It really is going to get that bad
40 million Americans losing their homes is four times the amount seen during the 2007-2010 Great Recession.
Across the U.S., more than 40% of renter households are at risk of eviction, according to a new analysis by global advisory firm Stout Risius Ross.
This is a calamity in any era, but during a pandemic! It'll cost thousands of lives.
Another 1.434 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. Prior to 2020, the all-time record for claims in a single week was just 695,000.
Overall, a total of more than 54 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits during the last 19 weeks.
There were only 152 million Americans working when employment peaked back in February. So how is that even possible?
How is this even tolerated?
Food insecurity for U.S. households last week reached its highest reported level since the Census Bureau started tracking the data in May, with almost 30 million Americans reporting that they’d not had enough to eat at some point in the seven days through July 21.In the bureau’s weekly Household Pulse Survey, roughly 23.9 million of 249 million respondents indicated they had “sometimes not enough to eat” for the week ended July 21, while about 5.42 million indicated they had “often not enough to eat."
So how is this not the top headline every day?
How could Congress go home during a time like this?
It's not incompetence. It's by design.
Our elites are predators. They are taught that they have no obligation to other people. Greed is good, and whatever makes money is good. If someone else has less money, that’s because they deserve less money, and because they create less good.In their daily lives, the rich become rich through passive income and exploiting other people; paying the lowest wage or price possible (Walmart and Amazon both famously fuck suppliers over, though in different ways), getting as much government money as possible, and making sure that they don’t have to work to make money, and that the stock market always goes up in the long run, along with other asset prices–no matter what’s actually happening in the economy.
Neoliberal elites are predators. This is true in every neoliberal country. It is simply most advanced in the United States...
You are food or a money-producing asset to elites.You are not human, you do not have a right to anything. Not due process of the law. Not food. Not housing. Not affordable medicine or health care. Those things are for people with enough money, and if that’s not you, you don’t deserve them.
This is THE most important thing you can understand about society today. You can’t count on US elites to care about you at all. If it is in their best financial interest to impoverish you, kill you or any other thing, they will do so.
This may seem hyperbolic, but it meets the most important test of truth: It predicts their actions with far more accuracy than any other hypothesis.
If it was just incompetence, like for example, the favorite excuse of liberals, “Never assume malice when incompetence will explain something,” then they wouldn’t keep getting more and more money.
Our elites have the same world view as feudal lords.
The working class can never be crushed enough.
Comments
And the majority
don't see it coming because it's beyond mosts
comprehension.
The peoples u.s. utopia is about to hit an unmoveble object.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
This should seal it for Joe Biden.
Nobody wanted this outcome, but the Senate didn't really give a damn, and so there will be chaos. Everyone is going to blame Trump and the Republicans for this, and they will have no answer. Biden doesn't have to lift a finger to earn a victory.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Whoever counts the vote
Wins not to mention multifaceted disenfranchisement. Cynicism or realism. You decide.
Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation
Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook
Even if he loses the election, he may be the ultimate winner
Trump is impervious to criticism. So if he loses, in his mind he will still be the victor. And he will hand a hot mess to Joe Biden, who will prove that all our fears about his incompetency were spot on. So Trump will have gotten out just in time. More Mar-A-Lago and more golf. All good in the end for him.
And hey, besides all that, I just read that Larry Summers, who Biden may choose to be in his cabinet, flew on the Lolita Express with Epstein. So at least we will be entertained by the Biden administration while we all go down in flames!
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
The nightmares will come regardless.
In the case of Biden, democratic and republican leadership will not allow Biden to do anything except pass out crumbs and that will be too late by the time Biden becomes president. Biden or I should say his caretakers can react by starting some all-out-war or marital law and turn on the National Guard, Feds, or even regular military on million of homeless people. When BLM does not serve the interests of the democratic party they will be either co-opted or put down like Occupy Wall Street. I can even see a scenario where tent cities are constructed to house the homeless away from urban areas and the homes of the elites.
With Trump who knows. I gave up trying to discern any of his behaviors. Trump did realize a bit too late that his re-election depended on having a second stimulus package for the proles--but now Pelosi rather have Americans get evicted and starve to allow a gop relief package of any sort. But if Trump wins, there will no attempt at any package by republicans.
Of course this is all speculation on my part. Whoever does get elected, who knows what dystopian nightmares will happen. However, the nightmares will come. The political leadership could have stopped them but they did not. And it is now too late.
Feudal lords
were somewhat constrained by noblesse oblige. In many cases, their serfs had more comfortable lives than is available here now.
“We may not be able to change the system, but we can make the system irrelevant in our lives and in the lives of those around us.”—John Beckett
Kudos
for perfectly explaining what the majority of the 1% are not.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Actually no.
Advances in sanitation, medicine, and electrical technology have made our lives much better than those of the kings of old. The fact that our elites are predators and our society is ecologically unsustainable does not change the fact that we are better off in the immediate-lifestyle department now than we were 700 years ago.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Advances
have also led to the majority being absolutly knowledgeless about the true nature of things most common.
To most, sanitation is the washing of hands and flushing of the toilet. Even our great ancestors went out of their way to not step in their own shit.
Medicine is useless without access.
Electrical technology was not capable without fossile fuels which the use of will eventually exterminate us all.
It's good to be the king.
[video:https://youtu.be/8z8SpgmF0sA]
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Right idea, wrong era
You're actually thinking of the Ancien Régime under Louis XIV, when all power was vested in the monarch and the First and Second Estates (nobility, clergy) and the peasants were simply to be exploited and worked to death.
Louis kept his world humming along with a series of expansionist wars, which could not be (and were not) sustained indefinitely. His successor, Louis XV, was well aware that the system was unstable and decaying, but believed - correctly - that the breakdown would not come until after he was safely dead ("Après nous, le déluge", as either he or Madame de Pompadour supposedly said).
The older feudal system was actually based on a series of interlocking mutual duties and obligations, and it worked pretty well as long as everybody understood their roles and held up their end of the bargain. But no system can escape the Second Law of Thermodynamics....
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
An enlightening set of dynamic details
...that is, for me it was enlightening. Thank you.
OT: U.S. now officially stealing Syria's oil
Trump wasn't kidding
How dare they
have oil fields that belong to us?
Syria should bomb them and be done with it until uncle cries uncle.
My nation is not but a festering wound that infects others.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Can you elaborate on that statistic?
For example, where will most of these home losses happen? Is this another East-Coast-centric thing?
Thing is, I just don't see much of that happening where I live; nothing ever changes around here. It's like living in a black hole or something.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Not just an east/west coast thing
Well, it's happening where I live – which is Texas. Northern Houston area, specifically.
Just a couple of blocks from me, on Saturday morning (first of the month, you know), all of one family's belongings were taken out of their house, put at the street curb or on the easement next to the curb. Then it rained. I understand a similar situation was occurring in the subdivision adjacent to ours.
I don't know whether these folks couldn't make rent or if it was mortgage. The rapidity of it makes me believe it was rent.
Sadly, I'm afraid this is going to be a very common sight. I have no idea where these people are going to go. Around here, I'm seeing an increase of panhandling at street intersections, etc., especially in the last two weeks. If I'm seeing it, it must be increasing as I really don't wander from the house much these days.
We should all report in the OT threads
...things we see that are part of the descending dystopia. Forewarned is forearmed. People need to prepare themselves. Citizen phone calls should be made to emergency charity services, such as the Red Cross or even to local news stations or to local or national congressional reps — anytime this is witnessed. Keep up the pressure and awareness.
Affordable housing has been a human right globally for the past 70 years. Ask why this universal right is now denied to Americans.
Almost too close
Yes, you are right. In the case I mentioned, by the time I found out it was happening, some neighbors had already stepped in to assist. In retrospect, I wish I'd have known sooner. I guess it kind of caught me off guard ...especially happening so nearby.
Might be a good idea to make a list of pertinent phone numbers, addresses, etc., and have them at the ready.
Good to remember that the end of the month is a popular time to evict folks.
Kind of says it all
Beyond book keeping level monetary theory, capitalism is just a machine, a construct with chosen and rejected rules. Based on these "rules" the machine hums along, and rule changes bring opportunity for profit. Our government is built around enforcing and creating these rules.
Thing is, we have no say in these "rules". We are not the owner of this machine. Every day we are told this machine is good, the best, exceptional. This machine provides everything for us, if we work at it hard enough. If we don't work hard enough at the machine, it won't work for us. In reality we are forced to participate in its function. Every choice we make in life, wrong schools, wrong career choice, wrong place at the wrong time and the machine won't work for you.
Think of it as a Slot Machine. Every choice we make we pull the lever. The odds are not in our favor and the house always win.
E. M. Forster was eerily prophetic
with his short story "The Machine Stops".
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
Thank you
for this story.
Riveting. and frightening
NYCVG
About 1/2 way through
will finish it tonight. My kind of story. Hard to believe it was written in 1909. Thanks.
Interesting/informative diary and thread.
Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
It is a taught and shared moral hierarchy.
On debates of min. wage. There are no legit studies that shows it raises prices. Instead increased spending. The debate on it becomes a moral one. Give money to poor working people and society collapses with $50 hamburgers. Give rich and elites money and good things flow like jobs and farts that don't smell.
I used to wonder why so call capitalists did not attack corporate welfare. And then I realized that wingers and capitalists do believe in government largess, but only for people high in the moral hierarchy. Giving food rations to a single mother is not right as she and the kids are low on the moral scale. Giving government largess to CEOs is morally correct as the CEO is high in the moral universe of right wingers.
Yes.
The Virtuous Circle.
Spread money around to the people who need money and they will spend it.
That's how economic growth happens.
The $600 Unemployment Insurance payments are growth producers.
NYCVG
And the response was to shame those getting it.
Right wingers along with media spread this idea early on the giving people the extra money would prevent them from getting a job. Of course, what jobs were available for those getting the relief? None as far as I can tell. Again, human society as a hierarchical moral system with those at the bottom shamed for using or getting money.
Don't have a link but study was done recently showing the amount of people competing for available jobs was staggering. So much for the idea that the proles will not work.
Rental rates have skyrocketed
Median rental rates have skyrocketed over the last 60 years as compared to median income levels. Click on the link for the full story and graphic tracking median rental rates versus median income.
There were already a significant portion of our citizens living on the margins of affordability prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The enormous job losses associated with the pandemic and the Trump administration and Congress' criminal lack of providing relief to the people has led to this catastrophe. It did NOT have to happen. Trump and Congress made this tragedy happen on purpose and it is criminal.
We may not see the effects of homelessness on our streets right away, but it will exist, none the less. Homeless people may couch surf with friends or family, live in their vehicles, camp in tents in the woods, or seek other forms of shelter. Homelessness can lead to the breakup of families, and the lack of a permanent address can present problems for enrolling children in schools or receiving assistance. The fact that anyone is homeless in the richest nation ever known to mankind is shameful.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
lack of permanent address
also impedes or prevents voting
NYCVG
Yes!
It also can prevent a person from getting a job.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I remember reading an article
A couple years back. This journalist went to a homeless encampment somewhere near Portland to interview the residents there.
What he found was an empty homeless encampment. The reason is because it was the middle of the day on a weekday. All the homeless had gone off to work at low-wage jobs.
Day Laborers
They gather at certain places in the mornings and are picked up by contractors needing cheap day labor. They are paid in cash at the end of each day.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
The newly homeless
aren't going to be conveniently concentrated in the Sun Belt, and winter is coming. They're going to have children with them. They'll need to learn the skills needed to sleep rough. Shelters will be overwhelmed, 50 newly homeless for each one there is today. Covid. Flu. Life in the Trumpvilles is going to be rough.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
The states may build tent cities and bus homeless there
Maybe force the homeless to do agricultural work to pay the rent on their tents.
It's already there
If you look for it you can see it. It's pretty obvious. It just isn't in every neighborhood.
And you are right about the negative effects of homelessness. In fact you most likely significantly understated the negative effects. Becoming homeless is like being put in a deep hole.
I've made many snarky comments
about being out of the asylum over the past few years. I stand by them but at the same time see refuge in GTFO of the US. Ecuador has it problems and the future strength of the economy has serious uncertainties but I wouldn't be anywhere else considering the deteriorating state of the US.
There are threats that I can foresee to our future here in what's going on in the US. We've been very fortunate and should be fine so I don't spend any time worrying about it. Other expats are not so fortunate but I don't find many to be too concerned. The saying here is that nobody starves in Ecuador and it's not hard living on very little money. The challenge I see many aging expats have is a lack of family and a support network. The community in Cuenca is growing though and it's not hard to make good friends of other expats and locals as well.
The cost of living is ridiculously low. The challenge for younger people is finding decent paying work. There are a lot who work online from here but it's easiest if you have at least modest saving and Social Security. I know several who live well enough on nothing but SS. An income of $1500-2000/month is sufficient to travel and live without having to budget too tightly. Even though we built a house I found it difficult to spend more than $2500-3000 a month while spending freely until we bought a car. I know those amounts are a challenge for a lot of people but this country, this city especially, is an excellent place to hunker down for a couple years or as a forever home.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
My son and his spouse have talked Costa Rica
But noticed Costa Rica just recently refused to allow Americans travel into the country.
Can't blame Costa Rica
for protecting their people I guess. It's a good place to live from everything I've read and heard. Last I heard though, some many months ago, there was trouble in paradise. I can't remember the particulars though. I also think they've been particularly hard hit by Covid. Of course, that applies to all of the Americas. Today, anywhere is going to be challenging to some extent. Still, anyone with resources, in demand job skills/education, and are willing to go on an adventure would probably be surprised what can be done relatively easily.
My trip back to the States last October convinced me there is no home to return to there and that there is little besides friends and family that I actually want there. It was a shock then but a relief now. I wish your kids lots of luck.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
What is left to return to?
My other son is in grad school in Europe after working for several years for a financial investment company in the States. Upgrade his skills. I thought about after he finishes where would he return to find work? He was thinking about Wall Street/NYC but just recently a good friend moved from Brooklyn in with her parents in CO and works remotely. She was really high on living and working in NYC.
I read an article by Micheal Tracey who traveled from NJ to Portland to report on what he saw and he came to the conclusion that the mainstream media has not reported on the damage done by rioting, arson attacks, and looting that damaged and destroyed entire neighborhoods. This ranged from large cities to places like Green Bay WI and Olympia WA.
So yah the question. And for a young man return to what? A gutted and hallowed out nation whose major cities are more suited for a scene back drop to dystopian movies? A political leadership class whose incompetency will be forever in history books? I will probably advise him to find a job if he can somewhere in Europe (not UK). EU governments at least are trying to help their populations. I heard on some show that there have been no evictions in Italy.
Thanks.
It's possible, but unlikely
One of the cities often mentioned is Oakland, CA.
Well, I am familiar with Oakland and there are zero "damaged and destroyed entire neighborhoods".
That's only one example of the bullsh*t "scary antifa" meme, but it's a prominent example.
Tracey calls them leftist anarchists--not AntiFa
From what I remember Tracey does not use the term AntiFa. But rather calls them white leftist anarchists. Sorta makes sense as AnitFa was really born out of directly confronting fascist white supremacists during demonstrations. They did not seem interested in arson and looting. As The Intercept reported, the FBI went looking for them and could not find them.
I believe Tracey's reporting and as I saw much the same following events in Portland Oregon.
But why do you think there was not the mayhem in Oakland as in other places?
Was there?
Or is this mayhem a right-wing Russiagate?
Just hit me. Replace "homeless" with "refugees"
The first response would be that a massive war happened to displace that many people. Only a war with significant combatants and large populations could produce so many refugees.
BTW. Europe had 11 million refugees after World War II.
Refugees
from neoliberalism, the War Against the People.
"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Albert Bartlett
"A species that is hurtling toward extinction has no business promoting slow incremental change." -- Caitlin Johnstone
I think that's brilliant
Call them "internal refugees".
It changes the whole narrative.
Another comparison, Syria has six million internal refugees and five million external.
A mass targeting of Big Media
and social media to force this to change: if we don’t do it, just whine
about it, we deserve to lose.
The “how” is we don’t have tens of millions of contacts — and every day! — with all the media demanding 24/7 coverage of the people’s misery. What else could possibly work?
Orwell: Where's the omelette?