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[wierd]

nonono.

He will get the novichok treatment, for making putin look bad.

[martinuzz]

Oh wait, didn't they release John Hinckley jr. last year?

[hector13]

Donald Trump looking for $20m in damages against Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom he is alleged to have had a relationship.

[McTraveller]

The funny thing is, for all people that claim that things are getting worse, there are actually objective metrics that show things are in fact better than they've ever been in many areas.  People tend to just focus on the specific local negatives, without realizing how good things actually are.  It's almost the reverse of what they are claiming - people are so used to how good things are, they don't notice it.

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't areas or aspects of society which are in fact declining, because they are.  While consumer cost of goods is really quite low, barriers to creating new businesses are very high.  There is no longer any expectation of privacy, mob mentality is rampant (public and even private figures are immediately eviscerated by the internet basically for being human and making mistakes or not speaking only with 'approved terminology'), and the internet provides such fast access to information that the extreme is easy to highlight.

Basically technology in general, and the internet specifically, has been a catalyst for both good and ill - it makes all things easier.

Regarding another economic hot-button: wealth equality is a bit of a red herring.  It definitely impacts power structures, but as far as absolute economic stability of the low tiers, the more important thing isn't the ratio of minimum income to max, but the absolute level of the "most poor".  Consider that in the US, we have massive wealth inequality.  Yet the most destitute poor in this country are still more wealthy than the poor in, say, Haiti.  The poor in this country don't generally have to worry about fresh water or cholera or fighting feral dogs for scraps of food.  The US doesn't have slums like in the tropical poor countries - yeah we call areas slums, but they generally have power, water, sewer, and the like.  The houses in US slums are not literally built out of trash.

I don't mean to say "there are areas worse off so we shouldn't try to keep/make our area good/better" - what I mean is that whining about the entertainment fiasco of the bread-and-circuses administration is a massive distraction from things that really matter.  Arguing / philosophizing about which party (or party structure) is better is white-tower kind of bullshit when there are people who literally don't have food nearby to even steal, let alone beg for.

I'm not saying here that we need to change the world - at least not in the media-visible sense. I'm saying change the world by trying to touch one person in your immediate sphere.  Assist them, even with a little personal sacrifice. Do it because other people are valuable, not because "you have to stop the tide of societal decline".  If you've been blessed with much material wealth, share it.  If you don't have material wealth, share your time.  And don't fret about what other people do or don't do with their wealth or time... you can't control that in the first place (and trying to distinguish "telling people to do X for the greater good is acceptable, it's only telling people to do X for personal gain that's bad" is also bullshit).

Also remember - everyone is destitute in their own way, be it emotionally, scars from the past, dealing with a bad environment or crappy relationships or depression or social issues.  Hell, even the "super rich" probably have all sorts of personal demons they don't let others see.

[sluissa]

The funny thing is, for all people that claim that things are getting worse, there are actually objective metrics that show things are in fact better than they've ever been in many areas.  People tend to just focus on the specific local negatives, without realizing how good things actually are.  It's almost the reverse of what they are claiming - people are so used to how good things are, they don't notice it.

Now, this isn't to say that there aren't areas or aspects of society which are in fact declining, because they are.  While consumer cost of goods is really quite low, barriers to creating new businesses are very high.  There is no longer any expectation of privacy, mob mentality is rampant (public and even private figures are immediately eviscerated by the internet basically for being human and making mistakes or not speaking only with 'approved terminology'), and the internet provides such fast access to information that the extreme is easy to highlight.

Basically technology in general, and the internet specifically, has been a catalyst for both good and ill - it makes all things easier.

Regarding another economic hot-button: wealth equality is a bit of a red herring.  It definitely impacts power structures, but as far as absolute economic stability of the low tiers, the more important thing isn't the ratio of minimum income to max, but the absolute level of the "most poor".  Consider that in the US, we have massive wealth inequality.  Yet the most destitute poor in this country are still more wealthy than the poor in, say, Haiti.  The poor in this country don't generally have to worry about fresh water or cholera or fighting feral dogs for scraps of food.  The US doesn't have slums like in the tropical poor countries - yeah we call areas slums, but they generally have power, water, sewer, and the like.  The houses in US slums are not literally built out of trash.

I don't mean to say "there are areas worse off so we shouldn't try to keep/make our area good/better" - what I mean is that whining about the entertainment fiasco of the bread-and-circuses administration is a massive distraction from things that really matter.  Arguing / philosophizing about which party (or party structure) is better is white-tower kind of bullshit when there are people who literally don't have food nearby to even steal, let alone beg for.

I'm not saying here that we need to change the world - at least not in the media-visible sense. I'm saying change the world by trying to touch one person in your immediate sphere.  Assist them, even with a little personal sacrifice. Do it because other people are valuable, not because "you have to stop the tide of societal decline".  If you've been blessed with much material wealth, share it.  If you don't have material wealth, share your time.  And don't fret about what other people do or don't do with their wealth or time... you can't control that in the first place (and trying to distinguish "telling people to do X for the greater good is acceptable, it's only telling people to do X for personal gain that's bad" is also bullshit).

Also remember - everyone is destitute in their own way, be it emotionally, scars from the past, dealing with a bad environment or crappy relationships or depression or social issues.  Hell, even the "super rich" probably have all sorts of personal demons they don't let others see.

You need to see more of the US. I can tell you from personal experience there are areas of the south that are exactly as described. People living in abandoned mobile homes with half the roof collapsed. No plumbing, sometimes surviving off of stuff like selling scrap, but just as often having a more or less decent job. (I've met people like this that are in food service. Fast food, diners, etc.) People going around cleaning other people's houses while living homeless out of their cars. It's a frustrating scene.

I think the data doesn't show this happening in the US because there's a certain level of income where they just stop keeping track of you. IRS doesn't care if you're making less than $10,400 a year as a single person. So notably there's very little data for income levels below that. The welfare system also doesn't typically kick in at levels that low either. There is actually a minimum income requirement for a lot of our welfare system, if that makes any sense. So data is sparse there too. Where people are eligible for it, they often don't know it or can't take advantage of it.

Any case, it's been a damn long time since the choice was difficult, personally.

The choice isn't hard because when the choice is between slavery + moral guilt tripping or slavery + bread and circuses, I choose neither, because it's still slavery either way. I'll leave it to personal opinion to determine who is doing the moral guilt tripping and who is doing the bread and circuses because sometimes I'm not even sure myself.

[Trekkin]

You need to see more of the US. I can tell you from personal experience there are areas of the south that are exactly as described. People living in abandoned mobile homes with half the roof collapsed. No plumbing, sometimes surviving off of stuff like selling scrap, but just as often having a more or less decent job. (I've met people like this that are in food service. Fast food, diners, etc.) People going around cleaning other people's houses while living homeless out of their cars. It's a frustrating scene.

I think the data doesn't show this happening in the US because there's a certain level of income where they just stop keeping track of you. IRS doesn't care if you're making less than $10,400 a year as a single person. So notably there's very little data for income levels below that. The welfare system also doesn't typically kick in at levels that low either. There is actually a minimum income requirement for a lot of our welfare system, if that makes any sense. So data is sparse there too. Where people are eligible for it, they often don't know it or can't take advantage of it.

There's also an effective minimum income requirement to make effective use of the welfare system, too -- not in a "pull yourself out of poverty" sense, but simply using the resources allocated to do what they're supposed to do. Consider food stamps; they aren't much good if there's no public transit between where the recipients live and an affordable grocery store, or if they don't have a way to store or cook food. Even when they do, proper nutrition on a budget that low is not easy even if you can eat anything. For people with allergies or other dietary restrictions it can get so much worse. This isn't even getting into the often onerous logistical requirements to realize many of these benefits, which soak up crazy amounts of time. There are big, obvious step functions in the welfare system where earning more money means taking home less, but there are also subtle ones where working a full-time job effectively cuts you off from a lot of other benefits.

That's one of the things about poverty that escapes people, I think: often, wealth doesn't so much buy a better standard of living as security from disruptions to your current one. A lot of the "most poor" are separated from third-world living conditions only by pure luck, and it is entirely possible to have people without water in a broadly functional plumbing system or without heat even when the grid is working, and if they're poor enough they're effectively invisible to the bureaucracy.

[McTraveller]

Oh, I've lived in the rural south, and I've seen the trailers you've mentioned. I've known people with dirt floors.  But these are "isolated" homes or small communities - they aren't 500k people living a square mile of walls made of discarded cardboard, construction concrete, and tin roofing.  Even in apocalyptic scenarios I don't see even the poor in the US accepting that type of living situation; the culture of the poor in the US (both inner city and rural) is very different than the culture of the poor in other countries.

I also chuckle at the idea of "doing work living out of their car" - if you can manage to afford a car, and you are doing work, you are actually better off than something like 90% of the people on the planet, even if that is 'squalor' in the US.

Regarding people working fast-food and not being able to make it - I blame this at least equally on the odd culture of individualism we have as much as corporatism.  I (would say say fortunately) grew up in a family and community where if all you could find for work was minimum wage, you band together with others to pool your resources into something better, or allow people to stay at home longer, rather than trying to go it alone or kick a kid out as a deadbeat and be unable to get out of the rut that having only a minimum-wage income provides.  We did this on our own accord, not because it was mandated*.  Yes, I still like to be able to support myself, but I would not feel shame if I had to ask for help or rely on others for support.  Sadly a significant fraction of society only finds their self worth in their ability to be self-sufficient, which causes all sorts of subsequent issues.

This is actually a tension that spills over into politics - the tension between community and individualism.  How much of your life should be for yourself (or people of your choosing) versus people that someone else chooses for you?  It shows up in gun control, health care, net neutrality, discrimination law, eminent domain, taxes, religion - basically everything.

[redwallzyl]

Yes, the individualism obsesson of the US is toxic. Manifesting in the libertarian movement especially. we seem to have forgotten how sociaty works. This contributes to the perpetuation of the up by you bootstraps thinking despite it being nothing more then a stastical certainly extapolated into norm in the collective mind of the country.

[Egan_BW]

Do people actually use the term "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" unironically? Because it's a metaphor for something very obviously physically impossible for similar reasons that the thing it's a metaphor for is impossible.

[redwallzyl]

Do people actually use the term "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" unironically? Because it's a metaphor for something very obviously physically impossible for similar reasons that the thing it's a metaphor for is impossible.

yes, there is a bit of a trend in the more well off to have a I did everything myself and all my social advancement was because of me. It's part of the hostility to social programs. They tend to ignore that all their success was build on sociaty and they have a great deal of luck. "I deserve my success" is a common attitude. It's really easy to justify your position by assuming it's because your just so great and worked so hard. Unlike all those other people of course. Prosperity gospel is popular as well among such people.

[Egan_BW]

Yeah but. Like. Who hears that phrase and thinks of it actually working? Have those people tried doing that!? Spoiler: it doesn't frikkin work!
Any kid with a sense of curiosity has physical experience with reality not working that way. And yet people use that idea to represent something that they think does work?

[redwallzyl]

Yeah but. Like. Who hears that phrase and thinks of it actually working? Have those people tried doing that!? Spoiler: it doesn't frikkin work!
Any kid with a sense of curiosity has physical experience with reality not working that way. And yet people use that idea to represent something that they think does work?

There is a bit of an obsesson with the "American Dream" despite us actually having shit social mobility these days. People want to believe it but a lot of younger people can see that it has been dead and gone for awhile. I think the rest of the world is waking up to that as well.

[redwallzyl]

Well, almost everyone. Us immigrant are still convinced it's a real thing.

Then again, you have to wonder what would motivate someone to immigrate to a country if they didn't think they would find better success there instead of their home country.

Having done some research on the topic the immigrants in the US yes they do have that belief and the drive that comes with it. They have not gotten cynical about the unequal system yet. Our shit support system and bad education usually kill that in following generations. Especially in the case of minority communities. Especially the African ones.

[Dunamisdeos]

A lot of them are just happy to live somewhere where they aren't under constant threat of starvation, or murder via government-issued gunshot wound.

Here in the US, minorities have to be at a routine traffic stop in order to be in immediate danger of getting shot by the government.

[Max™]

^Which used to just be a fairly dark joke.

The prosperity gospel shit mentioned a few posts up is such an absurdly vile way to justify hateful behavior: you aren't struggling because you got screwed over by a job being outsourced, accidental injury, lack of transportation, or anything like that, no, you are just too fucking lazy and need to get your shit together before god will help you out.

Literally using "fuck you, I got mine" and justifying it with "Jee-hee-zusssss" should be physical painful.