You can’t keep slaves anymore, but you can own a company and pay your workers an amount that makes it hard for them to pay for basic necessities so they don’t have time for leisure, or organising unions, or finding other jobs. The workers are free to go, of course, but then they’ll fall into financial ruin and not have healthcare.
Nah, most will just say get a better job, you’re not working hard enough etc. Lots of people I speak to tend to frame it as a worker problem rather than a problem with the system. It’s also why lots of people seem to be anti strikes…
Well I did use a qualifier. I know. I was in McDonald’s one day getting a soda and they took forever. A young woman was griping that “it’s those kids! No one wants to work anymore!” I told her for those wages and what was expected, i don’t blame them. I got an angry glare.
Too many people seem to think that chattel slavery is the only thing that counts as slavery, and that even that doesn’t count if a slaver is less horrible to their slaves than other slavers are.
With enough inequality and without a strong social net, wage labour is equivalent to slavery. They cover the minimum costs of your survival and you spend as much time working as they ask or else they’ll find someone more desperate.
Reminder that slavery was never outright abolished in the US, the constitution explicitly allows slavery as punishment for a crime which is why private for-profit prisons are a thing in the US.
Educated in history here (history should have no bias), while there are a greater number of slaves today they represent a smaller portion of the population than during the 1800s. In addition modern slavery is not the same as chattel slavery which is infinitely worse given that it denies the slave’s existence as a human being. Im not saying slavery is OK Im just saying your claims aren’t entirely accurate.
Automation means that proportionally fewer slaves can provide more. That “denies the slave’s existence as a human being” bit is rather vague. Are you saying modern slavery is not denying the slave’s existence as a human being? What does that mean?
The way they’re viewed really isn’t the problem. Someone being imprisoned and forced to work really isn’t affected by the man with the whips opinions of them, because of they slave away they don’t get whipped. They’re existence has been stripped too bare for such distinction to make a difference. Slavery is like war and war never changes.
That simply isn’t true. When your slaver looks at you as less than human they can justify a lot of mistreatment they would not do to another person.
There’s a reason why Western chattel slavery is so vilified because almost every other nation still thought of slaves as people. Chattel slavery thinks of them like livestock.
Point to the time where prisoners in the U.S. were stacked up on boats and shipped across the Atlantic for months at a time.
You don’t see prisoners treated like cargo here. Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t treated well, but there are certain factors here that I don’t think you’re considering.
Responses from historians will rarely make you feel better, but will help you understand the complexities that people without that specialization often overlook.
Yep, all of this “inflation” and “rising cost of housing” bullshit is essentially wealthy people turning the screws. They know regular people can barely make this work, and they love that.
I’m traveling in Europe right now and the prices everywhere are so reasonable it really pisses me off. Inflation my ass, I’m convinced it’s just American corps squeezing us for everything we got.
Very nice hotels for €100 in downtown areas that would cost easily $300/night in USA. Food in restaurants and cafes very reasonably priced, I got a couple coffees and pastries for like €8 and the coffee alone would be that much in the states let alone multiple pastries. €5 felafel. I can’t remember the last time I paid less than $15 for lunch.
Gas is super pricey but who cares when your cities are designed to be walkable and you have great public transport everywhere.
I get that I’m on the tourist route so this doesn’t represent true cost of living, but I understand rent is far cheaper in general, plus availability of healthcare and education leads me to believe COL in general is lower and some googling supports this.
I don’t know anything about their tax policies so I can’t comment on that either.
The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempt certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $684* per week.
Some industries (like mine) have mandatory overtime, but workers are absolutely compensated for that overtime.
The UAW is one of the most powerful unions in the US, so I’m not sure exactly where this post is coming from (as in, what specifically they are chasing via union action in this post), but from the context of other news it sounds like they’re wanting similar comp without mandatory overtime in their industry.
I wish one of the bigger industrial countries had the balls to curb the state-like influence of billionaires, by flat out capping the amount of wealth they get to wield. It’s not even that people should not be allowed to be “rich”. But “rich” should mean owning 1-50 millions or so. Not billions.
You should try visiting Scandinavian countries. While being ultra rich isn’t disallowed, it’s so heavily taxed that ultra rich end up providing more for the welfare than any other group.
Not true at all. Sweden has worse wealth equality than the US. Sure we have high income taxes, but basically no wealth or inheritance taxes. The only reason social democracy ever took off in Scandinavia was due to the fear of the nearby Soviet Union. The moment the Soviet Union collapsed all the countries of Scandinavia started dismantling the welfare and privatising.
If we’re not going to abolish money, it should really be entirely illegal for the highest paid person in a company to make more than, say, 15-20 times more than the lowest paid person.
Reliance on the state to make things right is the fatal flaw. The purpose of the state is not to make our life better, it is to protect the powerful from us.
You’re assuming I’m in favor of keeping our existing government intact. I don’t. It was shit from the start, and now it’s entirely unsalvageable.
Even if the government itself was salvageable, the US is far too ideologically divided into sides that cannot and should not be reconciled with each other.
This country cannot and will not hold itself together much longer, and the only potentially viable course of action is to mitigate the harm that is going to happen no matter what by breaking it up in as controlled and peaceful a manner as possible.
Rather than worrying about trying to tax 1 person heaps (they will dodge it anyway)
Why not put in place improved worker protection and pay laws.
Higher minimum wage - say equal to the bottom quartile median house price in the area, mandatory health care even for the lowest paid employees, absolutely no overtime.
They can dodge this by moving manufacturing overseas… But they already did this.
This has always been the case. Look at immigrant exploitation, the truck system, sharecropping, child labor, exporting work to undeveloped countries to exploit unregulated labor forces there.
It was always about bringing back slavery without calling it slavery.
And it will always be so long as we let them keep trying.
Violence is not the answer until the hour that it is.
Then be prepared to get hurt. Sure small strikes are tolerable to a government. Strikes that actually disrupt the economy are never tolerated, and are almost always met with police violence. It’s literally their first job, to maintain public order. Imagine what would happen if Lockheed Martin employees striked?
