Certain words can change your brain forever and ever so you do have to be very careful about it.

shoutout to everyone dealing with. thhe fucking difficulty

the fact that all of my mutuals immediately reblogged this from me really says something about all of us, doesn't it

I've mentioned this thing in tags before but I've decided fuck it, it should be its own post.

I've seen this sentiment lumped into Eat the Rich posts which goes like "if you're worth more than $1 million I think you should die" and I think tumblr users need to know this is not the Eat the Rich statement they think it is.

Someone being worth $1 million doesn't mean what you think it means.

A 71-year-old widow who bought a single-family 2,000 sqft home in Somerville Massachusetts with her husband 40 years ago to raise their family in, who now lives in this home all alone because her children are grown and her husband is dead, is--without a shadow of a doubt--worth more than $1 million. Maybe even $1.5 or $2 million. And it's because of her home equity, because that's what single family homes go for these days in that area.

The 71-year-old widow may be living pension check to pension check, because her millionaire status can only be dipped into if she's removed from her home and sells it. And if it's the home she's loved for 40 years, where she simply wants to live out the rest of her time peacefully in, I wouldn't put her to the guillotine for that.

Maybe that comes off as an extreme example, like that's just an outlier of the "we hate millionaires" agenda. But I don't think it truly is. I'll scale back and tell you the median U.S. home price right now is about $430,000. And that's just median. Half of them are more expensive than that.

The statement "I think people should be able to afford to buy and own the homes they live in" is, I would desperately hope, not a radical statement to anyone on Tumblr. I think that's a pretty well-received idea. So someone who's done that, who's bought their home and worked many years to pay off the mortgage and now owns it fully, is worth close to half a million dollars on average. Many of them more than that, as many areas rapidly gentrify and drive up housing worth.

Statement 2: "I think people deserve to have a retirement fund which would comfortably support them through end of life." Too radical for anyone? I hope not. And I won't pretend to be an expert on how much retirement money is ideal. I'm sure it varies with cost of living in places. But considering this is money which, ideally, should support someone for the remaining 10-20 years of life (money which may be necessary to cover the absolutely crippling medical costs of end-of-life treatment) I'd bet it's well into the many hundreds of thousands. Even if someone was simply living off $30k/year of take home money and just making that work, then 15 years of retirement, costing $30k/year, plus maybe $50k+ of end-of-life medical costs... That's at least $500k.

Which is all to say, if you show me someone approaching retirement age who's "worth" $1 million dollars, my hope would be that their house is paid off and their retirement fund is comfortable. I'd be happy for them. I would want this for them.

Even that may not be true, though. Someone "worth" $1 million maybe owns a paid-off house which has rapidly appreciated to being worth $900k, and their $100k in retirement is something they're trying to stretch through end of life. Maybe someone worth $1 million owns a house which has ballooned to $1.1 million, and they're in fact $100k in debt.

And the fact that SO many Americans will never even meet this bar is significantly more appalling to me than the existence of people worth more than $1 million. "I own my home and can retire comfortably" is a bar we want every American to meet. I want more millionaires who are millionaires because they meet these criteria.

If Nana Somerville's house burns down tomorrow, she'll have lost everything. If a billionaire were to similarly lose $1 million of worth, he would not feel it. That's a fickle day at the stock market. That's Tuesday. That's the rich which desperately needs to be eaten.

It isn’t really my wheelhouse to decide who gets eaten but if you retire with $1million in my origin state, you’d better hope to be eaten quickly! Because if you live too long, you’ll die in poverty in a government home.

“But Dean’s intelligence was every bit as formal and shining and complete, without the tedious intellectualness. And his “criminality” was not something that sulked and sneered; it was a wild yea-saying overburst of American joy; it was Western, the west wind, an ode from the Plains, something new, long prophesied, long a-coming. Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love.” - Jack Kerouac, On The Road

For such an American show, Supernatural sure is a better show when it's watched in literally any other language other than English

bill shakespeare in like 1606 writing The Famous Tragedie Or Whatever Of Scottish King MacBitch: tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day

people living through the 2020 pandemic: 

Are we sure Shakespeare didn’t write that line when he was stuck indoors, on his seventh cup of mead, during an outbreak of the plague or something

Want to take my new uquiz: Which imaginary illness do you have? Guaranteed to reaveal at least one burried complex.

Here u go.

considering I’ve lived in six different countries over the last five years, DAMN is this accurate

This is some truth laid down right here boy.

Millennials have essentially been forced into a perpetual teenagerhood by socioeconomic circumstance, we desperately want to grow up, and we’re worried that we’re running out of time to do so

My dad raised 5 kids on a high school education. Most of my generation are having trouble supporting themself off a college education.

I wanna be that CEO that pays their employees 70K a year like that white guy I be seeing all over the Internet. I can’t remember his name.

I’m not gonna be like Jeff Bezos but I do wanna be a multimillionaire 😂😂😂

He took a pay cut. I’m not doing all of that. Ima just pay my people well and give top notch benefits.

It gets better.

We are definitely going to talk about this guy on Buisness Desserts

Employees are not costs to be reduced, they are investments, they are assets that appreciate in value

Absolutely

For the person commenting on not taking a pay cut, he HAD to change his lifestyle to be able to afford to pay his employees a living wage. He talked to accountants and they helped him break the numbers down based on data about the cost of living and various factors about the commute, housing issues, etc. All inspired by his best friend going nearly into debt over medical costs meanwhile he had several houses, a jet, and drank champagne daily.

He sold stock, houses, and changed his spending and as a result, his employees were overall happier and the way they worked improved. They all bought more shit and had more kids and did all the consumption people want for us while also enjoying their work and their boss enough to band together and buy him a fucking Tesla as a thank you.

And you know what he realized after taking his pay cut? He didn’t need the champagne or the girls or the “lifestyle” of being a billionaire. He feels fulfilled in his work and with the people he’s surrounded himself with and he feels that he’s made a step in the right direction that other businessmen and billionaires should follow.

Please read the article and his statements on twitter because it’s eye-opening to see that you CAN be successful doing things ethically. 

Update: during the pandemic, Dan Price cut his salary to $0 so that he could keep paying his employees.

What a lovely man

And to be clear.

He was only ever a fraction of a Bezos.

He did this with far less to his name. Bezos could too just as easily. He’s just a bad person, unlike Price.

the sexual tension between everyone and nevada right now

ROARING 20s AGAIN Y’ALL KNOW WHAT THT MEANS

got damn. this hits different 7 months into the 20′s

The Evening Star, Washington DC, October 16, 1918