#precarity — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #precarity, aggregated by home.social.
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Swimming in It Until You Escape
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — August 21, 2026, 9:30 p.m. PHT
You Don’t Smell the Water You’re Drowning In
One of the most dangerous things about a stagnant system is that it feels normal while you’re inside it. Not good. Not hopeful. Just normal.
That was Iowa.
When nothing is actively collapsing, you assume progress must be possible. You keep working. You keep waiting. You tell yourself the next raise, the next opening, the next election cycle will change something. You do not realize you are standing still because everything around you is also standing still.
It is only after you leave that the stench becomes obvious.
Stagnation Masquerading as Stability
In Iowa, life appeared stable on the surface. People went to work. Bills were paid—barely. Communities functioned. Nothing looked broken enough to demand urgent attention.
That appearance is what traps people.
Economic stagnation rarely announces itself as crisis. More often, it presents as a plateau that never ends. Wages rise just enough to be called raises. Costs rise faster. Housing deteriorates slowly. Jobs persist without evolving.
Economists describe this as low-mobility equilibrium—a condition where employment exists but advancement does not (Autor & Dorn, 2013). You are not unemployed. You are immobilized.
The Slow Drain of Energy
Living inside a stagnant system drains energy in ways that are hard to name. You are not fighting an emergency. You are enduring a grind.
Every year that looks like the last one chips away at motivation. Ambition becomes dangerous because it has nowhere to land. You learn not to hope too loudly. You lower expectations not out of pessimism, but out of self-preservation.
That psychological adjustment is rational. It is also devastating.
Studies on long-term economic insecurity show that prolonged stagnation reduces risk-taking, future planning, and cognitive bandwidth (Mullainathan & Shafir, 2013). People adapt to scarcity by narrowing their world.
Iowa rewarded that adaptation.
When Work Stops Meaning Anything
I worked. Consistently. Reliably. For years.
It did not matter.
The raises were symbolic. The promotions theoretical. The idea that effort would eventually convert into stability became harder to defend with each passing year. You start to realize that time itself has become the cost.
You are trading years of your life for maintenance, not movement.
That is when people begin to disengage—not dramatically, but quietly. They stop pushing. They stop asking. They stop imagining themselves somewhere else because imagining without means hurts too much.
The Fog You Can’t See Through
The most insidious part of stagnation is that it clouds perception. When everyone around you is stuck, stuck feels universal. You assume the problem is personal, or generational, or just “how things are now.”
This is why leaving is so disruptive.
Distance restores perspective. You suddenly see how constrained your choices were. How narrow the margins had become. How much energy was spent simply staying afloat.
Looking back, Iowa felt like being underwater without realizing you were holding your breath.
Addiction as a Pressure Valve
Stagnant systems need release valves. In Iowa, those valves were alcohol and meth.
This is not a moral judgment. It is an observation. When there is no path forward, numbing becomes one of the few available forms of relief. Substance use offers temporary escape from a reality that offers no exit.
Public health research links economic stagnation directly to increased rates of substance abuse and “deaths of despair,” particularly in rural and semi-rural regions (Case & Deaton, 2020). Iowa fits that pattern precisely.
The system does not cause addiction directly. It creates the conditions where escape—any escape—becomes attractive.
Why You Don’t Realize It Until You’re Gone
People often ask why it took so long for me to leave Iowa. The answer is simple: nothing dramatic forced the issue.
There was no eviction. No firing. No single catastrophe.
Just a slow, cumulative realization—after leaving—that I had been treading water for nearly a decade. That my life had not been moving forward. That I had mistaken endurance for progress.
You cannot diagnose stagnation accurately from inside it. The metrics you would need—comparison, mobility, opportunity—are invisible when you have nowhere to compare yourself to.
The Moment Clarity Arrives
Clarity came after I left. That is always how it happens.
Suddenly, the exhaustion made sense. The depression had context. The sense of being trapped was no longer mysterious. It had a name.
I had not failed.
I had been submerged.
Sociologists call this relative deprivation—the realization of disadvantage that emerges only through comparison (Runciman, 1966). Leaving Iowa provided that comparison.
Why Staying Is So Costly
Stagnant systems exact their toll quietly. They do not break you quickly. They wear you down slowly, stealing years without leaving obvious scars.
That is why people who escape often feel grief alongside relief. You mourn the time you cannot recover. You wonder who you might have been in a system that allowed movement.
That mourning is rational. It is the cost of clarity.
Iowa as a Category, Not an Exception
Iowa is not alone. It represents a category of American places where life is livable but not expandable. Where work exists but futures do not. Where people are told to stay patient while nothing changes.
Understanding that category matters—because people are still being encouraged to wait in places that have already stopped moving.
Waiting does not create exits.
Naming the Truth Without Softening It
Iowa taught me that you can be fully employed, socially polite, and functionally trapped at the same time.
It taught me that stagnation is hardest to detect when it is universal.
And it taught me that escape is not betrayal. It is recognition.
You cannot climb while swimming.
Eventually, you either drown—or you get out of the water.
References
Autor, D. H., & Dorn, D. (2013). The growth of low-skill service jobs and the polarization of the U.S. labor market. American Economic Review, 103(5), 1553–1597.
#addiction #AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #EconomicStagnation #Iowa #laborMarkets #Midwest #precarity #ruralEconomy
Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2020). Deaths of despair and the future of capitalism. Princeton University Press.
Mullainathan, S., & Shafir, E. (2013). Scarcity: Why having too little means so much. Times Books.
Runciman, W. G. (1966). Relative deprivation and social justice. University of California Press. -
Honestly where do people come from with the whole "just use statistical word guessers to get jobs cause that's what the HR people do" thing?
It's insane. How about any C suite people on here tell HR to stop using statistical word guessers to wrongly evaluate people? Actually do. your. jobs.
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Honestly where do people come from with the whole "just use statistical word guessers to get jobs cause that's what the HR people do" thing?
It's insane. How about any C suite people on here tell HR to stop using statistical word guessers to wrongly evaluate people? Actually do. your. jobs.
-
Honestly where do people come from with the whole "just use statistical word guessers to get jobs cause that's what the HR people do" thing?
It's insane. How about any C suite people on here tell HR to stop using statistical word guessers to wrongly evaluate people? Actually do. your. jobs.
-
Honestly where do people come from with the whole "just use statistical word guessers to get jobs cause that's what the HR people do" thing?
It's insane. How about any C suite people on here tell HR to stop using statistical word guessers to wrongly evaluate people? Actually do. your. jobs.
-
Honestly where do people come from with the whole "just use statistical word guessers to get jobs cause that's what the HR people do" thing?
It's insane. How about any C suite people on here tell HR to stop using statistical word guessers to wrongly evaluate people? Actually do. your. jobs.
-
OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:
#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823
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OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:
#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823
-
OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:
#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823
-
OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:
#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823
-
OnlineFirst - "Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins" by Aseela Haque:
#pigeons #more-than-humancohabitation #Karachi #precarity #urbanecologies
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486261459823
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Back from a food distribution event with the local #FoodNotBombs group, in Norristown.
There are a lot of very desperate people out there, many of them unhoused. So, now pondering how to do better next time: what dish of food to prepare and bring, what supplies to bring, things like that.
For me, this is the flip side to protesting at #TeslaTakedown: doing what I stand for, not just what I stand against.
-
Back from a food distribution event with the local #FoodNotBombs group, in Norristown.
There are a lot of very desperate people out there, many of them unhoused. So, now pondering how to do better next time: what dish of food to prepare and bring, what supplies to bring, things like that.
For me, this is the flip side to protesting at #TeslaTakedown: doing what I stand for, not just what I stand against.
-
Back from a food distribution event with the local #FoodNotBombs group, in Norristown.
There are a lot of very desperate people out there, many of them unhoused. So, now pondering how to do better next time: what dish of food to prepare and bring, what supplies to bring, things like that.
For me, this is the flip side to protesting at #TeslaTakedown: doing what I stand for, not just what I stand against.
-
Back from a food distribution event with the local #FoodNotBombs group, in Norristown.
There are a lot of very desperate people out there, many of them unhoused. So, now pondering how to do better next time: what dish of food to prepare and bring, what supplies to bring, things like that.
For me, this is the flip side to protesting at #TeslaTakedown: doing what I stand for, not just what I stand against.
-
Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.
* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction
"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."
World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation
* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one."Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."
"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book -
Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.
* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction
"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."
World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation
* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one."Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."
"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book -
Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.
* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction
"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."
World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation
* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one."Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."
"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book -
Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.
* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction
"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."
World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation
* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one."Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."
"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book -
Loss - the belief in progress and the reality of experiences of loss.
* Grievance-fuelled violence at home and psychological harm reduction
"The family violence workforce is stretched in Western societies... 20 out of 38 reviewed cases of fatal family violence were "grievance-fuelled"...The Fixated Grievance Perpetrator Intervention Pilot brings together experts in forensic psychology and psychiatry, criminology, policing, perpetrator intervention and victim support."
World-first trial testing whether counterterrorism strategies can prevent domestic homicide >>
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-05-25/dv-new-trial-terrorism-domestic-violence-grievance-homicide/106658162
#violence #FamilyViolence #grievance #loss #ressentiment #precarity #masculinity #entitlement #resentment #anger #GenderBasedViolence #homicide #DV #terror #CrisisOfReproduction #crimes #HarmReduction #therapists #psychologisation
* The role of loss within society
Andreas Reckwitz 's book 'Loss, A Modern Predicament, The first comprehensive study of the role of loss within society", 2025 explains loss not only from a psychological perspective, but also from a sociological one."Loss has come to occupy a central position in late modernity – whether in the consequences of climate change or the entrenchment of negative expectations about the future, the ‘losers’ of post-industrial modernisation or the collective processing of ‘historical wounds’ and of who is acknowledged as the victims and perpetrators of these crimes, in a heightened psychological awareness of vulnerability, in political populism, a nostalgia for things past, or programmes of resilience."
"Loss is the bread and butter of populism." >>
https://res.cloudinary.com/suhrkamp/images/q_auto/v1742134247/151338/loss_9783518588222_sample_translation.pdf
#loss #progress #ProgressNarrative #improvement #credibility #modernity #stagnation #precariousness #experience #inequality #StatusAnxiety #SocialHierarchy #CollectiveExperiencesOfLoss #populism #nostalgia #socioanalysis #ClimateDisasters #PolyCrisis #WesternModernity #future #book -
Help Is Not the Same as a Future
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026
The Difference No One Warns You About
There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.
I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.
After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.
A future requires something else entirely.
When Assistance Works as Designed
Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.
This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.
But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.
Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.
Stabilization Without Movement
Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.
Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.
Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.
If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.
The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach
In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.
In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.
You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.
There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.
This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.
Temporary Lives Become Permanent
When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.
You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.
Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.
That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.
Why Decency Is Not Enough
Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.
But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.
Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.
That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.
The Emotional Cost of Waiting
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.
After all, the system is doing its part.
This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.
I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.
When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice
Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.
Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.
That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.
A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure
This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.
Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.
This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.
Naming the Distinction Clearly
Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.
But help is not a future.
A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.
Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.
It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.
References
Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
#AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #inequality #laborMarkets #Minnesota #precarity #socialAssistance #socialSafetyNet
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. -
Help Is Not the Same as a Future
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026
The Difference No One Warns You About
There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.
I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.
After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.
A future requires something else entirely.
When Assistance Works as Designed
Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.
This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.
But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.
Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.
Stabilization Without Movement
Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.
Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.
Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.
If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.
The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach
In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.
In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.
You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.
There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.
This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.
Temporary Lives Become Permanent
When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.
You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.
Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.
That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.
Why Decency Is Not Enough
Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.
But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.
Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.
That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.
The Emotional Cost of Waiting
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.
After all, the system is doing its part.
This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.
I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.
When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice
Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.
Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.
That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.
A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure
This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.
Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.
This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.
Naming the Distinction Clearly
Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.
But help is not a future.
A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.
Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.
It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.
References
Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
#AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #inequality #laborMarkets #Minnesota #precarity #socialAssistance #socialSafetyNet
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. -
Help Is Not the Same as a Future
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026
The Difference No One Warns You About
There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.
I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.
After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.
A future requires something else entirely.
When Assistance Works as Designed
Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.
This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.
But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.
Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.
Stabilization Without Movement
Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.
Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.
Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.
If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.
The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach
In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.
In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.
You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.
There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.
This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.
Temporary Lives Become Permanent
When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.
You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.
Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.
That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.
Why Decency Is Not Enough
Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.
But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.
Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.
That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.
The Emotional Cost of Waiting
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.
After all, the system is doing its part.
This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.
I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.
When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice
Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.
Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.
That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.
A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure
This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.
Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.
This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.
Naming the Distinction Clearly
Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.
But help is not a future.
A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.
Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.
It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.
References
Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
#AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #inequality #laborMarkets #Minnesota #precarity #socialAssistance #socialSafetyNet
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. -
Help Is Not the Same as a Future
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026
The Difference No One Warns You About
There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.
I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.
After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.
A future requires something else entirely.
When Assistance Works as Designed
Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.
This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.
But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.
Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.
Stabilization Without Movement
Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.
Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.
Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.
If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.
The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach
In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.
In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.
You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.
There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.
This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.
Temporary Lives Become Permanent
When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.
You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.
Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.
That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.
Why Decency Is Not Enough
Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.
But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.
Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.
That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.
The Emotional Cost of Waiting
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.
After all, the system is doing its part.
This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.
I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.
When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice
Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.
Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.
That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.
A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure
This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.
Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.
This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.
Naming the Distinction Clearly
Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.
But help is not a future.
A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.
Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.
It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.
References
Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
#AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #inequality #laborMarkets #Minnesota #precarity #socialAssistance #socialSafetyNet
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. -
Help Is Not the Same as a Future
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
Baybay City, Leyte, Philippines — May 15, 2026
The Difference No One Warns You About
There is a distinction that matters more than most people realize, and it is one America is very careful not to teach explicitly. Help and a future are not the same thing. One can exist without the other, and often does.
I learned that lesson most clearly in Minnesota.
After Illinois, help felt like progress. Assistance existed. People noticed. Systems responded. Compared to what I had known before, that alone felt like a step forward. It took time to understand that help, by itself, does not change trajectory. It only stabilizes the present.
A future requires something else entirely.
When Assistance Works as Designed
Minnesota’s support systems did what they were supposed to do. Food pantries were available. Churches stepped in with grocery vouchers. State assistance existed and was accessible. None of it was humiliating or hostile.
This matters, and it should not be minimized. Compared to many states, Minnesota treats need as a condition rather than a moral failing. That alone reduces suffering.
But systems designed to alleviate immediate hardship are not the same as systems designed to produce long-term mobility. One keeps you afloat. The other gives you a direction.
Minnesota offered flotation. It did not offer direction.
Stabilization Without Movement
Once basic needs are met, the next question is obvious: what comes next? That is where the silence returned.
Work was available, but it clustered in roles that did not lead anywhere else. Security work. Overnight shifts. Positions that absorbed time and energy without building leverage. These jobs kept people alive, but they did not help them move.
Labor economists have noted that many regional economies rely on what are effectively “containment jobs”—roles that stabilize labor markets without creating upward mobility (Autor, 2019). They are not meant to be ladders. They are meant to be endpoints.
If you enter one of those jobs from the outside, you tend to stay there.
The Ceiling You Don’t Hit—You Just Reach
In more openly stratified states, ceilings announce themselves. Wages stall. Housing becomes impossible. You are pushed out.
In Minnesota, the ceiling is quieter. You simply stop rising.
You receive help. You survive. You do not advance.
There is no dramatic rejection. No explicit denial. Just a gradual realization that nothing is opening further, no matter how steady your effort remains.
This is a subtler form of closure, and in some ways, it is more dangerous. It encourages patience where action might otherwise occur. It teaches people to wait.
Temporary Lives Become Permanent
When help replaces opportunity, lives become provisional. You do not plan long-term. You do not invest. You do not imagine permanence.
You tell yourself you are “getting through this period,” even when the period stretches into years.
Sociological research on precarity shows that long-term instability, even when buffered by assistance, erodes planning capacity and future orientation (Standing, 2011). People adapt to the absence of forward motion by shrinking their expectations.
That adaptation is rational. It is also corrosive.
Why Decency Is Not Enough
Minnesota is often held up as evidence that decency solves inequality. The logic is appealing: if systems are kind, outcomes will improve.
But kindness does not rewire labor markets. It does not dismantle closed networks. It does not create pathways where none exist.
Decency reduces harm. It does not redistribute access.
That is not a moral critique. It is a structural one.
The Emotional Cost of Waiting
There is a particular exhaustion that comes from being told, implicitly, that things are fine because you are being helped. Gratitude becomes an obligation. Frustration becomes inappropriate.
After all, the system is doing its part.
This dynamic silences critique. It frames dissatisfaction as ingratitude. It keeps people from naming the absence of a future because the present is tolerable.
I felt that pressure in Minnesota. I felt the need to justify leaving a place that had treated me decently—despite knowing I could not build a life there.
When Leaving Is the Only Honest Choice
Eventually, circumstances made the decision easier. My daughter returned to Texas. The reason I had come to Minnesota dissolved. What remained was a choice between staying static or moving on.
Leaving did not feel dramatic. It felt necessary.
That is often how exits happen in systems that offer help without futures. People do not flee. They drift away when they realize waiting will not change anything.
A National Pattern, Not a Local Failure
This essay is not an indictment of Minnesota alone. It describes a pattern visible across many “well-run” states and cities.
Assistance expands. Opportunity contracts. People survive longer without advancing further.
This is how inequality becomes normalized. Not through cruelty, but through containment.
Naming the Distinction Clearly
Help matters. It saves lives. It reduces suffering. It should exist everywhere.
But help is not a future.
A future requires access to networks, mobility, housing stability, and work that compounds rather than consumes time. Without those, assistance becomes a holding pattern.
Minnesota taught me that lesson clearly.
It showed me that survival and progress are not the same thing—and that confusing the two can cost you years.
References
Autor, D. (2019). Work of the past, work of the future. AEA Papers and Proceedings, 109, 1–32.
#AmericanClassSystem #classMobility #inequality #laborMarkets #Minnesota #precarity #socialAssistance #socialSafetyNet
Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury Academic. -
" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song
“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."
A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures -
" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song
“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."
A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures -
" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song
“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."
A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures -
" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song
“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."
A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures -
" There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."Leonard Cohen,1992, Anthem song
“He was just somebody who fell through all the cracks..."
A young man who came to Australia to study computer science died in the bushes near the bustling tunnel entrance to Sydney’s St James station. "Roughly 100,000 people went in or out of St James station during the time ..."
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/19/bikram-lama-birdman-sydney-st-james-tunnel-homelessness-ntwnfb
#biopolitics #Sydney #education #housing #visas #homelessness #VulnerableHomelessness #precarity #cracks #SystemicFailures -
The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders."For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfbReport: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war
-
The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders."For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfbReport: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war
-
The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders."For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfbReport: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war
-
The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders."For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfbReport: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war
-
The new uncomfortable normality
No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience (report): National security starts at the front door – not at the territorial borders."For most Australians, the 18-month research project revealed, national security starts at their front door – not at the territorial borders of the island continent. It showed they are worried the country is not prepared for the demands of a volatile 21st century in a polluted information ecosystem, where the rules-based international order is crumbling, economic precarity has become uncomfortably normal and trust is more fragile." >>
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/29/surging-anxiety-australia-national-security-patriotism-ntwnfbReport: No Worries? Australian attitudes to national security, risk and resilience >>
https://nsc.anu.edu.au/research/no-worries-australian-attitudes-national-security-risk-and-resilience#PublicAnxiety #anxiety #Australia #worries #trust #precarity #inequality #polycrisis #instability #safety #stability #participation #SocialIntegration #FarRight #SocialCohesion #belonging #HyperIndIvidualisation #UncomfortableNormality #climate #NationalSecurity #war
-
Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»
🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.
> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.
— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h
❤️🔥🤩❤️🔥
#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14
-
Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»
🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.
> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.
— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h
❤️🔥🤩❤️🔥
#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14
-
Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»
🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.
> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.
— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h
❤️🔥🤩❤️🔥
#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14
-
Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»
🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.
> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.
— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h
❤️🔥🤩❤️🔥
#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14
-
Report launch: «Sex Workers Navigating Gendered Poverty»
🗓 Monday 30th March
💻 Online 🕓 13:00–14:30 UTC
✍️ https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decrim-now-report-launch-sex-workers-navigating-gendered-poverty-tickets-1983265489467> Next Monday 30th March, 2-3.30pm, we’ll be hosting an online event to discuss the findings of our autumn 2025 research report on why people go into sex work and remain in it, and what they’d like the government to do to support them.
> We’ll be joined for a panel discussion by colleagues from the English Collective of Prostitutes, National Ugly Mugs, BASIS Yorkshire and Amnesty International UK. We’re looking forward to discussing the current situation for sex workers’ rights in the UK, as well as how the cost of living crisis could be contributing to driving more people, especially women, into sex work.
— 🦋 https://bsky.app/profile/decrimnow.bsky.social/post/3mhsr5uoqfk2h
❤️🔥🤩❤️🔥
#SexWork #DecrimNow #UK #Precarity #Poverty #ECP #NUM #BASIS #AmnestyInternational #Online #2026W14
-
This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity
More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt
Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757 -
This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity
More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt
Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757 -
This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity
More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt
Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757 -
This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity
More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt
Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757 -
This is understatement. Read the article, it's incredible. #precarity
More families in Southeast Asia sinking into debt
Across Southeast Asia, households are taking on debt just to cover basic needs. Analysts warn that the region's growing dependence on borrowing risks triggering wider financial stress and long term economic harm.
https://www.dw.com/en/more-families-in-southeast-asia-sinking-into-debt/a-76430757 -
Similar to my own work on #affectivePolarisation, @[email protected] comments on how the producers are actually doing OK economically, but they feel their horizons have shrunk, and complain there is nothing at the end of the month. It seems to me this #precarity may also come from upselling… 3/3
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Similar to my own work on #affectivePolarisation, @[email protected] comments on how the producers are actually doing OK economically, but they feel their horizons have shrunk, and complain there is nothing at the end of the month. It seems to me this #precarity may also come from upselling… 3/3
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#Neoliberalism #poverty #RentExtraction #Precarity #ClassWar #Capitalism #Neofeudalism #Corporatism, the #Slavery that was never abolished. The solution? #RevolutionNOTreform #VoteBlue, then topple the #Democrats too. That's The Plan. m.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTQ...
Neoliberalism is dying: Mark C... -
#Neoliberalism #poverty #RentExtraction #Precarity #ClassWar #Capitalism #Neofeudalism #Corporatism, the #Slavery that was never abolished. The solution? #RevolutionNOTreform #VoteBlue, then topple the #Democrats too. That's The Plan. m.youtube.com/watch?v=AMTQ...
Neoliberalism is dying: Mark C... -
Valeria Guarneros-Meza reflects on her work alongside Barnsley's Educational Learning Support Hub, and highlights the multi-layered ways that precarity stifles community organisations. She argues that solidarity between different social groups is key for overcoming its debilitating effects.
#precarity #Barnsley #barnsleynorth #labour #work #uk #migrants #England #community #Organize #CommunityDevelopment #communityorganizing #migrantworkers #migrantlabor
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Valeria Guarneros-Meza reflects on her work alongside Barnsley's Educational Learning Support Hub, and highlights the multi-layered ways that precarity stifles community organisations. She argues that solidarity between different social groups is key for overcoming its debilitating effects.
#precarity #Barnsley #barnsleynorth #labour #work #uk #migrants #England #community #Organize #CommunityDevelopment #communityorganizing #migrantworkers #migrantlabor
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Valeria Guarneros-Meza reflects on her work alongside Barnsley's Educational Learning Support Hub, and highlights the multi-layered ways that precarity stifles community organisations. She argues that solidarity between different social groups is key for overcoming its debilitating effects.
#precarity #Barnsley #barnsleynorth #labour #work #uk #migrants #England #community #Organize #CommunityDevelopment #communityorganizing #migrantworkers #migrantlabor
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Valeria Guarneros-Meza reflects on her work alongside Barnsley's Educational Learning Support Hub, and highlights the multi-layered ways that precarity stifles community organisations. She argues that solidarity between different social groups is key for overcoming its debilitating effects.
#precarity #Barnsley #barnsleynorth #labour #work #uk #migrants #England #community #Organize #CommunityDevelopment #communityorganizing #migrantworkers #migrantlabor
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#FollowTheMoney 🧵 81/n From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver
This is an incredible, moving personal perspective on this system that we are all entangled in, that shifts money to the few away from the rest of us at accelerating rate.
Having also experienced #Redundancy not too long ago and still very much in the doldrums of short term, part time jobs, this resonates deeply. So many are going through this, we need to help each other. #Precarity
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#FollowTheMoney 🧵 81/n From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver
This is an incredible, moving personal perspective on this system that we are all entangled in, that shifts money to the few away from the rest of us at accelerating rate.
Having also experienced #Redundancy not too long ago and still very much in the doldrums of short term, part time jobs, this resonates deeply. So many are going through this, we need to help each other. #Precarity
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#FollowTheMoney 🧵 81/n From Foreign Correspondent to Uber Driver
This is an incredible, moving personal perspective on this system that we are all entangled in, that shifts money to the few away from the rest of us at accelerating rate.
Having also experienced #Redundancy not too long ago and still very much in the doldrums of short term, part time jobs, this resonates deeply. So many are going through this, we need to help each other. #Precarity
