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Maddy the Android: Out of Character

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Just a page for stuff I wanted to share, which would be super out-of-character for Maddy to share as a character.

I am an autistic game developer and music producer, who is living the genderfluid experience. I really love airplanes, hard sci-fi, orbital mechanics, and purple is my happiest color!

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pieartsy
@pieartsy

in most (USAmerican) people's minds, i've found, the scale of wealth inequality goes like this:

  1. struggling to make ends meet. exactly what it sounds like, poverty and lower class folks.

  2. paycheck-to-paycheck. you're stable as long as you have a paycheck. if you don't, or if a big expense like a medical emergency hits and drains your coffers, you're screwed. probably around $50k/year+ for most USAmericans.

  3. rich, eat these motherfuckers, they make more money than the average person therefore they should burn. $100k/year+

the jump from 2 to 3 is fucking wrong and lacks nuance, therefore with the help of other people i've talked to, i've made this scale.

  1. struggling to make ends meet.

  2. paycheck to paycheck.

  3. sick days rich. my friend who's at this tier suggested this. if you have enough money that that after all your expenses and needs have been met, you can take an unpaid sick day (disruption in income) or pay for an unexpected medical emergency (non-routine expense) without getting utterly and immediately bodied, then you are sick days rich. your bank accounts can withstand a hit, or a few hits, but not a barrage, and you still have to mind your budget, unlike the next tier. Almost certainly laborers, do not eat them!

  4. daily socks rich. My friend who's at Tier 1 suggested this. you have enough money that after all your expenses and needs have been met, you can buy a new pair of nice socks every day for as long as you want without worrying at all about "oh no what if i need to pay for food or rent or an unexpected medical expense but i keep buying socks". you may have assets to fall back on to support you in your socks endeavors when cash flow lessens or is disrupted. as long as they're laborers, do not eat them!

  5. lawyers and assassins rich. My friend who's at Tier 4(ish) suggested this. if you have enough money to get rid of most problems you could conceivably encounter, either legally or extra-legally, then you have lawyers and assassins money. this is most millionaires. as long as they're laborers, do not eat them!

  6. exploitation rich. billionaires. you can't get this rich without exploiting people and owning capital. there's no way they can be laborers and be at this level of wealth. eat these people.

Can you think of other tiers I'm missing?


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in reply to @pieartsy's post:

yeah i mean in a general sense i think this is more appropriate in a materialist way -- what can you do with your wealth, and how much of that is controlled by your position (e.g. do you only have enough resources to live, or do you have enough resources to amass capital).

obviously no identification system is perfect but this at least puts the focus on that, and less on specific numbers (which is really short-sighted imo)

There's a tier 3.5 that most high end government employees are at where at the drop of the hat the ruling party in charge shits the bed and suddenly your manageable lifestyle can be cut because of the "fiscal cliff." Highly coveted jobs that barely exist anymore. My brother at NASA is at tier 3.5 with barely over 100K salary and is one of the highest paid public employees with government benefits. He also has a stressful job and is responsible for billions of taxpayers' dollars worth of equipment and resources.

Yeah, he basically makes enough money to be socks rich, but can't spend like that because a government shutdown is looming for some dumb reason every 2-3 years. Also, living in Louisiana means that he also has to keep money tied in assets in case it hits the fan. But he also makes enough money that he lets me live feral in his house without asking for a lot, so there's that.

yeah i definitely think that trying to get too hyper-specific would be detrimental to the point. brevity is valuable, and you can pretty easily mentally interpolate between these things, pinning down a few points as guideposts is more useful than attempting to be exhaustive