Don’t use Hamburger Helper, switch to the store brand Lasgana Skillet Meal. It will taste much better. The people who make Hamburger Helper have seriously cheaped out on their ingredients in the last several years, speaking as a childhood fan.
Not surprising. Turds tend to stick together.
I wonder if Kraft Macaroni would become the currency of the Greater Depression?
I am figuring K-Cups might be a currency as well, for those who have a caffeine addiction like myself.
What is the point of living without art and culture? That sounds like being a worker bee, without any honey.
If we took it at face value, this would distract Russia from Ukraine - diverting attention and resources eastwards. I think this proposal is just a means of laundering resources to bypass sanctions and NATO, to supply Russia with stuff that they can build war materials with.
It would make much more sense if our MIC developed these…
…huh. I find the missile-to-bust ratio to be implausible.
The freedom to be an asshole, specifically.
If this is Yahweh’s planning, then they are in dire need of a pink slip. We should try hiring on Cthulu or Ahura Mazda instead.
The income ranking for comes from what I call ERK: Effort, Risk, Knowledge. Effort is how tough the job is. Crop pickers have to deal with the weather, lots of backbreaking labor, and so forth. Risk is things like when a lumberjack cuts down trees - their industry tends to have high fatality rates, due to unpredictable and heavy trees falling. A researcher needs lots of education to do their work.
What we will need is a council and research institute, that creates objective standards: How much continuous labor does a person need to do an effective job? Does their environment have things like AC and plumbing? Is there travel involved with this industry? What sort of education is required to make a capable worker? Is there a social stigma? All these factors and more have to be considered for each profession, then slotted into fixed income ranks. Of course, the standards used for ranking job types has to be public, so that people can contest the results if a job is implausibly ranked.
I am assuming this goes into a six-hour workday, alongside things like education being a paid job for students. The goal isn’t perfect fairness, rather it is to allow individuals to have enough agency to safely pursue a career, enjoy everyday life, and fulfill life goals without getting distracted by predatory capitalism.
However, we also need to constrain people in such a way, that they can’t become a fiscal distortion that can damage society. In that respect, I want people to eventually bow out of ‘the game’ at some point, because they can’t accrue anymore wealth due to absolute caps. This essentially forces people to reorient themselves on using their time on things that aren’t about money, such as raising family, creation, or being part of their community.
We don’t specifically price bananas. Presumably, the government buys the ‘blemished’ fruits, veggies, and so forth, that are perfectly fine, but otherwise get tossed out for not being pretty. Grocery stores can focus on delivering the premium versions of food. For example, the government allows anyone to order generic Jumbo Corndogs #1 for free, but capitalism sells Pancake Corndogs by Krustez. People value individualism and variety, which is where capitalism excels. We just don’t want capitalism to dictate a person’s wellbeing, because it simply isn’t suited for that.
As to taxation, I figure that the bulk of the government’s discretionary tax money should come from corporations and immigrants. When it comes to taxing individual citizens, my design intent is a bit different: they should be used to cajol individuals into funding society, by allowing people to tag specific projects with their tax dollars. For example, an map app of roadways and infrastructure, where a person can tag particular bits of roads that they think needs to be maintained. By assigning their taxes to that section, they communicate to the government that upkeep needs to be done. Ditto goes for proposals to build schools, parks, and other social goods.
In addition to an individual’s ‘Social Tax’, they also get a ‘Cultural Tax’. The latter is that they can assign a portion of their taxes towards cultural projects. Say that a studio needs funding to create an anime, and needs money. Individuals can assign their Cultural Taxes towards that project. They won’t receive any goods or privileges from doing so, it just encourages the creation of cool stuff. No one individual can fund enough money for cultural projects like that, but when you have a thousand or so people contributing, it becomes possible. Be it churches, books, or music, people have a portion of their income dedicated towards funding things they think are neat by default.
Essentially, individual taxes are treated as a form of enforced crowdfunding. I feel that by having people directly earmarking their taxes towards specific things, their bond with society will become stronger - they think about how their neighborhood should be, or what new exciting things are on the horizon.
Probably as long as this game, assuming that commiting seppeku is an option.
As ever, centrists are just fascists when scratched.
I have been workshopping a “Universal Ranked Income” concept, where UBI provides all necessities, while capitalism is used for luxury goods. For example, you get free generic shampoo and conditioner. If you want versions that are scented or have different properties, you spend money. All money is for getting upgrades to lifestyle - bigger beds, vehicles, houses, ect, but the state provides free but boring goods and services as a baseline. Capitalism has to compete against free.
The way I figure, doing it this way allows us to have the best qualities of capitalism, while preventing the hostage leverage that needing food, shelter, and general wellbeing that corporations exploit against people. By ensuring people have what they need, they can essentially unionize by default - the corporations can’t force them nor their families to genuinely suffer for refusing to work bad jobs.
Unfortunately, there are complaints about my concept creating ‘castes’, since I want absolute limitations on wealth, fixed incomes, and want each job to fall into a rank of income according to difficulty, education, and risk that is involved with that type of job. IMO, a national standardization of incomes and job requirements that employers can’t manipulate is key to egalitarianism.
As ever, Trump and his pals are bloody stupid. Money is just to make it easier to get cool stuff. You don’t get neat things when civilizations die, and partnerships are dissolved.
As another had put it, the Trump Regime is “America Alone”. There will be no friends nor partners, just hollow isolation.
My money is on Mr. Beast running a game show out of RFK’s wellness camps. “Only one of these foul minorities will be allowed to be allowed to live, and will fight each other to the death to earn their life!”
He will live up to his name.
GTA 6 has gone beyond VR, and has become Actual Reality.
Apparently, Putin never learned to swallow your food in manageable chunks before moving on. I think he will end up choking to death.
I would like them to mob Bezo’s yacht. One of them can leap over it Free Willy style, and snap up Mr. Bezos in midflight.
He isn’t smart enough to understand that it strips away the civility that protected him.