Post-Scarcity Economics

“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction. …[A]re we brave enough to imagine beyond the boundaries of “the real” and then do the work of sculpting reality from our dreams?”

Musk announced on Twitter that he had the money (from funders) to buy back all Tesla shares for $420 each. This meant that if you owned a share in Tesla, it would soon become worth $420. At the time he made that tweet, a share in Tesla cost $341.99. Therefore, because he made that tweet, people started buying shares at that price, in the belief that soon Musk would be buying all those shares back and they would make $78.01 for every share they bought. 

This caused a spike in the price of shares in Tesla, as everybody competed to buy up as many as they could. This increased the value of Tesla as a company. 

Brittany DeBarros is waging the kind of vehement public protest via Twitter against the Defense Department and US government that’s commonplace in the Trump-era — except that DeBarros is a captain in the US Army Reserve assigned to the Army’s Psychological Operations Command.

According to DeBarros’ Twitter account , she has been called up on two-week assignment since July 14, but each day since then DeBarros has posted tweets criticizing “the horror being carried out by our war machine for profit,” with the Army moving to investigate the officer’s remarks.

The “Dept. of ‘Defense’ is the largest oil consumer worldwide,” DeBarros notes in one tweet. “The violence unleashed directly is horrific, but it also has massive spillover impacts.”

“Defense corporations made contributions to 496 of 525 Congress members in 2018,” DeBarros said in her most recent tweet, posted on July 20, the seventh day of her assignment. Defense contractors are prolific political donors , though many of their contributions come from their political-action committees, owners, employees, or employees’ immediate families.

DeBarros, however, has stopped short of directly criticizing President Trump during her July protest; using “contemptuous words” against the president is a violation of military law.

DeBarros detailed her criticism of US foreign policy and its impact at home in a June 23 speech in Washington, DC, at a Poor People’s Campaign rally.

During the speech, DeBarros said she was a combat veteran who identified as a woman, Latina, white, black, and queer, and that as a person “existing at the intersection of these identities, I carry a grave conviction in my core that there can be no true economic, racial, gender liberation without addressing the militarism that is strangling the morality and empathy out of our society.”

“For decades, we have been lulled into complacency and inattention as our drones have obliterated weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, ordinary homes, and ordinary people,” DeBarros said.

i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)

at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)

i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.

this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.

to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.

now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?

the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?

the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.

the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.

what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.

what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.

that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.

the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.

the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money. 

when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”

The Electoral College originally heavily favored Slave States, because the large slave populations contributed to electoral points, but obviously slaves could not vote, so voting whites in those states had more political power per vote.

No single city, no group of cities has that population. The TOP 10 cities in the US have a combined population of 28 million. Out of 328. That’s roughly 8% of the population. 

If you add up EVERY SINGLE CITY with more than 100,000 people in it (Which is 311 cities), that’s still only 94 million. 28% of the US population.

So this idea that the popular vote would give power to just a few cities isn’t supported by the facts.

wouldnt it be nice if more news articles were like this

His response was, “just save money”. I kept trying to explain that when you are living paycheck to paycheck, there really is no saving money because most of your income is being spent on basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, transportation. 

So, then he responded, “well, why can’t you just save $5 every week”. Well, a lot of poor people do try to save. I would manage to get a few hundred in my savings account, but then you get a flat tire, or you end up getting sick and missing a week of work, or you have an unexpected bill. And, that few hundred dollars suddenly disappears. I tried to explain to him that when you’re poor, unanticipated expenses can very quickly and easily blow through what little you have in your savings account and put you back at square one. 

I also tried to explain that when you are that poor, you need to make purchases while you have the money. Like, if I needed a new pair of jeans and I had an extra $30 that week, I would buy myself a new pair of jeans that week because I didn’t know when I would have an extra $20 or $30 to spend. So, he countered that with, “You don’t need to buy clothes. You could have put that $30 in your savings.”

To which I responded, “Well, if it were socially acceptable to walk around without pants on, then maybe poor people could climb out of poverty, but until then, when your jeans have holes in them, or don’t fit you anymore, you need to get some new ones.”

Then it kind of clicked for him.. a little. 

So, I went on to talk about the sociological aspects of poverty, like how growing up poor, or growing up as part of a marginalized demographic pushes your starting block 100 feet behind your peers.. how our educational systems are set up to fail impoverished children. The light bulb flickered, but never fully turned on. 

And, then he said, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps.” 

Yes, my friend, poverty and I get a nice little reunion every few years. I know it intimately, which is why you should sit back, relax, and just listen. 

I never understood how it was so difficult to see the realities of poverty. To me, it is sort of common sense. And, what is irksome is that poverty doesn’t always present itself as an old beat up car, and falling apart sneakers. People who grow up middle class and financially secure seem to think that poverty looks a lot like dirty children with dirty clothes, and no shoes. But, it doesn’t. It can be that, but it’s often not. 

I grew up in a nice house in the suburbs, but we were poor. We were very poor for a long time, in part due to my medical issues. People assume that because we went to Catholic school, and had a nice house that we were well-off. We weren’t. My mother worked 2-3 jobs, and my parents took out loans to pay for our school tuition. My mother’s parents helped pay for some of our education, even though they were also incredibly poor. My parents sometimes struggled to put food on the table. 

I never had clothes that were dirty or falling apart, but most of my clothes and shoes were hand-me-downs from my older cousins. In fact, a lot of my toys were, too. 

Both of my parents grew up in poverty. My father, especially, grew up in complete and abject poverty. Their parents grew up in poverty, and so did their parents. My parents made immense sacrifices to set us up for financial success, but life always finds a way to intervene. 

Personally, my health issues have been the driving factor behind my own financial issues. I have amassed thousands of dollars in medical debt. I work a job that doesn’t use my degree at all because I can work part time and still get benefits, and because I know I won’t get fired if I need to take extended absences due to my health. 

So, when you say, “I still can’t believe you were ever on food stamps,”  you are really saying, “I have this picture in my head of what poverty looks like, and you don’t fit that image.”