#miso asks

nonono because hold on. look me in the eye and tell me this doesnt look enticing

11.what kind of music is stuck in your head a lot lately?

hm. well SOMEBODY got me hooked on choremania by florence + the machine, but bc of the song i dont remember what it sounds like until i listen to it. but last week i was listening to latin music so i had like, baile inolvidable and gasolina stuck in my head.

14. if you could give a TED talk on anything, what would you talk about?

Apologies if you know all or some of this already, I don't aim to be redundant or condescending, I just saw your post about starting to get into figure skating. I'm assuming you watched some of the US Nationals and that's how you're familiar with Amber, Alysa, and Isabeau?

:)

question: is miso soup actually your favorite kind of soup or did you just call yourself that to be silly. if no what is your favorite soup? <3

HI OLIVER!!

i do like miso soup. however. the name miso came because a couple years ago (i guess when i joined tumblr?) i typed miso soup a bunch of times on my cousin’s tablet and it kept autocorrecting to misogyny soup and i thought that was funny.

hi!

okay this might be long. also im realizing that i am accidentally sort of writing this essay style.

so first of all: laissez faire economics is basically when the government goes hands off on the economy.

the u.s. has taken this approach (whether under this name or not) multiple times over the past 250 ish years of its existence.

(notably, this is happening now. some people say that we are living in a second gilded age. while the conditions we work in are on average slightly better — more people are unionized, less children work in factories, hours are shorter, pay is slightly better — we do still have an incredible disparity between the extremely wealthy minuscule elite and the large swaths of poverty).

personally, i dont think laissez faire economics is a good idea. however, every few presidential terms, someone comes along and sees that there is some amount of prosperity. but you know what would bring more prosperity? if we let the companies have full rein. decrease regulations. decrease taxes for the rich. don't meddle in labor disputes. and you know what? they were right. there was prosperity. for the rich. the rich were allowed to gain an insane amount of wealth and treat their workers badly.

side note: i am primarily thinking/talking about the gilded age (1870s-1900 approx) and reaganomics (1980s).

in the gilded age, monopolists were able to become monopolists because they could pay their workers terribly, make the workers work incredibly long days (one of the demands of the homestead strike and the haymarket riot (both in 1880s) was an eight hour work day. according to this digital history article unskilled workers at the carnegie steel mill made about $1.70 for a 12 hour day).

also another fun fact about carnegie steel company: in 1892 there as the homestead strike at the homestead mill (for the reasons i just outlined). and carnegie called up the pinkerton guards. the pinkerton guards are a union busting agency. carnegie also called in the national guard to break up the strike. but what is interesting about this is that in 2011 Jeff Bezos hired pinkerton guards to union bust amazon.

okay so i strayed a bit from the original question. basically, i find the gilded age (and the fact that we are living in a second gilded age) very interesting. it is simultaneously uplifting and depressing. that we fall into these patterns and cannot help but forget our past mistakes. but we have recovered from them in the past so we can do it again.

other links about this i find interesting:

robert reich on living in the second gilded age

graph of the share of income going to the top 10% vs union membership