I know I’ve been beating this redlining and wealth gap drum for 20+ years but here is a GREAT cliffs notes version.

But don’t take @ambermruffin’s word for it. You should get references...

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Breaking News:

In a 5-4 decision, the conservative judges on the Supreme Court reject the final death row appeal of a Nazarene minister convicted of teaching Christian Race Theory.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issues blistering dissent, calling it a “crucifixion.”

“I told you she was soft on crime,” says Josh Hawley.

“We can’t have these people teaching these sermons on public mounts, said Galilee Governor Ron DeSatanis. “Telling children to repent for their sins makes kids feel bad.”

33-year-old community organizer and protest leader
Yeshua bin Yusuf, who went by the street name Jesus, was convicted by an all-white jury after his violent arrest resulted in at least one officer losing an ear, according to the police report.

Authorities said his protest organization was really a front for his gang activity. While Jesus confessed that he had about 12 friends who were disciples, he claimed he was not gang affiliated.

“That’s what they all say,” explained Sen. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “He also claimed he was ‘saving’ prostitutes but if you read the message boards, it’s clear he was a sex trafficker. Why else would Mary Magdalene always be around? What do you expect? He was an anchor baby, too!”

White people are storming the Capitol Building to support a white nationalist president and many people are saying: “If Black people did that...”

Not me, though.

I know.

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Here’s what happened to them when these “patriots” attacked the CAPITAL OF THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT for—and I can’t stress this enough—SOMETHING THAT DID NOT HAPPEN

Here’s what happened when I covered the George Floyd protests where four officers WERE ARRESTED AND CHARGED WITH MURDER

Here’s what happened when they stormed the capital in Michigan

Kyle Rittenpeacefully protesting after Eric Garner was choked to death

A lot of the anger about non-white people voting for a white nationalist is because some people don't understand one inarguable historical truth:

THAT'S EXACTLY HOW YOU BECOME WHITE!

A thread:

First of all, let's all agree that whiteness is some shit people made up. It has no basis in science or even logic.

For instance, for MOST of American history, the Irish weren't considered white and they might be the whitest people on the planet!

Now the Irish WERE NOT slaves, but the English and Scottish considered them "the closest thing to the negro" and "human chimpanzees"

Do you know how far England is from Ireland?

21 miles!

It's like when Brooklyn niggas talk shit about people from Queens.

It was only after the slaves were freed that the Irish moved up on the social ladder. An 1864 Democrat dociment said “There is the strongest reason for believing that the first movement toward amalgamation in this country will take place between Irish and Negroes.”

They were considered athletic, strong and lazy. They could dance, though. Plus, they excelled in boxing.

Does any of this sound familiar?

So how did they become white?

Well, basically, it was because of Gangs.

🚨🚨 THREAD TIME 🚨🚨

let's talk about the differences between income, wealth, and class

tl;dr: income is earned, wealth is bought, and class is inherited

also hi friends, while on the topic of income, this work is my only source of it! times are tough and folks are really struggling, but if you have a couple extra bucks please consider sending a tip my way

💰 venmo rachel-kahn-5
💵 cashapp

INCOME is the amount of money a person makes from labor and investments

so if you work for 2,000 hours and are paid $40,000 in a year, that's income

OR if you have a $1,000,000 stock portfolio with a 5% return rate and cash out $40,000 of it, that's income too (fucked, right?)

WEALTH is the amount of capital you own

that could be owning a house and land worth $150,000

or owning a small business with $150,000 in assets

or owning $150,000 worth of stocks

wealth is the investments that are themselves accruing value

CLASS is about what you stand to inherit

in the united states we use a lot of weird doublespeak to avoid talking about the proletariat, the petit bourgeoisie, and the bourgeoisie directly

proletariat ~ working class
petit bourgeoisie ~ middle class
bourgeoisie ~ upper class

1/ In @RayDalio's perspective, we are at the very late stages of the long term debt cycle. These long term debt cycles typically take 50-75 years to play out. This cycle began in 1945 when World War II ended and we began the US dollar-dominated world order.

2/ In the words of @RayDalio, "Right now, the world’s major central banks have the least fuel in their tanks since the late 1930s so are now in the later stages of the long-term debt cycle. Because they come along about once in a lifetime most people aren’t aware of them."

3/ Central banks have spent the last decade in a race to see who could devalue their currency the fastest. Near 0% interest rates have meant increased printing of the dollar, euro, and yen. Central banks no longer have the ability to tighten credit so they print money.

4/ Being towards the later stages of the long-term debt cycle there is a global sovereign debt bubble similar to what we saw in the 20's & 30's. In 2019, global debt-to-gdp hit 322% with total debt reaching a new all-time high of $253 Trillion.

5/ The wealth gap has also expanded to levels last seen in the 30's. Historically, inequality and large wealth gaps have eventually led to dire consequences. Periods of conflict and social unrest often marked by taxes, revolutions, or wars.

I’m beginning to think that the left has been too obsessed with GDP as a broken economic metric governing the global shitshow, when inflation is more insidious. Deflation may be a more radical demand than degrowth. Burst bubbles. Deflate the price of fossil fuel infrastructure.

It’s amazing just how much political economy is still determined by the threat of stagflation. This has created a weird metonymy in which as long as you’re fight inflation (preserving the interests of (older) savers) you’re also fighting stagnation (supporting (younger) earners).

To some extent the residual fear of deflationary spirals lies behind this, waiting in the wings for any suggestion that stagnation must be fought with deflation. This is entirely understandable, as uncontrolled deflation hits the poorest hardest.

The assumption that conjoins these fears into an engine of unbridled economic stagnation is that there’s a unitary market effectively mediating between the markets in different sectors, be this unity micro-economic or macro-economic in flavour. But this just isn’t how it works.

There is so much more logistic friction in the price system than the popular story of just in time production suggests, not least in the concrete details of differentiated trade between economic actors from local businesses to nation states.

Hancock: "It's your actions now which can make a difference."

Plays down prospect of immediate introduction of new restrictions.

Few doubt the public must play its part. But legitimate questions about whether the govt has made/is making public's task harder in two key respects:

1) For some there's still a major economic disincentive apropos self isolation. Sick pay still poor. Savings for many exhausted.

Imminent prospect of Universal Credit cut would make this worse. Some people have fallen through the gaps of government support throughout. Though government support for (effectively) laid off people, a full economic bargain to universally support self isolation still...

...does not exist. Rishi Sunak just made a statement to the House which offered nothing new on any of these fronts.

And 2) The job for individuals is now made harder as a result of prevalence as a result of the delay in full lockdown in most of the country between the...

...point ministers were informed that the new variant had greater transmissibility (December 18th) and full lockdown (early January). We can't interrogate the micro decisions of the public alone, we must look at the macro decisions of ministers too.