Egyptian authorities announced the recovery of a heavy sarcophagus lid from the United States on Monday at a ceremony in Cairo.
The
sarcophagus, which at 500 kilograms (about 1,100 pounds) is one of the
biggest, dates back to the Late Period of Ancient Egypt (747-332 BC),
said Mostafa Waziri, the secretary-general of the Supreme Council of
Antiquities at Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
Ahmed
Issa, Egypt’s minister of tourism and antiquities, said the lid “was
looted and smuggled from Egypt to the United States a few years ago.”
The
recovery came as a result of the collaboration with US authorities and
an investigation spanning over two years, Issa added. …
Source: ‘The math checks out. In 2019, the median annual earning for women was $47,299. For men, it was $57,546. Averaged together, that’s about $52,423.The cost of the average home in the same time was $377,700. That is about 14 percent of the median salary.’
The average salary in the US is now about 10.2% of the cost of a home.
But that’s not even the whole story, because “income earned” means pre-tax income, and mortgage payments are not tax deductible unless you itemize (which people w/ average salaries do not do bc it’s usually less than the standard deduction).
In Oct 2022, taxes are a bit more complicated. Assuming you take the standard deduction, file single, and only pay federal income tax, the take-home pay from a salary of $55,640 is about $51,584.
(Using H&R Block’s 2022 tax estimator)
So really, the average take-home pay is now 9.5% of the average home price.
Meanwhile, the person earning $2M/yr in 2022 would end up taking home at least $1,289,600. He is taxed at 35.3% of his earnings. The person earning the inflation-adjusted equivalent of in 1936 (~$95,000) would be taxed at 60% of his earnings.
Tl;dr: It’s an even more dire situation than that tweet suggests. Taxes on the middle class have skyrocketed, taxes on the ultra-rich have been slashed in half, and housing is nearly twice the ratio to income earned that it was in the middle of the Great Depression.
The charity founded in Greta Thunberg’s name has
donated £158,000 to cover the legal costs of Indigenous people in
Sweden’s Arctic north as they battle a British mining company over plans
for an iron-ore mine on reindeer-herding lands.
Beowulf Mining,
which has its headquarters in the City of London, was given approval in
March by the Swedish government for excavation on an area used by the
Sami community.
The
government’s decision appeared to bring to an end to a decade-long
fight during which opposition to the open pit mine had attracted the
support of Unesco and the leader of Sweden’s national church.
Jon-Mikko
Länta, the chair of the Jåhkågaska Sami community, which will be most
affected, said a Greta Thunberg Foundation donation of 2m Swedish krona
(£158,000), had provided them with the opportunity to continue to resist
the mine.
He said: “At the moment we are
trying to appeal against the Swedish government’s decision to grant the
concession as our legal team think it is not in line with international
conventions on the rights of Indigenous people.
“It
is a lot of work and expensive, which is why we are so grateful. We are
hoping that if our appeal is successful that everything will go back to
the Swedish government and we will at least get better terms.”
The
proposed Gállok mining site, located 28 miles (45km) outside the town
of Jokkmokk in the county of Norrbotten in Swedish Sápmi, has become a
symbol of the fight to protect Sami culture from big business and
government.
…
The Sami parliament, the representative body for people of indigenous heritage in Sweden,
wrote last February to the Swedish government warning the mine would
destroy grazing areas and cut off the only viable migratory route for
reindeer followed by the Jåhkågasska Sami community.
Sami
communities to the west and east of the mine would also be hit through a
reduction in viable grazing areas already under pressure from changes
to the snow conditions attributed to the climate emergency, logging,
power lines and the development of a hydroelectric dam, the parliament
said.
Unesco, the UN’s cultural protection
wing, has spoken of a potentially “large, very large” impact on the
Laponian area, the mountainous world heritage site 21 miles west of the
mine.
The archbishop of Uppsala, Antje
Jackelén, who heads the Church of Sweden, wrote an open letter to the
Swedish prime minister, claiming that the open pit mine was “not
existentially and spiritually sustainable”.
