On this day, 29 August 1923, anti-Nazi resistance fighter and sculptor Truus Oversteegen was born in Schoten, Netherlands. Truus (pictured, right) with her younger sister, Freddie (left), joined the Haarlem resistance group in 1941 and began sabotaging railways and killing fascists: on at least one occasion seducing an SS officer leading him into the woods to be shot. Unlike her best friend and comrade Hannie Schaft, Truus survived the war and lived a long life, and used her art as one way of dealing with the trauma of killing and losing Hannie.
This is a podcast episode we produced about anti-fascist youths during World War II: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/04/04/wch4-anti-nazi-youth-movements-in-world-war-ii/https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1513735352144943/?type=3
“Nickel is a crucial element in stainless steel. Its chemical compounds are increasingly used in batteries for electric vehicles and renewable energies. It is toxic to plants, just as it is to humans in high doses. Where nickel is mined and refined, it destroys land and leaves waste.
In areas where soils are naturally rich in nickel, typically in the tropics and Mediterranean basin, plants have either adapted or died off. In New Caledonia, a New Jersey-size French territory in the South Pacific that has been a major source of nickel, botanists know of at least 65 nickel-loving plants.
Such plants are the most common metal-craving vegetation; others suck up cobalt, zinc and similarly crucial metals. With new electronics spurring surging demand for rare minerals, companies are exploring as far as outer space and the bottom of the ocean. Far less explored is one of humanity’s oldest technologies, the farm.
The language of literature on phytomining, or agromining, hints of a future when plant and machine live together: bio-ore, metal farm, metal crops. “Smelting plants” sounds about as incongruous as carving oxygen.”
I know more about economics than AOC and my knowledge on economics is on a high school level. Its actually embarassing how little she knows about this shit. But hey, expecting a socialist to know about economics is like expecting a fish to know what a desert is.
Much of the ocean is a desert
You know what? Let’s use the allowance example again to make it even clearer.
Let’s pretend we have an allowance tax bracket with a 70% tax on money received after a certain point. To keep things simple, we’ll make the limit $90.
If a kid does chores and earns $10 in allowance, they get $10. They’re not going to be affected by the 70% tax.
If a kid does chores and earns $50, they get $50. They also aren’t in the 70% tax bracket, even though they make five times as much money as the kid making $10.
If a kid does chores and earns $100 in allowance, then they’re in the allowance tax bracket with the 70% tax.
$100 minus $90 is $10. This is the part that’s going to be taxed 70%.
70% of $10 is $7.
So the kid getting $100 in allowance will have $93 after the 70% tax takes its share.
Now, I’d never impose such a thing on actual kids. All of this is a thought exercise.
But if it were real, the kid making $10 and the kid making $50 would probably be kind of mad if the kid getting $93 was bitching about being short $7.
Also, can we talk about how taxes are used to pay for things for the benefit of society - roads, schools, libraries etc. so to further the above example, the parents aren’t just pocketing that money themselves just to be mean and selfish, they might use it to pay for a Netflix subscription that the whole family can watch.
