this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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You know your life has gone to shit when you have to finance a pizza.
But most importantly, whichever corporate honchos thought preying on the ultra-poor was a decent thing to do and authorized this scheme should know they're worthless human beings.
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My wife and I were talking about this earlier. Boomers who managed to save cash were able to put that money into fixed income assets at incredibly high interest rates during the eighties. A 5 year CD in 1984 paid 12%, at renewal in 1989 it was, 9%, then 6.5% at the next renewal in 1994. In 1999 rates started their race to the bottom but stocks skyrocketed. So if you amassed cash in the eighties and nineties through fixed income, you had a great position to capitalize on the dot com boom, buy cheap during its crash, buy cheap real estate after the 2008 financial crash, capitalize on the market rebound, etc. All mostly for free because of timing.
All easy decisions, in hindsight. In reality quite a few missed out completely on all of those or lost significantly. It's all just some sort of gambling in a casino. I'm sure in hindsight it will be clear which opportunities you missed out on in your time. The big difference is being able to save to start off with, because wages were relatively a lot higher for simple jobs than they are now.
That's why I started by highlighting the fixed income stuff like five year CDs. I remember my mother and grandmother putting their money in those and bonds and how well it served them into retirement. Those weren't hindsight. Back then, working families put their money in savings. Sure there were Wall Street cocaine yuppies making insane money but, at least in my household, that was just the stuff of movies.
I'm not fully disagreeing with you. I just think both aspects made a difference. Higher wages and a feasible way to save your money without having to partake in the casino was key. I look at millennials and zoomers and I see none of that. Low wages, higher cost, and the only way to save for retirement is by betting everything you've got on a system that's heavily rigged against you as a retail investor. As Gen-X at least we had the chance to make our own wealth by creating an entire new industry. My younger siblings and my children would have had none of that, if I had siblings or children. /Rant
EDIT: The eternal battle with autocorrect
Yeah. People could also get rich now on crypto, but that's easy to say in hindsight, it was all a gamble, and just as many people lost a whole lot.
covid crash happened only a few years ago and looking back it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Of course at the time there was a very real possibility that society was collapsing and there wouldn't be a stock market in a year or so.
everything's easy in hindsight
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Domino's barely even puts sauce on the fucking pizza anymore. Fuck the economy.
Costco pizza is the best. I just wish they had more variety.
Also I wish I could just order on my phone and then pick up when I'm done shopping, rather than having to queue for 15 minutes to order and then wait another 15 while they cook it.
Costco pizza is the best.
Man, idk what kind of pizza options you have in your area, but I'm sorry that none of them are good.
Costco pizza is fire. If you dab some grease off and try to ignore the feeling of your arteries actively clogging, it's pretty damn good
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Don't fuck it... That will bring a worse bastard to live.
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"You will own nothing and you will be happy about it." -1100 c.e. The Feudal System
Feudal peasants actually got a decent amount of time off, because the landlords understood that they had to keep the masses happy. Medieval peasants had an average of like four months of vacation time a year. Basically, the ruling class knew that the only thing stopping the peasants from marching up to the castle with pitchforks was the peasants’ own sense of civility.
And by "vacation", you mean "Time spent working not to pay taxes"
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As if advertisement wasn't already the most insidious part of everyday life, now they're also laughing at us and the capitalist hellscape they've put us in.
Not really capitalism if they got the government's economic and political support against competitors. I'd really call it Neomercantilism more than anything
...............thats literally what capitalism always does. manipulate the government for economic and political support. Thats like capitalism 101.
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What's the interest charged? If they're charging 0% of interest then it could be a good decision if you have an account that pay interest over thar time. Obviously, it also assumed that ypu were already going to buy a pizza anyway.
6 weeks of interest at 0.25%apr compounded daily on a ten dollar pizza is 0.34 cents, or 0.0034 dollars. Might not be worth it, but ymmv.
My APR is 4.26 at Discover, Ally, and Sofi... that's like 17x the pennies!
If you're catering some huge event (...with pizza, apparently), it would absolutely make sense.
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Today's Behind the Bastards is about how Christianity was eaten by capitalism. The super far right propaganda campaign like FOX news and PragerU started before WWII when pastors were all far left champions of the poor. (Contrast today.)
Seems relevant.
FDR's New Deal was meant to stop the Great Depression from turning into a socialist revolution (We were watching the early USSR play out).
Interesting, I've always wondered how American Christianity managed to be so right-wing despite being based on the idea of a rebellious, anti-materialist, proto-socialist, proto-hippie Middle-Eastern figure.
I'm not religious but was raised Christian so the contrast between their interpretation of Christianity and the "teachings of Christ" are baffling.
If you look as religion as padding for the ego instead of an idealistic pursuit, it makes all the more sense.
Maybe the tankies will actually save us. If we can get another red scare going our government might step towards social democracy for a change.
Cardboard? Are you talking about the pizza, or the build quality of a lot of new houses I’ve seen?
The pizza mostly, but that also fits.
Born to early to experience a capitalist free post scarcity solarpunk utopia
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