Ficus-lovin\x27 Capybara N\x27 pals • 🌟 • 25 yrs ago
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Comments by "Ficus-lovin\x27 Capybara N\x27 pals • 🌟 • 25 yrs ago" (@YourCapybaraAmigo_17yrsago) on "America’s Last Affordable Housing Is Under Threat" video.
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@mikeparker6322 I hear you. Well I mean I'm sure you did what you could in your time. So now it's time for the next generation to step up and do what we can. Whether or not this particular community gets to retain the ability to live in their trailers at their previous rent, while very important to me, isn't as important as the overall question of why the HELL are we allowing every basic necessity in life to be made increasingly unavailable for people in the bottom 60% of incomes?
Obviously these are serious questions that I'm sure I'm not the first to point to as needing immediate change. Some say only a fundamental shift to communism will work, where the profit motive doesn't exist. While that may or may not be true, for the immediate future we need to think on a little smaller scale. Nothing that big will happen in our lifetime BUT we can get laws changed and reignite the Left movement (prioritizing people, the earth & justice) in this country. That's where I'm at right now.
Regarding housing policy, what anyone should be in support of whether they're a homeowner or renter; is hard and fast rent control, strict limits on how many individual units a private or corporate landlord can hold, and WAY tougher regulation on corporate landlords including bans on ANY kind of low-income housing, rent limits, increase limits, eviction protections, and mandatory moratoriums for necessitating circumstances.
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@siddhesh US is not a real democracy. We have some voting yes but by and large, all the politicians care about from the local to the Federal are bribes from Big Money interests. BRIBERY AND WHOLESALE CORRUPTION IS LEGAL IN THE US AND MOREOVER IS WHAT IS CONSIDERED NORMAL HERE.
Govt in the US IS voted on, but our votes don't really matter. Only the Rich Business Interests and Pig Unions (police) matter to politicians here. The political structure in the US only serves Large Corporatizations and Wall Street Interests.
It's a corrupt 4th-world PLUTOCRACY, let no one tell you different. Most of the people here are decent, but the political structure including heartless judges like the one profiled in this video, are completely amoral, corrupt, and utterly anti-life in their decisions and policies. If I could drop a dirty bomb on every city council chamber, Governor's Mansion and DC, I'd probably do it. It's basically like being ruled by a very cruel, very ruthless, and very efficient criminal syndicate.
That sounds dramatic but I can promise you I am NOT exaggerating. For people who don't see this it's just because they've been fortunate enough never to have been poor or had to struggle financially. I'm happy for them, but they don't see how it really is for the rest of us who HAVE had to struggle and have been the victim of these cruel and exploitative policies that have affected us in one or more ways, i.e. as shown in this video, and other similar situations.
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@highbrass3749 I don't know if people are saying owed but yes, I believe that access to safe shelter fit for human habitation is a human right. You don't have to agree, but that's a pretty old school way of thinking. Do people have a human right to be free from violence? To be free from fear? And if we don't have any numerated human right to housing then why aren't they leaving the homeless alone who have no other choice but to pitch a tent somewhere? it's pretty cruel to put housing behind a paywall basically, and then treat them like animals if they have no choice but to move out onto the street. Most zip codes are harassing their homeless these days. And by that I mean the police of course. Housing can't be reserved just for those lucky enough or capable enough to be able to pay a special amount. For people who fall through those cracks, what then? Yeah I do believe humans have certain fundamental rights and that they're wider society should be able to provide for them in some fashion reasonable access to things like healthy and various food, clean water, sanitation, safe shelter, Fair wages, dignified treatment at the workplace, a non-rigged economy, comprehensive healthcare, and more. yeah I believe every human being in a civilized society deserves reasonable access to these things regardless of their individual capability to pay. If they can pay the asking price great. If not they still deserve it in some fashion, usually provided by the government or at some reduced cost to the user. this shouldn't be too hard to do especially in a developed rich country like ours.
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@highbrass3749 I'm 40. I won't be changing my mind. Certain things are guaranteed in life and certain things aren't. I'm not guaranteed a rolls-royce. I'm not guaranteed a million dollars. I do believe I should be guaranteed a base amount of food, and so should you. Likewise with every other basic material guarantee. I mean we can go around and round on this if you want.
Also, while work is necessary and important, not everyone needs a quote unquote "work" to contribute to society. Or in other words, there are many things that currently go unpaid but are absolutely vital. Caregiving, housework, a lot of daily survival activities, especially if they're for the support of someone else besides just yourself. Other things of that nature. Finally, even if someone may not be working at the moment perhaps they're working on themselves, investing in themselves (ie education, training, or other learning activities) so they could give more in the future to the people in their life and by extension their community. So I say we need to widen our definition of what we consider qualifies as work. you've been raised in the old school method which is very black and white, very didactic and doesn't have any nuance. I'm saying for me that's insufficient and I qualify that as I've explained.
PS. For some people who are dealing with significant issues, sometimes simply surviving is a job all unto itself. If somebody cannot currently manage to work in the traditional sense of the word, due to mental illness or physical illness or something else whether it's temporary permanent they still deserve to survive and access the means of subsistence. I hope you would agree with that.
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Lino Andrade The sad thing is some working class people STILL don't understand why unions (even with all their problems today and with their corruption in the leadership) are SO absolutely vital. I am so happy that I just read that you benefited from a union, that it changed your life so now you can work a sane amount of hours and still have a life and still survive. People who don't work in an industry where unions have had a presence or have had a good income without them don't have the awareness to understand how crucial their union work has been over there past 100 years and that is WHY the right wing, who has consistently represented big business interests in this country, has tried their DAMNEDEST to assault them for so long at least since the late 1970s. I have more to say but I'll just post this for right now. I'm happy you have the skills to find a skilled union job. By all means, people who have the capacity to do so and that includes myself, need to advance their skills by any means necessary so they have more options.
Thank God the Reaganites haven't been able to kill everything the unions have done over the years, though that hasn't stopped them from trying. The advances were so strong from the 30s through the early seventies that even with their very coordinated concerted efforts against them they haven't been able to undo all the good they did from those previous eras and thank goodness for that because our lives are better as a result. Unfortunately the bigger picture is that a very small percentage of job positions and industries in this country are unionized. I think it's something like union membership right now is only 11% in the US. But they say that even even the mere presence of unionized protections in an industry has a knock-on effect of keeping wages and benefits MUCH better than they would be otherwise without that union for non-unitized jobs in thar industry.
People think $18 is a good wage, that's not really true anymore. And those of us who are economically literate are well aware that real wages for the vast majority of people have been frozen for 40 years when you take into account the massive increases in cost of living. Wages of actually backslid in some cases. So a comparable person making XYZ in 1980 money is STILL making essentially that same amount today. People are having to live on 1980 money in 2022. you think that's going to work? Of course not why do you think we see spiraling homelessness and financial insecurity? Because 1980 money doesn't go very far in 2022 now does it? The cost of living is in 2022 dollars, but our wages for the majority of people continue to be paid out in 1980 dollars basically. As you can see this is an extreme mismatch- no wonder you had to work 60 to 80 hours a week. in 1984 my dad made $18 an hour at his local towns water district job. We were able to live really comfortably we had a nice condo and I remember at 5 years old thinking lived as well as we did. Now of course we were still lower middle class but when we got for that money back then was more than enough to feel comfortable and like we weren't missing out on anything. $18 today? Maybe in the rural areas it's considered desirable, but anywhere outside of that usually it's not enough unless you're splitting expenses with someone else or you have a housing subsidy.
And that's just not right. Unless you're one of those few people that truly is a workaholic and doesn't want to do anything else In his waking hours, but work, people shouldn't have to work that much just to get by. 30-40 hours should be sufficient for unacceptable, not fancy but acceptable standard of living at LEAST for a single person.
Most people even if they really like their job don't want that kind of a workload because that doesn't leave you time for anything else. What about family, friends, or just taking care of ourselves? You barely have time to take a shower if you work that much.
So economically you see that there are so many inequities today that need to be reversed and resolved so that everybody can access a dignified standard of living without having to sell their soul to the workplace or become a robot who trains themselves to sleep as a luxury. There's nothing wrong with working hard- working hard SHOULD be a way to get ahead- but not if the wages and benefits aren't keeping up and not if you have to multiply that hard work for 60+ hours a week.
We can get this stuff sorted out but the current political duopoly take turns deep drilling us. They're two sides of the same ass. ONLY Left independent candidates will reset the system to where everybody has a fair chance and labor standards and work standards and wages are dignified for everyone.
That's where I'm at now. We're at the very BEGINNING of trying to get around the juggernaut of the two-party criminal syndicate as I call them and bring economic justice BACK to the bottom 70% of this country- because they've done an incredibly efficient job at removing it over the past 50 to always years; (depending on what specific metrics or details you use to judge).
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