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NATIONSTATES
• DRY DRY DIGEST BOOK REVIEW COLUMN:
The popular, controversial book Time Capsule: TurtleShroom's Eternal Gilded Age, written by a creature under the pseudonym Author Unknown, is the subject of today’s public review, on the petition of one hundred thousand signatures.
The book presents itself as “an insightful criticism of the modern economic and industrial state of the country, contrasting the national economic boom and increased population with the Gilded Age of USA, 1870-1910”.
The book received the second-lowest rating by the Board of Censors (scoring a Holiness Board “CA+”), indicating full compliance (C) but not intended for distribution to pre-teen/sexual-maturation creatures (Adolescent and Up/A+). It was flagged with the warnings of government criticism, of sinful greed and division by inciting hatred amongst different tiers of net worth, of calling for labor riots, and generally existing as a leftists’ manifesto. The Board concluded that its criticism of TS capitalism and successful enterprises (foreign and domestic) equates to criticizing the government’s “hands off” economic policy, and that the book can not be banned or restricted beyond the traditional mandate.
Quotes from the book:
The paper and this column do not endorse this book. In fact, we hate Marxist propaganda.
It’s a shame so few in TurtleShroom would picket anything. This book is for Marxists, and not the good kind down south!
-DRY DRY DIGEST
- Time Capsule: the Eternal Gilded Age
- GENRE: Non-fiction; print documentary, political commentary, Marxist text
- RATING: CA+-CGBLMX (Compliant-Adolescent, Criticism of Government/Society, Blue Collar Hate, non-Quaker Marxist Literature) – Teen and up. Approved for unconditional public reading. Protected under TS Constitution, Article IX.
- ADVISORIES: Contains advocacy of greed and avarice, indignant; supports blue-collar uprising, organized labor thuggery. Class warfare; class envy; class hatred. Anti-corporate, anti-capitalism. Trotskyite by export of revolution.
- RESTRICTIONS: U (Cleared to be sold in any location that seeks to sell it/unconditional.)
- Archival number 330695-2013AD
The popular, controversial book Time Capsule: TurtleShroom's Eternal Gilded Age, written by a creature under the pseudonym Author Unknown, is the subject of today’s public review, on the petition of one hundred thousand signatures.
The book presents itself as “an insightful criticism of the modern economic and industrial state of the country, contrasting the national economic boom and increased population with the Gilded Age of USA, 1870-1910”.
The book received the second-lowest rating by the Board of Censors (scoring a Holiness Board “CA+”), indicating full compliance (C) but not intended for distribution to pre-teen/sexual-maturation creatures (Adolescent and Up/A+). It was flagged with the warnings of government criticism, of sinful greed and division by inciting hatred amongst different tiers of net worth, of calling for labor riots, and generally existing as a leftists’ manifesto. The Board concluded that its criticism of TS capitalism and successful enterprises (foreign and domestic) equates to criticizing the government’s “hands off” economic policy, and that the book can not be banned or restricted beyond the traditional mandate.
Quotes from the book:
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:The state of TurtleShroomer society is marked by total corporate dominance and suppression of the labor movement. Convinced that asking for a wage is selfish, the entire populace willingly submits itself to wages below all international and regional poverty marks and suffers under ten hour workdays.
Although the Church is complacent in this issue, I do not believe they are at fault. This is, in fact, deliberate manipulation by big business and fierce lobbying forces that have owned this country since the Industrial Revolution.
As NationStates catapults into the future of workers rights and even the Aashinian Navy, whose men have long experienced the TurtleShroomer labor crises, increases benefits and pay to working-class sailors while overall wages remain stagnant.
Companies that have increased wages have seen immigrant and domestic labor flock to their doorstep for a new job. Mighty B Oil, for example, has expanded its so-called “benefits package” for each tenement in the truck system, and while using Mighty B Oil is an irony to describe salaried pay, it is an example of the slow pace by which capitalism is raising its own pay floor.
However, this process is slower than any chelonian. Average wages have increased thirty Skillets from 1969....
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:TurtleShroom is a tourists’ and pilgrims’ haven. Glitzy casinos, cuisine, a servile and humble population, etiquette, and an “old world charm”, not to mention the mushroom and turtle population, draws tens of thousands of tourists every week to the country, and they are willing to go by rail because of the price. Jonesboro has never had more traffic or business, and yet the city still refuses to increase spending.
The wealth difference between tourists and citizens is profound. Tourists buy bags of souvenirs and consistently inform others of how “great a deal” visiting TurtleShroom is for them.
Restaurant owners consistently gawk at even lower-class workers leaving one hundred Skillets ($25.00 NS-standard/USA Dollars) for a single meal. Waiters can pay for a complete tertiary education on less than a year of tips…
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:The richest of the rich are still aligned with the general population that “conspicuous consumption” is wasteful or even evil. Thrift is expected and upper-class creatures rarely exhibit more signs of wealth that a digital wristwatch or a finer suit. Obviously, security guards or some form of wheeled transport is used by these upper crusts to travel extremely long distances, but they exhibit the humility of the common worker, and normally because they were that themselves.
Yet, there emerges a huge new generation of less wealthy, but unquestionably upper class creatures- not limited to humanity –who engage in the very thing their wealthier, more elite brethren shun to their deaths. It is conspicuous consumption. They have wealth and they make it known.
For literary reasons, I find it necessary to differentiate the wealthiest top ten percent of the larger share of the wealthiest elites in TurtleShroom. Only in TurtleShroom are the trillionaires(s) and multi-billionaires are more able to demonstrate modesty. Any TurtleShroomer laughs at the classic joke that the richest TurtleShroomers simply “collect money” and hide it in privately-owned caves for fun.
That is not so with the lower-rung wealthy. Multi-millionaires and entry-level billionaires are an entirely different breed. They purchase automobiles and use them to travel mere miles; they buy color televisions whose internal workings are housed in chambers as thin as a man’s wrist, and news of thinner imports are followed. They host lavish parties and open their homes for guests every day, living in pampered hedonism as any ennobled, aristocratic Aashinian Commissar. As these men and creatures age and enter the annals of power, this could harm the electoral integrity of the country.
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:TurtleShroomers hate banks and love their credit unions. It is a rarity that a nation with such unregulated prosperity- seen as an end unto itself –has such a low ratio of banking usage. The economic freedom of TurtleShroom should have allowed banking to engage in its classic actions when sheltered in a plutocracy, and they have, but this hasn’t affected the society as a whole.
The new class of wealthy TurtleShroomers seem to shed the previous “mattress vault” mindset of their richer peers. Banks- not credit unions nor household vaults –have received increased cash deposits into tens of thousands of anonymous accounts. Money has been made there, and banks are encroaching into places that they were unheard of. Their capital and clout are a risk to credit unions as banks can offer larger loans, for a longer time, in a bigger way, to more people.
In banks, large loan interests catering to the poor have had rates finally crossed the government’s century-old definition of sinful usury (twenty-five percent). Credit union loans only reach sixteen percent. While the government has finally forced its hand on parochial interest caps, this is a great fear. The capitalists agree that banking ought to be done by those who can provide the best product and therefore the best loan rates.
Yet, capitalists don’t entertain the argument that credit union tellers have reported having to pay into protection rackets in urban areas, or lesser, but still large towns and jurisdictions have begun using zoning laws in unbalanced manners.
Every for-profit bank is essentially a front for the mob or the Drug Lords. These actions are illegal; where’s our government?
The Eternal Gilded Age wrote:Did you know that TurtleShroom's Constitution allows the government to regulate price gouging? It does, but no one watching the markets would know it. Non-well running water has risen from sixteen Pones (~$0.08) a day to more than thirty two Pones ($0.16) a day. This drove urban TurtleShroomers into having their water shut off or to switch into wells. More outhouses exist in cities than countries. The water companies didn’t care because they went out with enough money to retire.
Wages remain the same while goods go up. This inflation isn’t capitalism, it’s big business. The workers have been taking this for generations, and it is becoming more visible and grander in scheme every day…
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:The bane of USA is outsourcing. Jobs are being exported to the Deep Orient- and to us –and their workers starve in the streets. We, though, have an uniquely TurtleShroomian problem, which I will address now.
Is the truck system repackaged slavery? Is the enemy correct?
Well: is GEICO tied three ways for the best-selling car insurer as of print?
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:Let’s face it. This country is a banana republic. We are plutocratic at best and bought-and-sold at worst. Patriotism and nationalism are nice, but nothing separates our de facto control over the state than Azande except for the fact that we remove politicians that get caught! Politicians aren’t even kingmakers, much less decision makers. The Free Market’s upward mobility surpasses the state. Corporations either become subtlety above the law or they corrupt it.
Eternal Gilded Age wrote:Capitalism is nice, but there is such a thing as too much. The workers have their case and are worthy of a big raise. If the Free Market was to do this, they’d have their raise in say, twenty years or so, assuming salaried employment isn’t removed.
There is no working class more self-loathing and self-defeating then this country. This isn’t humility: workers genuinely believe they are unworthy of calling for televisions to be stocked in common big-box-stores, or that a car is “never needed” when the trains are crowded to hide-in-shell room only. The busses and trains can only hold as much as they want to. When is the last time a bus network was expanded for population? The busses are more and more packed, the trains are denser and denser, but the prices are still the same. We’re being fleeced. You are being fleeced.
Only a proper labor movement can fight this and tick the hands of time forwards. TurtleShroom needs a Samuel Gompers. TurtleShroom needs a dose of the left. TurtleShroom needs a labor movement. It’ll cost blood, but I for one am willing to die for more money at the end of the day. Isn’t bettering your family what you want?
The paper and this column do not endorse this book. In fact, we hate Marxist propaganda.
It’s a shame so few in TurtleShroom would picket anything. This book is for Marxists, and not the good kind down south!
-DRY DRY DIGEST