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Lefty Memes
An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of the "ML" influence of instances like lemmy.ml and lemmygrad. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.
Serious posts, news, and discussion go in c/Socialism.
If you are new to socialism, you can ask questions and find resources over on c/Socialism101.
Please don't forget to help keep this community clean by reporting rule violations, updooting good contributions and downdooting those of low-quality!
Rules
0. Only post socialist memes
That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme)
1. Socialist Unity in the form of mutual respect and good faith interactions is enforced here
Try to keep an open mind, other schools of thought may offer points of view and analyses you haven't considered yet. Also: This is not a place for the Idealism vs. Materialism or rather Anarchism vs. Marxism debate(s), for that please visit c/AnarchismVsMarxism.
2. Anti-Imperialism means recognizing capitalist states like Russia and China as such,
as well as condemning (their) imperialism, even if it is of the "anti-USA" flavor.
3. No liberalism, (right-wing) revisionism or reactionaries.
That includes so called: Social Democracy, Democratic Socialism, Dengism, Market Socialism, Patriotic Socialism, National Bolshevism, Anarcho-Capitalism etc. . Anti-Socialist people and content have no place here, as well as the variety of "Marxist"-"Leninists" seen on lemmygrad and more specifically GenZedong (actual ML's are welcome as long as they agree to the rules and don't just copy paste/larp about stuff from a hundred years ago).
4. No Bigotry.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
5. Don't demonize previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.
(if you are reading the rules to apply for modding this community, mention "Mantic Minotaur" when answering question 2)
6. Don't idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.
Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.
7. Absolutely no posts or comments meant to relativize(/apologize for), advocate, promote or defend:
- Racism
- Sexism
- Queerphobia
- Ableism
- Classism
- Rape or assault
- Genocide/ethnic cleansing or (mass) deportations
- Fascism
- (National) chauvinism
- Orientalism
- Colonialism or Imperialism (and their neo- counterparts)
- Zionism
- Religious fundamentalism of any kind
(This is not a definitive list, the spirit of the other rules still counts! Eventual duplicates with other rules are for emphasis.)
Work smart, not hard.
You have to understand that the housing crisis, in Aus at least is no longer just affecting the most disadvantaged. It's also affecting middle-aged folks with with defence intelligence backgrounds, as an example.
Besides, I'm talking about civili disobedience that inconveniences them and reminds them that they share our streets and our infrastructure. And they rely on an army of union workers to keep it all going.
I'm not talking about rolling out guillotines yet.
(A lot of what I say should be taken in context, I am Australian, not American).
Im Australian as well and did a bit of number crunching the other day. I live in suburban sprawl 40 minutes from the middle of Brisbane and 40 minutes from the middle of the gold coast. Much worse if there's traffic. No particular natural beauty to speak of. It's an upper blue collar suburb, lots of qualified tradies, wives have a part time gig while the kids are at school.
The median house price is 750k. There is very little variance. All houses are pretty much the same. Right now the cheapest is $650k with 10 houses under 750k (maybe 100 houses on the market right now)
There are 3141 households in the suburb The weekly repayments on 750k is just over $1000/week on a 30 year loan
Of those households, only 2200 households earn enough money to pay the mortgage. That's not earn enough and live, literally earn enough just to pay it and then you cant eat, no electricity, rates etc.
https://profile.id.com.au/gold-coast/household-income?WebID=410
So that leaves 70% who can even just exist.
Affordable housing is considered as being 30% of your income, (https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/brief/understanding-3040-indicator-housing-affordability-stress) that's supposed to cover rates and maintenance too, but let's just see who can afford to pay the mortgage:
270 homes. That's only 8.5%. 8.5% of homes in my suburb can afford to pay the MEDIAN mortgage and live without housing stress.
In that link above it considers that the bottom 40% of houses should not be paying more than 30% of their income. This suburb is great for that because I would suggest it's pretty low-average as far as income goes. It's the definition of what should be affordable housing.
That means we need to see the median house fall to 30% of the $1250-$1499 income bracket. IE repayments at $450/week - or a median house price of $315,000
Basically prices need to halve, or incomes need to double.
It doesn't make any sense how the economy hasn't collapsed yet. I would love someone to explain to me how it all adds up, because when I try to discuss it people just shrug and say "They are worth that much and it's not coming down" like how is anyone affording it?
Yeah thanks for taking the time to post this. So Americans and others can get an idea of just how bad it can get.
I know why it hasn't collapsed yet, it's because folks like me are hanging on. My wife and I moved to a rural location that will never be expensive to rent in. And vetted landlords as best we could.
So many folks are trying to adapt and kicking the can. But there's only so much we can stretch. People are already moving back in with their parents, building granny flats out back and so on.
I was making 90k, but with no generational wealth to back me, I was making just enough to pay rent in a major city, pay my bills and feed myself. Working 13hr days for the priveledge.
Changing careers and joining a union right now.