- Housing
- Student Loans
- Medical Care
- Child care/The cost of children (assuming that's something you want to do not making a value judgement)
- Education
- Wages/"JOBS™©®"/"THE ECONOMY™©®"
- Inflation/Cost of Living/Value of currency
- Just the political issues we all face but are the best "hot button" issues
All that sort of stuff. I'm not minimizing stuff like Palestine of course, but I don't recall in the seemingly endless 2020-2024 election campaign. I don't really think I heard any sort of real "kitchen table issues". I feel like even the most basic political issues have been obfuscated or ignored. It feels like these very political issues have been removed from the sphere of political discourse.
I don't know what my larger point is, but it feels strange to think that for example I haven't heard a single mention of something like higher education costs for example. This isn’t just a dunk on Democrats either, though it is worth saying “get fucked losers”, but I think since about 2020 I haven’t heard a damn thing about healthcare or housing in a real political way from the big two or the media in general.
Again this isn't to meant to minimize any other real problems either, not trying to "this is more important than that", just saying I haven't political people talk about politics all the while not being able to escape the political dimension
I was just thinking the other day about how back in 2022 during the baby formula shortage it seemed like Democrats didn’t fucking care and talked about fucking Ukraine instead.
Then I had kind of a hunch about something, looked it up, and bazinga! Turns out infant formula usage skews based on socioeconomic status/race.
What was interesting is that, in a rare W, the Biden admin actually did act fairly quickly to arrange new imports and stabilize the supply. But then they never communicated any of that shit to voters for the upcoming midterms.
In which way?
Sorry, I don't have kids.
Poorer families generally rely more on baby formula. If you are working full time, it is not really possible to produce enough milk for all the times a baby needs to eat, especially considering that you need to eat good nutritional food as well, which is expensive.
Baby formula is a real fuck for poor families, because it is real expensive but also needed, and people can be very judgemental about it because not breastfeeding is seen as a choice (because it's "free"). It's another moment where the sadism of poor social policy is individualized as personal failure.
The stigma about formula is really awful. In addition to the socioeconomic considerations, some women just don't have sufficient milk production. So now they have feelings of guilt and failure because they can't feed their baby, that is then reinforced by society saying that it is "the right way". Fed is best is often repeated, but only goes so far to counteract the background radiation
Pumping and storing milk is a middle class privilege.
My sister bought a $500 milker and separate storage fridge so she could plan out her pump schedule and meals for her newborn. She also had the kind of email job that has a private pumping room with plush chairs, dim lighting, and nobody asking questions as to where you were for the last hour.
The average mother of 3 working at Taco Bell needs to resort to using formula