@djc but not "a safety net"! that is, the minimum is always there for everyone, not a thing you have to prove your misery in order to deserve.
(on the topside, i'd ask you to think about what it would take to solve the many social problems we face if we were serious and unified in addressing them, and why we don't do those things. we are paralyzed because a very few people are addicted to impossible lives and immersed in egotistic competitions.)
@curtosis your content warning is a thing of beauty.
fzf.
i've never heard of it, but it's so cool.
like so often i'm indebted to @llimllib https://notes.billmill.org/computer_usage/cli_tips_and_tools/fzf.html
@djc Apparently by whatever that’s measuring Finland’s welfare state has grown more generous. Lots of Swedes lament the retrenchment of social democracy during neoliberalism. Norway is of course Norway. In any case, Nordic social democracy is not a particular number. It is first and foremost a commitment to a universalism of positive rights, backed by an ethos of solidarity and reciprocity. Everybody must have access to the basics of a decent life and to complements to social contribution.
@djc Very arithmetic notions of egalitarianism would have tons of means testing. Take from the rich, give to the poor, maximize arithmetic equality per dollar taxed. But arithmetic egalitarianism is dumb, inhuman. Egalitarian means equal participation, equal dignity. It does not mean uniformity in every outcome, including income or wealth. It should (unfortunately in the Nordics does not) foreclose differences in wealth so great that political equality becomes a sham.
@djc But there is no great contradiction between Nordic universalism and the “capitalist” side of Nordic social democracy. They complement one another. Arithmetically, universal benefits promote equality in an incentive preserving way. Adding a large constant number to everybody’s variable “capitalist” income reduces variation.
@djc (You’ll note in that thread the declines are attributed to less generous unemployment and pension benefits. Those are actually difference preserving, rather than difference reducing benefits. With less of them, people fall back more quickly on more universally identical benefits. I’m not arguing that threadbare unemployment insurance is “good”! What goods, including protection from what kinds of rich, a society should define as universal is an open conversation with lots of nuance.
@djc But a decent society ensures a decent basic, no matter what, and the Nordics still do that. Nordic wealth inequality is high, due to the basic political settlement that enabled social democracy. That’s fine. Nordics should do a better job of preventing plutocratic wealth accumulation though. There as here, every billionaire is a policy failure, and they have too many.
@djc We all should think less about means testing at the bottom and more about means testing at the top, to prevent the emergence of caste and influence.)
@zhous98 i wish i had one!
[tech notebook] Readying a blog for revision histories and sprouts under unstatic https://tech.interfluidity.com/2024/06/02/readying-a-blog-for-revision-histories-and-sprouts-under-unstatic/index.html
@tofugolem@mastodon.social @kzimmermann let it be.
@enmodo one can be worse but still “ok”. saying “not ok” may just be not something people are eager to do. if you ask me how i am and i say “ok”, that often means pretty bad but i don’t want to whine to you.
@enmodo That's the point people who share my electoral politics typically make. I think it's wrong. I think this is in fact a pretty rough economy for most people, and that affluent professional-class liberals are letting their own good fortune and a very selective reading of "data" and "evidence" write discontent off just as "foxwashing".
People whose electoral politics is the same as mine seem very excited to share Figure 7, but they seem less often to share Figure 5.
Both from the same source, the Fed's Report on the Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2023 - May 2024 https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/2024-economic-well-being-of-us-households-in-2023-overall-financial-well-being.htm
"Figure 7. Assessment of own financial well-being, local economy, and national economy (by year)" showing a steady 75%-ish describe themselves as "doing at least okay" financially, even while they perceive their local and the national economy declining.
"Figure 5. Financial situation compared with 12 months prior (by year)" showing that of that "doing okay" in Figure 7, only about a third ever felt better off year-over-year, and since 2022, substantially more perceive themselves to be worse off than better off, year over year.
"Unless the government steps in to build when new home sales demand gets soft, we will not add homes to the builders’ demand algorithm. Builders have learned to tightly control inventory… We won’t see the construction boom that people want because the builders are here to make money; they’re not here to fix the low inventory issues of the existing home sales market, which is their main rival for demand." #LoganMohtashami https://www.housingwire.com/articles/why-we-cant-build-our-way-out-of-this-hot-housing-market/
@scott the shards can be sharp.
@darwinwoodka perfection! so exciting.
sometimes the arc of history… just breaks.
katrina was a warning that we mistook for a fluke.
@LouisIngenthron i still look forward to getting (cheap) coffee sometime.
there's not a lot of money in not being evil.
@highvizghilliesuit and audioapps that show visualizations of waveforms will become taboo.
Overall, the United States __________ to COVID between March 2020 and July 2021.
CONFIRMED: The falsehood is true.
