We should have UBI, Medicare for all, SNAP for all, and housing for all. Unfortunately, we live in a world with power-hungry billionaires who derive their own value based on how many people below them have less, so we’re all stuck playing by capitalist rules to survive. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bend them a little bit.

Of course, jewelry or books or music or whatever the hell I’m selling here aren’t essentials like food and healthcare…but I’d argue that art brings joy, and joy is absolutely essential. So if some of my silly art can bring you some joy, I want to make it easier for you to have it. Enter my sliding scale pricing formula:

Price = Materials + (Labor * HourlyWage) + (Materials*.2)

Dirty Socialist Pricing means YOU decide how much you pay (and how much I get paid). My rates for 2026 are $15, $20, or $25 per hour. ($15 is the lowest I can accept for this work if I want to afford to keep doing it right now.) Each piece I list in the shop will have labor hours clearly stated in the description, as well as transparent materials cost (tracked in my obnoxiously meticulous spreadsheet; see below).

Labor only covers the active time I’m working on a piece—not planning, designing, marketing, or maintaining this website. I’ll never bill less than 1 hour, because…well, would you go to work for less than an hour?

Materials are listed exactly, but there are some things I can’t account for. This is where that extra (Materials*.2) comes in: the 20% addition to the materials cost covers incidentals like breakages during assembly, wear & tear on tools, or packaging materials (shipping labels, etc). Prices are rounded to the nearest dollar.

So there it is! My Dirty Socialist Pricing isn’t quite socialist, but I think it covers the vibe of what I’m trying to do here. Maybe one day we’ll have all those luxuries like housing and UBI, and I can give away my art for free.