Sean, Pear Enthusiast ⚓

"8uez Ganal" yes I see

I do this quite often but the treat is usually a beer.

Just because the media cycle has forgotten about climate change doesn’t mean it’s not happening. We need to take urgent action to save the future of humanity.

Welcome comrade

If this were Biden, that pump would be plastered in “I did that” stickers. But Trump really is the reason for gas prices spiking!

Illustration depicting a giant riding a giant bicycle through a bunch of people on a city street.

"The Unrestrained Demon of the Wheel"

Judge magazine, 1893
🎨Grant E. Hamilton

Not so much on the left. Tbh aside from him I can't really think of anyone who made their campaign on blue collar aesthetics recently (on the left).

For my adult life at least this has largely been Republican territory

No no I think he's firmly what the general interpretation of working class is, certainly, but I also think this is why we seem to end up with "why do these champions of the working class we keep electing immediately fuck over actual working people" basically as a rule. In a broader context

The image and mythology is often weaponized by capital though. Think of how many landscapers (owners of large and exploitive landscaping companies) and carpenters (owners of large and exploitive construction firms) throw their capital around in stained jeans and dirty T-shirts to incredible effect

I know this is not maybe the strictest interpretation but I agree that there's a line somewhere and I feel as far as loyalties and relationship to capital goes there are folks on the small end of those types of trades which I think are among the working class.

If they have a crew who they set wages for, taking a cut along the way: that passes fully to capital class. If they're negotiating prices directly with buyers and setting their own workload, we're out of working class territory again.

If you're a solo quahogger in RI you're selling 100% of your product to a very large shellfish broker who's setting the price, timeline, and as a result more-or-less dictating hours worked as well. I'm willing to entertain that they are essentially working for the broker in that scenario.

On the very small end: one man quahogging boats, small plot farmers(owners): the relationship with their buyers I think changes things significantly, for me. Many of them are completely beholden to their distributors who have a defacto monopoly on the products of their labor

Much to consider. But this is exactly my point that collar color and class are often conflated but not equivalent

Fishing boats owned by their crew (more or less a co-op) and even owner-operator truckers (the truck is a depreciating asset/tool not an investment, and they are beholden to shopping companies) are tricky for me. The nature is more like an independent craftsman and their tools than an investment...

The only way for me to make more money is to get another job, or petition my boss for overtime (out of the goodness of their heart) so no matter how white my collar is I'm firmly working class.

A question I like to ask is: if your rent went up, or your insurance went way up, and -you- could decide to increase your salary. Then you are not working class. Not if it's feasible, plenty of business owners hemorrhage money, but if it's possible.

If your money comes from wages you're working class, if it comes from investments that's capital. So any configuration of individual business ownership is capital class. You made an investment to start the business, your income even if you do hand labor is return on that investment.

But given that it seems the bulk of his income is sales to his mother's restaurants, though he is not the sole supplier, I'd ask what would look any different if he was just doing this as a hobby and getting an allowance from his mom?

He owns the business though. He does not have his hours set by others, he does not exchange his labor for a wage, he cannot be fired. He determines how much of his profit he takes, he sees gains directly from business investments. That's not working class even if we ignore that he sells to his mom

Its quite antithetical to class I think

These takes are fascinating. They project a sense of wonder, as if nothing was knowable. Like, yes it's true some private schools enroll public school students. Was that the case for Planter? We can check! It's not a mystery!

Very zen of you. All points are Mu

I had a student once who, when they needed to write a new assignment, would open the last one they submitted, delete everything, and then type the new assignment. The formatting implications alone were preposterous

Putting busways on existing streets are among most cost effective projects. 20% speed improvement = 20% ops savings or 20% frequency improvement at no ops cost. They're like printing cash

Depends how boradly you want to interpret the extent of each entity (do we include all the hospitals, which are "Brown" now too?)

IIRC even under the current arrangement Brown only pays the equivalent of about 20% of their assessed tax obligations. Given how much real estate they own what a deal!

FWIW, Brown's tax liability was assessed at $49.3 million; they pay 26.37% of that.

This is about 50% more than Brown's payments to the city, taken in the broadest and most charitable (to Brown) context.

I'd we'd elected a strong willed businessman like Brett Smiley in Providence instead of whichever do-nothing we ended up with we might have an arrangement like this with Brown