Jentu @ Jentu @lemmy.blahaj.zone

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2 yr. ago

Yes yes, many different methods to try to convince people that the Matthew effect isn’t real and the top 1% isn’t gaining wealth at an ungodly rate to the detriment of the planet and everyone living on it. Ignoring the richest people when comparing the gap between the richest to the poorest income growth is such a dishonest way of making statistics work.

Income growth of 6% when your income is near nothing is crumbs. Surviving on less than $38 a day and getting a bump of a couple dollars might be greatly needed to those people, but it’s really absolutely nothing compared to the rate of wealth accumulated by the rich in this country. How much material change to one’s life will a couple dollars make? The difference between starving on the street or starving on someone’s couch? All while the richest are suddenly making enough money to buy entire countries, let alone their impact on governing policies to keep those who are poor poor enough to always be gasping for air, too tired to fight back.

So long as capitalism is functioning as intended, every president will feel worse and worse unless you’re comfortable. Comfortable people are willing to believe any article they read on the internet to not feel guilty that the system they feel comfortable in exploits their fellow countrymen as well as those in the global south. I’m not playing political team sports and I have no incentive to try to convince people “my guy” really isn’t that bad. I have no reason to parrot other people who have a material incentive on writing articles that are trying to convince people who are hurting that they aren’t really hurting. If you want Biden to win, you’re better off trying to convince him to pull an FDR with a New Deal than trying to convince me to vote for someone who is perpetuating genocide.

[edit] forgive me for not giving any sort of credit to the Gini method, created by someone who defended fascism and the nazis. (I’ll ignore his eugenics stance since it seems everyone around then was big into eugenics). From Robert H Wade, professor of economy: “it has long been accepted that the Gini coefficient is the workhorse measure of inequality. But it is not generally recognized that the coefficient is normally defined in a way which biases the measure in a downward direction, making inequality seem less large than another version of the coefficient would suggest. By this alternative measure inequality is much higher than is generally thought. The standard measure is misleading us into thinking that economic growth is more “inclusive’ than it is.”

It seems to me like the Gini index is just as bad as the GDP for being an oversimplification of something complex (be that income inequality or economic health). Hey, but it’s a single number and that number is easy to understand at the detriment of its accuracy.

When your link says when the bottom 50% has increased faster than every other group except the top 1%, the fact still stands that income inequality is getting worse. And a misleading title on top of that. All of us in the middle are just stagnating and you’re seeing that as a win because the poorest and most vulnerable were given crumbs? Also the article mentions that the gains of the lower class might not last long because that gain is due to covid stimulus programs.

Corporate profits have risen 25%-30% and the value of the dollar has lost 18% of its value since 2020. Something is wrong.

The thing is statistics can say anything so they’re nearly meaningless if someone has a motive for presenting the statistics in a particular way. But so long as we’re making comparisons, going to bat for the party in power and refusing to listen to valid complaints from people is also pretty similar to the GOP and Republican voters.

Considering the article I posted contradicts yours, I find it hard to believe either 100%. I trust the people who are having trouble buying medicine, rent, or groceries over some article telling me some carefully crafted statistic on why things really are good and we should just stop complaining or protesting about anything and everything. Essentially, it’s just an appeal to status quo to present specific statistics in a way that makes things seem rosy to contradict those who think otherwise.

I do think it’s possible to make statistics claim anything you want if you categorize the positions you’re comparing in a way that supports what you want to claim. All I know is people generally don’t feel like they’re doing better economically whether it’s the honest fact or not. And if I’m having issues with groceries, those who make less than me must be struggling more.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-income-inequality-rose-3-years-through-2022-fed-data-shows-2023-10-18/

If transportation is necessary, find ways to mitigate emissions as best as possible. If emissions are unavoidable, use the thing with least emissions (small-tired lightweight vehicles) until you research a solution to a tire material that isn’t harmful (which is being worked on I think). Busses mitigate a dozen or two cars. Local rail mitigates a few busses and a few hundred cars. Essentially, personal vehicles should be small and lightweight, and essential mass transit or city services should be large enough to serve an entire area.

Looking at the Realtime Inequality source, I think the picture is a bit less rosy than the article gives it, if I’m reading the graphs correctly. It looks like the bottom 50% were absolutely financially destroyed during 2020 (as was everyone else) and measures have been taken to place them relatively close to where they were before the pandemic. But the upper class not only didn’t fall as hard as the bottom 50%, but they recovered to a higher level than they were previous.

To me, this seems like “the income inequality train is slowing down” rather than “the income inequality train is going in reverse”. That being said, I’m a dummy when it comes to economics, so I might not know how to read this correctly.

I’m not sure if a study exists for it, but I’d assume walking produces more microplastics/km than bicycling because of how soft shoe rubber is and how scrubby the action is. Who knows. There is a study I saw that said that walking produces more CO2 per km than cycling, but I’m not sure if this is parallel to microplastic emissions.

The logic will make sense if you think that tailpipe emissions are so litte, it’s almost not worth considering in comparison to tire emissions. So the next step is to say “so how do we limit the microplastics in the air and in the ground on a necessary part of transportation”- the answer is to make it smaller and lighter. And if you want to go distances that you can’t get to by bike, that’s where public transportation comes in.

I’d be interested to see a source on if income inequality is decreasing because I haven’t seen any articles about that tbh. In fact, since 2020 when I last looked at graphs on it, it’s seemed like the gap is just getting wider and wider every year.

And if I was told things would get harder for me and other people in my bracket to make it easier for people making less than me, I’d be fine with it, but I’m not seeing an indication that that is what’s happening. But to be honest, so long as I’m seeing record profits for corporations and billionaires continuing to breathe, I’ll continue to think income inequality is continuing to get worse regardless of a study that states the contrary.

But in the comparison of tailpipe emissions (0.02 mg/km) vs tire emissions (36mg/km), I know which one I’m more worried about.

Nick Molden of Emissions Analytics seems to think that the heavier the vehicle, the worse the wear on tires seems to be (though it greatly depends on driving style and torque). That’d probably mean heavy EVs and SUVs are the worst for this.

Not that bicycles are completely clean- but there’s probably a time in the future to worry about bicycle microplastics- after the cars have been phased out.

I’m also not sure how relevant my experience is to this whole thing since my work experience is 100% contract work in a specialized field instead of salaried or employer scheduled. From my perspective everything is becoming gig work, but that might not be the case. I think it’s hard to budget for groceries getting more expensive if one year I make 85k and the year after, I make 25k. Employers just don’t seem to have as much money to spend on advertising as they used to, so finding work is hard unless you take less than what you’re used to taking.

All my peers seem to be having issues with finances nowadays unless their parents are helping them out or have a partner making quite a bit as well. Combine that with businesses forcing the end of work from home means we have to move back to expensive cities. It’s looking pretty bleak even from my pretty privileged vantage point.

Half joking response- but wouldn’t the survivorship bias mean those who were surviving only on minimum wage alone didn’t survive for very long?

I’d give a Gould if I could.

Breathing in Micro-rubber/micro-plastics from disintegrating car tires isn’t fixed at all by electrification.

I can also hear ICE cars approach from behind when I’m cycling, but that isn’t the case with electric vehicles (which might be using “autopilot” and can’t see me on the road). I’m not sure if that whirring sound is present outside of low speeds, but I certainly can’t hear it with wind crossing my ears. Sometimes tire noise is audible, but not always.

On the other hand, ICE drivers are more likely to intentionally try to hit me soooo

A company I used to work for (digital advertising) would buy fake Facebook likes and followers and it seemed to work well for them with regards to getting a ton of investors. That is, until Facebook made changes that pretty much stopped all profit from the platform.

Truenas scale to host:

Jellyfin (alternative to movie/tv streaming services)

Navidrome (alternative to Apple Music/spotify)

Obsidian

The “-arr” services

Tailscale (to access these services outside of my house)

Haven’t seen this mentioned, but Meta hired marketing consultants to present to the government how dangerous TikTok was just so their Facebook/IG reels or whatever they are called can take their place. This spawned a ton of news articles and opinion pieces about the government talking about this new dangerous TikTok thing and how bad it is. Also, it was very clear that an anti TikTok campaign was happening on Reddit like a year ago, so the marketing didn’t stop with presenting things to the government.

And I’m not saying it isn’t a breach of privacy. I also use Google maps too, so I’m not too terribly concerned with it. But it does just seem like a marketing smear campaign centralized around the facade of xenophobia and “think of the children”

I think the issue with this question is the fact that you asked it on a decentralized platform. If you asked this same thing on a centralized social media platform, you’ll definitely get far more pro-Facebook and anti-TikTok comments and less “uh…both are bad CHECK PLEASE”

Smoke smoke weed smoke smoke weed every day day

They're the ones who determine their own salary, so if they think that $100k/yr is enough, it's almost certainly way more than enough.

If I was a fae creature, I'd get the endless candle so I could lure people to my hut in the forest and they would not get a sense of danger at all (assuming everyone around the candle can also feel the effects by smelling it)

The fact that the pillow won't help my awful insomnia (or help you fall asleep in general) makes it so close to being the best choice to me, but it falls short in the most frustrating way.