Sideswiped: Breadwinners and losers
Baltimore bridge conspiracy, National’s Nepo-buddies, Double Grammar zone, headlines that will elicit a guffaw and every presidential campaign ad, ever.
The gross 45 cent an hour minimum wage increase was less than promised and arguabley less than what is needed to help anyone.
In response to criticism David Seymour gaslights the public by rationalising that minimum wage earners “are not the breadwinner' — the adult in the family who earns the largest portion of household income. Maybe not in Epsom, mate.
He’s talking through a hole in his head, because 49% of minimum wage workers are 25-64, according to Treasury.
It’s a weird flex, isn’t it? Being a ‘provider’ undoubtedly has big male energy, historically.
In 1972, 49% of husbands were the sole breadwinner in the US heterosexual land, by 2022, that share had dropped to 23%. Not far behind is the bread winner wife at 16%.
But it’s not so much a gender issue than an economic one. The idea of a sole breadwinner, male or female is bogus, because most households require a double income just to get by. Certainly, to buy a first home. And food.
Stranger Things on 1News
Ship Conspiracy
The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore - after a container ship lost power and collided with the structure -- went globally viral because and what happened was all caught on camera.
This was excellent conspiracy fuel.
Misogynist influencer and sex trafficker Andrew Tate kicked thing off claiming the vessel was “cyber-attacked” by “foreign agents of the USA,” and the incels lapped it up, despite the White House and FBI say nah, not info suggests “nefarious intent". Some other dickhead influencer with too many followers suggested the Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke movie Leave the World Behind, which opened with an oil tanker running aground on the coast of Long Island amid a nationwide power failure, somehow foreshadowed this real life event. Oh, and because the Obama’s were producers on the movie. There was also mindless chat about Ukrainian boat pilot with a vendetta against the United States, that explosive charges were affixed to the bridge.
Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick in the The Trend Report™ describes this phenomenon as “petting of the soft brain”, which is our inability to process massive ideas.
“Things that don’t make sense or that “go against” your preconceived notions, largely about power. The ship’s crashing and the bridge’s collapse is an awful tragedy but connecting it to open borders and rampant capitalism is both lazy and myopic: the reality is the ship is fucking huge, which meant a little malfunction rippled into catastrophe.”
Shipping vessels have grown from a capacity of 3,000 to 20,000 containers over the years, according to Business Insider. The Dali container ship The Dali has a capacity of 10,000, so the real question here is, why so big?
While ships are one of the greener forms of shipping, and the demand is booming, the industry relies heavily on low-cost labour sourced directly from developing countries. And since their floating workplaces are in international waters, there’s no authority to enforce workers’ rights and safety.
A chaplain with the Mission to Seafarers, a charity for merchant sailors, told CNN “every day, I meet a seafarer who has a child he has never met.” Humans may try their best to make the ocean safer, but it is still the wildest place on the planet. Around 2,000 seafarers still die every year.
So, our hungry consumer hearts are driving all this.
“It’s harder to say, “I’m going to stop shopping to not support precarious industries.” than it is to say “Capitalism or the Obamas are to blame!” because it offers a smooth-brained answer that allows you to escape culpability — or the reality of what’s happening.”
National’s Nepo-buddies
1News reporter Benedict Collins unearthed some eye-watering pay rates for the National Party politicians mates who were appointed to senior public roles. Spending on your mates while slashing other jobs in the public sector is never a good look.
Erica Stanford lured her old boss Murray McCully to review school buildings for the MOE. Incentivising the deal with a $2200 a day pay rate.
Chris Bishop shoulder tapped former Prime Minister Bill English is conducting a review into Kainga Ora, for the same money as McCully.
And The Bish also reached around to former Finance Minister Steven Joyce for help with the new infrastructure agency. But he managed to gouge a $4K a day deal.
When you add Simeon Brown’s appointing former National Party leader Simon Bridges to the throne at Waka Kotahi and then Minister Paul Goldsmith hand-picking Roger Sowry to sorting KiwiRail’s Ferry clusterfuck, even the blind see a pattern.
A whitewash. And a sausage party.
And no doubt McCully and English will be pissed Steven Joyce is being paid considerably more.
Things our government could spend $4K a day on instead of Steven Joyce? Um… 590 school lunches ($6.77 average), Continuous glucose monitors (heapsof) and more important journalism, like Nicholas Jones keeping his foot on the neck of Pharmac and Shane Reti for lack of funded medications for multiple myeloma patients.
But I guess these exorbitant daily rates will be channelled into growing our economy by lining the pockets of the politically connected, who could very well buy an investment property and maybe, provide a low paid job for and put a roof over the head of a struggling kiwi-battler family.
Link Love
Read: Harvard University removes human skin binding from book.”You can't even bind cursed tomes in human flesh anymore, because of woke,” tweets Christopher Ingraham.
Video: News gabbers in 1994 discussing the strange new internet thingie called email.
Niche media: Is there anything more Auckland than a Double Grammar zone story? (Maybe, one about a Easter Holiday traffic armegeddon, a ram raid..) But wow, this is no-once over-lightly yarn. Some intensive hours of data journalism and talent sourcing have gone into this premium tome. The digging reveals “it’s almost $60,000 cheaper in some cases to buy a home in a suburb such as Papatoetoe and pay for a private school”. Good news.
Number crunching aside, this is a relatable conundrum for many parents.
“Remuera resident Nigel Fisher said he pays about $26,000 per year for his 12-year-old son’s education at Saint Kentigern College in Pakuranga. He also pays about $6000 each for his daughters, aged 16 and 17, to attend Baradene College of the Sacred Heart in Remuera.”
one minute I was polevaulting, next...
Why does it matter that the apparent grifters are all white men?
I don't want money that has been taken from me through the threat of force to be used to line the pockets of anyone, whether it's Tipa Mahuta or Bill English.
As for the minimum wage, I suspect it will see a larger increase in the future, roughly equalling inflation in the long run. It's only a concern now due to Adrian Orr's horrific monetary policy during 2020 and 2021.