this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2024
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
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The problem, or at least one of them, is that those words resonate so well with her viewers. I am not excusing her, but if she did not say them then someone else would - so yeah it's more the game than the playa.
People in Gen-Z just don't work hard as often. Ofc there are reasons: why should they, when their work isn't valued/rewarded properly? So then to the self-ish/-centered crowd, all they see is that they get served less well by their Gen-Z ~~slaves~~ workers than the Millennials who put in more of an effort, but rather than take ownership of that and like go somewhere else that pays their workers better, they instead blame the victim. Like, "I paid a whole dollar for this burger - why aren't you smiling at me harder as you walk out in the rain to hand-deliver it to me?"
Like if you have to live with your parents or roommates anyway, and have little to no hope of ever owning your own home, or possibly even car, and also can't afford health insurance, to get married, and after over-turning of Roe v. Wade to have sex (even if you were married), etc. then why should you work more than the bare minimum to survive?
If you kick a dog often enough, it stops being happy to see you.:-( Boomers solution: it must need to be kicked harder, until it complies and wags its tail enthusiastically whenever you come home. I am sorry if it breaks your heart to read that sentence... but fwiw, at least it proves you have one:-).
The cost of living crisis in western countries at the moment feels like a stand off between boomers and gen Z over exactly this. One one hand you have the boomers expecting the same service and quality while paying less and less, on the other you have gen Z who refuse to do it for the pittance. So the cost of living is now skyrocketing in an attempt to strong-arm gen Z into compliance.
I understand that it looks that way from the outside, but that is far too simplistic - i.e., correlation is not causation, especially where the latter is already known. What is CAUSING so much pain right now is corporate greed, and what ALLOWS that is primarily voting Democrat vs. Republican, with the heaviest voting block being evangelical Christian vs. not. A complicating factor is that baby boomers are somewhat insulated from the worst effects, plus their retirement savings are often tied up into the stock market that is what rich people want to succeed, plus they don't do themselves much credit by being remarkably unsympathetic to the plight of how the younger generations are being sold into corporate near-slavery, plus on top of it all they do trend more towards voting conservative to begin with, etc. But e.g. a young Republican does far more harm than an old Democrat, i.e. age is one of the more minor correlating effects.
An illustration may help: right now if a 10-year old girl is raped by her very own father and gets pregnant, the primary discriminator of whether she will live or is consigned to have a VERY good chance of dying (in agony) is whether she lives in an area that votes primarily Democratic or one that votes primarily Republican. This is the stuff that is literally life and death.
Beyond that, the effects of inflation, the availability of jobs, whether the government of the state that you are in is bankrupt, and/or has any/no competent/sufficient firefighters/police/teachers/medical staff/etc. all correlate with Republican vs. Democrat. Look at COVID death rates to see which area is which, especially after the vaccine existed.
In short, there are two different Americas right now, one being mostly third-world (except still has internet and TV and cars and stuff, but I still would not call it second-world when the child mortality rate is somewhere between Rwanda and Uganda, and has been about that level for decades) and the other first-world. And they are tearing at each other, one being never happy with the way things are and wanting to go still further back in time, floating such thoughts as whether women should still be allowed to vote, plus literally calling for a "national divorce" (with prejudice - i.e. a literal, murderous, bloody Civil War part 2), and the other also wanting basically not that. So similar to Brexit, we are basically ready for Amexit? Except from ourselves. Which will affect the entire fucking world b/c if Biden loses and Trump comes in again, what are the chances that this time he discovers that he can control nukes?
Anyway, yes old people helped bring this about, but mostly by inaction and while I am not saying that mistakes were not made, I am saying that much of the media rhetoric about the generations being at each others' throats is... if not entirely false, then at least mostly so. i.e., it is not old people attacking the younger ones, it is corporations attacking us all (but who would like it very much if we would simply pretend that they were not involved? thus they bought up all the media, and now good luck hearing a story that ever says that they are complicit in anything).