I posted this comment already yesterday but i’ll post it again because it’s still relevant:
Do we want to get higher wages? The obvious answer might seem “yes”. But i argue it’s not that obvious.
People should be able to live without being forced to work. When your only income is from wages, that effectively forces you to work. I think we should strive for a society where basic needs are fulfilled even without jobs.
Personally i think that unless you’re disabled everyone should work. Where I live everyone has basic healthcare, cheap schools and there are lots of unions and workers rights so literally no one has to work more than 32 hours for a basic level of living. If youre disabled you receive wellfare so you dont have to work. Its literally a choice if you live on the streets here.
I have literally no idea why the US has such a horrible and oppressive system when it comes to workers rights, healthcare and schooling. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a two party system. I have no idea why the rich barely pay any taxes there. You have a truly corrupt and inhuman system in place.
It’s because we were a nation founded by violence and oppression and built on the backs of a slave race, none of which are practices we ever truly abandoned.
You have healthcare, affordable schooling, and labor unions because, wherever you are, your populace is considered a workforce, not a slave race. When your society relies on a workforce, you want them healthy so they can work longer, you want them educated so they can work smarter, and you want them comfortable enough with their salaries and their hours to feel they can afford to have kids, who will one day join the workforce.
Governing bodies in the US don’t need us healthy, smart, or comfortable. They just need us to 1) work (hence tying our healthcare to our work hours), and 2) breed (hence minimal sex education, poor access to contraception, abortion bans, etc).
They don’t need to give us healthcare (or education, or basic human necessities or rights), because as long as we’re breeding, it’s cheaper if we just die. And if that ever bothers us enough to take to the streets (which it has, many times), our local police forces are highly militarized and have no qualms about doing to us what their white ancestors did to my native and black ones (which they have, many times).
And to be clear, this isn’t meant to be a woe-is-America spiel. These are problems that we’ve had many opportunities to address over the years, but let hubris, bigotry, and plain old stupidity get in the way. This is very much a mess of our own making, so I’m not trying to throw a pity party, just addressing your confusion.
TL;DR: Violence, oppression, and slavery. The tried and true American way.
You left off they want you poor so you’re more likely to commit crimes, like stealing food, so they can put you in jail and now use you for actual slave labor where its still legal.
America: 4% of the world’s population
20-25% of the world’s prisoners
But your BigMac costs a dollar less because of it!
But I love my Trump sponsored hamberders!
The irony of assuming that it’s cheaper to let people grow old and die when the reality is a senior pension requires the income of two working aged citizens to subsidize it is not lost on me.
The US specifically didn’t choose a two party system. We accidentally set one up. The math proving that FPTP has a 100% guaranteed chance to devolve into a two party system hadn’t been done until the mid 1800s
The problem with that is there are doctors with individual opinions gatekeeping that welfare. One might think you’re disabled, while another might think you can get better. I’ve been stuck in just that kind of limbo for almost a decade. I’m required to look for a job each month that everyone involved knows I could never do, and so I have to live on the bare minimum until I reach some arbitrary threshold to get the pension I should’ve gotten a long time ago.
Meanwhile my family suffers, I have to spend what little I get on the medicine keeping me breathing and when I finally get it I’ll be too far gone to have any time left.
All this because I happened to get a disease rare enough that there are no experts and it just so happens to interact with the asthma I already had in unpredictable ways.
So tell me, who should decide who’s disabled and who isn’t?
Its literally a choice if you live on the streets here.
What if you can’t find work for whatever reason (e.g. there’s high unemployment and not enough jobs for everyone, or the person is somehow considered “unemployable,” but not necessarily disabled)? What about single parents with infants/toddlers? Are there a lot of “bullshit jobs” where you live?
We have a social rent system in place for that, it means the government will pay part of the rent. Also if you cant work because you have kids there is a system in place for that too, you receive benefits (which is based on minimum wage).
Basically everyone pays taxes on their wage here to make sure no one has to live on the streets. There is lots of social housing here.
Because your favorite authors, screenwriters, poets, bands would be homeless under what counts as “work,” or they’d not have the time, money, energy to invest in their preferred work.
I agree. “Starving artist” should not be a common phrase.
This is exactly why my country subsidizes art so people are still encouraged to make. I guess the US doesn’t have that either.
If it’s a good idea, it’s safe to assume it doesn’t exist in the US. You’ll be correct much more often than not.
Is there competition for the subsidies?
at this point, most of us were born into it.
by the time we were born, it was so entrenched nothing but horrible bloodshed could change it.
we’ve been inundated with news and media since early childhood not to rise up for that change and many of us have (until recently) been left comfortable enough that we don’t want to risk what remains.
we’ve been made to believe (by the aforementioned propaganda) that we can vote in real change. some of us still want this to be true. it’s becoming apparent this may not be the case. we’re terrified.
Even if change can be voted in, its pretty obvious now that it can be undone pretty easily as well. Change is at best temporary.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a two party system.
It doesn’t matter if the candidate you’re voting for supports the two party system. This current election is the most important one of our lifetimes. So we’ll keep voting for people who support the two party system because of the two party system.
I had to take early retirement last year due to a spinal injury that causes random vertigo attacks that drop me to the shop floor more than once a week. Hated like hell to do it but didn’t want to be fired as a safety risk since it would’ve prevented me from getting work anywhere else. The company was visibly relieved by my decision as well so I guess it was my time to drop off the chain, no pun intended.
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We should strive for that society, sure, but that’s going to take generations. Meanwhile, people need to eat today.
It will only take 1 generation willing to fight for the change.
Or don’t wait, and start doing things French style today.
Every take that excludes this perspective is ableist.
Just my two cents as a person who was born and will die disabled.
except the national economies aren’t organized in a way to enable any form of UBI.
Yet
it’s not like governments are trying to get there when it’s not an election season though
Elections aren’t going to save you.
I mean Somalia is right there, mate
What?
exactly. If elections ain’t doing the trick, Somalia is doing all of the tricks
national economies handle being welfare states just fine, which isn’t so different from what a UBI would be. Also developed service economies live and die by consumption. A UBI would stabilise and stimulate domestic consumer demand.
there’s massive difference in scale though that brings in a lot of variables that would require a full lock-in before implementation. Given how globalised and interdependent modern economies are - there are too many unpredictable factors outside of governmental control that can whiplash onto national economy and wreck the plans even more than usual. And that might render any UBI-type system a huge burden that would get targeted by folks from IMF making “valuable” “suggestions”.
The Comingle app (beta) is seeking to start our own UBI without relying on the government to do it for us. Seems very promising
How?
It’s a nonprofot org which basically just does monthly UBI to your bank account when you sign up… They did the math and it turns out you only need a few thousand people of diverse economic backgrounds for it to be viable.
From what I understand it’s like a phone banking app, but more secure, and it takes something like 10% of your earnings each month, then returns a lump sum to everyone of around $500 almost immediately. So people earning $40k/yr will net a couple hundred dollars per month. If you make nothing that month you will get closer to $1000 People who make $100k/yr will lose a couple hundred dollars. And the multimillionaires will lose a couple Gs a month (which sounds like a lot but it’s negligible to them).
the multimillionaires
Why would any of them do this instead of charity donation that they can deduct from their taxable income?
Great question. So this money goes directly to people, instead of through a charity. We are cutting out the middle man, and it affects EVERYONE with cash, not just a select few who know how to benefit from the charity and qualify for their supplies or whatever the charity provides. It’s awesome for us, but not as awesome for the billionaires and multimillionaires. The only real benefit for them is, they get to keep their heads!
how so? why not?
There should be a clear definition of what “basic needs” means. Opinions will vary greatly when you broaden the discussion.
I’d define it as such:
- Health care (this includes good food and water)
- Housing
- Transport
- Education & Information systems
Medical care
Housing
Food
Water
Internet
Replace internet with access to means of acquire knowledge and communicate with others. Internet just happens to fulfill both very efficiently.
the cited comment is the most “shit firstworlders say” ever.
It’s an ideological position, yes we should be striving for a non-ableist society
If you’re capable of working, you should work. It should be a fair wage and billionaires shouldn’t exist. Our society should support those who can’t work.
I’ll tell you what. I have had to interact with some people in retail or fast food who were technically able to work, but I really wish they didn’t. I would chip in some money from every paycheck for those people to stay home, do something they enjoy. Maybe do a kind of work they are good at, but doesn’t pay much. Some people are born with the drive to be a ceo, nfl level athlete or what not. Some are born eith the drive to solve problems, help people, or what not but also to relax. And some people are born with no drive at all. They are capable of working, but the lack of drive means they will never be any good at it. So if you don’t force people to work, you will find most still will in some form. And the ones who don’t… it’s better for all of us that they don’t.
Why? We don’t have enough work for the number of people that our work can sustain. Our ancestors literally dreamt of a time when the labor of a few could allow the leisure of the masses. We would be better served at this point addressing workaholic tendencies and refocusing that energy into something they actually enjoy doing.
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Explain what you mean by “should work.” What qualifies as “work” and who makes the determination that it is valid or correct?
If you’re capable of working, you should work
in what country do you live, if i may ask?
That ain’t happening in America in your lifetime.
It was the fuck aroundest of times
It was the find outest of times
Bonfire Lit
The beacons are lit! The working class calls for aid!
I’ve posted this in another area regarding this event, but I think it would be wise to post it here, too.
From Malcom X’s Ballot or the Bullet:
“Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job, you’re in bad shape.”
“You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion. But this government has failed us. The government itself has failed us. And the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us. And once we see that all these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves.”
“He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were going somewhere, and you end up going nowhere…”
“So today our people are disillusioned. They become disenchanted. They become dissatisfied. And in their frustrations, they want action.”
“You, today, are in the hands of a government of segregationists, racists, white supremacists…”
“America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They have never had a bloodless revolution, or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems. A revolution is bloody.”
“So it’s the ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are a filibustering concerning your and my rights, that’s the government. Don’t say it’s Southern senators. This is the government. This is a government filibuster. It’s not a segregationist filibuster, it’s a government filibuster. Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, that’s the government. Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government. Any kind of pussyfooting, that’s the government. Any kind of act that’s designed to delay or deprive you in need right now of getting full rights, that’s the government that’s responsible. And anytime you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it’s guilty of today.”
“It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price, don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.”
In this speech, he does say we Americans have a unique opportunity to do things non-violently. We did not get unions by being peaceful. We did not get labor rights by being nice.
I want a peaceful way. I truly do. But options are running out quickly. This is not an encouragement of terror or violence. I, like many other want other ways. But as we can see, we cannot control everyone. Some are in situations that feed the violent mind extra portions of greed’s injustice. This breeds a vengeful, hateful spirit that even the most noble and moral of humans cannot withstand.
If our world, country, and local leaders continue not to act swiftly and quickly, this will continue, not because you or I will act, spread hate, or encourage this, but because those who are starving for justice will act out. They don’t need to browse these halls of discussion to be radicalized. The ultra-rich and our dystopian nation will do that for them.
Choose wisely, work together, and eliminate injustice by any (hopefully peaceful) means necessary.
The rich forgot that before worker’s rights existed, greedy capitalists who owned factories and treated their workers horribly during the industrial revolutions would either find their factories or their homes burnt down, and themselves beaten to death in front of their own families.
Unions and worker’s rights were the compromise to avoid this from happening. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and the rich clearly didn’t.
I do worry that they are expecting it in some way. The few “smart” ones. The ones that are not flagrant with their funds and likes. The ones that don’t donate but hold hatred in their hearts. I worry about those. I wonder if they will slip out of the grasp of justice because they decided to hide in their money bushes and stay quiet.
But yes, the fools that we see in the news for sure have forgotten.
This is an absolutely hilarious way to hear about this news.
Right? For a minute, I was like “Wait… I don’t get the joke. Is- is this just a general public announcement?”
what walmart was firebombed?
None — it’s a Kimberly-Clark distribution warehouse. Their products include Kleenex, Cottonelle, Scott, Kotex, and Huggies
Are they a paper products monopoly?
I’m not sure if I’d call them a monopoly, but they are a multibillion dollar company directly in competition with Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Clorox, etc
Oligopoly.
Not a Walmart, but a Kimberly-Clark warehouse as others mentioned. This is more making fun of an old tweet of a liberal essentially saying “leftists will say voting doesn’t work and to instead firebomb a walmart and then they don’t firebomb a walmart”, and this meme was about the irony of something symbolically similar happening. And uh, there’s been four warehouse fires this week counting this one.
It was the big Kimberly-Clark warehouse in LA, but firebombing a Walmart is a good idea, too, as long as the people can get out. I’m not concerned with the lives of Sociopathic Oligarchs, but I don’t want workers to be hurt.
I am become death, destroyer of wally-worlds.
How many warehouses is it now? 7?
Is it really? I haven’t seen it
I’m not sure, honestly. Social media and news media seem to be telling different stories, unsurprisingly.
Initially around 20 people were inside
All survived unharmed
Physically
Edit - would be so mad if my mom worked there that shift, ‘tis upsetting b/c I immediately put myself in those kinds of shoes ya know? Even if paying workers is necessary for survival too
Initially
This implies more people entered later. 😱
I see it used akin to “started with”.
like, how many rewards points do I get at my favorite store? Well initially it was 10 points to a dollar until they got cheap and reduced it to five.
(For example) :)
Or, how’d my diet go?: great b/c initially I weighed 1000lbs but now weigh 100lbs
Guy worked for a third-party distributor, so he didn’t destroy his boss’s warehouse
Anyone know how big the 3P distributor is? Is Kimberly-Clark OK financially and were they following best practices? Ideally you would make sure everyone you pay was treating their people properly including timely compensation, right? You’d have a supplier code of conduct demanding it and a system in place to verify…
Also wonder if the head of the Kimberly warehouse was aware of their subcontractor was making life so hard for their people and whether they put them on a leash. A takeaway here for a business person, don’t let clowns put you at risk, no matter how tempting it is to sign away trying offload your liabilities and optimize your headcount spend.
It would have been even better if he worked in a hospital right. Fight the power dur dur. Fucking clowns
You think when they rebuild that they’re going to try to hire at that same wage?
It’s not the IDEAL way to make your point…
But you gotta admit… He made his point and the top brass are now 100% aware of his issues.
You are telling me that I may have been hyperbolic to convey my point and defending an arsonist.
I didn’t say shit… You don’t even know where I live…
Is this Elon’s account?
No no no I don’t even think Mars exists
Get off the drugs man
The quality of mercy is not strained
someone’s got a dumpy diaper! better go get your wittle butt wiped ya big ole one day old account baby.
My account’s dad can beat up your account’s dad.
Lol. This isn’t truth social dork.
But thank you for this. We needed this on Lemmy.
I bet that’s his real name too lol
Everything you said is true soooooo
Such a cynical take.
It’s spelled clinical peasant
No, it isn’t. Insurance will cover it.
They’ll cover what it cost to make, not what they could have sold it for, so all the profit they expected is gone. And their operations may be massively disrupted in the area around the warehouse.
Then someone else does it again. They don’t have any practical way of stopping this other than meeting reasonable demands.
Insurance isn’t free. On average, you pay more in insurance premiums than you get in claims. That’s how insurance works. If you become riskier, your premiums go up. If you become catastrophically risky, you become uninsurable.
Till they back out due to excessive fires.
okay one day old account! I’ll trust you no matter what anyone says about your one day old account.
one day old accounts are legit accounts, no trolls here.
/s
What does this have to do with trust? Is insurance a brand new concept for you?
Walmart now?
Have there been more fire bombings?
No, this is the kimberly-clark fire, this is a reference to that older twitter meme.
not directly.
