50 years ago, George Wallace ran against pointy headed bureaucrats.
40 years ago, that lying fascist motherf'ker Ronnie Ray-Gun ran to destroy the community,
the unemployment & retraining systems?
MAKE SHTUF WORK.
How are We The People ever going to have a
government by the people, for the people, and of the people,
when the Policy Big $hot$ who run community services are out of touch?
Why are the Policy Big $hot$ so out of touch, and, so incompetent?
We are hamstrung by the apex of the truly Privileged Policy Cla$$e$.
These Cla$$e$ have hit the Privilege Trifecta.
They are financially privileged in family net wealth,
in current household income,
and they work in positions which are far removed from the actual
on the ground realities of the policies they fabricate.
Privilege = $ub$idie$, By The Thou$and$
Supporting the Privileged are the groveling hordes
with 1 or 2 of the Privy Trifecta tic boxes in their Power Point Credentials.
In the hordes, NOTHING is more important than fitting in with the cool kids of the Privileged Trifecta.
Remember the cool cliques of 6th, 7th grade, 12 grade?
Who was in?
Who was out?
Who didn't have a chance? YAWN.
It is scary how many adult life pecking orders are similar.
In the arithmetically challenged world of the Privileged Trifecta,
and the groveling hordes,
society's failings will cease when we are ALL in the top 10%
of personal income, household income, and household wealth.
We'll ALL be doing the work of higher order thinking, and,
like Rodin's "The Thinker", we'll all be sitting around on rocks,
emanating, illuminating, ruminating, thinking deeply and profoundly.
This model has been spectacularly successful for the Privileged, and, few others.
In some aspects of life, the Privileged & the groveling hordes are a perfect fit with
Roman Empire Patricians, British Aristocrats, and Antebellum Southern Plantation Owners.
They live and breath in an ether of complete contempt, disdain and scorn
for those who do the actual work of making society actually work.
It is Jan. 2021 at the time of this posting -
how well have the essentially disposable working stiffs
been doing since Covid started in March 2020?
We know that the Privileged Big $hot$ are doing great!
Someday, to be running an organization
you're going to have to excel at making SHTUF work!?
While I may be mistaken in a few minor cases,
in my 15+ years of teaching high school math,
I honestly can't recall ever seeing any Great Ideas!
presented by the Privileged such that there are
ball park estimates of the steps required to accomplish the Great Idea!
Given that there are few or no steps for executing The Great Idea!,
there are no or few details about staff and time needed to execute the steps.
With no ballpark time estimates for how long staff will have
to spend executing the missing steps,
who needs a budget for The Great Idea!
Actual budget is vacuumed up by the self dealing Privileged Cla$$e$,
with a few crumbs thrown to the beat down working stiffs,
too few of whom are earning family wage pay.
There are some constants with these Great Ideas!
In education, those of us in the building are blamed for systemic failures
which we have little to no control over.
The Privileged, off in their Ivory ether,
use their mountain of power points to tout their phake accomplishments,
thereby justifying their self dealing existence,
ultimately leading to a higher paying position within the district or elsewhere.
When I consider the skill of the Privileged Cla$$ with jargon,
with self promotion,
with spouting virtue signaling platitudes,
with doublethink and doublespeak worthy of Robert McNamara's Defense Department,
I suppose they've earned their positions in the Privileged Policy Cla$$ of Para$ite$ ?
+++++
Numbers from October, 2020.
-- Individual Income Percentile - 2020
https://dqydj.com/income-percentile-calculator/
Top 5% at or above $174,000.
=> appx. 8.883 million out of appx. 176.666 million individuals with income.
Top 20% above $85,950. => 80%, appx. 141.332 million BELOW
-- Household Income Percentile
https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/
Top 5% Above $270,358. appx. 6.421 million out of 128.421 million households
Top 20% Above $142,400.
=> 80%, appx. 102.736 million household BELOW.
-- Household Wealth Percentiles
https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator-united-states/
Top 5% Above $2,584,000. Appx. 6.421 million out of 128.421 million households
BOTTOM 50%, Less Than $121,411.
=> appx. 64.210 million households.
Anyone who doesn't like my language, who thinks that I won't influence people --- ha ha ha.
ReplyDeleteWake the fuck up.
You've been living in the top 10 and 20% for so long that you're clueless about how shitty things are for the bottom 80%? You're so freaking clueless about $tatu$ and power in America that you don't even know what the top 10%, top 1%, and top .01% are about?
-- 18 july 2018
ReplyDelete[draft]
When "privilege" discussions are NOT about money,
then they're about vague, multi syllable, hand waving jargon.
Having grown up in Irish Catholicism, having been a working stiff for decades
before my 12+1 years as a high school math teacher,
having always had an interest in history and money and
how humans fuck community things up or make community things work,
"privilege" discussions typically seem to be a lot like Bible interpretation battles.
Instead of "Drivers, Start Your Engines", the call should be -
"Hand Wavers, Start Your Interpretive Debates, Dances and Debacles."
Privilege is MONEY.
Money is in your life as assets & lack of debt & as income.
Money buys security in housing, in retirement, in health care access for yourself and your loved ones.
Insecurity eats holes in people.
(There is a dinky percentage of people with dinky incomes and dinky wealth who also are unperturbed
& unaffected by the ravages of financial insecurity - they're annoying, and I don't give a shit about them.)
Where were you, financially, at age 22? at age 25?
- DEBT (Liabilities)
How much student loan debt did you have?
How much do you owe on your transportation?
- INCOME
How much are you making, and what percentile are you at?
How much time would it take you to replace your job, with the same income, if you suddenly lost your job?
How much does some family member pay, per month or year, towards your transportation, or health insurance, or retirement, or housing,?
- ASSETS
What is a reasonable fair market value of your transportation?
- HEALTH INSURANCE / COVERAGE
How many months could you pay your insurance premium without working?
... I put at the top [draft]
There is a lot more to flesh out.
++
it is a draft. 😉
In my NOT humble opinion, 1 thing which really kills the possibilities
of getting white people to look at their privilege
is THE FACT that white people shit on each other, incessantly, constantly.
When lots of whites look at how lots of white's above them live -
great vacations, fancy cars & homes, nice retirements -
you get white people who aren't inclined to look at what advantages they've had!
Security improves our quality of life, and security comes from money. period.
There are a lot of clauses in the rules, regulations and laws which
redirects money and which takes money from the lower to the higher.
I can't count your internal security, or anyone's.
We can count what we've had financially to increase our ability to be secure.
We could look at the specific clauses in the rules, regulations and laws which redirect & take money.
We could and should work for open processes and fair accounting,
and chop off the fingers of hte fuckers corrupting the system
so they can take the surpluses of our sweat with no one knowing,
all so the fuckers can live like princes and kings and warlords.
[just threw the 'chop off..." thing in there to see if anyone is still reading.]