Huge losses from national disasters prompt industry to jack up prices and pull back from some markets; ‘worst possible scenario’ for consumers
After Allstate suffered billions of dollars in losses and failed to get the rate increases it wanted, it resorted to the nuclear option.
The insurance giant threatened last fall to stop renewing auto insurance for customers in three states that hadn’t given in to its demands, which would have left those policyholders scrambling for coverage. The states blinked.
In December, New Jersey approved auto rate increases for Allstate averaging 17%, and New York, a 15% hike. Regulators in California are allowing Allstate to boost auto rates by 30%, but still haven’t decided on its request for a 40% increase in home-insurance rates after the insurer refused to write new policies.
For many Americans, getting insurance for both their cars and homes has gone from a routine, generally manageable expense to a do-or-die ordeal that can strain household budgets.
There’s some artistic rhetoric in there but at the heart of it im saying people today, despite our technical advances, aren’t any different than people medieval. Keep in mind, I’m talking as if I’m yapping at my boys here, this ain’t for publication or speech writing. That being said, I’m feeling a little lyrical, I’m sure this’ll be long.
We done fucked up. For some of us, all our fancy tech has geniunely given a utopia. But all that fancy tech also shoved that shit in the rest our faces making sure we know we’ll never get to play with it to. Every week its some new amazing discovery but outside, for the majority of us, it’s perpetual 1999. This is where someone chimes in with “technically” stats about most peaceful time in history, etc etc. I’ll even agree with the stats, but i know, hopefully you know too, that statistics thrown up ≠ persuasive argument.
I’ve heard the recession is over since 2008. Now, 16 years later and I still haven’t seen this improvement the talking heads prattle on about. What little recovery anyone of us workers had managed to squirrel away the pandemic took. I know one couple who is better off now than they were 16 years ago. Showing me statistics otherwise my observed existence isn’t going to convince me I’m wrong, it’s going to make me think you 1. Aren’t listening to me, and 2. Would rather steamroll me with party lines and talking points. 100% would not work. Im still convinced that the recession, for at least 75% of Americans never ended, and the unprecedented success of Black Rock, Amazon, and that grifter Musk, and the rest of the lawless, Epstein clas, threw every metric out the window. Or just blurred enough of the acronyms to hammer a couple home as evidence even tho …in .no one sees it anywhere.
But y’know, media, ministry of truth, 2+2=5. Neoliberalism lies thru its teeth.
Example: We have a dept of defense but we haven’t fought a defensive war since 1865, save for 2 moments in 1941. We are historically the warring party, the attackers.
That point aside, my main point is the heavy, unironical use of euphemism when everyone and their mail-order-mother-in-law knows their playing fast and loose…but he who controls the present controls the past. Words matter. There’s still a public record. There is still what we indoctrina…/teach our next generation. That’s why those sick GOP fucksticks fetishize children…s education. I joke but the only two things a R cares about in a school are what myth of our history are we selling and what set of private parts the kids have.
Now I don’t know any pedo’s, but for how much the right talks about children’s nethers and their concern for where 2 (or more) consensual adults park their bits, I don’t know which group, far right fascista faggotry or literal chimo’s, which of whom is more consumed by other people’s bits than the other, and that’s frankly frightening.
There’s the media line, the line of record. Then there’s testimony by those actually living it. Bro, I don’t know a single parent that’s not on food stamps. I’m 42. I know hundreds and hundreds of parents. Not. One. Our failures as a society, and the general mood towards that is a one of the most important statistics we have, because it measures the general zeitgeist of resentment: income inequality. NeoLiberal policy has created our society, these conditions aren’t the result of unforseen social theory. Neoliberalism itself is a rather interesting sparring partner with in² ($≠…idk) since NL requires almost maxing out the propaganda and police state specs. Theyve already sustained far longer than the French Monarchy did. Income was easier to acquire before and during the French revolution, and homes were easier to purchase during the great depression.
School teaches us that, generally, we are at the end of history, which is NeoLiberal doublespeak to dissuade looking elsewhere for answers. But I’ve the mind that the truth doesn’t need to hide away. If capitalism were so secure, why do poli sci grads leave uni without reading Das Kapital? You cant gloss over Marx when talking poli sci.
They’ll juviophobe every generation to distract. Millennials killed the funeral (can’t afford any fun :( ), GenZ can’t think in color. Blah blah. Gay, straight, fuzzy, chimera’s, whatever. It’s all bullshit
We have the same problems today we had a hundred years ago. An entire century of human development wasted. For what? So the same lazy fucking 100 families can continue never working?
You got another way of seeing that? Cuz that’s my take on our entire planet and I find it extremely wanting. I couldn’t plead a defense to some galactic court, I’d just go listen to Gogon poetry.
So stats can make a narrative, but if no one is actually living that narrative, it’s not an if, it’s a when. Democrats, always, ALWAYS, framed as it’s them or ANARCHY, sell us a narrative we all know is bullshit.
Some people are tired of eating it. And I can’t blame them. I am not paid by the DNC, I am not doing their work for them. And if I’m being honest, anarchy sounds more appealing then perpetual 1999.