At last the caravan is back on the road, at last the reptiles have got their act together and are chanting in unison …
Of course it would have to gather steam. Where would the world be without dinkum Oz clean coal fired machinery? Whatever happened, where did we go wrong, how did we lose steam engines and steam ships?
See how the reptiles steam and fume …at the top of the digital page and in the opinion section, hurling down thunderbolts and delivering stern curses, whirling in unison like a murmuration of starlings ...
How far could a reptile go? The bouffant one was on hand to help …
Say what? Follow in the path of the Donald?
Was it only yesterday that the reptiles were trying to compete with the New Yorker by borrowing a bland story from the WSJ?
Follow the path of Donald Trump?
Speaking of MAGA cap wearing Trump lovers, Dame Slap was also out and about …
The pond often wonders: if Dame Groan gets 357k a year to berate immigrants, deny climate science, and scribble furiously in favour of all right and proper reptile topics, how much does Dame Slap get to blather on about faux compassion?
The pond prepared itself for another dose of 'harden the fuck up, because I'm alright Jack and Jill, thanks to the Chairman, his son and assorted minions,' but consoled itself that it could pause along the way for a few cartoons …
Ah, the pond thought it wouldn't be long before AOC got trotted out. AOC is the new bête noire for Fox and Friends, GOPsters, the hard right, white nationalists and the rest of the bunch of Murdochian fellow travellers that litter the US and the lizard Oz …
Why today the reptiles even had to borrow from the Economist for further demonisation procedures …
Sheesh, even old socialists rejected Tony Bleagh's third war-mongering way ...
Why not a cartoon before proceeding with more Dame Slap?
The funny thing is that the MAGA cap-wearing Dame Slap doesn't seem to realise that she, and other Trumpians, have aided, abetted and nobly assisted in the rise of politicians of the AOC stripe. When you veer off into the barking mad, howling at the moon world of snake oil salesmen and grifters, you're going to produce something of an equal and opposite action …
But that would require some self-insight and self-analysis, and when you're on a lavish Dame Groan style stipend, who would expect that of Dame Slap?
You see how easy it would be to re-write Dame Slap:
"Don't count on it. The ageing, wig-wearing Donald, who describes himself as versed in the Art of the Deal and who describes his wall as his 'moonshot', has fast built a profile by making generic and frankly ridiculous promises about how to legislate to make America great again."
And what do you know, mug punters like Dame Slap bought the snake oil … but then you can afford a lot of snake oil if you're on a generous Murdochian stipend …
Why you might not even need a dog, you might just get a Dame Slap or a Lindsey Graham as a companion pet …
Come again?
"Not. So. Fast. The results of this terrible two-year experiment have fallen horribly flat."
Why in the United States a lot of people have to work two jobs simply to achieve the most basic level of survival …and the lot of seasonal workers, those at the bottom of the gig economy, and assorted other wretches is hard, as businesses socialise basic necessities while making out like bandits by not having to pay for the food stamps ...but don't let any of that worry you, it certainly doesn't worry Dame Slap …
Human dignity comes from earned success?
But doesn't Presidential dignity come from bankrupting casinos and assorted other businesses, not paying contractors and being a braggart and a bully? Oh and inheriting a decent swag from the old man, and talking of a swamp, while being a fetid creature from the swamp ...
Never mind, we're at the end, with Dame Slap determined to explain how working for Amazon for a pitiful amount of money, eventually raised to US$15, is a noble thing …
Last week, Gizmodo also published excerpts from an internal video for Whole Foods managers that appears designed to train them to spot and squash labor organizing efforts. (It has previously been reported that employees of the Amazon-owned luxury grocery chain were planning to unionise.) (Wired here in 2018).
The other side to dick pics … but it's time for a last pee in the water bottle from Dame Slap …
To be sure, Dame Slap gets a lot of money to pee in her water bottle, but sometimes the pond hungers to see her spend three months as a seasonal worker in an Amazon warehouse, and then see how she emerges to blather about the nobility of being screwed by a Bezos …instead of blathering about faux compassion and harden the fuck up, from the lofty heights of an "I'm alright, Jack or Jill, go work in a coal mine and cop black lung, and enjoy your human dignity, while I just keep on pounding away at the keyboard with a righteous air of giving a flying fuck about your fate" ….
And so to a few final cartoons …
Maybe Dame Slap needs someone like the Oreo to help her interpret the Finnish report. The smartest woman on the planet (TM) has more experience with reading scientific papers, and could surely steer her around the substantial logic pothole she seems to have stuck a wheel into.
ReplyDelete"Those who received free money were no better or worse off that the control group in finding a job. In other words, giving people money for free didn't provide them with any incentive to look for a job. Why would it?"
No better or worse off. And there you have it - UBI is not intended to encourage people to find work. It is intended to give people enough security to choose whether to work for pay, or work unpaid (for some social benefit, such as volunteering), or not work at all (study, retire, go "discover themselves", whatever). The noteworthy finding here is not that it did not provide an incentive, but that it did not provide a disincentive. People who were being "given money for free" still went out and found work at the same rate as people who were compelled (like Oz, Finland has some "mutual obligation" requirements) to do so.
I agree that the low response rate, short timespan etc impose some limitations on how much can be drawn from the experiment so far. But that also applies to Dame Slap's negatives.
So a trial which found, tentatively, that people were happier and healthier and not "disincentivised" from finding work "fell flat"? Maybe the problem is really that reptiles are unable to recognise the difference between success and failure? That would explain a lot...
Quite so, FD, our Dame Slap is just a wee bit off-planet when it comes to logical reasoning.
DeleteApart from which, I thought that, regardless of what tribes of American "social darwinists" believe and/or do, in Australia we actually provide "free money" to quite a few categories of people who are "unwilling to work". For instance, what about young single parents looking after very young babies - mostly mothers I guess, but not exclusively. They could work to earn their capitalistic "self respect" but some number would prefer not to (even ignoring what it would cost by way of childcare if they didn't happen to have obliging and resident parents who will do daily childcare duty).
And I thought we had various categories of injured, damaged or genetically malformed people who also were "unwilling to work" but receive pensions anyway.
But surely, the biggest class of people who are "unwilling to work" are us age pensioners. I'm 75, but still reasonably sound and kinda fit, I could work - if I could find anybody willing to employ me. But I'm "unwilling to work" and so I get a moderately generous pension. Now then, isn't that "free money" ?
More than any other reptile, Dame Slap saves up special venom for compassion, or as she calls it "faux compassion". (Shouldn't that be fausse compassion?) That is probably because she has never felt it, and thinks everyone else must be faking it. That could apply in other fields too.
ReplyDeleteNot true, NH Dame Slap has a great deal of "compassion authentique" for Dame Slap. Stuff all for anybody and everybody else, of course, but that's just because she is a dedicated agent of "survival of the fittest" as religiously practiced by all Murdochrats.
Delete"Survival of the most privileged" really. The thing about privilege is that those that benefit most don't recognise that they have any advantage. They think that everything has come as a result of their own effort and those who haven't done so well are victims of their own laziness.
ReplyDeleteIt's a very "serviceable" approach that avoids disrupting the gravy train. The subtext is that the unworthy poor have to take whatever the D Slaps of this world care to send their way.
Anyway, what are the reptiles but faux journalists peddling faux facts and faux ethics? No wonder they are unable to understand any motivation other than a narrow self-interest or those of the Master, of course.
Well quite, Bef, but clearly the most privileged are the fittest. If they weren't, their God wouldn't have made this best of all possible worlds for them to enjoy the delicious fruits thereof.
DeleteAh, the prosperity gospel, how current/
DeleteAnd passionately revered by our Pentecostal, PM, Bef.
Delete