The important thing to remember is that she's still a teacher. She's just not teaching children anymore, since it doesn't pay enough. This should be a wake up call to most people...
The headline is really misleading. She now works for Costco corporate doing marketing training. The typical store employee is still around $18/hour.
Downvoting you, because you are mischaracterizing the article content.
The first half of it describes how she started there and the regular positions she had, before she moved up and into the teaching position she has at corporate office, which is similar to the teaching position she had before; both are of a teaching.
From the article…
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.
School teachers often get physically and verbally abused by both parents and students, with the abusers getting little to no reprocussions. In a corporate environment that would get you fired or arrested.
Except that we have education requirements for teachers, and retail will hire just about anyone.
The reason teachers aren’t paid well is because we have a culture of funding public services like absolute shit. So despite low supply and high demand for teachers, we just keep adding more and more kids to each teacher, and giving them less and less supplies to work with. While letting wages stagnate.
People need to stop applying free-market thinking to our public services.
My school district is one of the few that pays a competitive wage to be private industry to their teachers in the U.S. The local teacher unions are extremely strong and have had numerous strikes over the years.
They unionized the non-certificated staff and they have gone on strike as well.
This past summer they were getting 100+ applicants for every open teacher position. Every open position is filled easily.
Just because its obvious doesn't mean its not also bullshit.
Education is the single most important thing affecting a societies longevity and well-being. If the people responsible for that education aren't able to support themselves, it erodes the very foundation of the country.
Whether or not it affects the bottom line of an investment firm may be an important metric to you but it doesn't necessarily mean what's best for everyone.
How TF am I mischaracterizing it? The teacher in this story got a pay bump by taking a marketing job with Costco corporate, not by working in the warehouse. The headline implies that she got a raise by working for her local Costco. That’s misleading.
Well then in that case your reading comprehension is pretty bad.
In September 2022, I started full-time on the memberships team at a new warehouse in Athens, Georgia. I had two 15-minute breaks, and 30 minutes for lunch. Otherwise, I was on my feet all day.
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher. I put in 40-hour workweeks, five days a week, and got a $1-per-hour raise when I hit 1,000 hours.
The article also describes how she worked in the bakery.
My reading comprehension is fine. Do you understand the difference between the headline and the article?
To recap, my critique is that the headline obscures the real story – that she got a raise by getting a corporate job. “Works at Costco” clearly implies working at a store, not corporate.
At first, I made $18.50 an hour — a little less than what I earned as a teacher.
So you agree the headline is a lie because she was not making 50% more by switching to work at Costco but by finding a job with vertical promotion possibilities and getting a corporate job using her degree which few would be able to follow in her footsteps cause their is limited positions.
She took a pay cut to work on her feet all day.
This is a recruiter article bragging about how much better it is to work for Costco and they try to make the pay cut seem like not a big deal when there is vastly different perks and benefits.
A good reason to have laws regulating the maximum pay gap between executive and the lowest paid peon. And make sure to include all types of pay like stock options so companies can’t squirm out of it.
I'm ok with this, but it's essentially just a step toward socialism which is the better option (but will never happen). Because all this will do is make CEOs less wealthy from the company itself. The investors still make tons more than the CEOs already and they don't do anything. You need to force revenue sharing essentially which is just socialism with extra steps. Cause CEOs will just end up investing in other companies and still be wealthy and get less compensation from the company itself.
No, for investors to grow revenue it would. Which was the whole initial concept of owning the means of production. You invest in what you thought would make money. You didn't invest because you wanted to take away employee's earned value to yourself. But that's what it came to. A majority of inflation is profit-driven related. Not government assistance related like many corporations and conservatives want you to think. Aside from that, any overt success is shared amongst everyone and no increase would be offset by normal COLA through the supply chain. People could survive and thrive without having to gut the value of employees or those in the supply chain. The only issue would be loss of business which is always a risk. But losses can be shared equally or if it's a large enough loss over a long enough time, it would require some folks to be laid off and depending on why, the employees could put the person running the business.
You didn’t invest because you wanted to take away employee’s earned value to yourself.
The fact that this ends up being the way that companies create more ‘shareholder value’ is a particular disease of modern neoliberalism. What you describe seems to me more similar to how companies in the US were run in the 1950s. More of a ‘rising tide lifts all ships’ approach that was used before management became antagonistic towards labor (viewing business units as ‘cost centers’ etc…). Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
Its a particular framing that I think we can say does not guarantee any kind of result of profitability, but seems particularly enshrined in modern management culture.
It’s enshrined in a management culture that has largely conquered labor through a mixture of anti-union measures and taking capitalism global so that they can pay as close to zero as possible for labor in other countries.
Sure, the products and services (and the country) all suffer, but nobody really seems to give a shit about that.
Exactly. Increasing pay would be really, really nice. But we can do that and have more control over our workplaces. Worker owned companies would prevent huge disparities in pay from reoccurring, regardless of what the government does.
Like a wise and angry man once said: "Fuck the G rides, I want the machines that are making them."
I know. But investors don't care. They're the root of the problem. CEOs are simply an employee of the company that ultimately represents the shareholders interest. Affecting their pay does not affect shareholder value that much. It just commoditizes the CEO position.
Seriously, I literally just posted the same comment basically. It’s really silly how fixated on CEOs people are. I guess they are an easy scapegoat example, but they’re just goons hired by the board of directors on behalf of the shareholders. It’s not like they straight up own the company. (Yeah yeah yeah, there’s stock compensation, and some founder CEOs like Zuck still own shares after IPO etc, i know.)
Socialism is the abolition of social classes. Regulating capital is usually called Social Democracy, or Marxism. Honestly, sieze the means of production.
Haha what the fuck do you think we’re talking about here? Nobody said lower CEO pay or anything about a ceiling, we’re talking about lessening the pay gap by enforcing a ratio. If CEOs want to make huge wages they need to pay employees more. This is grade school math dude.
Obviously you’re trolling and I’m just feeding it, but on the small chance that you’re not… Well shit man, maybe don’t dig yourself into stances so strongly if you can’t do basic math?
Dude scroll up. Unless buddy edited the post, this entire response thread was a reply calling for reducing ceo pay to fix the ratio. Which I maintain, despite all the name calling, doesn’t fucking help anything at all
37% federal plus 5-10% state, plus additional Medicare tax and 3.8% investment income tax and a bunch of others, not good enough for you? That’s literally approaching 50% what’s your problem?
A majority of wealth doesn't come from income so would never be touched by income tax. A "wealth tax" is just a broad term meaning that they should be taxed on the wealth fairly. Like capital gains for instance is a doozy. Way less taxation than what you likely pay (percentage wise obviously).
So "wealth tax" would include an income tax, capital tax, estate tax etc, all just at rates that are equivalent to how well the system treats them. They get a much larger advantage off the system that is set up than most others.
And the ultra wealthy don't even always have an income. You think Bezos has a salary right now that's significantly attributing to his wealth? Or Buffet or even Zuckerberg? I forget, his his salary still $1 a year? You want to tax only that?
But they're literally not counted under income tax law. So you're essentially arguing for the exact same thing if you want it to count under some sort of tax.
Edit: short term capital gains is the only one that counts as income. Long term is not and is severely under taxed compared to income tax. Like, I like your intentions, but you're severely fucking up the details and it details your entire motivation and intentions.
When your comment backed me up, I didn't find any reason to respond. Capital gains tax isn't income tax. You admitted it by typing it out. You're just showing that "wealth tax" is just a tax on various means of wealth. I don't know if English isn't your first language, but you're literally agreeing with everyone but saying you don't.
No one owes you anything, nor do they owe you a response. Especially when it didn't back up your own point.
Thanks for typing out a lot of words to say "you want taxes other than income."
You never even offered a rebuttal to what I said. You're a fucking joke.
Don't talk to me again. You're so unhinged you came back 6 days because someone decided you weren't worth the fucking time to respond to due to your shitty ass logic and poor understanding of language. So again, capital gains tax is not income tax. You agree. Thanks. You understand that "wealth tax" is just a broad term that means taxes on things other than their income (which in many cases is $1, such as Zuckerberg).
You're not a CPA. If you are? I feel bad for your clients as they're gonna get fucked in audits.
That's only short term capital gains tax. Long term capital gains is taxed at a different rate than short term. I literally already mentioned that.
Edit: to be clear, Schedule D would include sales of assets that aren't required to be reported on 1040. https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i1040gi you can follow the instructions there and specifically where it tells you how to choose different tax rates than, you know, the income tax rate.
All capital gains and losses foot on schedule D line 16 and flows into 1040 line 7. The worksheet below breaks out items treated differently like section 1250 recapture, qualified dividends and LTCG:
It’s all income, just different tax rates and rules.If you want higher LTCG tax rates sure, crank it up I don’t care.
Wealth tax is NOT simply asking for higher tax rates.
Wealth tax typically includes unrealized capital gains. All unrealized gains eventually become realized one way or another. At that point LTCG tax or estate tax applies.
Taxing unrealized capital gains is a terrible idea. Wealth tax is a terrible idea. Income tax is just fine. Income tax includes realized capital gains. Crank that rate up if you want. Just no wealth tax. These are completely separate concepts.
the fact you even had to say "typically" means its a broad term that just means different things to different people. if someone wanted to tax unrealized gains specifically, they would say that. they didn't. they're essentially just saying they want wealthy people to pay taxes.
this has been repeatedly told to you. you even used a specific rate to describe income tax as being enough. that alone would have excluded your whole, now further expanded upon but originally excluded by definition, explanation.
this was also extremely clear from everything i said. multiple times. but obviously, like i said, multiple times, you're in agreement with me. you just have some hangup on the definition of an ambiguous word that the original user gave no further intent behind and just jumped to your own conclusions on nothing, despite being told, repeatedly.
do you understand now?
I'm done here. I can't believe you're arguing with someone who has repeated been on the same page as you. Nothing you've said is in disagreement with me (except my claim you're not a CPA). Its like you just want to hear yourself talk or "win" something. Especially after that childish rant about someone not responding to you on the internet. Honestly. You should be ashamed of that. I don't get it. Do you want the last word or not? It's behavior like that which makes me believe you aren't a CPA because you're not acting like a goddamn fucking adult.
So you don't get all stressed out or angry or need an extra call to your therapist, i'm not going to respond again, but I might downvote you just for fun. And honestly, why is an upvote without a comment ok but a downvote without a comment isn't? Someone can disagree with you and leave it at that. They don't owe you anything, you entitled ass.
That’s literally exactly what I’m advocating for word for word. Wealth tax bad, income tax good. Income tax rate too low? Crank it up to your hearts content. Glad we agree.
The problem is that once you are super rich you don’t really have an income anymore. You just expand your wealth and you end up paying way less taxes on that.
This is something that the common mortal can’t even think of.
The upper-class does not rely on income the same way the middle and lower class do. Taxing income affects us much more than it does them, that’s why you institute a wealth tax to spread the burden.
You simply don’t understand. All income flows into wealth. All wealth is eventually becomes, one way or another, taxable income. You can defer it for a while but it’s literally all the same thing.
You’re talking about legislating a massive clusterfuck, like you can’t even imagine how messy it would be, that pretty much nobody would comply with free of errors and omissions, all over a timing difference.
Just please, I’m fucking begging you, stop talking about a wealth tax, especially when you don’t understand how tax works to begin with.
The point is that if max pay gap laws are passed, CEOs will just hide their actual pay in external resources and normal employees will still make exactly the same.
Good. Make them hide it. Then make it illegal to hide income(if it already isn’t). Tax agencies like the IRS are really good at catching this sort of thing.
Make it difficult for them and their companies.
Make them have to spend to hide it. If they get caught, the money goes back to the economy. If they don’t get caught, at least some the money they spend on law firms and accounts goes back to the economy.
Because this is America and if you make rules like that you’ll crush the American Dream ^tm^ and no one will want to work at all because you’ve taken away their ability to daydream about one day being the disgustingly rich person doing the trickling instead of the disgustingly poor person waiting to be trickled on.
Oh it’s simple. Would you be commuting if you didn’t have the job? No? Then it’s work related and should be compensated.
If you have a two hour daily commute you should be paid for those two hours. Hell the company should probably pay for the cost of commuting and a tax for offsetting the emissions.
I would move as far as possible from the job site. 2 hours one way on a train watching Netflix, 4 hours work, 2 hours relax on the train. That would be nice.
Currently you work 8 hours + 1.5 hours commute. With this you’d work 6.5 hours + 1.5 hour commute, so you’d have 1.5 extra hour for chores or whatever.
If you use train/bus for commuting, you can even sleep there :-)
You’re highlighting that it’s not a great solution, but at least a 2 hours of flat payment per office call would be an acknowledgement of my time considering it’s an hour each way for the majority of people.
…and you just wouldn’t get hired, because the guy who lives next to their office is a more attractive option, even if he’s only 80% as productive as you.
And that’s arguably why it makes some sense; companies would be more likely to hire more locally and be more flexible about remote work - both of which save precious planetary resources ánd people’s time.
Companies would also then be incentivized to invest in and lobby for better affordable housing in the communities their offices are located in/around so that employees at all pay scales have affordable options within a few miles of the office.
They could even set up close by company shops, where you could pay with company issued tokens, along with clinics, amenities, and private security for the urbanization…
I would just move temporarily, and after probation period move far away. Surely they can’t fire me because my living situation changed and had to move…
It’d be fair to just keep paying the same compensation you received before moving; you could still move, but you’d have to pay the price.
And yeah, there are still a lot of problems with this approach as long as housing is left to market forces. But those problems are inherent to free markets, not to this possible solution to another problem.
Literally happened at a place I worked at. They hired people near to the work, who then within a year bought a cheap house out in the boonies and increased their commute to 3+ hours daily. And they got paid for it. Such a stupid policy (for the company, I don’t blame the workers for taking advantage).
There should be a reasonable limit of one hour in normal traffic for the commute each way though. Basing it on time would encourage companies to be flexible on start/end times to avoid needing to pay for people to sit in traffic, and there should be some kind of high but not crazy limit on commute time.
Let’s say I have a job right now that I live 10 minutes from. I interview for a different job in the next city over, or across town, because it’s offering 50% more than my current job, but my commute would end up being an hour and a half.
How does that mean that by living closer to my current job I can afford to work for the company an hour and a half away?
Because that just limits people’s ability to find employment.
I’ve had jobs where I lived 10 minutes away, and took a different job with a further commute because it paid significantly more.
Should an employee have to up and move their house every time they change employers, or should employees be able to decide if a long commute is worth it to them based on the offer?
Because that just limits people’s ability to find employment.
Not really? In cities with actual functional public transit, you can go way further than you can with a car. In cities with reasonable density, the stuff you need, including job opportunities, aren’t 2 hours away to begin with. The problem isn’t incentivizing short commutes.
Even in my city with mediocre transit, and that’s got way more sprawl than necessary for the population, I can cross the city, a distance of 20 miles/31km, using transit, in 1.5hrs. The problem isn’t incentivizing short commutes.
I’ve had jobs where I lived 10 minutes away, and took a different job with a further commute because it paid significantly more.
How much further? 30 mins? 2 hours? Let me guess, you used a car because transit and density is bad?
Should an employee have to up and move their house every time they change employers, or should employees be able to decide if a long commute is worth it to them based on the offer?
That’s a loaded question, a strawman, and a black or white fallacy. It isn’t an either/or, and you’re reaching for the absolute most unreasonable scenario that’s unlikely to happen to begin with. That’s called arguing in bad faith.
I would argue yours is strawman - you are arguing against a city with quality public transportation which is not always the case and wasn’t the original arguement.
I think the biggest point the other poster is arguing is that personal choice comes into play. It’s not the employers job to tell you how to get to work, nor is it their responsibility if you want to take a job a distance from your house - its their job to find the best candidate who is willing to do the job offered.
You also argue against the argument that people won’t move house every time they change job. It sounds extreme, but it is always an option for the employee and a part of free choice.
you are arguing against a city with quality public transportation which is not always the case and wasn’t the original arguement.
It should be, and we should be making those changes, so arguing that something is only a problem if the given situation really should be temporary isn’t a very good argument. Arguing that this change is a problem (It still isn’t for the majority of people) if we’re dealing with problems in other areas (So this change itself isn’t even the problem, it just exacerbates another one, that we should be fixing anyway), isn’t a very good argument.
I think the biggest point the other poster is arguing is that personal choice comes into play.
“Personal Choice” is only an argument when it doesn’t affect other people. Having a 2 hour commute by car definitely does. And even if it didn’t, it has a large effect on the person doing it. And we block/disincentivize people from doing other harmful things. Why is this one special?
It’s not the employers job to tell you how to get to work,
Good thing nobody suggested it was.
nor is it their responsibility if you want to take a job a distance from your house
So commutes should be unpaid, despite the only reason you do it is because of work? Why are commutes different from other work? They pay when you’re moving between jobsites, why is this different? “Employers don’t have control over it”? Did you know relocation packages are a thing? Lobbying for loosened zoning, so we can have higher density? Better public transit? They have far from 0 control over it.
its their job to find the best candidate who is willing to do the job offered.
And they need to include a variety of circumstances, one of which is the employee’s proximity to any jobsites, because how long it takes them to get there is very much relevant in many industries. And in the ones it isn’t, remote work is quite often possible.
You also argue against the argument that people won’t move house every time they change job.
I didn’t though. In fact, if you’re planning on a 2 hour commute, you should be considering moving closer, or not taking that job.
It sounds extreme, but it is always an option for the employee and a part of free choice.
We also block people from purchasing food with bleach in it. That’s part of free choice, isn’t it? Why is this choice so important that it should be up to the person to make? The externalities of having a 2 hour commute are massive, and even just the effects on the person themselves are also huge. Since these 2 hour commutes are mostly done by car, that’s a huge mental load on the person doing the commute, and a lot of emissions, which we should be avoiding.
No, people should not be free to choose a 2 hour car commute.
In the US, commutes aren’t covered and that’s part of law. However, the FLSA was passed in the 30s and the Portal-to-Portal Act was passed in the 40s so it’s arguably time to reevaluate.
As pro labor as I am, I do think it’s reasonable to put some cap on commute times so that commuters can’t abuse it. The hard part is coming up with a good one. You can’t give a max time without some idea of things like housing, public transportation, commute costs, etc. because then employers could abuse it by setting up offices away from everything or setting the radius too low.
A completely different problem for paid commutes is that suddenly it becomes work time. When I had a shit job doing pool inspections, the city controlled my time in the car from the office to the pools and back. The city did not control my time commuting. If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid. My solution here is working from home.
I think this conversation is more about office workers than site workers. You need to get on site to do the work but office workers don’t need to actually go in, they are being told they have to come in and the time needed to adhere to an enforced policy should be included in the work day.
As a manager with a limited budget that I want to stretch as much as possible, I need to limit the amount of it I spend paying for commutes. At the same time, I need to make sure my team is protected from the company abusing a commute cap.
Similarly, if I’m paying for an employee’s commute, I’d like to get some value out of that. That’s money out of my budget I’m spending for no appreciable gains unless they’re producing. I can build work that’s doable on a train or a bus.
Of course, all of this is solved by WFH as I said at the end of my previous post.
if I’m paying for an employee’s commute, I’d like to get some value out of that. That’s money out of my budget I’m spending for no appreciable gains unless they’re producing.
So, like bathrooms. Do you require employees to “produce” while in the bathroom, or do you write it off as part of general expenses along with chairs, lighting, and office cleaning?
Commuting is an expense linked to the production, and should be billed accordingly. The gains, are preparing the employee to produce; just like starting a production line, it doesn’t happen instantly.
Strictly speaking, even WFH employees should be paid a “getting up” rate for the time it takes them to get up to working speed.
If I’m actually onsite, my employer has tremendous control over that. They can play the music they want and ban headphones. They can put a bunch of informational literature all over the bathrooms (this is a thing Google does/did). If I start getting paid for the commute, suddenly my employer has the ability to start controlling that.
You and I agree that commute should be paid. What I think you’re lacking right now is my point about the commute being controlled. If it’s paid, it can be controlled, and that’s something I’m personally not comfortable with.
If the company is paying me for my commute, I’m on the clock, which means they can reasonably ask me to do things like not listen to my podcasts or take specific routes. If I’m on public transport, they can reasonably ask me to do work because I’m being paid.
You do work: you commute.
If the company wants you to do some other kind of work in that time, they can offer an office space in your car or public transport… or have you stay at your home office, it’s up to them.
The article defines working one’s contract hours as a form of quitting, a contortion of fact that I have struggled to grasp since laying eyes on it.
It is asserted that employees are obliged to put in extra hours, do additional work and recalibrate their work-life balance for the “benefits” of social capital, “wellbeing” and career success.
I have a novel proposal. Pay employees in actual capital for the additional time they are expected to work.
Dispense with the relaxation classes on their lunch breaks and the sweet treats and the tokenistic attitude of management to the labour that drives their business.
Instead, resource staff sufficiently to complete work within business hours, respect the rights of staff to a fulfilling life not defined by their day jobs, and stop using gaslighting terms like “quiet quitting” for fulfilling the terms of their contract of employment.
This may seem radical to those managers who have been around the block, but KPIs (key performance indicators) don’t spend time with my loved ones nor do they put food on the table. – Yours, etc,
That letter is way too polite for the "go fuck yourselves" that I had in mind...
I honestly think we should start actually spitting in the faces of managers of that kind that we happen to know in private life, be it family or neighbors, just show them disdain and disgust coming from people whom they have no power over.
I’m willing to sacrifice in-office work in favor of WFH. That should save the corpos money on renting office space that they can then pass on as increased wages as well.
Thankfully, Biden recently gave the IRS some teeth to go after millionaires who rely on tax dodging. So there’s hope as long as a criminal isn’t put in charge to de-teeth the government again.
We let corporations take over without limit or recourse.
Walmart pays a wage to people whose job it is to help other Walmart employees apply for government assistance. That's way cheaper to Walmart than paying people more. Then the government assistance comes from the lower 90% who do pay taxes.
Minimum wage hasn't been raised in decades. It has increased a bit only in a few places.
Over half (guesstimate) of prepared food workers do not have a steady income. They rely on a few customers to tip. And very rarely have any sick time or vacation time or health benefits.
You've eaten food that has been handled by someone sick with a fever because they were highly discouraged from staying home sick.
You know what? Fuck this. I'm so godamn sick of seeing people say "we let this happen" as if we can just suddenly not let it happen. This happens because our current society is just a rebranding of feudalism, and to not give the rich their due on responsibility is downright wrong. We did not let shit happen, WE attempted to survive and got fucked, and continued to get fucked. I've seen this enough times now that everyone one of you reading this better expect to read it again the next time you or I see anything remotely close to "WE lET ThIS HapPen"
I want to put this edit here because I didn't expect your comment to get nuked after mine, and because you do raise a lot of good and productive points. I was drunk when I wrote this and it came with a lot of anger that I should have held back. I just think you should reevaluate the first part, other than that, you're spot on.
It's less "we let this happen" and more "we were duped into fighting against our comrades over crumbs instead of banding together to ensure our right to more than just crumbs in the first place." The 1% benefits from every culture war that sows division amongst us. We're too busy and distracted to organize or build guillotines.
I long for the day we can get over culture wars, at least temporarily, and come to agreement on how we're all getting fucked over by the rich. I always think about ways to get involved but I come up short. I know a general strike is the game plan, but as an engineer my professional has strayed away from unionizing. Need to get more involved there. Change happens slowly until it doesn't I suppose.
I'm a power plant operator. Most of my coworkers have chugged the Kool aid in terms of hating unions. We're well paid but the benefits aren't good and the schedule is life-wrecking for the average person. Bad unions exist, but I think that they don't understand the core concept of the power behind collective bargaining. I've seen one person get fired in the 3 years I've been here, so jobs are generally secure, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to gain from unionizing.
They also very much eat up the culture war slop and aren't particularly literate. They're "common sense" forward, which means they don't understand things like tax brackets or geopolitics, but they're very upset about them.
To play devil's advocate -- Liberalism, or the idea that the people who are ruled should have a say in the rules, started coming about ~500 years ago. The elite's were all always evil and bad to the masses, enslaving us, paying us very little, even clocks and timekeeping were used to trick workers into more hours and when pocket watches became available, they were just banned in early industry.
A lot of people fought and died to establish the idea of Liberalism all the way up to unions and workers rights. So, in a way, 'we' did fight for those things and earned them over a long time. It does kind of feel like now the same 'we' has forgotten the value of that stuff and the sacrifice it took to get there.
I still don't really see this as our fault. We live in gilded age II where money is virtue no matter how its acquired. The internet broke the stable propaganda machines and we're in flux of stabilizing around the new ones and kicking out the smaller bad actors.
Society did let this happen. You know how many rednecks I run into who think billionaires are just success stories who did a good job? You know how people chose to listen to the anti union propaganda back in the 1950's onward? Up until around 5 years ago back on reddit I was in the minority on being pro union. The population absolutely allowed this to happen. We have 80 year olds running the country because the 20 year olds are 100% straight up too lazy or apathetic to vote in elections. When only around 30% of the eligible under 30 crowd vote in elections. Go try and do something that'll change it.
Have you seen what happens when people try to change this? I really don't understand how you can hand me the list of reasons why this isn't the case, then turn around and say it is.
The rich have massive wings of propaganda, the rich have the police to beat the fuck out of us for protesting, the rich have access to union busting companies, the rich live in a different world when it comes to access and laws, the rich can buy lobbying.
For us, money is a tool to survive, and we work tirelessly for it. For the rich, money is a tool to protect their control, and they do not work for it. They get to use their time to either relax or to plot new ways to fuck us. So again, no we did not let this happen.
Society allowed themselves to be lead around like sheep and fall for the propaganda. The rich kept saying unions were bad, and you fell for it. They said socialist ideas were bad, and you fell for it. They allowed for all sorts of things that were bad for society, because they said and advertised they were bad for society, and you all bought into it. The people here just fall for the propaganda. For decades and decades. Society allows all the propaganda to shape their opinions instead of thinking for themselves and now we're neck deep in shit from corruption and greed. The oligarchy needs eliminated and we can't even manage to get a 25 year old to a voting booth.
It's easy to discount it that way but the blame is way more on the rich than it is on the other 99%, and if you can't see that it means you either are trolling, haven't looked, or are lying.
Can't forget to mention that those Walmart employees usually turn around and use those food stamps and government assistance at Walmart due to whatever meager employee discount they get.
So now Walmart not only gets to pay their workers far below a living wage, they also get reimbursed by the government for all those food stamps their own employees spend at their stores. These corporations are the biggest "welfare queens" the world has ever seen.
Reminiscent of owing one's soul to the company store, eh?
This is how societies have traditionally operated. Far from failing, they are correcting back to the exploitative mean.
With no more free real estate to conquer and no frontier to expand into, we're boxed in by limited resources and forced to choose between socialism or barbarism.
Since we categorically and unequivocally proved Socialism Doesn't Work back in the 1980s, that only leaves one option.
I had a friend who made a point of "needing" to go into the office an average of one day every week during the pandemic. His logic was that, if his job could be done entirely from the comfort of his living room in the suburbs, eventually the bosses would realize that it could also be done entirely from the comfort of someone else's living room in the Philippines or India.
Most practical examples of out-sourcing has however failed to show any worthwhile savings, while working from home has shown remarkable increases in productivity.
Other time zones and that makes communication difficult, so no quick IM with "by the end of the day" as that means something different over there. Different culture and way of doing things, so have to spend a lot more effort in communication being very clear. Even then they're far away where it's a lot easier to hide stuff until the hole is very deep. Travel expenses going up very quickly for a little training for a new guy. It can be so fun to work with teams in a different continent.
Hiring someone in India means that the person is gonna give you as much dedication as their wage will allow. If they produced top of the line stuff they would want close to top of the line compensation.
Perhaps true with office work (so many tales of people saying they got shit code from overseas developers) and such, but I think the savings were very real for manufacturing, at least for a period of time. Happy to be corrected if that's wrong.
His fears happened to me. I worked a fully remote job for 5 years and ended up getting a horrible boss who worked me insane hours and liked to remind me that he could replace me with someone in India for 1/10th my salary.
I left and got a hybrid job that is 2 days in office. It pays 50% more, has a free gym, free EV charging, 30 days of vacation, and better health insurance. And I have a niche specialty so they won't be able to replace me easily. Feels much more secure.
Some do. The ones that don’t are garbage companies not worth the time to begin with. It depends heavily on the type of work you do. If your company can squeak by with shit quality work, then you probably don’t belong there to begin with.
My company has a large presence in India and exclusively hires there now as far as I know, but I will concede that the employees from there are very good in general. They're actual employees though, not contractors. And there are a lot of issues that arise from the language barrier, timezones, management etc
Yeah but they still haven't found a way to assign a monetary value to consumer trust, so it doesn't show up on the spreadsheets that are used to make decisuons. Only thing that matters is line go up, shareholders can always find a different company to squeeze later.
While the work could be outsourced to foreign countries there is still some hurdles to overcome. Language barriers, cultural barriers, time zones, labor laws, the paperwork involved with taxes, worker reliability, the threat of scams (see N. Korea), etc. But hey, let them find out for themselves.
This makes no sense. What could possibly be in the office that's needed AND can't be purchased in the Philippines? Is your friend working for a government agency building military or spy equipment which can't be shipped overseas?
The moment boss man can do this, is the moment it will do it... your friend does not understand what game he is playing. It is rather sad for adult people to think like this but here we are.
Maybe, just maybe, Gen-Z is not saving as much for the future because (1) they have less money to save due to inflation, and (2) they don’t foresee a viable future. These reasons can also explain the parenthood rate dropping lately.
Main reason I never had kids was I was screwed over by just about everything financially. Student loans, housing/“financial crisis”, medical system, deck stacked against self-employment, predatory credit cards. Great job, USA. Then the same cunts who did that bemoan low birth rates and cry about immigrants.
Despite all that, things are overall better than previous generations. There is and always has been bad news. Life has always been a constant string of disasters, yet when you pause for a moment to reflect you realize that despite the bad news, overall it wasn't that bad.
In many countries, yes. People in India and China for instance are on average more likely to not be in severe poverty and subsistence vs 40 years ago, though western-style modernization has caused it's own problems. However most people are less well off in the US than we were in the 50s-90s. Reagan economics seems to have been 'wait, why are we letting the middle class exist? We could just keep all their money'. Seriously though i was completely fucked over by what I mentioned and it's only based on luck that I'm not homeless.
Okay, fair point that racial equity and access to opportunity has increased significantly in most of the country. Gender equality has come a long way as well, though it’s also a “ha ha you have to work now too and your family is still worse off than it was, good luck with paying for day care”
The argument of people being ‘better off’ now is that technology is better and more available. It is much cheaper to buy a big 4k flat panel tv now than a black and white tv with four channels and no remote back in the 50s. We have the Internet, smartphones, better health care, video games, music, streaming services, cheap air travel, food from all over the world, robot vacuum cleaners, air conditioning etc. etc.
What we don’t have so much of is cheap housing, good secure jobs, any reasonable degree of income equality etc.
You must be cherry picking. 3rd world life expectancy is a lot worse than our, while we are very close to the best. If you cut the chart off below us we look bad.
But life expectancy isn’t the only measure of quality of life and life expectancy can be measured in different ways, especially in a nation with 50 very different states. The most accurate comparison would be to other post industrial western nations.
There are TOO MANY procedures/fees/tax/unsafe ways to lose everything you have or be in a position where you will never be able to live without constantly being demanded to provide more work/cash/time.
Agreed, life wasn't this shakey in the past. Depression era: certainly, but it was caused by the same BS we are dealing with now. For example, it's amazing that medical bills are a leading cause of bankruptcy and thus degradation of quality of life in the US, and there's little will among politicians or citizens to do much about it. You could save up enough money to retire, even have good insurance, and then be screwed because you or any member of your family had a severe illness or accident, and lose everything.
Right, The hope for Gen X/Z has been "just wait until until your boomer parents die! Then you can have a normal life!" and then it's oh, sorry, guess you have $4 million in medical bills if they don't just die instantly.
I saw a report that someone my age will need $3m to retire at 65. The average total income from 22-65 for people my age is around $1.4m. So I guess we never get to retire.
There is no magic number you need. $3m will get you some lifestyle. You could retire at 40 with only $300k if you want to live the lifestyle that means (move to very low cost of living area where you walk to groceries). And there is a good chance social security will continue to provide a minimal income once you reach whatever age.
You’re right. In a 1 bedroom in a rural city in a low cost of living state living as a freegan who never needs anything like medications you might be able to live off that.
I for one think that the situation with social security is that my parents and grandparents took one of the best things my country ever did, robbed it blind, and pissed all over it. Fuck. That. Shit.
And yeah I’m prepared to work the rest of my life until I get too old to work and then die homeless. That’s not what people should live like. We had something beautiful and let it fall into disrepair
Let’s say optimistically that you die at 70. That’s 30 years living on 300k, so 30k per year on rent, food, utilities and medical. You could live indoors for that amount in some parts of America in 2023. But what about in 2053? Inflation could have a huge impact on your cost of living and if you’re already living close to the bread line it’s hard to find savings anywhere. You could put your money in stocks but likewise you’re at the mercy of the market. It might be fine but if the market tanks when you’re 65 you could be in big trouble.
I saw a report that someone my age will need $3m to retire at 65. The average total income from 22-65 for people my age is around $1.4m. So I guess we never get to retire.
Compound interest might get you to that goal, maybe, if you start saving now.
The “start saving now” part is the bit that fucks most people.
It seems that a lot of things in the US are carefully designed to keep you in servitude to your current employer, which I find a little ironic coming from the land of the free.
Where I live, Australia, employers are required to put in approx 10 percent of an employee’s full time wages into a superannuation fund. This is linked via reportable wages to the tax office and companies will eventually find themselves under a lot of unpleasant attention from the Australian Tax Office if they don’t make regular payments for you.
This is basically “invisible” to workers, it’s essentially factored into the cost to have an employee by the business.The superannuation fund can be a “default preferred” one selected by the business, or an employee nominated one, and you can transfer/roll over your accumulated funds between any superannuation fund you like as you hop between jobs. You can draw from it in some specific dire circumstances, but usually you can only access it at retirement age.
For most Australians it ticks over in the background by itself. Most super funds easily beat inflation by a fair margin most of the time, and definitely in the long term. The tax office keeps track of balances for you and gives you an easy way to see what’s where and the option to roll any scattered amounts into your current main superannuation fund.
You can also contribute extra to your super fund and there are tax benefits if you do. The government actively encourages investment in super, because that way they don’t have to provide much in the way of old age pensions come 2050 or so when all workers will have some sort of decent retirement amount.
Is there any form of “mandatory” saving like that in the US? I know you guys have company pension plans of some sort, is there a government version?
If inflation is as high as it currently is compared to the collected interest it does not matter how much compounding is done, the buying power of that savings will flatline. Add to this equation the need to eat and live now, the amount most put away is minimal and when something comes up even those meager savings are wiped out.
The math in most households is not working out. Debt is becoming peoples rainy day fund, people are unable to even pay their property taxes with the now insufficient government minimum pensions (and a lot of people don’t think these pensions will even be there when they are eligible). This leaves people selling things (reverse mortgage, downsizing, moving to lower COL areas, etc) taking on debt to live now and generally giving up.
If you put away $50 a week for 10 years you end up with (based on a generous average 2% rate) $28,554.34. This seems like a good amount but keep in mind that you put $26,000 into this. That $2554.24 does not beat the loss of buying power over 10 years. You need much closer or better returns vs inflation for this to work in your favour. I was once told that you would be better off buying some raw metal like lead, or copper as the return on simple materials at least keeps up with costs.
You’re absolutely right, but I’ll just point out that superannuation (pension) funds in Australia are hitting 8 percent annual returns over a 30 year timeframe. You need a broader investment base to do that, and that’s hard for individuals to do by themselves. How do you diversify your $50 a week investment to maximise return? You can’t.
Here, superannuation funds do all the heavy lifting for you, it’s mandatory for employers to put a nominal amount of each pay into one. There are no minimum investment amounts with them and fees are waived if the balance is below a few thousand, so even if it’s $10 a week you get something back eventually.
So it’s possible to have it work if your government sets things up right.
Oh I am not saying people should be the ones wholly responsible for their retirement portfolio, and congrats for having a competent government pension option. I would love to have access to something better then the market equivalent of roulette.
Hell in Canada the pension plan (that you can not get enough to live off at the moment) got a stunning 1.3% return this year. And unlike other plans you need to pay extra for 40 years to get additional funds at the end (no one I know of even thinks of doing this). And some parts of the county want to spin off there own pension plan (Alberta) even though most expect it to perform worse (due to a smaller investment base and using a bad private firm to run it).
It’s immensely satisfying that we’re entering another era of strikes. As they get more common it’ll trigger a domino effect that will pervade our entire work culture.
It’s crazy how some workers actually defend the tipping system and blame the consumer. They’re doing the work of their oppressors and can’t even realize it. The business isn’t subsidizing lower prices, they’re lining the pockets of their investors and telling the workers to get mad at the consumers.
Or highly highly personable. But also usually both.
I was a workhorse and could solo Saturday rush for a restaurant with an hour wait, but I’d have made way more if I could flirt and bs with people when it’s slow.
Find me a job where I can make more than a full day of construction or contractor labor in 4-5hrs
You forgot your original statement.
Also, according to Ziprecruiter construction workers make, on average, $220-$260 a day in Ohio, which is a little bit below the national average of $240-$290 a day.
Yeah my part time job is tipped and I hate it. It’s a a scam for both the consumer and the worker. I just want a higher wage and not be at the whelm of ppl
I know I’ve seen some articles on this but I can’t seem to find them again. There were studies done where they asked self identified right wing people to agree or disagree with political statements.
People were very likely to disagree with a statement like “I support universal healthcare”, but very likely to agree with statements like “I support laws which would ensure no taxpayer would enter into medical debt for obtaining necessary medical care”. Essentially, if you just described socialist ideology, without using the common words for it, a large amount of right wing people completely agreed with it.
But right wing also oppose government interventions to lower those prices. And no, the market will not fix itself. Some things are not bound to laws of supply and demand. When your kid is on the operation table, you’re not going to tell him « hey sorry it’s too expensive to keep you around, we’re putting you down ».
That’s authoritarianism. You don’t see the CCP edging closer to a civil war based on propagated polarising. AFAIK, that’s never been achieved in human history. I’m sure it’s unlikely to happen, but between all the international targeting from Russia, China, etc. and then the US’s own media and governments, the US is soaked in propaganda more than anywhere else. Absolutely surrounded by it.
But this is the interesting part. The more someone is propagated, the less likely they are to realise it.
America doesn’t even need to do that. It just convinces people to not trust anything that doesn’t come from pre-approved sources and that works well enough.
Yes. The difference is that its corporations doing the the majority of the propagandizing rather than the government directly. But propaganda is propaganda.
I’ve noticed the same in conversations. When I talk about socialist theory, people agree 100%, but as soon as you say a buzz word it’s, “Now I don’t want full socialism!”
This has been my anecdotal experience as well. Most of the time when I ask my Republican friends their opinions on specific policies I find that their views are very populist leaning toward socialist. They just happen to also be motivated by fear and easily swayed by propaganda and will readily vote against their own interests in exchange for a false sense of security.
They are then confused and frustrated when the scumbags they voted for do exactly what they said they would do and it turns out badly.
I think this is a huge part of the problem. Rental property owners are just a liability buffer for the banks. There should be mortgages at a 1% down payment for first time buyers with a proven track record of making rent payments on time. Maybe the rates are a little higher, with the extra interest giving the banks motivation for taking on the extra risk. Then after the first term the owner can renew with a normal rate.
Doesn’t help with the demand issue, but maybe all the rentals will flood the market after nobody is being punished for not having $100k laying around because they’re busy paying someone else’s carrying costs.
Right, like the majority of my millennial friends also work to live, not live to work, it’s just that living is so damn expensive that after we’re done working enough to pay rent, there’s not many hours left in the week to live.
I’m incredibly privileged. I have no debt, no loans, and housemates to split bills with. I only do 20 hours of paid work per week, and my hourly rate is pretty damn decent for my industry (I’m a coordinator in a community centre, I make $32AUD an hour).
I enjoy my work life balance and I wouldn’t have it any other way, I have time to care for my chronic illness properly, and time for friends, and family, and to volunteer in my community for passion projects that could never in a million years pay the bills.
But being in your mid thirties and splitting rent with other people is tough, I fortunately don’t want marriage or kids, but I can’t see how I’d make it work if I did, babies can’t help me split the rent, and most housemates don’t want to live with a crying baby that isn’t theirs.
So when my friend leaves his fun job for a grind company we know sucks our your soul, but it pays 8x as much and it’s “just for 2 years until the deposit is saved for and the baby is born” then it’s completely understandable why the next 24 months of my friends life is consumed with work. Because he needs that work now, so that he can live later.
But 2 years becomes 5 years becomes 10 years because first it’s the GFC, then it’s the housing bubble, then it’s the mini recession, then it’s covid, now it’s whatever the fuck times were living in.
And at some point for millennials (and many younger Gen X’ers) living became surviving and we work to survive, we don’t even know what thriving looks like.
I’m a milennial. I live in a country where we try not to work ourselves to death. Even my employer encourages an active separation between work and personal life. I do not remember what my monthly or yearly salary is, but I am able to have a good personal life with alot of spare time and money for my hobbies.
When I talk to my friends over the pond to the west, I’m always shocked about what I hear. 40+ hour workweeks, hardly any time off from work, etc. I also have a couple of friends in Japan, and their stories are actually worse compared to across the western pond.
Me and my girlfriend rent, which is somewhat unheard of around here. After the war, the economy was based on owning your own home. I made a few stupid choices when I was in my 20s, and I’m paying for them now by renting. The prices of homes are skyrocketing, so that every time I save some money, the prices increase and I have to save more to get a loan. Tough luck, but that’s the way it is. I do not want to get a side hustle just to kill my self getting enough money to buy my home.
Just for context, if you made 100k a year, an extremely enviable salary, and saved every penny somehow, you’d be a billionaire in exactly TEN THOUSAND YEARS.
No one can earn a billion dollars through honest labor and the sweat of their brow. It must be exploited out of others. It must be stolen. You cannot possess a billion dollars and be a decent human being. For any good you do, you can’t approach the harm you’ve already inflicted upon others in the name of insatiable greed.
Oh I’m sorry, they’ve used their wealth to warp the culture and language to their benefit, so greed doesn’t exist anymore. I meant “rational self-interest.” also we have always been at war with Eurasia.
Buddy it ain’t stealing if we keep using the product and indirectly (directly) supporting the billionaires exploiting others.
EDIT: this comment was only directed at people who will see this kind of thing and not care. To those who don’t believe you have a choice in dropping Facebook because of life events. I get it. Most people do business through Facebook even.
The problem is that Facebook has a hold on the market. I do understand this but the truth of the matter is if we could get people to stop supporting Facebook then they wouldn’t make the money users keep fueling them with. It isn’t your fault Facebook is a power house of social media. I don’t blame consumers but was stating Facebook will continue to hold this market until consumers care.
I also do personally believe you can let go of Facebook or mitigate its use and I know this is possible because I do this myself. Yes, the guy who made the comment about supporting Facebook is using Facebook but only when necessary.
If you would like some tips and person tricks on how to mitigate your use then message me. I have just custom tailored my experience to use Facebook less and only for essential need, what little it provides.
My problem with using the word, “stolen.” Is that stealing is usually being done without our notice. It isn’t stealing if you have been caught multiple times and no one cares. At that point it’s just using.
I think you underestimate the propaganda influence they have. I don’t consider it voluntary by most, any more than I blame a North Korean citizen for hating the west as they’ve been indoctrinated to do, it’s the fault of the power above them.
The power above us isn’t our purchased government, it’s capital. And it propagandizes us to defend this system from Kindergarten to colleges of economics to the for profit news they own. And if that doesn’t work, they control the means of state violence through the government and both major parties they fully own and control to defend their profits and interests against the peasants. We aren’t approaching Orwellian society, we’ve surpassed it. Legions of peasants advocate directly against their own interests because thats what all of us are taught to do, you have to buck that pressure to even truly open your eyes and know whats going on.
Problem is that it’s not against the interest of the peasants.
Everybody knows how poor life can be in the rest of the world. Once you go human decency you want to share with everybody. You may even care about animals.
any more than I blame a North Korean citizen for hating the west as they’ve been indoctrinated to do
I assure you that North Koreans don’t need to be indoctrinated in order to hate the west. The genocide committed upon them by America was enough to do the job. But don’t take my word for it, read what USAF General Curtis LeMay, who was also head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, had to say on the matter.
We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too.… Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?
I was off Facebook for years, and was never a heavy user, but I had to get back on because the school my daughter goes to sends out so many notifications that way.
Facebook is very ingrained in how business and groups interact these days, what’s an individual to do? Disconnect from the world and miss important school notifications, among other things?
Plus the “stealing” isn’t just from people using the platform, it’s also in wages and benefits for employees. Why aren’t they getting a bigger share of those profits they worked to produce?
I work 7 days a week and my wife works full time to get that $100k/year and it took us years to get where we are in our careers. $1million in assets is still so far away. It’s such an incredible amount of money and Zuckerberg and friends have thousands of times that much money. It’s just so crazy to think about.
And here’s the problem I have with that: not all labor is exploitative. No matter what economy we have, there would still be laborers printing the book, binding it, cutting down the trees and making the paper, etc.
Even if they’re not making an even split of company profits, some worker somewhere is happy with what they’re getting.
And regardless of economy, some worker will be unhappy working, somewhere, feel they’re not getting their fair share, etc.
That doesn’t change simply because we switch from capitalism to some other system.
The only fair way for that book to be made from the implications given is if all of the labor is automated, but at the end of the day a human being would have to do some work somewhere no matter how many levels of automation redundancy you have, so how is he not implying being expected to do anything is the problem, and using the blatant shitty behavior of the rich as a smokescreen for that?
We could live in a Jetsonian paradise where all he’d have to do is push a few buttons once a day and he’d still complain.
I have done things that are hard work for less compensation than it deserves and been happy to give it freely (ie charity, volunteering), but that doesn’t mean we can’t examine the power structure, even if the plurality of people are happy inside it.
But it’s not the author exploiting publishing companies. It’s the execs of those companies exploiting their own workers. The publishing companies make excellent money (and same for paper creators, etc). Just it disproportionately goes to execs and possibly shareholders, not workers.
of course you can slice it any way you like. I’m not saying no one should be an author, but I am saying billionaires aren’t made without exploitation somewhere
You forget the impact of compound interest. If you invested 1 dollar at 1% interest, you would have a billion dollars in just over 2000 years. So these comparisons based on income are not useful.
+1. A lot of pushback I've seen is along the lines of "but all these business owners will have to close their businesses!". What short sighted BS. We are talking about decades and decades of wage stagnation and business models that are not teneble with living wages. We are talking about a history of having the public subsidize the profits of these businesses through social programs for their workers, while the money stolen from labor goes right into the pockets of the owner.
Will some, or even many, businesses need to close? Yes. Should they have to? Yes. We collectively need to get out of this mindset that MBA-think is the way. It is not.
They can survive by paying living wages. They just don't want to. How would they rake in all that money if they had to spend a little bit extra? Preposterous!
The businesses don't care about employee's lives in the slightest so why should the employees care about the business?
My employer promised a raise after 3 months. It took them over a year and a half for them to finally give me a small raise and it's still below a living wage. They think I'm actually gonna care about my job and do it right when they fucked me over like that? I mean sure it's my fault for sticking around at a shitty company but this situation shouldn't be allowed to happen in the first place. They cost me thousands of dollars that I should have been making. I don't care if I cost them thousands as well.
Also my coworker who gets paid way more than I do does less than a 1/5th of the work that I do but they won't get rid of him.
Oh, I know they won't close. That's just their threat. They keep saying "oh woe is us, if we have to pay living wages then we won't be able to keep the staff hours or we'll go out of business and look at all the employees that would lose their jobs."
But it's a thinly veiled threat and always has been. What they are saying is "if you do this, I'll hurt all these people in response."
If your business closes because you can't manage your costs, then another business will fill the void that can. Isn't that how they always describe capitalism and the "free" market? They have money to pay for all this media and "reporters" to repeat their propaganda. They'd rather pay that then spend the same on their employees.
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