staycations don’t count)
I’m doubly cooked because of that. Apparently my photos on dating apps aren’t exotic enough to get matches.
Does it count if my parents did all the planning and the spending and I just had to make sure I had the days off? Didn’t think so 🫠
“There are men who, through ownership of land, are able to make others pay for the privilege of being allowed to exist and to work. These landowners are idle, and I might therefore be expected to praise them. Unfortunately, their idleness is only rendered possible by the industry of others; indeed their desire for comfortable idleness is historically the source of the whole gospel of work. The last thing they have ever wished is that others should follow their example.”
― Bertrand Russell
Thanks for sharing some of your knowledge, such a great quote!
Found additional info of a source for quote, 7th paragraph.
Bertrand Russell, “In Praise of Idleness”
https://philosophy.tamucc.edu/texts/russell-in-praise-of-idleness
“Worked an extra job” and “worked a side hustle like uber or lift” are one in the same, add them up and they are second, so we are forced to work 2 jobs for minimum wage (as in minimum to survive). When are we going to dox all the billionaires and burn down their houses?
A lot of information is public, like property records, flight data, corporate records, etc. All the information needs to be tracked down.
Good luck. Historically that kind of thing won’t happen unless significant numbers of people - say over 50% - are literally starving to death. The rich fuckers are keeping their greed juuuuust enough in check to keep the number of disorganized desperate people from becoming an actual threat.
Imho Housing should be provided by the state.
I’d settle from even a small reprieve from the capitalist hellscape like not having to agree to forced binding arbitration to have a place to live.
How would that work exactly?
Decrease the “defence” budget and the private prison budget, put that money into building public houses that are managed by the state.
You know how parcels and or houses are bought or rented from realtors? That realtor is now the city. The city also employs janitors to keep the housing maintained. If you got a problem that needs fixing you call that janitor to get it fixed.
So instead having a private landlord you have a public landlord in the form of the state.
Look up social housing
The lion from Narnia would walk out of the wardrobe and say “housing is dank” and it will be so.
Kidding but I think housing should be more widely provided or subsidized for the poor, with a tapered payout for all the way into the middle class
It kinda is? There is public housing IIRC, the issue is the supply of it available and how many people who would be hypothetically eligible that just don’t ever try for it, again because supply
Yeah crank that supply way up
I mean, the system is broken, something needs to change, fuck capitalism and all that. But the original stats say “renters or homeowners”. It’s not just the renters getting fucked by the system, despite Dick Wolff’s interpretation. Also, at no point does the data say half of the respondents. I’m thinking a lot the people who fall into any of these categories fall into the others as well.
Canada is right there with y’all, fucking sucks
I don’t know why Wolff is calling it a failing. Looks like it’s operating exactly as designed. Also we need to look at the bright side, shareholders are making a lot of money!
My solution,
- determine the median quarterly rent within a state
- Minimum wage is the lowest value rounded to the next highest $100 where that median rent amounts to no more than 35% of it.
- people are hired for the week and paid at the end of it, a nominal rate of pay for up to 32 hours of work, 2.5* that is added on for between 32 and 48 hours of work, and between 48 and 64 hours of work earns you an additional sum of 2.5* the overtime rate, meaning overtime is more expensive than staffing appropriately, exponentially so if you’re really pushing it
- holiday hours count towards the weekly total but working a holiday nets a whole extra week of pay for the worker who came in on that holiday, yes even if they themselves don’t observe it personally.
- St. Monday is back from the dead! Mondays are now the third weekend day.
Owner occupant credit against residential property taxes, to hold the effective tax rates for homeowners where they are now, or lower it.
Massive increase in property tax rate, which now only affects investors.
Statutory future increases, targeting an owner-occupancy rate of >80%. If fewer than 8 in 10 residential properties are owned by their occupants, the investor tax rate rises to melt their profits. Statutory decreases in investor tax rates if owner-occupancy rate rises above 90%.
This will effectively kill traditional renting, as the taxes will quickly melt any profit a traditional landlord will collect. To maintain their profitability, landlords will have to find a way for their tenants to be named on the deed, making them eligible for the owner-occupant credit.
Land contracts and private mortgages will become commonplace. Commercial lending requirements will become more tolerant. Housing prices will stabilize, because the market will no longer see unsustainable investor influence.
The only properties that will be feasible to rent will be 2-4 unit dwellings, where the landlord lives in one of the units, and can thus claim the owner occupant credit. Apartment complexes will become condominiums.
Landlords can always charge more. The government needs to under cut them by providing affordable public housing with affordable rent or financing.
I forgot to add that point, you can only raises prices by a rate equal to the previous year’s median interest rate
Stop trying to fix capitalism, it’s not fixable.
How about fuck off, if your strategy for revolution is that the poor aren’t allowed to have their lives improved by anything except guillotining the billionaires, you’re not an ally, your a cynic who’s hoping things will get bad enough for guillotines to make a comeback.
The government is obligated to provide public housing, they don’t even have to be free, just sensibly priced.
I like the idea but, what evidence do you have to support this argument? Other than it being the moral and correct thing to do.
Countries with government supported housing tend to have drastically lower homelessness, lower crime rates, lower prison population, higher happiness, smaller housing price/rent inflation, lower racial tension and much more. Of course there are a lot of other things those governments tend to do that also affect those same things, but it’s not hard to think of reasons why government supported housing would help.
Right, this is sensible and positive for society as a whole.
My question is, where is it written that are they obligated? How can governments be held to that obligation?
I guess the only argument for that i can think of is that goverments are mandated to uphold human rights and if housing is considered a human right then the argument could be made but i think that is not a waterproof argument
If we could rewrite most countries constitutions we should include all of this. We would need this on paper for governments to be truly obligated to the welfare of its people.
Thanks for taking the time to engage with me.
thanks Dick Wolf
Meanwhile, my grandma who rents rooms, entire floor or garage, monthly.
- 100 dollars for a single room.
- 1000 dollars for the garage so you can use it as a store to sell stuff.
- 600 dollars for an entire floor with three rooms, bathroom, kitchen and living room.
