Feeling proud of my pit hair today.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
(Source: xcopy)
Gonna be a lot more of this I guess.
(Source: xcopy)
Tumblr, Rojo Rojito: Why aren't more people freaking out about the new Venezuelan labor law? -
You know, the one that gives housewives/full-time mothers a pension— wages for housework?
It’s ONLY A HUGE VICTORY FOR FEMINISM, SOCIALISM, AND WOMEN OF COLOR. Not a big deal or anything. Tumblr is mysteriously silent about this.
Read this and ask yourselves why this can happen in Venezuela, and why it (currently) can’t happen here. I’ll give you a hint: it starts with “soci” and ends in “alism.” Alternatively, it starts with “revol” and ends in “ultion.”
(Source: thinksquad, via disquietingtruths)
That traffic light is still bossing people about, though.
Yes.
(Source: yourheadinaplasticbag)
Get it, girl.
Rad Bird comes correct. Righteous bird.
>: I sleep with the window open and the other morning I heard what... -
I sleep with the window open and the other morning I heard what sounded like a transformer (Michael Bay one) deepthroating a pine tree. Now I’ve grown accustomed to being woken up by strange sounding machinery but this one threw me good, now in retrospective it was probably just a stump grinder or…
Maybe someone was just playing dub step real loud?
[video]
![idlnmclean:
ritterlied:
jephtha:
awesome-everyday:
shorterexcerpts:
thecallus:
theatlantic:
The Cheapest Generation: Why Aren’t Millennials Buying Cars or Houses?
What if Millennials’ aversion to car-buying isn’t a temporary side effect of the recession, but part of a permanent generational shift in tastes and spending habits? It’s a question that applies not only to cars, but to several other traditional categories of big spending—most notably, housing. And its answer has large implications for the future shape of the economy—and for the speed of recovery.
Read more. [Image: Kagan McLeod]
It’s safe to say that a decent number of Tumblr users are a part of the Millennial generation. So, tell us: Do you own a car or house? If not, why?
IT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO DISPOSABLE INCOME YOU THUNDERING IDIOTS. Fucking preference has nothing to do with it. 50% of college graduates have no job! They all have the most student loan debt ever! What are you asking this question for?!
Also: housing is a good bit more expensive now.
My parents got a 15-year mortgage on a new house in the mid-70s. The house was $32,000. Average home price in that area now? $190,000.
So, home prices went up. Food prices went up. Health care prices went WAY UP. Rent prices went up. Higher education went up so damn high that some of us forgo that all together. Energy prices went up. Car prices went up.
Prices of prices went up.
We also pay cell phone bills, internet bills, data plans, text plans, online subscriptions, cable/satellite tv, netflix, DVR subscriptions — bills that didn’t even exist 30-40 years ago. We also use computers and smartphones and microwaves and other consumer electronics that didn’t exist 20-50 years ago.
We need medications and doctors and contact lenses and tampons and maxi pads and other things that cost money just to be alive and keep us healthy.
Most of us can’t afford to:
Get married and have a “Traditional” big wedding
Buy a house
Buy a new car
PLAN to have children
Take two, consecutive weeks of vacation.
Jobs that paid 50k in the late 1990s now pay between 30-35. Interest rates that favor consumers have gone down.
So I say, no. We are not choosing not to buy homes. We’re not choosing to take the bus in cities where there’s no good public transit. WE ARE NOT CHOOSING TO LIVE WHAT SOCIETY DEEMS AS AN UNDESIRABLE LIFESTYLE.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that these two people in the picture are young white hipsters. Young black and brown folks have been forgoing homeownership and buying new cars for decades, this shit isn’t new, pal. You’re just acting like this shit is new because it’s hitting white folks.
anyway, my point is: We are fucking broke.
^
It’s very much a class problem. This is why free market and neoliberalism is bad. Once we go over that “fiscal cliff” and economic collapse happens, game over.
Sure, I got an answer. I am ideologically opposed to car ownership and operation. Every car represents a theft from public transit. Similar argument for collective housing vs paying rent/mortgages to greedy landowners and banks.
Besides that. It is really really expensive to own and operate cars and houses. Frankly, why would I want to? I’ve grown up watching my favorite things become obsolete before my first decade. I’ve watched super expensive and clunky cell phones become dirt cheap and like something out of Star Trek. I remember the literal desktop computer with its 5 1/2” floppies that my grandfather gave my mother and how a few years later my grandma let me use her laptop. My brother decided to become a building inspector and go for his civil engineering degree because he realized he could either spend a small fortune on buying some crappy home built in the 70s or he could spend the same amount to buy the land and build himself a house that would last for generations and would reduce his monthly expenses to near zero.
Let’s talk what it means to actually own something like a car and a house. It means paying a significant amount of money over a long period of time. It means taking the ~60 productive hours a week I have to spend and spending 3/4 of my time paying for the privilege of owning things which will be obsolete the day of purchase and which will degrade there after. It means obligating myself to a ruthless bank which may not even to bother to fill the paper work out properly before attempting to seize the product of my time. You know what I’m spending my time on? I spend all the time and money that I save by not investing in those things on acquiring a lot of little cheap things that have lasting value. In the long run, what I invest my time into might even get me out of this country and to some place where they build their houses as heirlooms to be kept in families or to serve the community. In the long run, I may use my time and meager resources to move somewhere that won’t bankrupt me when I get sick and steal the place I live out from under me. In the long run, I may spend my time migrating somewhere that has cheap almost hassle free transportation to anywhere I might want to go and an appreciation for the time I invest into intellectual and scientific cultural pursuits. That would be why I’m not buying a car or a house or taking out ridiculous student loans for an education that will probably not remove me from the poverty I was born into.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m97qpaHmvN1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
The Cheapest Generation: Why Aren’t Millennials Buying Cars or Houses?
What if Millennials’ aversion to car-buying isn’t a temporary side effect of the recession, but part of a permanent generational shift in tastes and spending habits? It’s a question that applies not only to cars, but to several other traditional categories of big spending—most notably, housing. And its answer has large implications for the future shape of the economy—and for the speed of recovery.
Read more. [Image: Kagan McLeod]
It’s safe to say that a decent number of Tumblr users are a part of the Millennial generation. So, tell us: Do you own a car or house? If not, why?
IT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE NO DISPOSABLE INCOME YOU THUNDERING IDIOTS. Fucking preference has nothing to do with it. 50% of college graduates have no job! They all have the most student loan debt ever! What are you asking this question for?!
Also: housing is a good bit more expensive now.
My parents got a 15-year mortgage on a new house in the mid-70s. The house was $32,000. Average home price in that area now? $190,000.
So, home prices went up. Food prices went up. Health care prices went WAY UP. Rent prices went up. Higher education went up so damn high that some of us forgo that all together. Energy prices went up. Car prices went up.
Prices of prices went up.
We also pay cell phone bills, internet bills, data plans, text plans, online subscriptions, cable/satellite tv, netflix, DVR subscriptions — bills that didn’t even exist 30-40 years ago. We also use computers and smartphones and microwaves and other consumer electronics that didn’t exist 20-50 years ago.
We need medications and doctors and contact lenses and tampons and maxi pads and other things that cost money just to be alive and keep us healthy.
Most of us can’t afford to:
- Get married and have a “Traditional” big wedding
- Buy a house
- Buy a new car
- PLAN to have children
- Take two, consecutive weeks of vacation.
Jobs that paid 50k in the late 1990s now pay between 30-35. Interest rates that favor consumers have gone down.
So I say, no. We are not choosing not to buy homes. We’re not choosing to take the bus in cities where there’s no good public transit. WE ARE NOT CHOOSING TO LIVE WHAT SOCIETY DEEMS AS AN UNDESIRABLE LIFESTYLE.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that these two people in the picture are young white hipsters. Young black and brown folks have been forgoing homeownership and buying new cars for decades, this shit isn’t new, pal. You’re just acting like this shit is new because it’s hitting white folks.
anyway, my point is: We are fucking broke.
^
It’s very much a class problem. This is why free market and neoliberalism is bad.
Once we go over that “fiscal cliff” and economic collapse happens, game over.Sure, I got an answer. I am ideologically opposed to car ownership and operation. Every car represents a theft from public transit. Similar argument for collective housing vs paying rent/mortgages to greedy landowners and banks.
Besides that. It is really really expensive to own and operate cars and houses. Frankly, why would I want to? I’ve grown up watching my favorite things become obsolete before my first decade. I’ve watched super expensive and clunky cell phones become dirt cheap and like something out of Star Trek. I remember the literal desktop computer with its 5 1/2” floppies that my grandfather gave my mother and how a few years later my grandma let me use her laptop. My brother decided to become a building inspector and go for his civil engineering degree because he realized he could either spend a small fortune on buying some crappy home built in the 70s or he could spend the same amount to buy the land and build himself a house that would last for generations and would reduce his monthly expenses to near zero.
Let’s talk what it means to actually own something like a car and a house. It means paying a significant amount of money over a long period of time. It means taking the ~60 productive hours a week I have to spend and spending 3/4 of my time paying for the privilege of owning things which will be obsolete the day of purchase and which will degrade there after. It means obligating myself to a ruthless bank which may not even to bother to fill the paper work out properly before attempting to seize the product of my time. You know what I’m spending my time on? I spend all the time and money that I save by not investing in those things on acquiring a lot of little cheap things that have lasting value. In the long run, what I invest my time into might even get me out of this country and to some place where they build their houses as heirlooms to be kept in families or to serve the community. In the long run, I may use my time and meager resources to move somewhere that won’t bankrupt me when I get sick and steal the place I live out from under me. In the long run, I may spend my time migrating somewhere that has cheap almost hassle free transportation to anywhere I might want to go and an appreciation for the time I invest into intellectual and scientific cultural pursuits. That would be why I’m not buying a car or a house or taking out ridiculous student loans for an education that will probably not remove me from the poverty I was born into.
(via disquietingtruths)
i hate money…
Because if you didn’t get paid things just would never be done. Ever. At all. Yep.
(via disquietingtruths)
“Here are some broad descriptions about the generation known as Millennials: They’re narcissistic. They’re lazy. They’re coddled. They’re even a bit delusional.
Those aren’t just unfounded negative stereotypes about 80 million Americans born roughly between 1980 and 2000. They’re backed up by a decade of sociological research. The National Institutes of Health found that for people in their 20s, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is three times as high than the generation that’s 65 or older. In 1992, 80 percent of people under 23 wanted to one day have a job with greater responsibility; ten years later, 60 percent did. Millennials received so many participation trophies growing up that 40 percent of them think they should be promoted every two years – regardless of performance. They’re so hopeful about the future you might think they hadn’t heard of something called the Great Recession.”
Well, they’re right about the “save us all” part, anyway.
Okay, like…what total fucking assholes. Actually we HAVE heard of the Great Recession! In fact, that’s WHY we live with our parents! And I don’t actually know ANYONE in that age bracket who is optimistic about the future. And I’m not sure how wanting a job with greater responsibility makes you narcissistic. My last job was as a barista. You’re telling me I shouldn’t want a job with greater responsibility than making coffee and being nice to people when they were mean? And none of the people I have ever worked with EXPECTED to get promoted regardless of performance. They either didn’t care about being promoted, or they expected to get promoted by working hard to show that they were more competent than everyone else.
Go fuck yourself, Time.
P.S. Want millenials to stop thinking about themselves so much? Then maybe you should make Syria or Bangladesh the cover story instead of whining about how your kids are annoying.
^^^^ this
“Expect to get promoted regardless of performance?”
No, motherfucker, we don’t expect to see promotion or advancement no matter how goddamn hard we work, because there’s NOWHERE UP TO GO.
We live in a world of wage and hiring freezes, without cost of living adjustments in the face of rising costs, of dead end jobs, where entry level demands a bachelors, and that bachelors sinks you so far in a hole you’re going to be paying for it for years, so you better not rock the boat or get fired.
Fuck Time. Print media must love watching itself die.
(via disquietingtruths)
Austerity programme proved to be ‘nonsense’ based on a spreadsheet mistake | Vox Political -
The government’s principal justification for pursuing austerity lay in tatters today, after it was revealed that the economic theory behind it is based on a mistake.
The Chancellor’s entire austerity policy is based on a paper by economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff, which is itself based on a spreadsheet concluding that public debt of more than 90 per cent of a country’s gross domestic product (GDP) slows down growth by 0.1 per cent – which is wrong…
(via disquietingtruths)
Obama student loan policy reaping… wait for it… $51 billion profit
May 14, 2013The Obama administration is forecast to turn a record $51 billion profit this year from student loan borrowers, a sum greater than the earnings of the nation’s most profitable companies and roughly equal to the combined net income of the four largest U.S. banks by assets.
Figures made public Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office show that the nonpartisan agency increased its 2013 fiscal year profit forecast for the Department of Education by 43 percent to $50.6 billion from its February estimate of $35.5 billion.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the nation’s most profitable company, reported $44.9 billion in net income last year. Apple Inc. recorded a $41.7 billion profit in its 2012 fiscal year, which ended in September, while Chevron Corp. reported $26.2 billion in earnings last year. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reported a combined $51.9 billion in profit last year.
The estimated increase in the Education Department’s earnings from student borrowers and their families may cause a political firestorm in Washington, where members of Congress and Obama administration officials thus far have appeared content to allow students to line government coffers.
The Education Department has generated nearly $120 billion in profit off student borrowers over the last five fiscal years, budget documents show, thanks to record relative interest rates on loans as well as the agency’s aggressive efforts to collect defaulted debt. A spokesman from the Education Department did not respond to a request for comment. A Congressional Budget Office spokesman could not be reached for comment after normal business hours.
The new profit prediction comes as Washington policymakers increasingly focus on soaring student debt levels and the record relative interest rates that borrowers pay as a potential impediment to economic growth. Regulators and officials at agencies that include the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Reserve Bank of New York have all warned that student borrowing may dampen consumption, depress the economy, limit credit creation or pose a threat to financial stability.
At $1.1 trillion, student debt eclipses all other forms of household debt, except for home mortgages. It’s also the only kind of consumer debt that has increased since the onset of the financial crisis, according to the New York Fed. Officials in Washington are worried that overly indebted student borrowers are unable to save enough to purchase a home, take out loans for new cars, start a business or save enough for their retirement.
Policymakers also are worried about the effect that high interest rates on outstanding student debt may have on the broader economy. Congress sets interest rates on federal student loans, with rates fixed on the majority of loans at 6.8 and 7.9 percent.
But as the Federal Reserve attempts to lower borrowing costs for everyone from households and small businesses to large corporations and Wall Street banks, student borrowers have not been able to benefit.
Compared to a benchmark interest rate — what the U.S. government pays to borrow for 10 years — student borrowers have never paid more, increasing the burden of their student debt as wage increases and yields on investments and bank accounts fail to keep up with the relative increase in student loan interest payments.
President Barack Obama recently asked Congress to tie federal student loan interest rates to the U.S. government’s borrowing costs. In a possible sign of congressional intent, leading Democratic senators on Tuesday proposed legislation that would keep existing interest rates on some student loans for the neediest households fixed at 3.4 percent, rather than allowing them to revert back to their original 6.8 percent rate.
The legislation, dubbed the “Student Loan Affordability Act” and proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), aims to help a small subset of future student borrowers who take out loans over the next two years. The bill does nothing for existing student debtors.
“Today’s figures from the CBO underscore the urgent need for Congress to prevent the July 1 interest rate hike and address the crushing debt placed on students,” said Tiffany Edwards, spokeswoman for Democrats on the House Education and Workforce Committee.
Rohit Chopra, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau official overseeing the regulator’s student debt efforts, has warned policymakers to not focus solely on future borrowers.
“The whole student loan problem is a problem that should be of deep concern to this body,” said Richard Cordray, CFPB director, during testimony last month before the Senate Banking Committee. “These are young people that we should care a great deal about.”
“They’re the ones with the ambition, aspirations and dreams, and they’re getting saddled with debt that they don’t understand,” Cordray said of student borrowers. “It’s holding them back and it’s making them unable to rise and succeed and become leaders in our society.”
He added: “It’s a significant problem and we’re going to be doing everything that we can to address it at the bureau.”
The CFPB has been focusing on helping existing borrowers refinance high-rate debt or modify the terms of their loans. In a report earlier this month, the CFPB lamented that borrowers are unable to refinance their obligations after they have graduated from college and secured well-paying jobs.
“Corporate entities, homeowners, and many others have been able to refinance debt at quite low rates, and student loan borrowers are wondering why they can’t do the same,” Chopra said.
The CFPB suggests that increased concentration in the student loan market may inhibit refinancings and debt workouts. Lenders and the Education Department profit when borrowers pay higher rates than they otherwise would in a normally-functioning market.
Unlike traditional lenders, though, the Education Department’s profits are barely dented by loan defaults. For loans made in 2013 that eventually default, the department estimates it will recover between 76 cents and 82 cents on the dollar. Bankruptcy rarely discharges student debt.
The Education Department’s collection efforts are aided by loan default specialists, including NCO Group Inc., a company owned by JPMorgan.
Who really needs to learn? Can you pay the price for it?
(via havocados)
Invitation to a Christian anti-Communism youth rally in 1963 (For a related post, click here http://christiannightmares.tumblr.com/post/30809187130/communism-hypnotism-and-the-beatles-by-reverend)
You guys, this party is gonna be great! /s