Computer decided to stop working a couple weeks back and only managed to get it back online today. Also happen to be going through another one of those major life upendings.
Both Mythomatic and Garage.Ganzeer taken offline in the meantime. Newsletter likely to commence before they do.
Here's a link to the web edition of the latest RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 219: The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us.
In other news, one of my bookshelves made the Shelfies newsletter. Really delightful initiative by authors Jared Shurin and Lavie Tidhar.
A new RESTRICTED FREQUENCY is scheduled. Titled The Great Shi(f)t is Upon Us, it goes out in about 15 hours.
Here's the link to the previous RESTRICTED FREQUENCY – 218: Between Venice, Rome, and Cairo
If ever there was a technological component to the solution, it wouldn't be useful without a complete revolt against the present sociopolitical economy.
Surprising absolutely no one, 17 of those 26 are American.
That is not to say there is no poverty in America; about 12% of Americans live below the poverty line and a whopping 49% have less than $500 in savings.
All quotes above are from Kohei Saito's brilliant SLOW DOWN: The Degrowth Manifesto.
Happy new year.
The same thing should've ideally happened in the wake of America's 2008 financial crisis (otherwise referred to as the Great Recession), but that's not quite how things worked out despite the ballot box tipping in favor of the socialist-seeming candidate of African American heritage.
“It would take the redistribution of a mere 0.2 percent of the world's wealth to end the hardship of the 1.4 billion people currently living beneath the world's poverty line of US $1.25 a day.”
More from Kohei Saito's SLOW DOWN.
“Economic equality if realized via the redistribution of subsidies currently spent on the fossil fuel industry ($5.9 trillion or 6.8 percent of the GDP of 2020), would produce no additional environmental burden. In fact, it would likely improve the environment!”
$5.9 trillion redistributed to 1.4 billion people would come out to about $11.5 a day per person, not a whole lot, but still 9 times more than what you've got if you're living on $1.25 a day.
One thing to keep in mind, the necessity of wealth redistribution does not only apply to the Global South vis-a-vis the Global North, but also applies within the populations of some nations of the Global North.
“The per capita GDP of most northern European nations like France and Germany is lower than that of the United States. But their standards of social welfare are much higher, and many of these nations provide healthcare and higher education free to their citizens. In the US, by contrast, some people lack health insurance and therefore have difficulties accessing healthcare, and many people struggle with student loans they will never be able to pay back Japan's GDP is also much lower than America's, but the average Japanese lifespan is almost six years longer.
“In other words, the extent to which societies thrive changes greatly depending on how production and distribution are organized and how social resources are shared. No matter how much an economy might grow, if the resulting wealth is monopolized by one part of the population and never redistributed, large numbers of people will live in comparative misery, unable to realize their potential.
“This can be seen the other way as well: even if its economy doesn't grow, if existing resources are distributed well, a society may thrive more than ever.”
SLOW DOWN: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito