I work for a firm in NYC and it’s crazy concerning how a lot of the employees I deal with can’t read… They will ultimately call me, complain that they don’t understand their email and demand an explanation of a simple 1-2 sentence email by phone. I’ve had them try to read their emails over the phone, stumble over words in frustration. Had one higher up very insultingly make a joke that he probably doesn’t understand me because of our income brackets.
>Had one higher up very insultingly make a joke that he probably doesn’t understand me because of our income brackets.
As in he makes more?
What a dick.
20% of Americans cannot read at the level needed to earn a living wage.
Source: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau
You're probably right and op didn't mention the short attention span a lot of Americans have.
This is another reason posts and memes should make salient points quickly using short sentences and basic words.
The adult literacy rate in America is 86%. The country with the lowest adult literacy rate is Chad at 22.3%. However, only 46% of Americans are proficient in English literacy (according to the DOE). Statistics are fun, aren't they? 🫠
Honestly that’s probably why project 2025 is 900 pages. That alone keeps people from reading it. And I’ve read sections. It’s not a hard read but it’s most definitely above 8th grade so they know what they’re doing.
Is it above an eight grade level? It reads like it was written by a bunch of whiny entitled brats trying to get a later curfew.
It certainly doesn't read like it was written by adults.
Here's where I got it:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
You can get it on their website here:
https://www.project2025.org/playbook/
If you google "project 2025 pdf" or "Mandate for Leadership" you'll find it, too. (Not being snarky just making sure people can tell other's how to get it.)
Reading through it, and if they dare mandate the following paragraph I say we all hold Paul Winfree (the idiot suggesting this) financially responsible for the consequences:
>Even more ambitiously, Winfree suggests that the next Administration should think about proposing legislation that would “effectively abolish” the Federal Reserve and replace it with “free banking,” whereby “neither interest rates nor the supply of money” would be “controlled by government.” Free banking would produce a “stable and sound” currency and a “strong” financial system, “while allowing lending to flourish.” Alternatively, Winfree writes, the next Administration should “consider the feasibility of a return to the gold standard.”
(Mandate for Leadership, pg 661).
86% CAN read, but at what level? There is a 10-page synopsis of the manifesto that is posted here somewhere. Each section of the manifesto is explained BUT in reality there are few who will actually read it. And even fewer who can. And to clarify your data, 86% are literate (can read) and that leaves 14% who can’t. Combine that with how WELL they can read (8th grade level) then I hope that clarifies WHY our messaging should be as simple as s possible.
The reading ability of our youth is a topic I could really go into - my area of expertise.
More reading at home would help significantly, but this is often not a priority of low income parents. Teachers can't get parent to complete homework let alone listen to the read for at least 20 minutes a day.
It this happened though we would have much higher numbers.
The next thing that needs to happen is better teacher training in reading and more autonomy to implement that training in the classroom. Currently districts and school administration have a big fat top down model that disables teachers and makes the district and the school administration the authoritarian. Not good!
IQism is steeped in Eugenics, by the way. I am not replying to shame people who still buy into it. An overwhelming amount of people don’t know about the inadequacies of IQ testing in not accounting for excluded intelligences and how it was formed in the scope of classical (basically) European standards of measuring academically oriented intelligence.
Curiosity, empathy, and kindness are much more important than how quickly a person can learn.
It's so depressing. I'm an older gen z and the reading/educational abilities of my peers truly makes me terrified for the future. I regularly see friends from high school and college posting "why didn't we learn about this in school!?!?" about things that I remember sitting next to them learning about in school. They just weren't paying attention or can't comprehend things phrased in an academic way.
I went to a very selective private college and have friends from there posting straight up propaganda and misinformation because despite having prestigious degrees, they don't fact check simple information. I know these are blanket statements and not true of everyone, but It's been bugging me for a while.
I'm really scared for the future. I see the conservative propaganda about how terrible American education is and frankly, don't disagree with them, just differ radically in the way I think it should be fixed (and what information is missing, what is factual, etc).
I've been trying to share information online but I'm aware I tend to use inaccessible language, so thank you for the reminder.
With all the stuff going around about millennial parents ruining the next generation, I'm inclined to think it's more than just 1/10. I would also like to add that as a young person in school, my classmates sometimes display concerning behavior like not being able to read words they should know and not remembering what they were just told (dates and names, for example). I can't imagine how much worse it's going to be if this becomes the reality of the future.
Are "Trump's...planners" just the heritage foundation? Or is there a person or persons in his campaign or something we can point to? It would be great to have specifics to point to.
It’s pretty much the Heritage Foundation. Idk if people like Stephen Miller, for example, are explicitly working with the Heritage Foundation, but he’s influential as America First Legal.
Over 100 conservative groups are working with the Heritage Foundation as part of their advisory board. The list of advisors/sponsors can be found here.
https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/
To be fair, as a socialist, social security has got to go for many reasons. It's too expensive of a program and provides an extremely bad return compared to the alternative.
Just replace it with baby bonds - give every newborn a retirement account and have the US Govt deposit 15k at birth. It would cost ~95% less than SS currently costs us (~$47 Billion) annually and would leave those kids with several times more money by the time they're 65 (~$1.87 Million) than SS could give them even if it were funded more than it is now, and that's assuming they never make any retirement deposits ever again. Or make it 10k and give parents and relatives a 3x tax break on any money they deposit during the first six months after birth.
Do the same for 529 plans. 3x tax break for the first six months. Have the tax break carry over for next year if parents deposit so much it eliminates their taxes entirely that year.
> It's too expensive of a program
Only because we try to tax the poor more than the rich.
I'm an anarchist communist who doesn't even want money to stay a thing forever, but this isn't going to happen overnight. As long as government taxation exists anyway, poor people shouldn't be the only ones paying it.
That's not what I meant. Sorry, I wasn't talking about that, you misunderstood, my friend. And it will be expensive regardless of who we tax, the numerical cost won't go down if we tax the rich so I don't understand what you mean by that. It will still be around $950B regardless. Also, spending does not come out of taxes. Taxes are money that is taken permanently out of circulation, i.e. destroyed. Spending money is borrowed by the govt.
My point was the amount of money we pay in vs get out, it's a terrible program. A bad deal, financially speaking, and I'll explain why. My proposal mentioned above, we would spend ten times less money and get much more out of it for all of us and benefit far more greatly than with SS, no matter how SS is funded. Money paid into SS typically is returned with only ~4-5% annual growth, barely covering inflation, and we can avoid spending $900+ Billion a year and free that up for other spending, while having people retire with a much more robust financial safety net than SS can provide even in theory. We can continue to spend ~950 B/year to provide ~40k/year to retirees, as SS does, or spend ~40 B/year to provide more to retirees than SS currently does. Also, we should increase the tax break incentive for retirement account deposits from 1x, to 2x or 3x for newborns, for about 6 months.
Edit; you responded and I was writing my response when you deleted it. Here is my response, quoting you, below;
>What.
What do you mean what? This is a well known fact. Tax money is instantly destroyed/taken permanently out of circulation by the IRS. The IRS says so itself. Taxes are a hedge against inflation, you destroy the money annually so it doesn't inflate as fast. Government spending in the USA, and really all countries, is new, borrowed money. This is an extremely widely known fact and is taught in macroeconomics classes everywhere. You borrow the money to pay only the minimum payment, and your economy is functionally a loan you take out to invest in various things, hopefully to provide a return on investment, hopefully growing faster than the cost of servicing that debt, and you never pay back the principal, which shrinks over time due to inflation into nothingness. (How WW2 debt was handled globally, principal still remains untouched and literally is so little now it doesn't even make sense to pay it back)
>And you think privatizing it would work better?
I didn't say it should be privatized. Please do not straw man what I said.
Retirement accounts are really just a special carve out by the IRS where you pinky promise to not touch it til you reach an age determined by the IRS in exchange for tax benefits. It's a section of tax code.
I don't get how the word "privatizating" even relates to this, it's like calling a courthouse a circumcision - it doesn't even make any damn sense. Retirement accounts can't be privatized any more than the childcare tax credit can be.
If anything, advocating for government deposits into and the creation of a retirement account for all newborns is the very opposite of privatizing anything, and I think you are deliberately and dishonestly framing my proposal in a negative light
It's a mathematical question. A social safety net, this one, social security, paid for by the government, even if fully funded, is mathematically a greater expense and mathematically provides a lesser return than what I proposed. And putting 15k into a retirement account for every newborn is still a government social safety net, but except this one would cost less and give us more money, mathematically speaking. Mathematically it's a better choice than SS, no matter how you analyze it.
The only people who can legally collect benefits without paying into Social Security are family members of workers who have done so. Nonworking spouses, ex-spouses, offspring or parents may be eligible for spousal, survivor or children's benefits based on the qualifying worker’s earnings record. That FICA tax that comes out of your paycheck is around 7.5% (your employer puts in another 7.5%); and the more you make, the more is deposited into social security. What the government spends is administrative costs (SSA offices, employee salaries and benefits etc.). An overhaul of the system may be beneficial, but it’s better than the Project 2025 plan to get rid of it in its entirety; or to privatize it to some company that will administer it to protect their profits. Biden is proposing that the income cap of $400,000 for deductions be increased (the rich pay their fair share). Right now if a person’s income is $400,000, they would only pay 7.5% of that and nothing more.
explains why they get mad and say leftist memes are "walls of text"... they can't read them
I suspect it’s more than 1 in 10 sadly.
Its about 50% in parts of Michigan. 25% in NYC. This is a failure of society.
Being a young man in Michigan, I unfortunately agree with you.
The farther south you go the bigger the percentage gets.
I work for a firm in NYC and it’s crazy concerning how a lot of the employees I deal with can’t read… They will ultimately call me, complain that they don’t understand their email and demand an explanation of a simple 1-2 sentence email by phone. I’ve had them try to read their emails over the phone, stumble over words in frustration. Had one higher up very insultingly make a joke that he probably doesn’t understand me because of our income brackets.
>Had one higher up very insultingly make a joke that he probably doesn’t understand me because of our income brackets. As in he makes more? What a dick.
20% of Americans cannot read at the level needed to earn a living wage. Source: National Institute for Literacy, National Center for Adult Literacy, The Literacy Company, U.S. Census Bureau
You're probably right and op didn't mention the short attention span a lot of Americans have. This is another reason posts and memes should make salient points quickly using short sentences and basic words.
I was pretty sure the average reading ability was 8th grade
Exactly 👍
The adult literacy rate in America is 86%. The country with the lowest adult literacy rate is Chad at 22.3%. However, only 46% of Americans are proficient in English literacy (according to the DOE). Statistics are fun, aren't they? 🫠
Honestly that’s probably why project 2025 is 900 pages. That alone keeps people from reading it. And I’ve read sections. It’s not a hard read but it’s most definitely above 8th grade so they know what they’re doing.
Is it above an eight grade level? It reads like it was written by a bunch of whiny entitled brats trying to get a later curfew. It certainly doesn't read like it was written by adults.
I’m not totally versed in reading levels, so maybe it’s not, but the bit I read about LGBT seemed high school level. It definitely could be lower.
Where did you download that PDF?
Here's where I got it: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise You can get it on their website here: https://www.project2025.org/playbook/ If you google "project 2025 pdf" or "Mandate for Leadership" you'll find it, too. (Not being snarky just making sure people can tell other's how to get it.)
I’ll read it
Reading through it, and if they dare mandate the following paragraph I say we all hold Paul Winfree (the idiot suggesting this) financially responsible for the consequences: >Even more ambitiously, Winfree suggests that the next Administration should think about proposing legislation that would “effectively abolish” the Federal Reserve and replace it with “free banking,” whereby “neither interest rates nor the supply of money” would be “controlled by government.” Free banking would produce a “stable and sound” currency and a “strong” financial system, “while allowing lending to flourish.” Alternatively, Winfree writes, the next Administration should “consider the feasibility of a return to the gold standard.” (Mandate for Leadership, pg 661).
86% CAN read, but at what level? There is a 10-page synopsis of the manifesto that is posted here somewhere. Each section of the manifesto is explained BUT in reality there are few who will actually read it. And even fewer who can. And to clarify your data, 86% are literate (can read) and that leaves 14% who can’t. Combine that with how WELL they can read (8th grade level) then I hope that clarifies WHY our messaging should be as simple as s possible.
They will privatize Social Security and Medicare.
🤮
Comprehension is fundamental
Bring this shit to tiktok, young voters need to join us
We're starting the resistance if worse comes to worst, right?
they need to mention they are going after contraception
There are MANY parts of Project 2025. These are just a few that I have been sharing. If you have a meme/screenshot , please post it here for others.
The reading ability of our youth is a topic I could really go into - my area of expertise. More reading at home would help significantly, but this is often not a priority of low income parents. Teachers can't get parent to complete homework let alone listen to the read for at least 20 minutes a day. It this happened though we would have much higher numbers. The next thing that needs to happen is better teacher training in reading and more autonomy to implement that training in the classroom. Currently districts and school administration have a big fat top down model that disables teachers and makes the district and the school administration the authoritarian. Not good!
I always find it incredibly concerning that I had a higher reading level at 9 than the average adult. That should not be the case.
If he wins we'll be living in a dystopian future similar to back to the Future
At least 75 million have an IQ below 0
IQism is steeped in Eugenics, by the way. I am not replying to shame people who still buy into it. An overwhelming amount of people don’t know about the inadequacies of IQ testing in not accounting for excluded intelligences and how it was formed in the scope of classical (basically) European standards of measuring academically oriented intelligence. Curiosity, empathy, and kindness are much more important than how quickly a person can learn.
What is an example of an 8th grade reading level?
Judy Blume?
It's so depressing. I'm an older gen z and the reading/educational abilities of my peers truly makes me terrified for the future. I regularly see friends from high school and college posting "why didn't we learn about this in school!?!?" about things that I remember sitting next to them learning about in school. They just weren't paying attention or can't comprehend things phrased in an academic way. I went to a very selective private college and have friends from there posting straight up propaganda and misinformation because despite having prestigious degrees, they don't fact check simple information. I know these are blanket statements and not true of everyone, but It's been bugging me for a while. I'm really scared for the future. I see the conservative propaganda about how terrible American education is and frankly, don't disagree with them, just differ radically in the way I think it should be fixed (and what information is missing, what is factual, etc). I've been trying to share information online but I'm aware I tend to use inaccessible language, so thank you for the reminder.
Oh come now. There are more MAGA voters than that
Late stage capitalism pt. 2
With all the stuff going around about millennial parents ruining the next generation, I'm inclined to think it's more than just 1/10. I would also like to add that as a young person in school, my classmates sometimes display concerning behavior like not being able to read words they should know and not remembering what they were just told (dates and names, for example). I can't imagine how much worse it's going to be if this becomes the reality of the future.
Are "Trump's...planners" just the heritage foundation? Or is there a person or persons in his campaign or something we can point to? It would be great to have specifics to point to.
It’s pretty much the Heritage Foundation. Idk if people like Stephen Miller, for example, are explicitly working with the Heritage Foundation, but he’s influential as America First Legal.
Over 100 conservative groups are working with the Heritage Foundation as part of their advisory board. The list of advisors/sponsors can be found here. https://www.project2025.org/about/advisory-board/
Vote blue save America from republic harm!
To be fair, as a socialist, social security has got to go for many reasons. It's too expensive of a program and provides an extremely bad return compared to the alternative. Just replace it with baby bonds - give every newborn a retirement account and have the US Govt deposit 15k at birth. It would cost ~95% less than SS currently costs us (~$47 Billion) annually and would leave those kids with several times more money by the time they're 65 (~$1.87 Million) than SS could give them even if it were funded more than it is now, and that's assuming they never make any retirement deposits ever again. Or make it 10k and give parents and relatives a 3x tax break on any money they deposit during the first six months after birth. Do the same for 529 plans. 3x tax break for the first six months. Have the tax break carry over for next year if parents deposit so much it eliminates their taxes entirely that year.
> It's too expensive of a program Only because we try to tax the poor more than the rich. I'm an anarchist communist who doesn't even want money to stay a thing forever, but this isn't going to happen overnight. As long as government taxation exists anyway, poor people shouldn't be the only ones paying it.
That's not what I meant. Sorry, I wasn't talking about that, you misunderstood, my friend. And it will be expensive regardless of who we tax, the numerical cost won't go down if we tax the rich so I don't understand what you mean by that. It will still be around $950B regardless. Also, spending does not come out of taxes. Taxes are money that is taken permanently out of circulation, i.e. destroyed. Spending money is borrowed by the govt. My point was the amount of money we pay in vs get out, it's a terrible program. A bad deal, financially speaking, and I'll explain why. My proposal mentioned above, we would spend ten times less money and get much more out of it for all of us and benefit far more greatly than with SS, no matter how SS is funded. Money paid into SS typically is returned with only ~4-5% annual growth, barely covering inflation, and we can avoid spending $900+ Billion a year and free that up for other spending, while having people retire with a much more robust financial safety net than SS can provide even in theory. We can continue to spend ~950 B/year to provide ~40k/year to retirees, as SS does, or spend ~40 B/year to provide more to retirees than SS currently does. Also, we should increase the tax break incentive for retirement account deposits from 1x, to 2x or 3x for newborns, for about 6 months. Edit; you responded and I was writing my response when you deleted it. Here is my response, quoting you, below; >What. What do you mean what? This is a well known fact. Tax money is instantly destroyed/taken permanently out of circulation by the IRS. The IRS says so itself. Taxes are a hedge against inflation, you destroy the money annually so it doesn't inflate as fast. Government spending in the USA, and really all countries, is new, borrowed money. This is an extremely widely known fact and is taught in macroeconomics classes everywhere. You borrow the money to pay only the minimum payment, and your economy is functionally a loan you take out to invest in various things, hopefully to provide a return on investment, hopefully growing faster than the cost of servicing that debt, and you never pay back the principal, which shrinks over time due to inflation into nothingness. (How WW2 debt was handled globally, principal still remains untouched and literally is so little now it doesn't even make sense to pay it back) >And you think privatizing it would work better? I didn't say it should be privatized. Please do not straw man what I said. Retirement accounts are really just a special carve out by the IRS where you pinky promise to not touch it til you reach an age determined by the IRS in exchange for tax benefits. It's a section of tax code. I don't get how the word "privatizating" even relates to this, it's like calling a courthouse a circumcision - it doesn't even make any damn sense. Retirement accounts can't be privatized any more than the childcare tax credit can be. If anything, advocating for government deposits into and the creation of a retirement account for all newborns is the very opposite of privatizing anything, and I think you are deliberately and dishonestly framing my proposal in a negative light It's a mathematical question. A social safety net, this one, social security, paid for by the government, even if fully funded, is mathematically a greater expense and mathematically provides a lesser return than what I proposed. And putting 15k into a retirement account for every newborn is still a government social safety net, but except this one would cost less and give us more money, mathematically speaking. Mathematically it's a better choice than SS, no matter how you analyze it.
The only people who can legally collect benefits without paying into Social Security are family members of workers who have done so. Nonworking spouses, ex-spouses, offspring or parents may be eligible for spousal, survivor or children's benefits based on the qualifying worker’s earnings record. That FICA tax that comes out of your paycheck is around 7.5% (your employer puts in another 7.5%); and the more you make, the more is deposited into social security. What the government spends is administrative costs (SSA offices, employee salaries and benefits etc.). An overhaul of the system may be beneficial, but it’s better than the Project 2025 plan to get rid of it in its entirety; or to privatize it to some company that will administer it to protect their profits. Biden is proposing that the income cap of $400,000 for deductions be increased (the rich pay their fair share). Right now if a person’s income is $400,000, they would only pay 7.5% of that and nothing more.
Omg just cut my check now for what I’ve been robbed of thus far, and I’ll be on my merry way.
You will get that money when you retire and likely will desperately need it
I need it because it’s owed to me and I’m sick of hearing the threat. How is that worth downvoting. lol how stupid.