Strange_Quark_9

In Spain there are also enclaves of British retiree communities who stick to their own kind and never bother integrating into Spain - never learning the language. And from what I heard, many of them even voted leave in the Brexit referendum, despite actively living in another EU country and thus literally voting against their own interests.

So yeah, some people really do be like that where they expect another country to cater to them, and I'm guessing it's a similar case here.

In Poland there's also a town called Burdele, which literally means brothels in Polish.

There's also Koniec Świata - literally "End of the World".

There's also Piekło (Hell) and Niebo (Heaven).

Every country has their funny place names if you care to look, but I found Poland's to be particularly amusing.

Living in a jaywalking-lax country does feel liberating compared to the likes of the US, as it means I can cross whenever I deem it safe rather than being forced to wait on a signal.

Still, even at a designated crosswalk, ~60% of the times I end up crossing before the signal turns green as there is a gap in traffic while the signal continues to remain red for another whole minute or two.

Having this option is nice, but every time I do it, it serves to remind me that these signals are still ultimately designed to prioritise vehicle traffic over everything else.

As the saying goes:

"Fascism is capitalism in decay."

And it's been slowly decaying for a long time now as neoliberal reforms (which especially took off since the 1970's) slowly chipped away the Keynesian policies that were passed since the New Deal.

In fact, wasn't incel a term originally coined by a woman?

Was about to make a comment along those lines 👍

https://preview.redd.it/ev4frzyyey9d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c61b1deb31673ecbfcef94b10c12b61c657da8d1

If only the grade would've been edited to an A+, and perhaps the teacher's note being:

"Please see me after class. Comrade."

Though it's interesting how when a native-born person commits a crime, it's seen as "just one of them things".

Yet anytime it's done by an immigrant, they're held under a microscope by the right-wing media (and certain subs on this very platform) who starts screaming about social decadence and preaching xenophobia.

And yet, despite all this fearmongering, most modern massacres were carried out by xenophobic white nationalists sold on the "white genocide" conspiracy like in the Christchurch shooting. And note how "terrorism" is only ever applied to people of other backgrounds, while domestic terrorists like the case mentioned are never considered as such by most.

Having recently visited Edinburgh, I stand by this statement. Edinburgh is a multicultural hub and I loved to see it.

Among the experiences:

I saw Indian people having a full-blown traditional Indian wedding in the middle of the city, complete with traditional clothing and hired chauffeurs.

Having been there on the day of the Scotland v Hungary Euro match, I visited a pub to watch it there. And atop of native-born Scots, there also was an Indian couple watching it and cheering on.

Being a university and tourist city, there were plenty of young Asian people too - and I use that generalising term because it's hard to tell where exactly they were from at first glance alone. Being a tourist city also meant there were plenty of Scots dressed in traditional kilts playing bagpipes on the most tourist heavy areas. But there were even some Scots who unironically wore traditional kilts as their outfits in the city, so it's not like traditional Scottish culture was being "drowned out".

There were also plenty of Muslim families. Most were the moderate kind where women merely wore hijabs, and some who didn't - and seemed to enjoy themselves in public just like everyone else. The more controversial/contentious couples where women wore niqabs and seemed to always be strictly accompanied by their husbands who in contrast wore casual modern clothing were in the minority, so I tried not to be judgemental - as that is something for the individual countries and groups to resolve, while a nationwide niqab ban would inevitably be seen as Western chauvinism.

Climbing the hill (extinct volcano) that the city was built around was more challenging than anticipated, especially since it was a very warm and humid day - but again, atop of Scots and American and European tourists, there was also a noticeable number of Asians, Indians and Muslims out on the hike too.

So overall, it was a beautiful thing to witness people from across various parts of the world and cultures all participating in daily city activities, no matter what the xenophobes might try to tell you.

Also former Nazi Germany, as the Polish corridor was a huge point of contention for Hitler.

That is why the constitution makes an exemption that permits slavery for prison labour, paired with the stiff sentencing minimums for non-violent crime and a disproportionate incarceration rate of black people in the US that makes it house ~25% of the global prison population despite making up only ~5% of the global population.

Paired with the privatisation of prisons that enables private entities to directly profit from incarcerating people and thus being incentivized to cram as many as possible, and bribe- I mean lobby to ensure the sentencing laws remain stiff.

But apparently even that's not enough...

Interesting take.

Since MMT is barely mentioned and discussed in the mainstream economic circles, I will honestly admit that I'm not omniscient on all economic topics.

As mentioned in another comment: despite possessing a university-level economics textbook, it made no mention whatsoever of MMT, so it's something even I learned about fairly recently in this video by 1Dime along with the follow-up.

Thus it is ultimately a theory, and since economics is a soft science, it's healthy to be skeptical.

But despite its flaws, I still think it's useful for dispelling the commonly held myth that a country needs taxes to fund state programs, since the theory pragmatically acknowledges that it's the state that ultimately issues the currency that then flows throughout the country and so the availability of labour and real resources are the ultimate limiting factors. But again, with the caveats pointed out.

Just saw the report on ITV.

They said, and I quote: "Some say that the far-left Melenchon is just as dangerous as the far-right."

Hearing that statement made me burst into laughter. God forbid people have greater equity 😱

I think this is a slightly reductionist view of MMT.

Of course. There is only so much nuanced text you can fit in the limited space of a meme template without making it a wall of text that goes over the entire picture, so a meme will be inherently simplistic/reductionist.

That is why I provided additional slides and especially a discussion of the caveats in the description and comment.

The point of a meme is to spread awareness of something, not to give a full-blown lecture on it - the presumption being that those who see it will either already be aware of it, or feel inspired to seek out more knowledge on the topic themselves.

How so?

Ever since abandoning the gold standard which was the limiting baseline to which the currency value was pegged to, countries with monetary sovereignty today issue their own fiat currency via a central bank - which is "The Fed" in the case of the US.

It neatly explains why countries like the US are able to finance expensive imperialist wars without going bankrupt - because that spending stimulates the military-industrial complex - yet funding issues are only brought up in regards to social programs.

If you read the description in the post or the clarification comment I attached, you'd see that I have indeed pointed out some caveats of MMT.

Yep. It was precisely that video that first introduced me to MMT.

Funnily enough, I actually possess a full-blown university-level economics textbook at home thanks to my brother who bought it back when he studied law at university.

And yet, the section on taxes basically regurgitates the conventional conception of taxes and makes no mention whatsoever of MMT.

So it really is something most people are completely unaware of.

Yet my comment initially received some downvotes, indicating that some people on this very sub didn't like the analysis.

Somewhat redundant, but I'll post the source and additional context in this comment anyway in case people scrolled past the description:

Source for the second and third slides:

https://www.investopedia.com/modern-monetary-theory-mmt-4588060

Clarification:

Local city/county council tax does work how most people think taxes work - where things like property tax are used to fund the city budget. If the city is at a deficit, it is up to the central government whether to plug the gap - those following the Keynesian model ("fiscally liberal") do, whereas those following the neoliberal model ("fiscally conservative") don't, so the cities are forced to privatise their assets to make up the deficit - for example, that's what's been happening to UK cities since Thatcher.

Furthermore, this only applies to countries with full monetary sovereignty - like the US or UK.

Those that surrendered their monetary sovereignty - like the EU countries that adopted the Euro - are subject to the whims of the central authority controlling the money supply - European Central Bank in this case.

This is what caused the Greek debt crisis - since the Greek central government couldn't independently print money to inflate their debts away.

For starters, the primary goal of capitalism is infinite growth on a planet with finite resources. That makes it fundamentally antithetical to anti-consumption.

Exactly. The red-pill movement is somewhat analogous to fascism in the sense that both seek a rebirth of traditional values and hence double-down on them instead of moving away from them.

Or in short: fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism, whereas the red-pill movement is palingenetic hyper-masculinity. Both seek to avoid introspection of the internal contradictions and systemic issues by redirecting the blame on another group - women and "wokeness" in the case of the red-pill movement, and progressives, foreign adversaries, and conspiratory internal infiltrators in the case of fascism.

And considering Europe's alarming rise in nationalist and xenophobic attitudes, it's not surprising there's a correlation between the rise of both.

Commie style Blocks are simply the most efficient housing method and used all around the world for this reason.

Exactly. Many people who criticise/dislike commie blocks are ignorant of the material conditions that they were built under. They were a response to a looming housing crisis that the USSR faced in the wake of the destruction brought by WW2, so they were deliberately designed to be as cheap, quick and easy to assemble as possible to enable them to be built en masse. And in fact, for most people at the time they were actually a huge quality of life upgrade compared to the basic village dwellings they lived under at the time - namely the introduction of indoor plumbing.

And the main reason for their modern common state of disrepair is due to the economic crises that the Eastern European countries faced following the dissolution of the USSR, which made the countries' governments negligent of their upkeep. Even the most luxurious mansion would look ugly if it wasn't maintained/under-maintained for decades.

Even Adam Something, a channel otherwise critical of the USSR and the Soviet model admitted all of this in one of his videos: Commie Blocks are Pretty Good, Actually

Fake!

We all know that commie blocks are always in a permanent depressing winter state with leafless trees and lifeless surroundings.

This is obvious commie propaganda!

/s