feddit.org

-3 points

2 days ago

Yeah we all hate Elon Musk, but government employees who work during a shutdown are reimbursed for full pay when the shutdown is over. Threads like this make me wonder how much of lemmy is high school sophomores. We don’t know how long this latest shutdown will last, but they’re getting to be almost a routine political tactic now instead of Congress doing its fucking job and taking care of its bookkeeping. This really isn’t a billionaire thing.

houstoneulers@lemmy.world

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6 points

2 days ago

They have bills that don’t wait for shutdowns to end.

This is absolutely a billionaire thing b/c it demonstrates that billionaires have no concern for the people they affect since they have the luxury of cash coffers that most Americans don’t have.

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0 points

2 days ago

Look I’m not objecting to being angry at billionaires, but TBH there are millions and millions of people who don’t live paycheck to paycheck and aren’t inconvenienced by a delay in getting paid. You don’t have to be anywhere near a billionaire to be in that category. If you want me to be the enemy for not jumping up and down cheering for this post, fine - or get a sense of perspective.

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JasonDJ@lemmy.zip

2 points

2 days ago

I’m not sure if you realize this, but “millions and millions” is still “single digit millions”. The talking heads say things like “millions and millions” because it sounds like a lot, but that’s actually a minority.

That still leaves hundreds of millions of Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck. In fact, they’re living at least 4 paychecks out on revolving debt.

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1 point

2 days ago

Nearly half of Americans “at least somewhat agree” that they’re living paycheck to paycheck (source) - which means MORE than half are not. Clearly not “single digit millions” and clearly not a minority.

Anyway, what I said was that you don’t have to be anywhere near a billionaire. So please don’t conjure numbers out of thin air to counter this simple fact.

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JasonDJ@lemmy.zip

1 point

2 days ago

Please be a more conscientious consumer of media.

The source in that article is a an analysis of Bank of America’s internal data. It is not “half of all Americans”, it is “half of Bank of America customers”. Which already qualifies the dataset as people who have a bank account (and at that, one as expensive and hostile to low-income customers as BoA)

If it were more than single digit millions, it would be “tens of millions”. And even once you get to “over a hundred million”, you’re still talking of less than a third of Americans.

“Millions and millions of Americans” is something that spin doctors say to make you think that it’s a majority of Americans. It’s very far from it. “Millions and millions of people” may even be less than a majority of Minnesotians

Edit to add: This federal reserve study showed that 6% of American adults are completely unbanked (as in, no bank accounts at all) and 16% are underbanked (having a checking or saving account, but no other banking products or use alternative products like payday advance or money orders).

Further in the study it shows over half of Americans have carried a balance on a credit card in the past 12 months.

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9 points

2 days ago

Doesn’t help that much if you live paycheck to paycheck.

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-4 points

2 days ago

Valid point of discussion, but that’s a much deeper level of thinking than 90% of the comments here.

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