#FollowTheMoney 🧵 5/n Adding here a piece a group of us co-wrote at an #anthropology
workshop, on “Understanding Growth”. This was experimental - co-writing on the spot! -, but i do come back to it: we distinguish between“Growth rooted in life” from “growth rooted in numbers”. Capitalism is pure number thinking.

Obviously there are many real experts on all this (Marx, Pikkety for a start), this piece is left field! But just thought of it again in this context.

https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2023/10/26/anthropology-and-degrowth-where-to-next/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 6/n This is important: in contrast to most other Central Banks, which simply sit out losses, the Bank of England has an indemnity arrangement requiring the Treasury to cover its losses. This has resulted in £38-£40 billion going in effect from taxpayers to private banks in 2023, and same this year. Adding a second hashtag: #SEEtheOligarchy

FT article only for subscribers, I know (i get it through work). Here screenshots of key passages.

https://on.ft.com/4bUtp80

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 7/n Now something different - this really is a rag bag, really just adding things as they come along, occur to me, no careful crafting! Just things that enable you to trace and understand how money flows to the rich, how accumulation works. So here, a piece, with this fantastic map, of second homes in the UK, in #Cornwall in particular. Key arena of widening #WealthGap #Inequality

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/06/were-on-a-cliff-edge-cornish-village-where-52-of-houses-are-not-first-homes?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#SEEtheOligarchy

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 8/n Adding here a (somewhat sweary, apologies) Politics Joe interview with Gary Stevenson (see 1/n), talking about the rapid increase in inequality in the UK and the world, and also about how we need to make people SEE THIS. They need to realise that the reason their lives are shit, that they can't get houses, is growing inequality. Because the system is set up to make money flow to the rich. Everyone needs to understand this. #SEETheOligarchy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVvoyRpxG-A

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 9/n So far the has been more about who the money flows towards, but now also some posts about who it flows away from. Again, random collection, no comprensive analysis - just snippets of what’s going on!

Yesterday I listened to this really heartbreaking and deeply worrying programme about the rapid rise in bankruptcies in the UK. Of course we see this all around us - all those closing restaurants, Debenhams etc. the #DeathOfTheHighStreet speeding up

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001x55h?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 11/n Another key area money flows away from are local councils and social services and, therefore, the young and, again, community. In Birmingham, whose council declared bankruptcy in 2023, provisions for children will be cut by £52m in 2024-25 and £63m in 2025-26; youth services by £2.3m; and eleven community centres are being sold off. As John Harris says:

The state is abandoning its people

#UKPolitics #Birmingham #Austerity

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/mar/17/birmingham-britain-state-cuts-austerity-local-services

#FollowTheMoney 🧵12/n Of course, things were never rosy for everyone. Nevertheless, key shared assumptions about the #commongood informed post war public spending and that is all eroding now.

“Continuing austerity does not just kill people’s services; it has long since warped most political debates about what we should expect from the state. In lots of places, squalor, mess and festering social problems are now seen as the norm. “
#TheCrumble

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 13/n and i have to mention UK universities too, since I am directly affected myself (see #AcademicVenting).

40% of UK universities are in debt, with major reduncancies right now (incl at Goldsmiths). All in arts, humanities and social sciences. All of this is crumbling, with too little money flowing into it. Another industry, another #CommonGood
being eroded. Check out this constantly updated tally. #TheCrumble

https://qmucu.org/qmul-transformation/uk-he-shrinking/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 14/n Just realised the title of this really excellent article by Sam Knight is actually perhaps the real theme of this 🧵:

What Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule have Done to Britain

As Sam says, #Austerity is not even talked about so much anymore, but it has just broken the #UK . Please do read the whole piece, so well written, so damning (and I’ve even managed to ignore an aside criticism of Corbyn - usually makes me hate any writer! 😊)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 15/n

“The average worker is now £14,000 worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis rates—it is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. “Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this. This is what failure looks like.” “

A Herefordshire case workers has developed a phrase to describe people needing help, “for her paperwork”:

“Overwhelming Distress”

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 16/n Back to who the money flows towards:

Nobody had a better year than Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whose net worth has increased by more than any other billionaire, up by nearly $113 billion over the past 12 months, to an estimated $177 billion #AI #Meta

https://www.forbes.com/sites/phoebeliu/2024/04/02/tech-billionaires-have-added-an-astonishing-750-billion-to-their-fortunes-over-the-past-year/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 17/n and here the whole Forbes Rich List for 2024. The planet has a record 2,781 billionaires now who are worth a record $14.2 trillion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2024/04/02/forbes-38th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2024/

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 18/n

Spotify too. Everywhere money is being sucked out (or who has the agency here really? More in next post) from artists to billionaires

https://mstdn.ca/@ned/112249803518261424

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 19/n

This is what I am thinking about now. Not at all the first to say this or even think it myself, but just to emphasise: better not to think of billionaires as evil scheming money grabbers - i mean, they are - but as vessels for money, capitalism itself. Like, sci-fi wise, human bodies that look like humans from the outside but have been taken over by an AI - money itself. And it’s ruling everything!

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112251122729288252

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 20/n

Now really is the time of monsters. #Gramsci

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 21/n Suddenly remembered that at the end of 2022 I posted this here. So embarrassing - cringe, as my children would say! That I actually wrote “the new world is almost born”. No it’s not. The time of monsters is in full, full swing, the new world really is not born yet. All we can do is to keep on trying to organise to make it happen one day. #Gramsci

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/109607575259368216

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 23/n. Sorry- one more! Just to end on a less bleak note: seeing this toot reminded me that, of course, that billionaire military might AI bleak dystopia is real,IS our world, but there is actually an even bigger reality here every day, in all of us, since forever. Which is that the vast majority of us humans basically just want a simple life, with family, friends, barbecues (ok maybe not perfect example but since it’s here). #FrugalAbundance

https://ohai.social/@archaeohistories/112251349725100974

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 24/n. Like, watching the blue tits busy building their nest in the box outside our kitchen window, feeding their young, flying back and forth: most of us humans are so much closer to them than to scheming billionaires.

And: this forever (i hope forever- in peril due to other!) reality - of birds, trees, parents hugging children, just enjoying being together - this is perhaps the real reality. Or at least always also there. Mustn’t forget!

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 25/n back to a reality most of us in the UK inhabit on a daily basis: the crumbling public sector. Found this report on NHS dentistry’s struggle for survival really very moving just now. #NHS #dentistry #UKpolitics

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001y0kf?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 26/n An outstanding review by Will Davies (my Goldsmiths colleague) of Brett Christopher’s “The Price is Wrong”: about our neoliberal political economy (using a Braudelian distinction btw “the market” and “capitalism” - SO useful) and how this explain why investments in fossil fuels continue to vastly outstrip those in renewables. Key point: Capitalism IS rent-seeking.
#ClimateEmergency

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n07/william-davies/antimarket

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 28/n But honestly, just read this piece - everything in this 🧵 in one brilliant analysis. And, crucially, using to explain lack of climate action. This is what everyone, each one of us, needs to think about! “Ecologically speaking, neoliberalism couldn’t have come at a worse time.”

Here Christopher’s book itself:
The Price is Wrong. Why Capitalism Won’t Save The Planet.

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 29/n Another overlap with #AcademicVenting 🧵- because it’s all of a piece! Because the crisis in HE is a key phenomenon in all this!

This great piece by Jessica Wildfire really needs to be read in full, but this extract most apt here:

“Universities aren't institutions of knowledge anymore. They're assets. They're revenue streams. If they're not generating money for the top, then they only pose a threat, and they have to be weakened and destroyed.”

https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/112359018143961300

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 30/n

Wow. As Bregman says: Stunning graph: the plummeting tax rates of the richest Americans. For the first time in history, billionaires have a lower effective tax rate than working-class Americans.

Look at 1980 - I do continue to think that *everything* could have been different if Carter hadn’t lost to Reagan.

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 31/n I think the graph came from this New York Times piece but don’t have a subscription so can’t check.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 32/n Watched “The Founder” on Netflix yesterday, about McDonalds. Really interesting- would recommend it. Particularly how the real breakthrough came when Kroc, advised by Sonneborn, went for real estate. Checked it on Wikipedia:

“McDonald's present-day real-estate holdings represent $37.7 billion on its balance sheet, about 99% of the company's assets and 35% of its annual gross revenue.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_McDonald%27s

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 33/n

Today an overlap with #ClimateDiary: British farmers are struggling due to climate change, Brexit AND supermarket power:

Most farmers receive less than 1% of the profit made from the food they grow. Of the 20% food inflation experienced by the public a minuscule proportion made its way back to the farmer. Tesco made a £2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear they’ll be out of business before the end of this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/08/british-farmer-food-climate-crisis-business?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#FollowTheMoney 🧵34/n #ClimateDiary

We had a veg box for 12 years from Hankham Organics; 3 weeks ago we suddenly had a note with our box that they were closing, as it wasn’t working financially any more. 😢😢😢

And a fish merchant who we got smoked salmon for Christmas from closed this year too, for the same reasons. Plus Goldsmiths’ woes of course (#AcademicVenting). So many good, small organisations struggling and ending.

#FollowTheMoney 35/n #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting

This is why:

https://mstdn.ca/@dbattistella/112408392604056154

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 36/n Here a positive, progressive use of money flows:

1400+ Columbia University alumni from its 20 schools have pledged to withhold all “financial, programmatic, and academic support” until school meets demands related to divestment, student discipline, and community safety.
Group website says over $63 million of donations at risk. #Gaza #studentprotests

#FollowTheMoney 🧵37/n

Even though all of us living in the UK know that homelessness is terrible (and has grown exponentially since 2010), it is still shocking to see this graph.

(There are notes on methods: all countries included both rough sleeping and invisible homelessness).

https://www.oecd.org/social/homelessness-country-notes.htm?utm_term=pac&utm_medium=social&utm_content=1-CorporatePriorityContent,2-Recovery%5BSupportingPublicandSocialPolicies%5D,3-ELS&utm_source=twitter

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 38/n

A rare silver lining to severe cuts in local council budgets: for the last few years Eastbourne have stopped spraying our streets and I love this time of year, flowers reclaiming the streets everywhere. #Rewilding #ClimateDiary

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 39/n

Have to add this here. The last 14 years summarised in 4 images #UKPolitics #GE2024

EDIT: here link itself too as images in screenshot i complete

https://x.com/ACORNunion/status/1793934201860792465

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 40/n haven’t added anything here in a while - but this needs to be posted!

Trump’s victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10

Share surge increases Elon Musk’s fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates also benefit

#USelections2024

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/nov/07/trump-victory-adds-record-wealth-richest-top-10?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 41/n Ok so the reason for the long pause in this 🧵 was being made rdundant in July, by my lovely (not) employer of 13 years, Goldsmiths University. You can read all about it in this long #AcademicVenting 🧵, tracing the whole sorry saga from first rumblings in Nov ‘23 to the bitter end. But of course, #redundancy is all about money, and I think about money all the time now (I have to), so really should write it about it all here a bit

https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/111563234050886278

#FollowTheMoney 🧵 43/n Now of course Elon Musk - having made 2/3 of Twitter staff redundant - has been hired by Trump to head the new “Efficiency Department”. i find this prospect alone deeply, deeply scary - both in terms of public services disappearing and the 1000s who will lose their jobs. As you all know: there is absolutely nothing “efficient” about these kinds of cuts whatsoever. They are deeply destructive, nothing else.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/trump-appoints-elon-musk-government-efficiency-department