- Show
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Union_membership_in_us_1930-2010.png
It's so frustrating, your coworkers will be (rightfully) complaining about how the job sucks and how your boss keeps screwing us but the second you ask if they've ever thought of unionization they look at you like you've grown two heads and start spewing bullshit about unions being useless and dues being a waste of money.
It would be one thing if they were apprehensive about it because of the risk of the company union busting and them losing their jobs but they're actively hostile to any suggestion of collective bargaining
It's incredibly discouraging, especially since unionizing is risky and you have no idea who's going to rat you out for talking about it.
My old job, a software job, people would work nights and weekends to "make deadlines". Arbitrary deadlines made up by ownership. I'd try to tell them that they're devaluing their labor by giving it away for cheap, but they don't care. No class solidarity.
These are healthy young white men making $200k to $300k a year.
These are the same people whose knowledge of history sums up to about "isn't jim crow a burger place?" so maybe I'm asking too much of them.
For white people in the imperial core
Keep downvoting, sorry the truth hurts that your parents only had those privileges fromremoved the rest of the world
I'm actually rather surprised by all of the negative responses to this post. Having lived through part of this period of time (gen-x), I can attest to the accuracy of this. This standard of living or quality of life, or whatever you want to callout absolutely was achievable for most. No, it was not perfect by any means - people did struggle, yes, racial discrimination was worse. Poverty was still there, but none of it was on the scale that we see today. People were NOT beat down and discouraged. Young people got out of high school, found jobs and could rent an apartment on their own. Small towns did not have people sleeping in the woods. Cities had homeless people but it was nowhere near the level we see today. Seriously, not even close. Medical care was much more affordable. If you had insurance, they just paid your doctor's bills without engaging in a protracted fight over copays, out-of-pocket nonsense or other methods of exploiting the fine print of your policy. You just didn't hear about people losing their homes over medical costs.
For a good portion of my childhood, I was raised by a single mom who was able to make rent on a 2 bedroom apartment working a job waiting tables. She was able to later buy a house on a non-union factory job and make payments on a car. One income, one person. We were very much on the lower end of the scale.
I think many of you have been gaslit by the current state of affairs. Everything sucks and seems to actively be getting worse. I really feel bad for the millennial generation and those that followed because the system is rigged, inequality is off the charts and basic living as we knew it is not achievable for a much larger portion of society. It's difficult to overestimate how far we've fallen over the past 40 years.
Now its your fault you can't make ends meet if you don't even have a "side hustle."
Living in cars is now such an accepted lifestyle, that I recently read about a college that was building a multi-level parking lot for students who live in their cars. They could build an affordable living facility, but it's better to normalize living in your car when they are young. And in college. That way, when that college degree that you went $60K in debt for doesn't turn into a real job, and you are working a minimum wage retail job, and door dashing, living in your car will feel perfectly normal.
I saw another post by guy discussing his strategy of living in his car for a few years, so he can save up the money for a house. We used to do stuff like that, too, except we wouldn't live in our car, we'd just get a roommate.
I have no doubt that soon we'll be seeing YouTube videos about couples living in cars, and even raising families in cars. Look how resourceful they are!
And kids today think that's normal.
The answer to why resides in the way wealth is allocated in society. If you look at the graph of the wealth of the 0.1%, the median income and the economical growth, those three numbers were growing at a steady pace up until the 70~80s. Now our economies are growing at a similar rate but median income plateaued/is decreasing while the wealth of people at the top has skyrocketed.
It's not hard to figure out where all that growth went.
We could still afford such a lifestyle. Or we could learn to share more and end poverty and respect the Earth. But instead we're allowing a small village of removed to each have more money and power than entire countries.
- Show
The Rand Corp issued a report in 2019 on income inequality, and the situation is far worse than most people think. The median salary of $43K in 1975 had increased to only $50K in 2019, while they would have been making $92K if the tax code hadn't been steadily re-written to enrich the wealthy at the cost of the middle class and poor.
In that same time period, the mean income for the top 1% went from $289K to $1.384 million, while they would have been making $630K under the old tax codes.
Thats a 17.4% increase in the lower median, and an increase of 321.6% in the 1% median. Clearly there has been an upwards distribution of wealth at the expense of the middle class since the tax codes started to be re-written in 1974 to favor the top economic tier. The Trickle Down Economics that everyone thought was Ronald Reagan's great idea, was baked into the tax code in 1974.
In addition, the Federal minimum wage was last increased to $7.25 in 2009. Previous to that, it was raised to $5.15 in 1997. The Federal minimum wage was only increased twice in the last 28 years, for a total of a measly $2.10. And yet corporations and their owners SCREAM like their nuts are being carved out by a red hot, dull, rusty spoon at even the mention of a raise in the minimum wage.
When there are threats to raise it every 15 years or so, there are always two responses, as if they are the ONLY possible options - prices will have to go up, or jobs will have to be cut. There is never a mention of the third possible option - that corporations and their owners might have to make a slightly smaller profit. That option is absolutely unthinkable. Unmentionable.
"But less profit means the stock market would be impacted!" is the standard cry. Yes it would, but so what? The stock market hit its recent low in March of 2008, soon after Obama took over the presidency in the midst of a free fall caused by the Bush Economic Crash - about 7500. Today it is over 40,000. Corporations are clearly benefiting in today's economy, even during a global pandemic when millions of American families were facing homelessness and food shortages through no fault of their own. They were the helpless victims of government edicts which forcibly and ruthlessly shut down their only ways to make a living, while doing NOTHING to help them survive because a few rich Republicans are upset that poor people might get more money than they deserve. So they fought to a stalemate over $400 or $600 per week, while their Sociopathic Oligarch slavemasters chuckled smugly while metaphorically lighting their cigars with $100 bills and demanding more corporate welfare.
So what if smaller profits (because workers got paid their value) meant the stock market was only at 20,000, or even 15,000? Those corporations and their stockholders would still be wealthy, but there would be enough money in the treasury to pay for health care for all, college or trade school for every qualified student, to forgive all student loan shark debts, to cover those whose jobs have been essentially declared illegal because of the pandemic, and more. Sure, corporations would have to live with less profit, but instead of that money being tied up in enormous stock portfolios or in offshore bank accounts, it would be in the hands of people who would buy houses, cars, furniture, vacations, retire to make room for the next generation, etc.
The Trickle Down Economic Theory never worked. As anyone could have predicted (and many did), instead of spending those tax profits on new factories or new opportunities or higher pay scales like we were promised, the Sociopathic Oligarchs only accumulated it at the top. When they did spend it, they spent it on political leverage to get more corporate welfare so they could accumulate even more wealth, at the expense of the working class, creating financial hoards which they sleep on like a Tolkienesque dragon.
Its time to give Trickle Up Economics a try. Make more money available to those at the bottom and middle, and see what happens. Raise wages, forgive student loans, offer free college and trade schools, give every citizen health care, etc. and it will create millions of jobs and stimulate the economy. Sure, the Oligarchs appreciate the efficiency of transferring the money directly from the government to their savings accounts, but the money from the Trickle Up stimulus will eventually reach them anyway, they just have to be a little patient and wait for it to help American families and the American economy first.
If they don't cooperate in this, then our society will spontaneously pivot to a Robin Hood Economy, and the Sociopathic Oligarchs won't like that one bit. We're already seeing the beginnings of it.
Read more about it :
New York Mag: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/amp/2020/09/rand-study-how-high-is-inequality-us.html
Fast Money: https://www.fastcompany.com/90550015/we-were-shocked-rand-study-uncovers-massive-income-shift-to-the-top-1
Ah yes, the art of "Enshittification" i.e., profit over product. And obviously you are the product for the billionaires and vertainly not other way around. https://www.themurrowproject.org/p/the-enshitification-of-everything
