To be clear, if you’re at all concerned about maintaining a food budget, even if it’s $500/week the billionaire class is still your enemy.
To be clear, the billionaire class is your enemy
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I am always amazed how everyone is so focused on billionaires only
It’s just a class that is absolutely exploring people. You can’t become a billionaire without it. You can absolutely become an honest millionaire so it wouldn’t make sense to use that.
Yeah like there are folks who are worth 10ish million who just bought a house 50ish years ago that gained a lot of value and had dual incomes that saved all their money for retirement.
100 million folks are on THIN ice, but there is probably an author or inventor out there who made something really nice and everyone they worked with was also well taken care of. Most of them are probably garbage, but not all of them have to be. Some famous actors also were well known for making sure everyone got paid what they deserved on set and were very generous.
I just don’t see getting to a billion without someone being taken advantage of on the way though.
I just don’t see getting to a billion without someone being taken advantage of on the way though.
By all means, show me some billionaires that never took advantage of anyone to get their billions and actually earned it. I’m down to change my view.
probably an author or inventor out there who made something really nice and everyone they worked with was also well taken care of.
JK Rowling should be a billionaire, but she keeps giving money away.
Yeah but she’s a garbage human being.
Any billionaire can lose 90% of their wealth and have above 100 million left.
Many can lose 99% and have above 100 million left.
Some can lose 99% and still be billionaires.
The 100 millionaire will still have a million or more left after losing 99%, but that’s not “live like hogs in the fat house forever” money at least. It’s just “I don’t have to worry if I lose my job” money.
A hundredbillionaire can lose 99% of their money and not make any perceptible changes in their lifestyle.
I propose the following:
Gap individual wealth at 50000x the national median annual income. Max wealth anyone in the US could have is, at present, under 2 billion. Other countries will vary, but generally it’s plenty enough to motivate people to innovate, but nobody gets to be Bezos or Musk wealthy. Yachts should count towards this wealth gap, at a depreciation rate of 5% a year off the build cost. Primary residence doesn’t count unless it’s also used for generating income. You get to have one car, regardless of price, that doesn’t get counted towards it, and the other ones count at market value. So you can have your classic car that appreciates in price, and a daily driver - without having to worry about the classic car’s effect on your wealth limit.
Side effect is that now suddenly rich people near the gap will be a lot more interested in paying better wages to the working class. Why? Because then they’d get to keep more of their money. And to raise the median efficiently, you need to be raising wages for the poorest among us first and foremost.
Holy cow, they can lose 90% of their wealth and still be above 100 mil. The math checks out, but my gosh, how rich are they?!
In general; I think even 2 billion is too much. Nobody needs that much money.
At best; I think no one should be able to have more than about 500 Million. You get one house, and one car for each adult family member if you’re married with non-adult kids. Adult kids don’t add uncounted vehicles; they have their own limit. Anything that is seaworthy or airworthy counts as about as much “Wealth” as you initially spent on it minus a reasonable depreciation rate yearly as determined by the market, so no buying a thing and having it lose 30% of it’s value the moment you drive it off the lot after buying it.
Additionally; to block too many shenanigans; wealth added by any property that is bought sticks; 3 years at minimum. This prevents people from storing too much excess in property and shell-gaming it. A company you own or have stake in cannot lend (in a long term) or gift you property in excess of 1% to 10% the wealth limit. (Depending on what the thing is). Companies may also not hold property or money in lieu of an individual personally; everything the company owns must have a global company function; and not personally benefit one or more people only. (Basically no executive-only or owner-only Jets; everyone from the tiniest manager on up should have access to it if there’s a business reason for it)
Oh I agree that even 2 billion is too much, but my reasoning is that proponents of capitalism often make the claim that capitalism drives innovation (you try to fill some market niche in order to get rich) so if they are right, then 2 billion should be enough that this still works.
I had yachts depreciating to zero in my example because it’s estimated that you have to spend about 10% of its’ purchase price annually anyway, so anyone keeping a 20 year old yacht around is going to be spending a lot of money on it that will fuel other parts of the economy.
To be positively translucent, even someone with $1,000,000 in the bank has 1000x less than the poorest billionaire. For other disturbing facts, see https://mkorostoff.github.io/1-pixel-wealth/.
Which of course is a stupid comparison indicative of economic ignorance, because wealth does not grow linearly for anyone who doesn’t stuff their money under a mattress.
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Ain’t that the truth! I’m a lay off and a medical emergency from needing to do this diet.
Billionaires are either an apocalypse or a revolution away from needing to do this.
One of these is much more likely to happen tomorrow than the other.
Ok but for real tho. The average American severely underestimates how far you can get on rice, beans, lentils and chickpeas.
Serious question, if I live off just that, I end up feeling like absolute garbage. That’s even with supplementing it with greens like spinach and some other veggies and vitamin supplements. What am I missing?
Like, macro-wise, I can replace meat and other things, but it doesn’t seem to hit the same?
Every plant is trying to kill you. It doesn’t want to be eaten. It especially doesn’t want you to eat its seeds. We can detoxify most of the ones that people eat, but it costs
Eating the same plants over again can make you sick
You may not be as good at detoxifying those plants as the people who do well eating them
I know I’m a lot healthier with no plants in my diet than I have been with lots of plants
Would you care to elaborate on what you feel like when you try living on plants? What do you tend to eat? How long does it take before you start feeling like shit?
Judging by your last comment about it “not hitting the same” my initial thought is that the issue might not even be nutritional, possibly more psychological/subjective.
Rice amd beans is the most important thing on my region’s diet. You just can’t live without eating it at least once.
YOU ARE A FOOL AND THE REBELLION DEMANDS YOU EAT LAGUMES!
Capitalism demands you eat legumes or go into debt.
The rebellion demands you stay alive how you need to and organize, which in the US means eating cheap proteins as you gotta.
“Also, do you really NEED to sleep?”
Feel free to ask me questions on how to eat on a budget so you can keep your strength up while organizing against those that wish nothing more for you to work until the day you die and own nothing of consequence!
Man where were you 8 years ago when I ate zero protein because I didn’t know it could be cheap. Couldn’t afford animal products and was conditioned to believe those were the only viable source of protein.
Btw I’d like to add textured vegetable protein to the list! It’s one of my go-tos nowadays.
I like your mission, but I hate your methods. Think more about what you’re suggesting.
You’ll have to clarify what is wrong with my methods.
Well I’m vegetarian
I have a union and still just scraping by. But if I didn’t have the union I’d have drowned by now
I can buy oats and flour on the cheap around here, but chickpeas and dried beans? That’s very quickly sounding like $10 a day.
Where potato
I feel like since they are mostly water weight, the math doesn’t always look great. But let’s go through it!
For example: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Russet-Potatoes-10-lb-Bag-Whole/10449951?classType=REGULAR&from=/search
10 pounds of food for $3 sounds great, but in a pound there is only 300 calories about, depending on type/peel/etc. So 3,000 calories for 3 dollars. At $1 per 1000 calories it isn’t bad.
But let’s compare to this 5 pound bag of flour for 2.38, at 3 cents an ounce:
https://www.walmart.com/search?q=flour
A pound of flour has 1,600 calories. So this bag of flour that is cheaper than the potatoes, has 8000 calories for 2.50. But you’ll need to put in some elbow grease to make it edible. Doing a sourdough is probably the cheapest way to do it since all you need is flour, water, salt, and the starter you made using flour, but it is more time intensive. So about 3,200 calories for a dollar.
Rice comes in with a very similar amount of calories, but just a little more expensive at 4 cents an ounce:
Rice is a bit easier to turn edible though, so the extra dollar might be worth it for a 5 pound bag. 2,400 calories per dollar spent.
Then oatmeal comes in as our most expensive at 7 cents an ounce.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KV4H51G?tag=sacapuntas9-20&linkCode=osi&th=1&psc=1
At once again 1600ish calories for a pound of dry oatmeal, it is 1.12 per pound. So it is creeping up closer to the price of potatoes TBH, and if you were super on a budget the oatmeal would be the first to go. But I suppose potatoes aren’t “that” much worse than oatmeal. But my thought was oatmeal is good breakfast option so wanted to include it, and the top bit is mostly setup for bottom.
Knowing this stuff is helpful to our daily lives because rich people hate us.
I’m sure all of this is correct, but you’re forgetting one thing: potatoes are the only one of these you can grow enough of to eat at home, as long as you have space for a bucket or sack or two of soil, and which basically require zero processing aside from applying heat to consume.
I agree with you that we shouldn’t actually need to know or use any of this information, and as a poor disabled person I also know that growing your own food isn’t always an option for everyone, but if it is an option, I think it at the very least puts potatoes back in the running.
You absolutely got me there! I mentioned making your own sour dough, but didn’t factor in growing potatoes.
What about eating people’s cats and allegedly ducks as well? Did you know thousands of pets are euthanized each year? That’s all just wasted food.
two conspiracy theories in one! i love that community.
The “red necks” who do road kill specials are just fighting against ground beef being $5/pound (which is somehow after all the subsidies they get in the US)!
I feel like some red neck making fun of is straight up just making fun of folks who found a way to make do and be happy. Like owning your own land with a little pre fab you learned to maintain yourself, and eating lots of hunted game? Good stuff.
Jesus Christ, you’re actually fucking nuts.
This is ML memes. If you came in here expecting us not to be over the top about “seize the means of production” and “eat the rich” then you gotta pay more attention.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m far enough to the left to participate in ML.
Is that diet OK for growing kids or just adults?
More variety in your diet is likely to always be superior to less. That goes for both kids and adults. The trouble with younger kids is that deficiencies can impact their development and have more severe long term consequences, and they’re also less capable of seeking out foods to fill that gap.
My mom basically starved so we could eat. I remember her giving me her food regularly. I Still only ate once a day even with her sacrifices. I expect I will be doing the same at this rate so I wanna do more for them if I cam.
If the option is you all not eating enough, and eating primarily cheap bulk foods, do pick the cheap bulk foods. With cheap seasonings and making your own tortillas, breads, and gravies, you can have a large variety using the same 20ish cheap base ingredients.
We are tortillas and rice all the time. Some days evey meal. Sure she upgraded it with veggies or added eggs but it’s like I was born of rice, molded by it, I didn’t know what a salad was until I was a man.
Haha makes sense! I forgot I posted it, but as an experiment I actually did this just to see how hard it is.
https://lemmy.world/post/17890870
But I mean the main things you need are calories, vitamins, and complete proteins. Flour is the cheapest calorie you can get in the US, so cooking your own biscuits, tortillas, sour dough, and gravy will always be the most calories for your buck.
Soy is a complete protein by itself, but rice and beans together are as well. Rice and beans is also a king of calories per price, so there is a reason I put it on there, and a reason you are alive it sounds like it!
The last thing is vitamins from veggies/fruit. In my post I used small amounts of dried fruit in oatmeal, peas in gravy, then tomato sauce. So getting a mix cheap frozen/canned/dried fruit then having a bit of that each day will help. As will making gravies/sauces with different veggies/stir fries.
I was able to do it under $2, and I might try it again with all different meals to try and make sure I can practice what I preach. I make one off cheap meals a lot, but don’t always do a full day.
