3 ms·
It's as if the author hasn't ever really encountered scientific precision. Take this for example: "Most of us constitute a property-less underclass only able
by tayistay 6y ago
It's as if the author hasn't ever really encountered scientific precision.
Take this for example:
"Most of us constitute a property-less underclass only able to survive by servicing the needs of high earners."
Who is "us"? In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied. Hardly property-less. Hyperbole much?
But then to presumably provide support for this, the author goes and cherry-picks something:
"A report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that over the next 10 years the occupation that will add the most jobs is personal care aides, not health workers but aides who bathe and clean people. The dependence of the ruling class on the vast sector of servants..."
Could this BLS statistic be because the boomers, a large cohort, are getting old? The author makes the caregivers seem like servants to the "ruling class", not people taking care of the elderly who really do need the help.
Another example:
"Universal Basic Income is an untenable survivalist approach. It promises just enough to keep those in the hinterlands going and barely enough for urban renters to handover to their landlords."
Let's just dismiss UBI, a complex topic, with two sentences! Why prove anything when you can simply assert plausible-sounding things?
And then you have stuff like:
"Such groupings reproduce their lives in common, yet the commons they reproduce is necessarily small, local, and in some sense exclusive and elite, exclusive insofar as their numbers are necessarily limited, elite because the aspirations are culturally specific rather than widespread."
Huh? Am I just too dumb to understand?
I could probably find more examples.
There might be some interesting ideas in the article, but it's just obscured by all the BS.
- mamon 6y ago>> In the USA, over 60% of housing units are owner-occupied Does that include houses with mortgages? Because in my opinion if you're not really the owner until you've paid off your mortgage fully.
- tayistay 6y agoI'm sure it does. Your ownership is in proportion to equity. It's not as if your life situation suddenly changes when you make that last mortgage payment. Your point makes me wonder if mortgages just had the effect of transferring rents from landlords over to banks.
- mamon 6y agoIn some sense yes, you're paying rent to your bank. But the difference is: with a landlord you would pay that rent indefinetely, with mortgage you pay it for 20-30 years and then the house becomes yours.