#FollowTheMoney 𧔠14/n Just realised the title of this really excellent article by Sam Knight is actually perhaps the real theme of this đ§”:
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 Iâve even managed to ignore an aside criticism of Corbyn - usually makes me hate any writer! đ)
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠15/n
âThe average worker is now ÂŁ14,000 worse off per year than if earnings had continued to rise at pre-crisis ratesâit is the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars. âNobody whoâs alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this. This is what failure looks like.â â
A Herefordshire case workers has developed a phrase to describe people needing help, âfor her paperworkâ:
âOverwhelming Distressâ
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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
Attached: 1 image "Spotifyâs CEO is now a billionaire but it takes artists 334 streams to make $1. The company just enacted a plan to completely demonetize smaller artists. Under the new policy, tracks that get under a certain threshold of annual streams will receive no money from the company. Groups like United Musicians and Allied Workers (ig: weareumaw) are fighting to save their industry." #Union #capitalism
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 itâs ruling everything!
#AcademicVenting That is what this is: we are governed by money itself, and it brings cruel unimaginative rightwing mediocrity to the top everywhere. (Second crossover with #FollowTheMoney 𧔠here!) Sadly forgotten name just now, (will edit), but remembering podcast with Cambridge prof saying people worry about being ruled by AI , nonhuman entities, but that is exactly what corporations are. Nonhuman entities are already running everything. https://mastodon.green/@pvonhellermannn/112047945347154458
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠20/n
Now really is the time of monsters. #Gramsci
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 âthe new world is almost bornâ. No itâs 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
Attached: 1 image 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of Schumacherâs 1973 book #SmallIsBeautiful. Letâs make it a turning point year for everyone recognising that indeed Small Is Beautiful, a year of #Transition towards #CommunityBuilding #Commoning, #Degrowth #AgroEcology #2023 1/5 The new world is almost born
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 itâs here). #FrugalAbundance
Attached: 1 image Stone cooking supports used to grill skewers of meat by Minoans on Santorini, 3600 years old. The line of holes in the base supplied coals with oxygen. Many consider modern "souvlaki" street kebabs a direct descendant of this portable food system. Museum of Prehistoric Thera, Greece #archaeohistories
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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. Mustnât forget!
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 dentistryâs 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 𧔠26/n An outstanding review by Will Davies (my Goldsmiths colleague) of Brett Christopherâs âThe Price is Wrongâ: about our neoliberal political economy (using a Braudelian distinction btw âthe marketâ and âcapitalismâ - 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 𧔠28/n But honestly, just read this piece - everything in this 𧔠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! âEcologically speaking, neoliberalism couldnât have come at a worse time.â
Here Christopherâs book itself:
The Price is Wrong. Why Capitalism Wonât Save The Planet.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3069-the-price-is-wrong
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠29/n Another overlap with #AcademicVenting đ§”- because itâs 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:
âUniversities 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.â
âA lot of rich people donât actually want an education system or the educated population that would come along with it. Sure, it would be better for everyone. But it would also mean having to share, and these people have let their greed literally drive them insane.â https://www.okdoomer.io/im-a-professor-heres-why-im-walking-away-from-my-tenure/ 1/2
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 hadnât lost to Reagan.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠31/n I think the graph came from this New York Times piece but donât have a subscription so canât check.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/05/03/opinion/global-billionaires-tax.html
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠32/n Watched âThe Founderâ 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:
âMcDonald'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.â
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 ÂŁ2.3bn profit last year, while 49% of fruit and veg farmers fear theyâll be out of business before the end of this one.
#FollowTheMoney đ§”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 wasnât working financially any more. đąđąđą
And a fish merchant who we got smoked salmon for Christmas from closed this year too, for the same reasons. Plus Goldsmithsâ woes of course (#AcademicVenting). So many good, small organisations struggling and ending.
#FollowTheMoney 35/n #ClimateDiary #AcademicVenting
This is why:
Attached: 1 image Yeah, why are things... #Prices #News #Corporations #Monopolies
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠36/n Here a positive, progressive use of money flows:
1400+ Columbia University alumni from its 20 schools have pledged to withhold all âfinancial, programmatic, and academic supportâ 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 đ§”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).
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠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 𧔠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
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠40/n havenât added anything here in a while - but this needs to be posted!
Trumpâs victory adds record $64bn to wealth of richest top 10
Share surge increases Elon Muskâs fortune by $26bn in a day as Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin and Bill Gates also benefit
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠41/n Ok so the reason for the long pause in this 𧔠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 đ§”, tracing the whole sorry saga from first rumblings in Nov â23 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
Half thinking of starting an #AcademicVenting hashtag here, about the dire, dire state of UK (global?) higher education. Sharing nuggets of senior management decisions, neoliberal language, and overall slow collapse. Wonât work of course because most of us canât risk honesty, but honestly: the everyday reality of what is happening deserves recording in all its depressing and damning detail. #Universities #AcademicChatter #neoliberalism
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠43/n Now of course Elon Musk - having made 2/3 of Twitter staff redundant - has been hired by Trump to head the new âEfficiency Departmentâ. 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 âefficientâ about these kinds of cuts whatsoever. They are deeply destructive, nothing else.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠44/n but also: #Redundancy has made me think deeply (of course!) about the role of money in personal decision making. I may be wrong but it feels like this is something we donât talk about much, and yet it is is so central to everything! I DO want to talk about it, even if I have nothing insightful to say actually. Just a few observations.
1. Money was at core of my decisions around redundancy. I have two teenage children and a high mortgage.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠45/n
I could not go for lovely 0.5 offered, or for tribunal; I had to opt for enhanced redundancy. If had chosen tribunal route i would have probably been able to keep my job as the 12 who did (who were able to do so due to different financial circumstances) were all reinstalled in an even lovelier deal btw management and union. (The 64 of us eho accepted enhanced redundancy by deadline did not know this would happen).
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠46/n
2. Money is now also so core to all my decision-making in how to spend my time, what jobs to go for - and balancing the need for money with wanting to do good, environmental work, and things I enjoy and am good at. It is quite strange, I gave a lecture at SOAS in Feb this year on âDoing Work You Believe in and be paid for itâ, on the very day the Goldsmiths mass redundancies were announced (will see if I can upload recording here)
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠47/n
This was a combination of two papers: one on unpaid Eastbourne climate activism, one on sustainability professionals in the palm oil sector. It is very strange that I gave that lecture and wrote that paper - this is me now! I am out here in the wilderness, having to make a living, and yes, doing consultancy work. Which, of course, as I am rapidly learning, does not have to mean âselling out â - my current work for the RSPB is really rewarding.
https://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/4717/
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠48/n here also a link to the other paper on Eastbourne climate activism, iâve shared it before but doing so again as it has a brief section on what kind of work is rewarded by high salaries, and what isnât. I still feel this is an incredibly important topic and not really talked about enough in #ClimateAction circles. Maybe we can talk about it more together here?
In July 2019, Eastbourne Borough Council declared a climate emergency and committed to making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030. In order to achieve this, citizens together with Council created a unique model of council-citizen collaborative climate governance, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EAN). EANâs main strategy has been the setting up of targeted working groups, each bringing together Councillors, engaged citizens and providers, and each tackling a specific area of climate action through a combination of infrastructure, institutional and behavioural changes. As an environmental anthropologist living in Eastbourne, I was involved in this process right from the beginning, having had my own âecophanyââthe realisation that the climate emergency required urgent actionâin February 2019. Two years and one pandemic later, in this paper I reflect on the overall experiences and challenges of EANâs and Eastbourne Borough Councilâs work towards town-wide carbon neutrality to date, discussing possible factors (structural and other) determining varying successes and failures. At the same time, this paper provides an auto-ethnographic account of what âengaged anthropologyâ means in practice, mapping out the real contributions anthropologists can and should make in local climate action, but also reflecting on challenges encountered along the way.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠50/n Today adding this excellent video by @RichardJMurphy on how âthe Cityâ is not our âJewel in the Crownâ, as Rachel Reeves put it, but a parasite extracting huge amounts of money for self-enrichment. It does not add any value to the economy.
So important to see the City for what it is.
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠51/n Richardâs video has spurred me on to do a few posts now on #PrivateEquity. Long overdue here, because private equity is at the heart of how our world works!
(Just to state again: i am not an expert, just someone who is trying to make sense of our world by #FollowingTheMoney, in an eclectic đ§”)
To start with basics: what is private equity? I like this clear definition by Justin Robertson
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563460903288270
#FollowTheMoney 𧔠52/n
The amount of wealth and assets held by private equity is vast. The biggest private equity firm of all is of course #BlackRock, founded by Larry Fink in 1988. Here is a lovely Statistica chart showing how its âassets under managementâ grew from $1.31 trillion (i mean, not bad) to $10.41 trillion in 2024. Bloomberg predicts they will hit $15 trillion in a few years
https://www.statista.com/statistics/891292/assets-under-management-blackrock/
Pauline von Hellermann
Jonathan Schofield