My Incredible Ramblings

Old Macd*nald had a farm.  

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

There’s just

so many of these

and I think it’s incredibly funny but

I just read this bit from the artist and

This is a "plein air" painting which means I set up my easel right across the street of this Chase bank in my city and painted it like it had caught fire. The police questioned me on the spot. Three weeks later Homeland Security was knocking on the door to my home. The question they kept asking me was "Do you hate these banks?" I can honestly say yes.

You think your company pays you out of the goodness of their hearts? Or even out of “market pressure?” The “job market” is a myth perpetuated by the capitalists. Corporations would pay you nothing if they could get away with it. And you argue “oh, but if they paid me nothing I’d just go to another one.” Wrong. Because to maximize profits, they all want to pay you nothing. Corporations exist to maximize profits while reducing risk for investors. It’s part of their entire function to find ways to cut costs as much as possible, and that includes finding ways to pay you nothing.

Unions are your defense against that. You think all a union does is strike? If you pay union dues, a lot of that is spent on lobbyists in various governments reminding your lawmakers that you have rights as a living human being that a corporation should not be able to stomp all over. Unions hire lawyers so that if you’re fired for bullshit reasons, the union can stand up for you against your boss. They’re called unions because workers are uniting to pool resources so that they can stand up to these corporate overlords with more money than God. Unions exist because you might not have the words, resources, or time to fight workplace injustices all by yourself. That’s the whole fucking point.

Workers: *Go on strike*