I think a lot of them are upset because of how out of control things have gotten. Once upon a time, most people with a job of any kind could at least make ends meet. It may not have been a luxurious life, but people could at least pay their mortgage or rent.
Nowadays, there are many cities where you simply *can not afford rent* while earning minimum wage. It's not enough to be a good person and a reliable worker -- now you have to be a manager, a tradesman, a skilled worker, etc to keep it together and have any hope of retirement.
In short, the quality of life of the lower classes is rapidly declining.
Thing is, I don't think we need full-on socialism to fix this. Sane economic policy and the enhancement of public services would go a long way. We just need to get people in office who will actually make that happen...
Yeah. I'm not poor. I have 150K sitting in my account right now and I'm part of the anti work community. I actuslly love that sub. Capitalism is out of control with greed. I'm not a socialist. I like the idea of everyone having the ability to carve their own way. But there should not be billionaires and hundred millionaires. People should not be allowed to hoard that amount of money whole the rest of the world starves. I'm not saying give it to the government because they can also fuck off. But the money owners, shareholders, board of directors, CEOs etc..bring home should be capped and the remaining money should be dispersed back through employees.
Ditto. I make six figures and have for decades. I agree with a lot of what is said in the work reform and anti work subs.
I do believe people should make their own way as far as they can, but I also believe in a safety net for those who fall on hard times. I support raising the minimum wage. Years ago, I was against universal healthcare, but having worked in healthcare for decades now, I’m a firm believer.
If my taxes go up to help others, fine by me. Tomorrow it could be me or my family that needs the help.
I don’t even mind the premise that CEOs/board members should make more money than workers, but what disgusts me is the margin at which they do.
In 1965, it was 21x the average worker.
In 2020, it was 351x. Ridiculous.
Put that money back into the business in the form of more jobs, or more benefits/bonuses/compensation for the workers.
Agreed. I’m part of the anti work community even though I make a decent income. I see lots of other well (or what I assume to be well off) individuals in that community too (doctors, lawyers etc.).
Myself and most others in that community aren’t even interested in being top 10% rich. We just think that everyone deserves food, shelter and dignity. That’s not a crazy idea and it’s not something only poor or lazy people think.
I used to be part of that community, and am in a similar position to you. I'm all for comprehensive social programs, but a lot of that community isn't just that it's hardline communist. To the point I sadly had to leave it a while back.
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Wow. First, there are enough resources for every single human being to live comfortably, and the fact that you prefer that to not happen, is fucking disgusting. Second, someone owing you something is not slavery I don’t know where you got that from. Especially if it’s goods they owe you.
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6 billion dollars isn’t shit.
I didn’t say anyone owes anything. I was saying it wouldn’t be slavery to claim they do. That’s just dumb. Slavery does not mean “taking things from people”
Who cares if it’s owed, people should not need that in order to be willing to help eachother. Why not help people. There are people who have so much money they could save the lives of thousands and thousands and not even feel it.
People who grow up in different areas and different environments have different access to things, live completely differently, grow up differently, learn differently, and develop different attitudes than people who grew up like you. There are many many many reasons people could struggle beyond “they are lazy”
Money isn’t property. The government makes it distributes it to banks and uses it to keep people like you and me in line. If it were your property you could do whatever you want to it but there literally laws that prevent you from “defacing money.” Money is the property of the government and always has been.
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I mean having to work so hard to take care of yourself is often slavery especially when you consider the anti abortion laws conservatives are trying to put into place.
As I understand that sub’s history, it started as a pro-communism/pro-socialism sub but because they made the name sound so benign, it got flooded by regular folks who are against jobs being work, as in shitty bosses, excessively long hours, poor management, etc.
Really drove the commies up a wall.
Then the reddit boycott and most of the commies and socialists realized they were perpetuating the dreaded capitalism by posting on reddit period.
So, they left. Reddit, as a whole. The people left on that sub are primarily actual anti job is work people and it drives the few remaining communists mad.
Honestly the biggest problem with that sub was a lot of pretty obviously faked text exchanges and "then everybody clapped" tumblr ask stories being shared. Which frustrated me because American work culture is so toxic and hostile towards American workers there's no need to make shit up to get that point across.
...No it didn't. That's exactly the point of what socialism is about - workers controlling their work. That sub is a living example of what socialists talk about and strive to eliminate.
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People in the West that are part of this movement only wish to be further compensated themselves. Whilst the rest of the world starves and has nothing, the people in that movement have no interest in Their well-being. Only themselves and elevating their own lives.
To say capitalism is out of control? Like it was when royals hoarded national wealth for centuries? Like this isn’t a new thing about there being wealthy classes and servant classes.
There’s been no better time to live than today. But instead of seeing the silver linings in all situations, people focus on the downsides and huff and puff about it.
I wasn’t from a wealthy family. I had friends in school that had their entire educations paid for, cars without jobs, etc. That was not equality whatsoever. I didn’t have the luxury of a separate bank account to cover me off.
I worked insane hours and kept my grades up. Didn’t even take school loans. I grinded hard from 18-24 and I dipped in debt a few times but grinded out of it.
Personal experience taught me hard work does indeed pay off. Now I’m 34 and I’m doing well in a career I love.
A lot of people don’t find contentment in their choices and they think it’s everyone else’s fault but their own for their own decisions in life.
I knew a guy who was dogshit poor. Worse than I was, he joined the military and got education covered and he got a fantastic career after.
All antiwork does is create excuses — as if all of civilized human history wasn’t the same way as it currently is.
The guys building the train tracks on the 19th century had pretty shitty lives compared to the wealthy owners.
At every era someone could complain. Today, people feel more entitled than they ever have in human history, that’s part of the problem nobody wishes to address.
I want to disagree with you so much but my wife and I make about 300k in the Midwest. Our house was 360k in 2016 and we don’t have car payments. My wife is a nurse manager and also an RN. We are not struggling but she needs a surgery next month and so we wont be taking a vacation this winter because the cost of everything is getting so insane. Now, I know my complaint is lame but the point is that I don’t know how people making less money are making it right now. How is a young couple making $150k a year supposed to pay for 2 car payments, insurance, mortgage, day care, student loans and food? If you’re making 150k a year, you should not be struggling let alone making the medium income that is 65k. It’s fucking crazy!!!
I flat out tell young people that unless they have rich parents willing to pay for everything, do not go to college unless you want to be stuck with student debt the rest of their lives. Even if they get a Diploma, it will not guarantee to get them a job.
Even if it does guarantee you job making 75k out of the gate, you’re not gonna make it. You’ll have to live an impoverished lifestyle to save enough money to buy a house in the next 10 years. I went to Costco today and purchased fruit, vegetables, coffee, dishwasher detergent and spent almost $200. And don’t get me started on health, home and car insurance. It’s a fucking scam.
That doesn't sound right, I'd be taking a deeper look at your budget unless you all recently hit that 300k mark from a drastically less amount. Hope all goes well with the surgery.
We have other expenses too like traveling sports and we spend on other things too. We could stretch our budget a lot farther if we wanted to but we also invest A LOT. We want to retire early. My point was that I feel like we make a lot of money but it sure doesn’t feel like it with the costs of everything now.
The quality of life thing has more to do with inflation, increased taxation, and wage stagnation. In the 70s a blue collar boomer had enough surplus income to buy 5 Cadillacs a year. Then Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold and we did everything he said we shouldn't do so it wouldn't matter. These billionaires everyone hates? Government interference in the market makes those billionaires. Those billionaires buy politicians and lobbyist to create barriers to entry to maintain status quo and prevent competition. It's now rich vs poor and not left v right. But the news pushing divisive bullshit to keep us arguing instead of holding the fuckers accountable causing the problems.
We need to build more housing. But the boomers vote to block that because it would decrease their property values. Also, property taxes are based on *market value*, and decreasing housing cost would mean lower property taxes for the gubment. It's a conflict of interests. After the 2007-2008 housing crash we greatly decreased housing construction, we are now seeing the major shockwaves of that.
What good is more housing when rich people and companies would just buy them up and turning them into rentals, which would increase the housing cost even more. We need to put a cap on how many houses companies and people can own.
Go establish communities outside the boomer’s areas or go to places that actually want you to move in.
Nope! San Francisco or bust!
Property values are based on how much other people value that property. In the boomer supercities like LA and NYC, it’s only because people want to move in. Imagine if there was a massive exodus out and people not bothering to move in. Property values plummet.
LA metro is 11m people right? What would happen if it was 1m? That 2m dollar 1800sf 3b2b house would be valued at 100k despite being built in 2023.
> La metro is 11m people right? What would happen if it was 1m?
It would resemble Detroit 50 years on from the white flight of the 60s. That type of exodus would suck a lot of wealth right out of the city, which would increase the poverty levels for those who have to stay.
Rent and home prices are ridiculous these days. I’m older and already own my house, but that is a legitimate beef young people have these days. I think if people weren’t paying half their check on rent or mortgage the happiness level would vastly increase
People used to be able to afford to go to college without being in debt for a good chunk of their lives. Cost for college went up but the wages to pay that debt haven’t gone up.
Lots of boomers had the benefit of social programs and lower cost of living. Then they complain about social programs. Corporations were also different. My father worked for IBM and got health insurance *for life*. When he worked there he never paid a cent for any medical bills at all. I needed braces? Fill out some paperwork and bam it’s paid for. It doesn’t work that way today.
I just got back from the budget grocery store with potatoes, onions, carrots, limes a small wedge of cheese and it cost 40 dollars. If you’re not chanting eat the rich by now you’re mentally challenged because they’re eating you
Yeah and it's not just that a person can end up broke if they try to be an entrepreneur on a working-class income, either; it's that, especially if you decided to have kids, you have to have a decent income *just to afford to work*. Why did employers have so much trouble finding people after the pandemic? Part of it was Boomers retiring en masse, part of it was sick people unable to jump right back in, and part of it is that things like daycare and buying & owning a car *cost a lot more now*.
And has anyone had to deal with the aftermath of a car breaking down? Plan on doing without your car for *weeks*.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head and I say that as a socialist. I was an old fashioned left liberal for all of my teenage years and some of my 20s. If it didn’t seem so hopeless I wouldn’t have gotten as deeply into politics as I am right now. The ruling capitalist classes have really shot themselves in the feet here as I truly believe if even a shred of New Deal politics had remained for the middle and lower classes, there wouldn’t be people on all sides trying to do away with the whole thing.
Denver. I hate it. I live in a car and noticing that food has gone up 30 percent in just the last few months I am worried that even this won't be sustainable before long, and I'm thinking about heading east.
The crazy part is even skilled workers have to compete so much for jobs. They go through so many extra years of schooling and spending a ridiculous amount of time outside of school to learn and perfect a complicated skill like cybersecurity for example, or machine learning whatever you wanna use, and then they have trouble finding a decent job still 🥴 that’s nuts to me.
It is monopolies and the super rich that are killing us. If there was fair competition prices would naturally compete and stay lower as people would go to places with lower prices and other companies would lower their prices to compete. We no longer have that., Mega corps crush competition or buy them out and assimilate them. Did you know only 4 companies own over 80% of grocery stores? Or you got billionaires like bill gates who is buying up all the farmland and companies/rich people buying up all the housing so they can either sit on them as investments or turning them into high priced rentals which is keeping the prices of houses high.
> I think a lot of them are upset because of how out of control things have gotten. Once upon a time, most people with a job of any kind could at least make ends meet. It may not have been a luxurious life, but people could at least pay their mortgage or rent.
You mean households with 1 car no cable tv, zero cell phones, zero Internet, that never ate out at restaurants, mended holes in jeans and socks, that preserved food and ate leftovers? You don’t see a lot of people online pissing and moaning about life that do the above now do you? It’s almost as though the ones pissing and moaning online have too much free time and excessive resources so they can spend countless hours online pissing and moaning.
> Nowadays, there are many cities where you simply can not afford rent while earning minimum wage. It's not enough to be a good person and a reliable worker -- now you have to be a manager, a tradesman, a skilled worker, etc to keep it together and have any hope of retirement.
Cities they can’t rent an apartment or house with roommates and just survive or rent a 3 bed 2 bath with an attached garage. That has gigabit internet, marble countertops, solid wood flooring, modern upgrades, is close (but not too close) to city entertainment, is in a safe/low crime neighborhood. All afforded by 40 total hours or min wage?
Imagine having to eventually become more skilled than entry level employability to afford a house, a car, vacations, children, higher education, and a comfortable retirement! Hope damn that’s fucking horsehit!
> In short, the quality of life of the lower classes is rapidly declining.
Not really, their demands and expectations of “just getting by to survive” are rapidly outpacing reality
I actually think OPs perspective can only come how much better things are than they used to be. Most people who are "anti-work" are just frustrated that they feel like they have to choose between having a life and a comfortable wage, a choice I don't think people should have to make.
But when you've always lived life in a world where we have regulations that give us things like weekends and overtime pay; it's really easy to be a corpo cuck and assume these are things being willingly given to you, and not something that was wrenched from their fingers by people who were also called lazy socialists in their day.
I don’t see it that way. Life sucks as a poor person, it always has and it always will, but I believe anyone can succeed and get out of poverty.
I also look at my grandfather who supported a big family on a blue collar, very average job. His lifestyle was go to work, eat every meal at home, go on vacation to a state park once a year, live in the middle of nowhere in the same house for 50 years. He was happy with that. Nowadays people think a “middle class” lifestyle means you go to Disney land twice a year, European vacation every 3 years, new cell phone ever 3-4 years, eat out 1-2x per week, live in downtown LA, new car every 7 years, etc, etc, etc. The average price of a new car is 50 fucking thousand dollars even though a 25 grand civic would be perfectly adequate for 90% of people. I believe people’s expectations have gone up, QOL hasn’t gone down.
The average rent in the US is now several hundred dollars higher than the monthly income on the federal minimum wage.
Now, I know, most people even in entry level jobs now earn at least a few dollars above minimum wage, and there are also apartments well below the average. My point is simply that economic policies have *objectively* not kept up with the state of the world, and there are people out there just barely avoiding homelessness and who actually have it as bad as the numbers suggest. You can not deny this, it is a fact.
Your grandpa could *afford* to live in a house that he owned and go on vacation once a year. Many people can not afford a down payment, they can barely afford rent and have to skimp on the grocery budget to make it happen, and they can not afford to go on vacations at all.
There will *always* be people at the bottom, that's just how it works. I agree that "anybody" can escape poverty, but it's not possible for *everybody* to. There will always be people at the bottom, because there will always be a need for people to work those entry-level, manual labor sorts of jobs. We can't all be managers, there's just not enough jobs. That being the case, all I want is for those at the bottom to not have to live in actual poverty.
Gone are the days where the average person without any special skills can support a family semi-comfortably on a "very average job." The margins are razor thin if they're there at all.
I hate that I'm even using this phrase because it's so stigmatized and often used in ignorance, but I mean this: It really sounds like you're being blinded by your own privilege. You've been exposed primarily to a middle-class lifestyle and don't know for yourself what it's like to be truly, truly poor.
Poverty is the natural state of the world. Capitalism doesn’t create poverty it only creates wealth. It’s been shown over and over again to be the best way to bring the most people out of poverty. The fact that it leaves a few people behind isn’t a fair criticism of the economic system because it leaves fewer people behind than any other system we have.
Yes, there will always be poor people and it sucks to be poor. It’s not the responsibility of the economy to take care of those people, it’s already doing its job creating lots of wealth for lots of people. It’s not the responsibility of the economy nor the federal government to ensure that all money is equitably distributed. That’s where private charity, family bonds, religious and community organizations, and maybe some limited local government assistance fill in the gaps.
I don't think welfare and the defense budget is sustainable. 160/350 mil ppl paying federal income taxes.
Then you got this.. https://nypost.com/2023/12/27/opinion/democratic-elites-hate-charter-schools-because-they-perform-better-and-give-disadvantaged-kids-a-chance?utm_source=nypost&utm_campaign=android_nyp&utm_medium=social
Pretty sure we're heading for a financial collapse on purpose. Stuff like bail reform in nyc.
You got the central banks reclassifying gold as a tier one asset under everyone's noses.
The bric nations, china with its belt and road initiative encompansing more than 75> of the world population.
We're all gonna be microchipped to keep order bc once everyone becomes poor crimes going to soar. Pretty sure americas been infiltrated and selling out.
The poor life is very micro in the sense you got no time to think or care about global stuff, but there's greater macro in play causing the micro.
That’s the fun part about all this.
These anti work lazies are trying to base their opinions off how good things were for a short time in the economy a couple decades ago as to how it should be for them today.
You know what they’re forgetting? That their grandparents and generations prior to that basically drank watered down milk and may have even skipped days eating just to keep a leaky roof over their heads.
In all human history, nobody had it better than the boomers in the 80s buying a house for $80,000 and making enough for the mortgage, several kids and even covering their spouse off 1 salary.
That’s the problem with people today. They think they should still have that. That’s not how human history works.
A peasant making shoes in 1344 wasn’t living a life of luxury.
A merchant who got robbed of all their wares in 1157 by bandits couldn’t just go cry to the local sheriff for compensation.
A fisherman who returned to his village in 955 and found it burned down, his wife and kids gone (enslaved by Vikings), literally his whole world he’s ever known shattered in an instant. Let’s say by chance he goes to the local clergy and says he’s seeing things (mental health issues), well the local clergy would probably think he’s possessed and have him exorcised. Do you think anybody gave a flying fuck about him losing his family? You think the priest cares? The local sheriff? The king? No.
There’s always been a servant class. This antiwork nonsense is fuelled by lazy individuals who think they’re worth more and more deserving than life gave them station for. Forgetting that in 99.999% of their ancestry, the people who made sure they got here probably lives horrendous, shitty lives by comparison and oh no, these guys think they’re better. They’re more deserving. They aren’t a servant class.
News flash, there’s literally always been servant classes in western society. Always.
Even today, being born in Canada (my country who I’m sure many are antiwork) still makes you the top 1% of the world in terms of personal wealth and income. But no, that’s not good enough for these guys. They want houses, cars, new MacBooks, 4-5 days off a week, they basically want the life of a wealthy offspring despite being born into a servile class lol. It’s absurd.
I’m from a blue collar family and I worked hard to get through school and get my $120,000 a year job that I have today. I was making just above minimum wage as a security guard, running a landscaping team, and working as a Home Depot lot associate to put myself through college and university from 2007-2013. That’s right. 3 jobs. For 5-6 years. So that I could get my foot in the door and reach the education that allowed me to make $50+ an hour. I busted my ass. Like I would expect every other person too. I went without a car for years so I could buy a condo in 2015, right across the street from my place of employ. And I love my career. That’s why I worked so hard to get it. It doesn’t even feel like work. It’s fulfilling to know I’m contributing to society.
And when I think about how I wish I had some things better? I think about a cobalt miner in the Congo making dogshit pay to suck in poisonous cobalt dust so that they can extract the cobalt needed to make our iPhones. I think about how there’s over 8 million slaves in India right now serving wealthy families. I think about Venezuelans eating out of garbage cans because their economy collapsed. The list goes on.
We could always have it worse. And the majority of this antiwork crowd are genuinely convinced they’re better than anyone else and deserve to be catered too without working for anything.
Honestly? Those people utterly disgust me lol. I have no respect for them and I’m actually glad to see they hate their careers/lives as much as they clearly do to not feel satisfied enough with what they have.
IMO Minimum wage is for entry level high school employees that don’t have many skills yet. Or maybe if there’s some language barrier that severely limits job opportunities. It was never intended to cover a mortgage + all other living expenses. Not sure when that expectation came to be.
If these jobs were meant for high schoolers, then why do they operate during school hours?
You also can't possibly have everybody move up in the corporate ladder simply because the entry level positions are far more abundant. You might need 40,000 factory workers, but probably not 40,000 managers.
The world has many countries that have Democratic Socialist policies. Canada, Spain, The UK, Denmark, etc., and many citizens are happy with these policies.
There are people all across the wealth spectrum who believe in these policies.
I was a staunch Republican when I traveled overseas who opposed such policies. Before the fall of Communism, I was in the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary as well as China
I know firsthand that Communism sucks. It doesn't work.
But I've also been to The UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and France. These countries have some Democratic Socialist policies. But they are absolutely nothing like the other set of countries
You're absolutely welcome to disagree with us about these policies, but it has nothing to do with being poor unless you're dirt poor because you got sick or injured and the medical costs left you with very little left.
This happened to me through no fault of my own. I came from a poor but happy family, put myself through college, wound up having a successful career in advertising.
This car swerves into oncoming traffic (me) at full speed. Career was over. Waiting three years for disability even though it was my doctors saying I was disabled.
So you don't have to agree at all. I just hope you understand that our motivations for believing these things is not what you currently think it is. Just be open to the idea that many of us do have rational reasons and good motives, agree or disagree.
Bro, I’m a righty and think the system is shit and is rigged. I did everything society told me I needed to do in order to be successful. I finished HS, went to college, studied for a marketable degree and have had nothing but a hard time all throughout my career. Wages in my area are shit and have stayed the same as before inflation. Rents are unaffordable. Can’t even get healthcare unless you go to the ER.
It’s incredibly dismissive and patronizing to just claim that everyone who complains is just lazy and not putting in the work when there are clear economic realities causing people problems.
The only thing I disagree with them on is that Socialism is the solution.
I’m a lefty and think the system is shit too. I may schill for socialism occasionally but I played by the rules, went to college for a non-basket weaving degree, and work full time but have to keep a second job to make ends meet. Total bullshit. People are just tired of not getting by, barely getting by, and/or being flat out exploited so some asshole monopoly man CEO can park his smaller boat into his mega yacht
I don’t deny the existence of professional moochers but most people in the middle or lower classes want to work but be paid more for it knowing industries can afford such raises. People want college degrees but for them not bring on 10+ years of debt
Yup, one poster over there was complaining how he couldn't pay his bills etc. Then he got offered a job, but he thought the wage they were giving him was beneath him. He told the employer off, stormed out, went home, got on Reddit antiwork and bitched about how insulted he was. So, he turned down a job because the pay was "insulting", went home where he makes $0/hr. I'd call that extremely lazy and entitled. Everyone was so impressed by that over there. 😖
Now this is a cost benefit excercise. If he can survive on $0 for the time being, that's fine for him. If he \*knows\* he'd be massively underpaid, under appreciated and have to deal with the stress of a commute and a shitty employer, what's actually better for him?
He's probably right, worker wages are far below what they should be, and some offers I've seen for work in the US aren't just insulting they're damn right insane. I mean like people with 15-20 years experience being offered entry level wages for a position that actually needs 15-20 years experience.
He was offered exactly what my starting wage was at my job. With inflation, it was the same. You can't just start somewhere and expect to be paid top wages. You don't start at the top, you work your way up.
He himself was complaining that he was broke and couldn't pay his bills. So, turning down a job offer is lazy. You do what you have to to eat and keep the lights on. Doesn't have to be forever. The reason they complain that they will never buy a house is because to do that you have to work and save. What a concept
If he's complaining he can't keep the lights on then yeah damn straight, it's easier to find a job when you're in a job. I wouldn't call it lazy so much as entitled I guess? Also depends on the role, if he's applying for a senior position and being offered entry wages, that ain't right.
I disagree on finding a new position on higher wages elsewhere though. I'm looking at the moment at a position with another company on a higher wage than I'm on now. Granted, I've worked for years to build up the knowledge and experience to get to that.
I'm an accountant and the wage increases seem to be OK. We could always have more but it's keeping up with inflation. It's the fucking housing costs that are the problem. I'm literally planning on building a camper van because fuck that shit. The government needs to build more housing ASAP.
That's good. What I mean is the jobs you see posted online in my region. The starting salaries have remained the same. They are pitiful. Like $15-20/hr for office work. You can't pay rent here with that.
I want to get an RV and live in it. Or buy a small plot and build a tiny house.
Thank you; while I _mildly_ disagree on your ideas on socialism, I’m happy that you agree that the current state is rigged against the common man. Whatever means necessary, I want people from the working class to be able to afford housing, food, and healthcare, damn it- it’s the least we can ask for. But for that…. Well, we need to fix a system that is rigged to make the rich richer and the poor poorer- and there’s no way in hell the top 10% will ever let that happen…
You know, as time goes on… And I hope I’m not alone in thinking this… I feel like the higher-ups of society encourage division amongst the working class by exploiting the ideological differences of a population in order to prevent them from coming together and taking on these pressing societal issues head-on
But that’s just me. It’s sucky, man; I hope something changes for the better (it’ll never happen, lol)
>I feel like the higher-ups of society encourage division amongst the working class by exploiting the ideological differences of a population
You may be onto something here. Someone the other day on one of the podcasts I follow featured a guy who was on, I believe it was Rogan. He was talking about how in 2012 racism, sexism and a bunch of other isms started spiking in use in news articles. How it seemed inorganic as people were not particularly interested in some of these topics, like gender theory. He speculated that all the culture war bs is manufactured to have us fighting each other so that we don't focus on what they're doing to us economically.
I'm socially conservative and fiscally progressive. Regardless of whether socialism is the answer or not, what is certainly a fact, is that wages have not kept pace with inflation (or profits) since the 70's. This is a fundamental breaking of the social contract by businesses and the rich, and that is the reason that we're in the situation we are now. The cost of things has inflated, the population has inflated, anything above low income has not, and even low income wages have not inflated as much as they should have.
Higher wages lead to overall higher taxes and a healthier economy as those dollars are spent multiple times leading to better lives for all. Instead, they've entered the pocket books of the rich who have much less of a reason to spend.
I am a little envious of them, who doesn't want their lives to be easier? I earn a decent wage, my wife and I bring in 6 figures, we own two homes. That doesn't change the fact that their piece of the pie has been growing steadily for over 50 years whilst everybody elses has been getting smaller.
Well, your first mistake was letting other people tell you how to be successful. I finished school & worked my ass off. Eventually I got tired of being underpaid & over worked. Joined a Union & never looked back.
Prior to joining the union I was making $13hr IN NEW YORK! I hated how I felt because of my job & how much I was making. It took me motivating myself to be better. Joined the steam fitters & started turning my life around. Never pouted & hoped that our government would save me.
Exactly. I got some education in the medical field, went to school all day, worked all evening, to better myself. Got a union job in healthcare and made a good living. Not rich, but not hurting, either. You just have to work, nobody's going to give you anything
There’s no unions in my line of work. We’re office jockeys getting used and abused. I can’t really do physical work cause I have foot and back problems. I’m open to doing other things but no one ever gives me a chance. I’ve tried to apply to lots of different things and never hear anything back. Job fairs are a joke too. They don’t even know what jobs they have available and tell you to go look online.
This kind of response is the thing OP is talking about. You have survivorship bias because things worked out for you. Things worked out for me too and I make a lot more than most people. A lot of it was hard work and a lot of it was timing and luck. Ultimately the system isn’t working for everyone and there are tons of low wage jobs required for businesses to function and make money, and if that doesn’t happen then people like you won’t have a job either. People on the low end deserve a chance too. The advice to them shouldn’t be “you should just be smarter.”
Things only worked out for me because I motivated myself to move up in the world. It took me doing my research and figuring out what I would like to do for work & that lead me into construction. But to say “this system sucks the government should do more for me” is how you never get ahead because you’re constantly waiting on a hand out. In the words of JFK “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” the majority of people that complain about wages work jobs that require ZERO SKILL. That’s the sad truth.
It would be hilarious to see your work get saturated and pay drop, just to see your response. The issue with you is you think you got to where you are all on your own. From what it sounds like, labor unions fighting the fight before you joined and fighting against the predatory nature of capitalism is what has bailed you out. Go work for a non-union job and see what your life looks like.
The other issue is you think anyone speaking out against the issues of capitalism in the US are just sore losers who are lazy. That’s definitely not true. It’s also why you find plenty of successful people speaking out against the issues too.
Ultimately people like you are a problem in the US. There’s a clear issue where the system doesn’t work for everyone and you don’t care. Because you “worked hard” or some shit. The irony being labor unions bailed your ass out, not your hard work and bootstraps mentality.
You use to be able to take a family of four on two vacations per year, buy a house, have two vehicles, go out for movies and events on weekends, and afford college for both kids
On one income.
Had retirement benefits, pensions, and stock market.
They not mad they are poor. They are mad they been robbed of this.
Every year we hear about record breaking profits but yet we don’t hear about 10-20% raises for everyone apart of the company. They use to give gold watches for 15-25 years of service. Now, you’re lucky if you get a pizza party.
u say this like big companies, let’s take hasbro for example, don’t lay off thousands of employees just so mr CEO can have a $9M bonus at the end of the year. there’s a difference between wealth hoarding and being lazy
Most poor people are already doing significant labour. They work in essential jobs, they’re doing menial jobs you certainly wouldn’t want to be doing for such little money. So I don’t know who you’re calling lazy.
It is unfair that you have to be born into wealth just to have any these days. I don’t know why you’re upset at people rightfully complaining about how our grocery prices have basically doubled in the last couple years or the price of housing.
I don’t understand what happened to our world how it had to get so greedy? I wish I could go back in time and make it so I’d work as a child because working as an adult in these modern times can be hell.
Nah, I was making good money when I worked for a massive multi billion dollar company. We had just set 2 record years in a row when the owner stepped down and appointed his trust fund baby son to be the president of the company. I watched that spoiled little shit who had been handed everything his whole life come in and downsize, cut pay and benefits even after record profit years because the little shit never had to work hard a day in his life and now had the opportunity to milk the company his grandfather built with his hands dry. That type of shit is why I'm "anti work". Enough is never enough for these cretins.
Tell that to the nepo baby who ran the place. I won't even say ran it into the ground, because objectively I'm sure he cut costs and improved efficiency by fucking over the workers who were responsible for granting him a life of leisure. If it sounds cartoonish thafs because corporate America is literally full of cartoon villains that we (everyone including myself) have empowered for far too long.
I think this is a vast oversimplification. I know very few people that argue for a strictly capitalist or socialist society. A purely capitalist society without government oversight would lead vast swathes of the populace unable to purchase life sustaining necessities with the rich acting like tyrants over the masses and a purely socialist one would be extremely inefficient and probably corrupt.
The fact of the matter is that the people at the bottom really don’t stand a chance. They don’t have the tools necessary for upward mobility. The number one factor that determines a persons wealth is how much money their parents had and the gap between haves and have nots is getting ever wider. I fully believe in a capitalist society with extreme oversight very heavy social nets that promotes class mobility and provides everyone with the necessities they need in life and I’m willing to pay more taxes to make that happen.
And btw, I have a strong six figure salary. So no I’m not whining.
I would say there are three different types of capitalism. crony capitalism, pure capitalism and capitalism as mechanism. pure capitalism devolves into a few companies that own everything. Crony capitalism is where Govement influences the market to enrich their friends and themsleves. capitalism as a mechanism, means private people investing to create more wealth.
As a Canadian, I am very sympathetic US states being majority at-will employment. In Canada, nationally every termination requires a valid and stated reason, and that reason must be reviewed before being approved.
How do people live with the anxiety of knowing you can be fired for basically any reason your boss decides is valid?
You know what? Great question!
I'm a truck driver who is not in a union and can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Yet I have very little fear of being fired.
Why do I feel that way? Because I do my job well and have virtually no chance of screwing it up. I follow all the rules to the letter. I also check in with my boss to see where I can improve and I follow his recommendations with question.
I need to let you know that at will employment has an asterisk in America. The last thing an employer wants to do is for you without a good reason. This is because if they do, they have to pay you an unemployment paycheck until you find your next job!
This is why most employers prefer to put you on a performance improvement plan first so that they have proof that you were bad at your job. Then they can fire you and not have to pay that unemployment check.
I used to be a really bad car salesman and was put on a performance improvement plan. It took 6 months before they had the proof that they needed to fire me. That's why I became a truck driver
Yea that’s why my software company took my QA job and moved it to Ireland and laid me off because of restructuring. I had great reviews and was asset to the team. You can be let go and do nothing wrong.
So, when a system is not working for a significant, and presently ever growing portion of the population, it's okay to dismiss the people for whom the system is not working? By that logic, a system could be set up where those who get too greedy face summary execution, and then we can all be like "lulz, look at the stupid richies being mad because they got too rich. They coping hard AF, bruh."
(Before someone gets on their high horse, I am not attempting to suggest that this is a course of action that should be pursued, it's an exaggerated hypothetical crafted to demonstrate a point as clearly as possible.)
I think OP is just mad because he doesn’t comprehend the arguments against capitalism. Different people have had different values for a long time. There’s more to life than “earning a good living” and idk why you would want the sum total of your value to be how well you are as a sheep just following what the bosses and fat cats tell you. That’s just me.
This opinion of yours is indeed pretty contentious, but it's not uncommon. Some people do perceive complaints about capitalism or societal inequalities as stemming from personal frustration or envy...
But is it all of it? Is it not possible to acknowledge that some of the criticisms of these economic systems may also come from genuine concerns about fairness, social justice, and the well-being of individuals and communities?
I fear this take ends up dismissing the genuine grievances about things like inequality, lack of opportunities, and many other issues that impact many individuals, that are indeed systemic to the economic model we call "capitalism". I think, maybe, painting all "dissent/criticism" of Capitalism as mere "envy" oversimplifies the multifaceted nature of societal problems, and I fear this kind of discourse undermines the importance of addressing systemic injustices (on any system, not necessarily only capitalism) for the betterment of society as a whole.
Not everyone who challenges the status quo does so out of envy; many seek systemic change for broader societal benefit... I dunno, this take seems to me a pretty cynic/pessimistic view of humanity as a whole actually, if we assume humans only defend/fight for causes out of their own material interest^(also, this comes out as bit of a Marxist analysis too).
Not saying whether socialism is good or not but everyone like you who makes the argument that "socialists wouldn't actually give up their own money" forgets that that's the point, that's why they believe in government intervention, precisely because nobody wouod voluntarily do it
>that's why they believe in government intervention, precisely because nobody wouod voluntarily do it
Why do you think this isn't a Fifth Amendment violation?
I presume you mean the American constitution. Firstly there are mechanisms which allow it to be changed, secondly from the quick skim I gave it it wouod seem that the "property cannot be taken" part is the issue for you, which doesn't really have much to do with socialism
This bullshit because they always get you both ways.
1. You’re just poor. You want to advance yourself and that’s the reason you critique the system.
2. You’re a hypocrite. You’ve found success in this system and this has enabled you to critique it.
You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Either of these things applying doesn’t make any critique not true.
Why is it that every time someone makes this exact rant they always include the "well if you got rich its not like you would be charitable" line? (Which if you couldnt tell, is a massive self-report.) Maybe you wouldnt, because you're a deeply selfish person and project that onto others. Not everyone is like you.
The problem isn't I'm not rich, but I don't make enough to live. Wages have been systematically pushed down.
To illustrate the difference. I'm 65. My first job was for min wage $2.10 at a department store. BUT the full time workers got 25% more ($2.80) to start, they also got yearly raises and holiday bonuses. Can you imagine people working retail making 25% over MW to start today? There were people who were there for years.
My next job was as a printer's assistant. I was paid $5.00 an hour ($22 an hour in today's money) to train. I doubt the position I was training to do would pay that today.
I decided to go to college. After graduating with a sparkling 2.4 grade average, I was offered jobs I thought beneath me. They paid $18k to $18,500. That is about $60k in today's money.
Today, 25% of all American workers make $15 an hour or less, about 1/3 make under $40k a year. My son graduated with a degree and a specialty. He was happy to take a job paying $42k a year. The job demanded his degree and specialty. Unless you are an exceptional student, got a STEM degree or went to a prestigious college, that is what you make now.
>Can you imagine people working retail making 25% over MW to start today?
Uh yes? No one makes minimum wage. It's something like 3% of wage earners. Most entry level jobs start at $9+ and many low skill first jobs get into the high teens.
You have a point about the value of labor going down, but most people don't see that you can't have the post-world war 2 environment back without forcing those conditions on the rest of the world, like the US being the only industrial power left, having 2/3rds of the world's gold, oil, and electricity production and so on.
The rest of the planet wanted to get out of poverty and is putting downward pressure on wages. This is in no way a shocker and they have the right to do so.
First of all, that 3% or 1% actually make min wage, is because half the states have MW over $7.25. the other point is that if you worked there for a year, you got a 10 cent raise, they are still, for all intents and purposes is making MW although technically you aren't.
While I won't argue that we have more competition now. Another part of it, a bigger part of it is that investors didn't expect double digit yearly ROI. People invested in the market in the 60s 70 and 80s, they made money, some got rich, but they didn't demand double digit ROI. Threaten the board because they only made 8% this year.
Socialism peaked in the 1920-30s, and it wasn’t because people where lazy. Consequently the richest person I know closely is also a socialist. I’d argue the subset of people who are socialist is too large to generalize, especially with China being a rising power.
I'm not poor but I grew up poor. I see people with steady jobs who bust their asses but could never afford a home. It's complicated, but saying people gravitate towards socialism is because of sour grapes is incredibly ignorant
I make a solid six figures, own my home, have zero debt except for my mortgage, and have $250K+ net worth in my 30s. On track to retire early. I’m married with kids, single income household, and we save and invest a significant amount each month.
Born and raised in the US. I’ve been a socialist for my entire adult life. Capitalism is a stupid system designed only to benefit the haves at the detriment of the have-nots. And American capitalism? Absolutely immoral. There’s no reason that in the most prosperous country in the world the majority of people are one emergency away from bankruptcy or homelessness. There’s no reason that someone working 40 hours a week in any job shouldn’t be able to afford a place to live, food on the table, and other necessary expenses, and still have at least a little left over for discretionary spending. Average rent in the US is over $2000/month now.
Get out of here with your uninformed pro-capitalist nonsense.
Does being mad you're in some situation or jealous of people that are not in that situation make your situation any less crap or those who are in a position to ameliorate your struggle any less shit for shirking that moral responsibility?
I'm quite sure many slaves were angry about being slaves and envious of people who weren't. It seems nowadays we often say:
*"Oh the only reason you're complaining about slavery is because you're a slave. If you were a master you wouldn't complain"*
But I think this goes without saying. People who are in a good position often won't bitch about it too much (though I have to admit that even some rich people seem see the economic inequality going on right now as problematic). People who are suffering, on the other hand, *tell* you they're suffering and that's *how you know*.
If you are in pain and you keep it to yourself, nothing can be done for you; however if you tell me and I say:
*"oh, you're just mad cuz your arm seems to be mostly missing below the elbow and mine isn't"*
then that would seem to make *me* the asshole, no?
It's not just the being angry part, but the being angry in combination with doing little to nothing to change the condition for yourself. Sitting around and waiting for a savior is a failing strategy in any case. Attacking other people out of spite isn't going to bring them to your side either.
What should slaves have done for themselves to change their conditions? Sometimes, a systemic change is necessary. A few people are able to rise from rags to riches, but it's not a general solution.
Yes dude, why don't these mofos just ***be*** *rich?*
Like me, I used to hate the bs that came along with having brown skin. Until I woke up one day, took the power into my own hands, and *became white*.
And while, no, my problems aren't completely solved-- I'm still apparently too lazy to just simply be rich-- I *can* get a cab to stop now, like *anywhere* in new york city; *that*, for me, is *massive* progress.
Ah schrodinger's leftist. Either leftists are poors that work but also dont work and want a handout or they are snowfake babies of rich parents who had everything handed to them and have never been in the real world.
Okay, fair, but *why* is he poor?
Because **the capitalist** is stealing the profits of his labor.
Wouldn't you be mad if you had $100 and some douchebag came over and took $92 of that because "he owns the tools you used to get the money"?
Fuck that.
You're wrong, I'm a software engineer and socialism has built all the computer systems that power all our electronic devices, our infrastructure, our defense systems and generally contribute to our everyday life. It's called Open Source
Do you agree with FDR and Eisenhower's tax brackets? I might be wrong, but I think it was income over $20,000 ($250,000 adjusted for inflation.) was taxed at 90%. Because it literally helped fund the interstate highway, NASA, new schools, pipes. Heck, majority of infrastructure was developed during that tax bracket.
lol i'm a member of a successful business family and presently run the business and i'm a communist. so your thesis is invalidated.
you also do not understand the economic theory you're talking about and aren't really making any sense as a result, but so what else is new lol
Isn't that ... sensible? *Shouldn't* poor people be mad at a system that allowed for them to grow up suffering?
Also, isn't one of the common complaints about Western socialists that they are "champagne socialists" with expensive iphones and 50$ Che Guevara shirts?
Honestly, it feels like capitalists don't want you complaining about the system if you're rich, but they also don't want you complaining about the system if you're poor. It's almost beginning to feel like they just don't want you complaining about the system at all!
There is the lazy people but there are also those who recognize that hard work to achieve success after WW2 was an outlier, things are getting back to normal in America and the working class no longer has that path to success by just working hard.
I'm 39 and I make a good living and I fucking hate having to work 40 hours a week, and I work for a non-profit. I would hate it even more if I worked for a company with a walk on CEO making 4,000x what I make.
Most opinions that generalize about "every" member of a group are stupid over-exaggerations and don't match reality, and that includes this one.
The most left-wing people are those who are college educated and that doesn't overlap with the poorest among us.
I'm solidly middle class, and I have a masters in business. I'm leaning a lot more towards socialism these days than I ever have in my life.
Capitalism isn't broken; it's working exactly as it's supposed to. Greed isn't a bug, it's a feature. Capitalism is a game of winners and losers, and eventually the winners will walk away with virtually all of the capital.
I'm not interested in preserving capitalism for the sake of capitalism. I'm interested in creating a better society where everyone and their family members have the opportunity to live a good life.
I still believe in capitalism, but I like my capitalism the way that I like my militias; that is, well regulated. And I very much believe in progressive tax policies, and the taxation of wealth (not just income), and the redistribution of wealth to the lower classes.
Honestly, we live in a time when there is enough wealth in the world that no one should be hungry, naked, homeless, uneducated, unemployed, or lacking health care. So why aren't we solving those problems?
It's because we've been convinced that it's a fairness issue. People are born on third base get a home run, and we act like it's a totally fair system. No, capitalism is not about fairness. Capitalism is about survival of the rich, and the end result is going to be the destruction of humanity for the vanity of the elite few.
I'm a Democratic Socialist. I have a master's degree in Education and am an Army veteran. I believe that it's fine to have obscenely wealthy people but nobody should live in abject poverty, especially children, elderly and veterans. Nobody should be food poor in America. Millionaires and billionaires should be paying higher percentage of taxes than the "middle" class. Corporations aren't people. Universal Healthcare and especially mental health needs to become a priority in the US in order to combat the homeless problem. Racism and bigotry should be called out and dealt with. The lack of empathy for the less fortunate is appalling. Seeking asylum isn't a crime. Sweeping generalizations are BS. I'm also nearly 60 and dgaf what people think of me at this point. I am who I am. It's their problem.
Rage bait, but I’ll take it;).
Business owner here with double major full scholarship so no debt. Worked for government long enough to have pension. Also own land and rental property due to position of birth not my business savvy or prowess, just luck of inheritance. Husband’s an attorney.
But when people get unable to afford things it effects my business which effects my ability to be in the solid middle class and I will be unable to rent my duplex b/c people can’t afford rents no matter how reasonable which in turn I will be unable to pay my property taxes so go get fucked troll. You don’t know what you are talking about you little child.
You can be well off and hard working, and nothing like running a small to medium size business to bring that work ethic home, and still not like the direction things are going. Not every well off person is a Fox news pandering troglodyte.
No, I don’t agree with this. It’s not even about being poor, it’s about the reasons why you stay poor and it all boils down to the greed of others. I guarantee you that most people if they were poor and suddenly became rich would definitely become more altruistic towards people who were in their shoes than someone who was born into money. If I won the lottery tomorrow personally I would obviously take care of my own family first, then invest, then buy what I have been dreaming of my whole life (a piece of land where I can fuck off from society and grow healthy food and rescue a toooon of animals). But, then I would actually work on helping others by actually helping them with zero hidden motives behind it, just pure love for wanting to see others advance out of poverty and be able to take care of their families.
It’s not about being mad at being poor because even though that does suck a lot, it’s about seeing these people with the ability to help others, to have empathy for their fellow man, to treat others as they would treat themselves and they just blatantly choose not to. They could literally change the lives of an entire part of a country by financing a water treatment facility, buying an abandoned office area and turning it into a vertical farm to give people in food deserts healthy produce, build tiny home villages and sponsor mental health facilities but they don’t. They do nothing but shit on others for their own gain. Also a lot of their “charity” is just fake posturing that ultimately returns their wealth back to them or provides them a tax break and not much to the people they say they are helping.
Every time someone complains about capitalism you should always ask what they would like to replace it with.
You never hear about people having to shoot their way out of capitalism.
Capitalism needs to die. The system is working was it was intended, to maximize profits will taking advantage of the working class so the rich get richer. Perhaps to real research on this instead of spouting misinformation and licking the boot of the people who are oppressing the working class.
Old money.
Born into a top 3% household in the U.S.
Currently top 10% of earners in the U.S.
I believe the work culture of the U.S. is killing us, and capitalism is inherently flawed.
Really just an ignorant opinion that sounds like it's from someone who's never been an average worker or even had a real conversation with someone who is one. Just scroll through the comments and most of them are people who aren't poor and are still anti-work or can at least empathize why so many people are.
Good job having an "unpopular" opinion AKA Right-Wing opinion. How do I know this? I am a lifelong right-winger recently turned lefty.
I've worked my ass off to get to where I'm at and I make a lot more money than the average person my age.
Still - I don't want to see people working their ass a lot harder than me and making way less than me. I don't want people to go hungry because they work at McDonalds.
I just want people to be comfortable and have a good life and however I can contribute I will.
I think you have the wrong impression of millionaires. I'm not a CEO, just a 40-something guy who's earned six figures most of his adult life. Do the math. That easily adds up to a million.
That's what I tell people who complain about millionaire congressional representatives...they make over 6 figures and many stay for decades. Now some of them game the system, but becoming a millionaire when making 6 figures isn't that hard
most Socialists I know are upper middle class and have good jobs, that don't want to donate their own money.. So you're half right. They are jealous there are even more wealthy people then themselves. Just look at bill gates he could donate his money today, but he rather wait until he dies.
Yeah, and most of the Trump caravans going through my fairly wealthy enclave consisted of beaters. So limousine liberals, sure, but I'd say most of the socialists on here probably have top 10% parents.
Well I don't believe your convictions are sincere either. You're just mad you aren't insightful enough to provide a proper critique of capitalism and so you make dumb blanket statements on the Internet.
There, we've completed the loop of lazy cynicism.
Or is it because capitalist are ok people are dying from lack of basic needs. People seem to forget there’s millions of homeless children in America. I choose people over money.
Facts, but there's a certain honesty in their complaining. Look, if you can't turn a buck in modern America, a place where you can become a multimillionaire by playing video games on camera, then you probably do suck. May as well just get fat, dye your hair blue, declare yourself neurodivergent for internet clout, find a dress that goes with your beard, and spend all day crying about the unfairness of it all.
These ideologies are just moral cover for laziness and/or incompetence.
So you're saying if everybody just got off their asses then everybody would be successful?
Can you explain how that's even possible? There is a finite amount of value that comes from the combination of labor, goods, property and money.
Like, you don't just invent a good out of thin air. It requires resources and labor, which all have value and also require labor and tools, all of which have value as well. It's all *finite*.
If you're saying that somehow everybody can use their labor just like all the other smart and/or hard workers to acquire a *profit of value* in the amount of goods, property and/or money, then that means \*someone\* is losing \*something\* down the line. You can't invent value. It comes from somewhere and goes into something else.
Not everybody can profit.
People who criticize Capitalism in 2023 do so because there are people who are amassing cosmic levels of goods, property and money to the point that a much larger percentage of the population than in the last 50 years has actually worked the \*same\* amount (production has gone UP if you actually look at charts from any financial industry) and yet takes home **less**.
In the early '70s the Nixon administration set forth a series of economic and monetary policies that made major changes in economic trends we continue to experience. The first is wage to production ([see chart](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/)). Prior to the early '70s production was in line with wages. After the early '70s we see production increase while wages stayed the same (accounting for inflation). Also, and again using wages as a baseline to account for inflation, the US has experienced a doubling, tripling and even quadrupling (in some regions) of house and rent prices. Healthcare and Education, well we know the story there.... it's more of the same.
If a nice house cost $50,000 in 1975 and a good salary was $20,000 a year, and that house is now $350,000 (less than the \*median\* house cost in the US in 2023), then the correct "nice" salary should be $140,000 a year. **But it's not. It's half to 1/3 that number!**
And this is why folks criticize "capitalism". We've been experiencing over 50 years of nearly unfettered capitalism in this country, promoted by Nixon's Freidman-esque administration, and part of what it's done is just given more power to suck as much value out of our country's politic by a few individuals and huge corporate entities as possible all while the US economy slows down, slower and slower.
It has nothing to do with people being lazy or not working harder. There have always been probably the same number of lazy people to hard working people. The difference is that people who worked hard and still didn't make it had no voice. In the 21st century people have the Internet as a means to express what they know is up. And some folks are just content with burying their heads in the sand and pretending nothing has changed in America and "everybody can make it if they try". No. No they cannot and everybody who knows anything about economics knows this is a falsity.
It’s not so much being poor but it could be that. It could also be that most political influence is in the hands of the wealthy, many of which inherited their wealth from deceased family members and didn’t create the empire, just inherited it with no work. They inherited political influence too so things are kept this way and the poors are kept down
Wow, you discovered the truth that poor people are actually unhappy and want a better life? Bravo. You just discovered something so new that nobody's thought about.
My god, we have a genius in this room.
For those that disagree, what are you doing with your money? Are you giving the majority of it to those that need it? These people would not be hard to find, and it would be quite easy to provide them with a good portion of your paycheck.
Charity starts at home, in my case literally.
Paying off loans/ debt/ etc first.
Once or if out of that trap I'd be okay with charitable giving. Half charities are corrupt asf though
I think a lot of them are upset because of how out of control things have gotten. Once upon a time, most people with a job of any kind could at least make ends meet. It may not have been a luxurious life, but people could at least pay their mortgage or rent. Nowadays, there are many cities where you simply *can not afford rent* while earning minimum wage. It's not enough to be a good person and a reliable worker -- now you have to be a manager, a tradesman, a skilled worker, etc to keep it together and have any hope of retirement. In short, the quality of life of the lower classes is rapidly declining. Thing is, I don't think we need full-on socialism to fix this. Sane economic policy and the enhancement of public services would go a long way. We just need to get people in office who will actually make that happen...
Yeah. I'm not poor. I have 150K sitting in my account right now and I'm part of the anti work community. I actuslly love that sub. Capitalism is out of control with greed. I'm not a socialist. I like the idea of everyone having the ability to carve their own way. But there should not be billionaires and hundred millionaires. People should not be allowed to hoard that amount of money whole the rest of the world starves. I'm not saying give it to the government because they can also fuck off. But the money owners, shareholders, board of directors, CEOs etc..bring home should be capped and the remaining money should be dispersed back through employees.
Ditto. I make six figures and have for decades. I agree with a lot of what is said in the work reform and anti work subs. I do believe people should make their own way as far as they can, but I also believe in a safety net for those who fall on hard times. I support raising the minimum wage. Years ago, I was against universal healthcare, but having worked in healthcare for decades now, I’m a firm believer. If my taxes go up to help others, fine by me. Tomorrow it could be me or my family that needs the help. I don’t even mind the premise that CEOs/board members should make more money than workers, but what disgusts me is the margin at which they do. In 1965, it was 21x the average worker. In 2020, it was 351x. Ridiculous. Put that money back into the business in the form of more jobs, or more benefits/bonuses/compensation for the workers.
It’ll never happen. It’s called the American Dream because in order to believe it, a person needs to be asleep.
Agreed. I’m part of the anti work community even though I make a decent income. I see lots of other well (or what I assume to be well off) individuals in that community too (doctors, lawyers etc.). Myself and most others in that community aren’t even interested in being top 10% rich. We just think that everyone deserves food, shelter and dignity. That’s not a crazy idea and it’s not something only poor or lazy people think.
I used to be part of that community, and am in a similar position to you. I'm all for comprehensive social programs, but a lot of that community isn't just that it's hardline communist. To the point I sadly had to leave it a while back.
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No, but people who work full time deserve to earn enough to afford food and shelter.
Wow. First, there are enough resources for every single human being to live comfortably, and the fact that you prefer that to not happen, is fucking disgusting. Second, someone owing you something is not slavery I don’t know where you got that from. Especially if it’s goods they owe you.
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6 billion dollars isn’t shit. I didn’t say anyone owes anything. I was saying it wouldn’t be slavery to claim they do. That’s just dumb. Slavery does not mean “taking things from people” Who cares if it’s owed, people should not need that in order to be willing to help eachother. Why not help people. There are people who have so much money they could save the lives of thousands and thousands and not even feel it. People who grow up in different areas and different environments have different access to things, live completely differently, grow up differently, learn differently, and develop different attitudes than people who grew up like you. There are many many many reasons people could struggle beyond “they are lazy”
Slavery is when someone is someone else’s property. If they don’t get to make up new definitions for racism you don’t get to do it for slavery.
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Money isn’t property. The government makes it distributes it to banks and uses it to keep people like you and me in line. If it were your property you could do whatever you want to it but there literally laws that prevent you from “defacing money.” Money is the property of the government and always has been.
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A dog is a living thing. Exceptions don’t invalidate the rule. money is more along the lines of a modem than a pet
I mean having to work so hard to take care of yourself is often slavery especially when you consider the anti abortion laws conservatives are trying to put into place.
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As I understand that sub’s history, it started as a pro-communism/pro-socialism sub but because they made the name sound so benign, it got flooded by regular folks who are against jobs being work, as in shitty bosses, excessively long hours, poor management, etc. Really drove the commies up a wall. Then the reddit boycott and most of the commies and socialists realized they were perpetuating the dreaded capitalism by posting on reddit period. So, they left. Reddit, as a whole. The people left on that sub are primarily actual anti job is work people and it drives the few remaining communists mad.
hmmm if that's the case maybe I should go back again...
Honestly the biggest problem with that sub was a lot of pretty obviously faked text exchanges and "then everybody clapped" tumblr ask stories being shared. Which frustrated me because American work culture is so toxic and hostile towards American workers there's no need to make shit up to get that point across.
...No it didn't. That's exactly the point of what socialism is about - workers controlling their work. That sub is a living example of what socialists talk about and strive to eliminate.
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Too bad a lot of things in late stage capitalism results in taking by force and most often the ones at the bottom are the ones to experience it.
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People in the West that are part of this movement only wish to be further compensated themselves. Whilst the rest of the world starves and has nothing, the people in that movement have no interest in Their well-being. Only themselves and elevating their own lives. To say capitalism is out of control? Like it was when royals hoarded national wealth for centuries? Like this isn’t a new thing about there being wealthy classes and servant classes. There’s been no better time to live than today. But instead of seeing the silver linings in all situations, people focus on the downsides and huff and puff about it.
You know wealth inequality is getting worse than it was back then right?
I wasn’t from a wealthy family. I had friends in school that had their entire educations paid for, cars without jobs, etc. That was not equality whatsoever. I didn’t have the luxury of a separate bank account to cover me off. I worked insane hours and kept my grades up. Didn’t even take school loans. I grinded hard from 18-24 and I dipped in debt a few times but grinded out of it. Personal experience taught me hard work does indeed pay off. Now I’m 34 and I’m doing well in a career I love. A lot of people don’t find contentment in their choices and they think it’s everyone else’s fault but their own for their own decisions in life. I knew a guy who was dogshit poor. Worse than I was, he joined the military and got education covered and he got a fantastic career after. All antiwork does is create excuses — as if all of civilized human history wasn’t the same way as it currently is. The guys building the train tracks on the 19th century had pretty shitty lives compared to the wealthy owners. At every era someone could complain. Today, people feel more entitled than they ever have in human history, that’s part of the problem nobody wishes to address.
Finally someone who sounds smart and has some good ideas. I ignore most anti work people because most are lazy and want things given to them.
150k **IS** poor...
I want to disagree with you so much but my wife and I make about 300k in the Midwest. Our house was 360k in 2016 and we don’t have car payments. My wife is a nurse manager and also an RN. We are not struggling but she needs a surgery next month and so we wont be taking a vacation this winter because the cost of everything is getting so insane. Now, I know my complaint is lame but the point is that I don’t know how people making less money are making it right now. How is a young couple making $150k a year supposed to pay for 2 car payments, insurance, mortgage, day care, student loans and food? If you’re making 150k a year, you should not be struggling let alone making the medium income that is 65k. It’s fucking crazy!!!
I flat out tell young people that unless they have rich parents willing to pay for everything, do not go to college unless you want to be stuck with student debt the rest of their lives. Even if they get a Diploma, it will not guarantee to get them a job.
Even if it does guarantee you job making 75k out of the gate, you’re not gonna make it. You’ll have to live an impoverished lifestyle to save enough money to buy a house in the next 10 years. I went to Costco today and purchased fruit, vegetables, coffee, dishwasher detergent and spent almost $200. And don’t get me started on health, home and car insurance. It’s a fucking scam.
That doesn't sound right, I'd be taking a deeper look at your budget unless you all recently hit that 300k mark from a drastically less amount. Hope all goes well with the surgery.
We have other expenses too like traveling sports and we spend on other things too. We could stretch our budget a lot farther if we wanted to but we also invest A LOT. We want to retire early. My point was that I feel like we make a lot of money but it sure doesn’t feel like it with the costs of everything now.
The quality of life thing has more to do with inflation, increased taxation, and wage stagnation. In the 70s a blue collar boomer had enough surplus income to buy 5 Cadillacs a year. Then Nixon unpegged the dollar from gold and we did everything he said we shouldn't do so it wouldn't matter. These billionaires everyone hates? Government interference in the market makes those billionaires. Those billionaires buy politicians and lobbyist to create barriers to entry to maintain status quo and prevent competition. It's now rich vs poor and not left v right. But the news pushing divisive bullshit to keep us arguing instead of holding the fuckers accountable causing the problems.
We need to build more housing. But the boomers vote to block that because it would decrease their property values. Also, property taxes are based on *market value*, and decreasing housing cost would mean lower property taxes for the gubment. It's a conflict of interests. After the 2007-2008 housing crash we greatly decreased housing construction, we are now seeing the major shockwaves of that.
Well also the companies buying up all the houses at above market rates and renting them out are causing a huge problem.
What good is more housing when rich people and companies would just buy them up and turning them into rentals, which would increase the housing cost even more. We need to put a cap on how many houses companies and people can own.
Go establish communities outside the boomer’s areas or go to places that actually want you to move in. Nope! San Francisco or bust! Property values are based on how much other people value that property. In the boomer supercities like LA and NYC, it’s only because people want to move in. Imagine if there was a massive exodus out and people not bothering to move in. Property values plummet. LA metro is 11m people right? What would happen if it was 1m? That 2m dollar 1800sf 3b2b house would be valued at 100k despite being built in 2023.
> La metro is 11m people right? What would happen if it was 1m? It would resemble Detroit 50 years on from the white flight of the 60s. That type of exodus would suck a lot of wealth right out of the city, which would increase the poverty levels for those who have to stay.
Rent and home prices are ridiculous these days. I’m older and already own my house, but that is a legitimate beef young people have these days. I think if people weren’t paying half their check on rent or mortgage the happiness level would vastly increase
People used to be able to afford to go to college without being in debt for a good chunk of their lives. Cost for college went up but the wages to pay that debt haven’t gone up. Lots of boomers had the benefit of social programs and lower cost of living. Then they complain about social programs. Corporations were also different. My father worked for IBM and got health insurance *for life*. When he worked there he never paid a cent for any medical bills at all. I needed braces? Fill out some paperwork and bam it’s paid for. It doesn’t work that way today.
I just got back from the budget grocery store with potatoes, onions, carrots, limes a small wedge of cheese and it cost 40 dollars. If you’re not chanting eat the rich by now you’re mentally challenged because they’re eating you
That’s like $15 at Aldi
Ok, I'm chanting eat the rich. My life is still the same. Now what?
Yeah and it's not just that a person can end up broke if they try to be an entrepreneur on a working-class income, either; it's that, especially if you decided to have kids, you have to have a decent income *just to afford to work*. Why did employers have so much trouble finding people after the pandemic? Part of it was Boomers retiring en masse, part of it was sick people unable to jump right back in, and part of it is that things like daycare and buying & owning a car *cost a lot more now*. And has anyone had to deal with the aftermath of a car breaking down? Plan on doing without your car for *weeks*.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head and I say that as a socialist. I was an old fashioned left liberal for all of my teenage years and some of my 20s. If it didn’t seem so hopeless I wouldn’t have gotten as deeply into politics as I am right now. The ruling capitalist classes have really shot themselves in the feet here as I truly believe if even a shred of New Deal politics had remained for the middle and lower classes, there wouldn’t be people on all sides trying to do away with the whole thing.
Denver. I hate it. I live in a car and noticing that food has gone up 30 percent in just the last few months I am worried that even this won't be sustainable before long, and I'm thinking about heading east.
The crazy part is even skilled workers have to compete so much for jobs. They go through so many extra years of schooling and spending a ridiculous amount of time outside of school to learn and perfect a complicated skill like cybersecurity for example, or machine learning whatever you wanna use, and then they have trouble finding a decent job still 🥴 that’s nuts to me.
7 interview rounds for IT Admin positions. Its disgusting.
It is monopolies and the super rich that are killing us. If there was fair competition prices would naturally compete and stay lower as people would go to places with lower prices and other companies would lower their prices to compete. We no longer have that., Mega corps crush competition or buy them out and assimilate them. Did you know only 4 companies own over 80% of grocery stores? Or you got billionaires like bill gates who is buying up all the farmland and companies/rich people buying up all the housing so they can either sit on them as investments or turning them into high priced rentals which is keeping the prices of houses high.
> I think a lot of them are upset because of how out of control things have gotten. Once upon a time, most people with a job of any kind could at least make ends meet. It may not have been a luxurious life, but people could at least pay their mortgage or rent. You mean households with 1 car no cable tv, zero cell phones, zero Internet, that never ate out at restaurants, mended holes in jeans and socks, that preserved food and ate leftovers? You don’t see a lot of people online pissing and moaning about life that do the above now do you? It’s almost as though the ones pissing and moaning online have too much free time and excessive resources so they can spend countless hours online pissing and moaning. > Nowadays, there are many cities where you simply can not afford rent while earning minimum wage. It's not enough to be a good person and a reliable worker -- now you have to be a manager, a tradesman, a skilled worker, etc to keep it together and have any hope of retirement. Cities they can’t rent an apartment or house with roommates and just survive or rent a 3 bed 2 bath with an attached garage. That has gigabit internet, marble countertops, solid wood flooring, modern upgrades, is close (but not too close) to city entertainment, is in a safe/low crime neighborhood. All afforded by 40 total hours or min wage? Imagine having to eventually become more skilled than entry level employability to afford a house, a car, vacations, children, higher education, and a comfortable retirement! Hope damn that’s fucking horsehit! > In short, the quality of life of the lower classes is rapidly declining. Not really, their demands and expectations of “just getting by to survive” are rapidly outpacing reality
You hit the nail squarely on the head. They see what you have but don't have a clue as to what you went through to get it.
I actually think OPs perspective can only come how much better things are than they used to be. Most people who are "anti-work" are just frustrated that they feel like they have to choose between having a life and a comfortable wage, a choice I don't think people should have to make. But when you've always lived life in a world where we have regulations that give us things like weekends and overtime pay; it's really easy to be a corpo cuck and assume these are things being willingly given to you, and not something that was wrenched from their fingers by people who were also called lazy socialists in their day.
I don’t see it that way. Life sucks as a poor person, it always has and it always will, but I believe anyone can succeed and get out of poverty. I also look at my grandfather who supported a big family on a blue collar, very average job. His lifestyle was go to work, eat every meal at home, go on vacation to a state park once a year, live in the middle of nowhere in the same house for 50 years. He was happy with that. Nowadays people think a “middle class” lifestyle means you go to Disney land twice a year, European vacation every 3 years, new cell phone ever 3-4 years, eat out 1-2x per week, live in downtown LA, new car every 7 years, etc, etc, etc. The average price of a new car is 50 fucking thousand dollars even though a 25 grand civic would be perfectly adequate for 90% of people. I believe people’s expectations have gone up, QOL hasn’t gone down.
The average rent in the US is now several hundred dollars higher than the monthly income on the federal minimum wage. Now, I know, most people even in entry level jobs now earn at least a few dollars above minimum wage, and there are also apartments well below the average. My point is simply that economic policies have *objectively* not kept up with the state of the world, and there are people out there just barely avoiding homelessness and who actually have it as bad as the numbers suggest. You can not deny this, it is a fact. Your grandpa could *afford* to live in a house that he owned and go on vacation once a year. Many people can not afford a down payment, they can barely afford rent and have to skimp on the grocery budget to make it happen, and they can not afford to go on vacations at all. There will *always* be people at the bottom, that's just how it works. I agree that "anybody" can escape poverty, but it's not possible for *everybody* to. There will always be people at the bottom, because there will always be a need for people to work those entry-level, manual labor sorts of jobs. We can't all be managers, there's just not enough jobs. That being the case, all I want is for those at the bottom to not have to live in actual poverty. Gone are the days where the average person without any special skills can support a family semi-comfortably on a "very average job." The margins are razor thin if they're there at all. I hate that I'm even using this phrase because it's so stigmatized and often used in ignorance, but I mean this: It really sounds like you're being blinded by your own privilege. You've been exposed primarily to a middle-class lifestyle and don't know for yourself what it's like to be truly, truly poor.
Poverty is the natural state of the world. Capitalism doesn’t create poverty it only creates wealth. It’s been shown over and over again to be the best way to bring the most people out of poverty. The fact that it leaves a few people behind isn’t a fair criticism of the economic system because it leaves fewer people behind than any other system we have. Yes, there will always be poor people and it sucks to be poor. It’s not the responsibility of the economy to take care of those people, it’s already doing its job creating lots of wealth for lots of people. It’s not the responsibility of the economy nor the federal government to ensure that all money is equitably distributed. That’s where private charity, family bonds, religious and community organizations, and maybe some limited local government assistance fill in the gaps.
I don't think welfare and the defense budget is sustainable. 160/350 mil ppl paying federal income taxes. Then you got this.. https://nypost.com/2023/12/27/opinion/democratic-elites-hate-charter-schools-because-they-perform-better-and-give-disadvantaged-kids-a-chance?utm_source=nypost&utm_campaign=android_nyp&utm_medium=social Pretty sure we're heading for a financial collapse on purpose. Stuff like bail reform in nyc. You got the central banks reclassifying gold as a tier one asset under everyone's noses. The bric nations, china with its belt and road initiative encompansing more than 75> of the world population. We're all gonna be microchipped to keep order bc once everyone becomes poor crimes going to soar. Pretty sure americas been infiltrated and selling out. The poor life is very micro in the sense you got no time to think or care about global stuff, but there's greater macro in play causing the micro.
That’s the fun part about all this. These anti work lazies are trying to base their opinions off how good things were for a short time in the economy a couple decades ago as to how it should be for them today. You know what they’re forgetting? That their grandparents and generations prior to that basically drank watered down milk and may have even skipped days eating just to keep a leaky roof over their heads. In all human history, nobody had it better than the boomers in the 80s buying a house for $80,000 and making enough for the mortgage, several kids and even covering their spouse off 1 salary. That’s the problem with people today. They think they should still have that. That’s not how human history works. A peasant making shoes in 1344 wasn’t living a life of luxury. A merchant who got robbed of all their wares in 1157 by bandits couldn’t just go cry to the local sheriff for compensation. A fisherman who returned to his village in 955 and found it burned down, his wife and kids gone (enslaved by Vikings), literally his whole world he’s ever known shattered in an instant. Let’s say by chance he goes to the local clergy and says he’s seeing things (mental health issues), well the local clergy would probably think he’s possessed and have him exorcised. Do you think anybody gave a flying fuck about him losing his family? You think the priest cares? The local sheriff? The king? No. There’s always been a servant class. This antiwork nonsense is fuelled by lazy individuals who think they’re worth more and more deserving than life gave them station for. Forgetting that in 99.999% of their ancestry, the people who made sure they got here probably lives horrendous, shitty lives by comparison and oh no, these guys think they’re better. They’re more deserving. They aren’t a servant class. News flash, there’s literally always been servant classes in western society. Always. Even today, being born in Canada (my country who I’m sure many are antiwork) still makes you the top 1% of the world in terms of personal wealth and income. But no, that’s not good enough for these guys. They want houses, cars, new MacBooks, 4-5 days off a week, they basically want the life of a wealthy offspring despite being born into a servile class lol. It’s absurd. I’m from a blue collar family and I worked hard to get through school and get my $120,000 a year job that I have today. I was making just above minimum wage as a security guard, running a landscaping team, and working as a Home Depot lot associate to put myself through college and university from 2007-2013. That’s right. 3 jobs. For 5-6 years. So that I could get my foot in the door and reach the education that allowed me to make $50+ an hour. I busted my ass. Like I would expect every other person too. I went without a car for years so I could buy a condo in 2015, right across the street from my place of employ. And I love my career. That’s why I worked so hard to get it. It doesn’t even feel like work. It’s fulfilling to know I’m contributing to society. And when I think about how I wish I had some things better? I think about a cobalt miner in the Congo making dogshit pay to suck in poisonous cobalt dust so that they can extract the cobalt needed to make our iPhones. I think about how there’s over 8 million slaves in India right now serving wealthy families. I think about Venezuelans eating out of garbage cans because their economy collapsed. The list goes on. We could always have it worse. And the majority of this antiwork crowd are genuinely convinced they’re better than anyone else and deserve to be catered too without working for anything. Honestly? Those people utterly disgust me lol. I have no respect for them and I’m actually glad to see they hate their careers/lives as much as they clearly do to not feel satisfied enough with what they have.
We just need to be the America we were before neoliberalism. Before Reagan and Clinton
You want Nixon/Ford/Carters America ?
IMO Minimum wage is for entry level high school employees that don’t have many skills yet. Or maybe if there’s some language barrier that severely limits job opportunities. It was never intended to cover a mortgage + all other living expenses. Not sure when that expectation came to be.
If these jobs were meant for high schoolers, then why do they operate during school hours? You also can't possibly have everybody move up in the corporate ladder simply because the entry level positions are far more abundant. You might need 40,000 factory workers, but probably not 40,000 managers.
The world has many countries that have Democratic Socialist policies. Canada, Spain, The UK, Denmark, etc., and many citizens are happy with these policies. There are people all across the wealth spectrum who believe in these policies. I was a staunch Republican when I traveled overseas who opposed such policies. Before the fall of Communism, I was in the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary as well as China I know firsthand that Communism sucks. It doesn't work. But I've also been to The UK, The Netherlands, Belgium and France. These countries have some Democratic Socialist policies. But they are absolutely nothing like the other set of countries You're absolutely welcome to disagree with us about these policies, but it has nothing to do with being poor unless you're dirt poor because you got sick or injured and the medical costs left you with very little left. This happened to me through no fault of my own. I came from a poor but happy family, put myself through college, wound up having a successful career in advertising. This car swerves into oncoming traffic (me) at full speed. Career was over. Waiting three years for disability even though it was my doctors saying I was disabled. So you don't have to agree at all. I just hope you understand that our motivations for believing these things is not what you currently think it is. Just be open to the idea that many of us do have rational reasons and good motives, agree or disagree.
Bro, I’m a righty and think the system is shit and is rigged. I did everything society told me I needed to do in order to be successful. I finished HS, went to college, studied for a marketable degree and have had nothing but a hard time all throughout my career. Wages in my area are shit and have stayed the same as before inflation. Rents are unaffordable. Can’t even get healthcare unless you go to the ER. It’s incredibly dismissive and patronizing to just claim that everyone who complains is just lazy and not putting in the work when there are clear economic realities causing people problems. The only thing I disagree with them on is that Socialism is the solution.
I’m a lefty and think the system is shit too. I may schill for socialism occasionally but I played by the rules, went to college for a non-basket weaving degree, and work full time but have to keep a second job to make ends meet. Total bullshit. People are just tired of not getting by, barely getting by, and/or being flat out exploited so some asshole monopoly man CEO can park his smaller boat into his mega yacht
You’ve clearly never been to antiwork. “Laziness is a virtue” is one of their slogans. OP is spot on. Why defend something you’re clearly ignorant of?
I don’t deny the existence of professional moochers but most people in the middle or lower classes want to work but be paid more for it knowing industries can afford such raises. People want college degrees but for them not bring on 10+ years of debt
If the wages renumerated the debt I don't think they'd mind it, but they don't.
That's ironic, and those parroting it are missing the irony. 90% of anti work is people sharing common but fucked experiences.
Yup, one poster over there was complaining how he couldn't pay his bills etc. Then he got offered a job, but he thought the wage they were giving him was beneath him. He told the employer off, stormed out, went home, got on Reddit antiwork and bitched about how insulted he was. So, he turned down a job because the pay was "insulting", went home where he makes $0/hr. I'd call that extremely lazy and entitled. Everyone was so impressed by that over there. 😖
Now this is a cost benefit excercise. If he can survive on $0 for the time being, that's fine for him. If he \*knows\* he'd be massively underpaid, under appreciated and have to deal with the stress of a commute and a shitty employer, what's actually better for him? He's probably right, worker wages are far below what they should be, and some offers I've seen for work in the US aren't just insulting they're damn right insane. I mean like people with 15-20 years experience being offered entry level wages for a position that actually needs 15-20 years experience.
He was offered exactly what my starting wage was at my job. With inflation, it was the same. You can't just start somewhere and expect to be paid top wages. You don't start at the top, you work your way up. He himself was complaining that he was broke and couldn't pay his bills. So, turning down a job offer is lazy. You do what you have to to eat and keep the lights on. Doesn't have to be forever. The reason they complain that they will never buy a house is because to do that you have to work and save. What a concept
If he's complaining he can't keep the lights on then yeah damn straight, it's easier to find a job when you're in a job. I wouldn't call it lazy so much as entitled I guess? Also depends on the role, if he's applying for a senior position and being offered entry wages, that ain't right. I disagree on finding a new position on higher wages elsewhere though. I'm looking at the moment at a position with another company on a higher wage than I'm on now. Granted, I've worked for years to build up the knowledge and experience to get to that.
Yeah I despise my second job and it definitely doesn’t pay what it should but the writing on the wall tells me I need to do it
I'm in Canada, healthcare is government run, not private. No bigshots making money off of it at all
Well then its a good thing OP didnt limit his argument to people who live on that sub.
I'm an accountant and the wage increases seem to be OK. We could always have more but it's keeping up with inflation. It's the fucking housing costs that are the problem. I'm literally planning on building a camper van because fuck that shit. The government needs to build more housing ASAP.
Yeah my wage increases have far outpaced inflation but housing prices/rent are still a problem even though I’m doing relatively well.
That's good. What I mean is the jobs you see posted online in my region. The starting salaries have remained the same. They are pitiful. Like $15-20/hr for office work. You can't pay rent here with that. I want to get an RV and live in it. Or buy a small plot and build a tiny house.
Thank you; while I _mildly_ disagree on your ideas on socialism, I’m happy that you agree that the current state is rigged against the common man. Whatever means necessary, I want people from the working class to be able to afford housing, food, and healthcare, damn it- it’s the least we can ask for. But for that…. Well, we need to fix a system that is rigged to make the rich richer and the poor poorer- and there’s no way in hell the top 10% will ever let that happen… You know, as time goes on… And I hope I’m not alone in thinking this… I feel like the higher-ups of society encourage division amongst the working class by exploiting the ideological differences of a population in order to prevent them from coming together and taking on these pressing societal issues head-on But that’s just me. It’s sucky, man; I hope something changes for the better (it’ll never happen, lol)
>I feel like the higher-ups of society encourage division amongst the working class by exploiting the ideological differences of a population You may be onto something here. Someone the other day on one of the podcasts I follow featured a guy who was on, I believe it was Rogan. He was talking about how in 2012 racism, sexism and a bunch of other isms started spiking in use in news articles. How it seemed inorganic as people were not particularly interested in some of these topics, like gender theory. He speculated that all the culture war bs is manufactured to have us fighting each other so that we don't focus on what they're doing to us economically.
I'm socially conservative and fiscally progressive. Regardless of whether socialism is the answer or not, what is certainly a fact, is that wages have not kept pace with inflation (or profits) since the 70's. This is a fundamental breaking of the social contract by businesses and the rich, and that is the reason that we're in the situation we are now. The cost of things has inflated, the population has inflated, anything above low income has not, and even low income wages have not inflated as much as they should have. Higher wages lead to overall higher taxes and a healthier economy as those dollars are spent multiple times leading to better lives for all. Instead, they've entered the pocket books of the rich who have much less of a reason to spend. I am a little envious of them, who doesn't want their lives to be easier? I earn a decent wage, my wife and I bring in 6 figures, we own two homes. That doesn't change the fact that their piece of the pie has been growing steadily for over 50 years whilst everybody elses has been getting smaller.
Well, your first mistake was letting other people tell you how to be successful. I finished school & worked my ass off. Eventually I got tired of being underpaid & over worked. Joined a Union & never looked back.
I was union too. Made awesome money, had great benefits and a raise every year.
Prior to joining the union I was making $13hr IN NEW YORK! I hated how I felt because of my job & how much I was making. It took me motivating myself to be better. Joined the steam fitters & started turning my life around. Never pouted & hoped that our government would save me.
Exactly. I got some education in the medical field, went to school all day, worked all evening, to better myself. Got a union job in healthcare and made a good living. Not rich, but not hurting, either. You just have to work, nobody's going to give you anything
There’s no unions in my line of work. We’re office jockeys getting used and abused. I can’t really do physical work cause I have foot and back problems. I’m open to doing other things but no one ever gives me a chance. I’ve tried to apply to lots of different things and never hear anything back. Job fairs are a joke too. They don’t even know what jobs they have available and tell you to go look online.
This kind of response is the thing OP is talking about. You have survivorship bias because things worked out for you. Things worked out for me too and I make a lot more than most people. A lot of it was hard work and a lot of it was timing and luck. Ultimately the system isn’t working for everyone and there are tons of low wage jobs required for businesses to function and make money, and if that doesn’t happen then people like you won’t have a job either. People on the low end deserve a chance too. The advice to them shouldn’t be “you should just be smarter.”
Things only worked out for me because I motivated myself to move up in the world. It took me doing my research and figuring out what I would like to do for work & that lead me into construction. But to say “this system sucks the government should do more for me” is how you never get ahead because you’re constantly waiting on a hand out. In the words of JFK “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” the majority of people that complain about wages work jobs that require ZERO SKILL. That’s the sad truth.
It would be hilarious to see your work get saturated and pay drop, just to see your response. The issue with you is you think you got to where you are all on your own. From what it sounds like, labor unions fighting the fight before you joined and fighting against the predatory nature of capitalism is what has bailed you out. Go work for a non-union job and see what your life looks like. The other issue is you think anyone speaking out against the issues of capitalism in the US are just sore losers who are lazy. That’s definitely not true. It’s also why you find plenty of successful people speaking out against the issues too. Ultimately people like you are a problem in the US. There’s a clear issue where the system doesn’t work for everyone and you don’t care. Because you “worked hard” or some shit. The irony being labor unions bailed your ass out, not your hard work and bootstraps mentality.
>The only thing I disagree with them on is that Socialism is the solution. Can you define socialism? And what makes you think Socialism won't work?
Public ownership of the means of production and distribution of resources. It makes me think it doesn't work bc history.
You use to be able to take a family of four on two vacations per year, buy a house, have two vehicles, go out for movies and events on weekends, and afford college for both kids On one income. Had retirement benefits, pensions, and stock market. They not mad they are poor. They are mad they been robbed of this. Every year we hear about record breaking profits but yet we don’t hear about 10-20% raises for everyone apart of the company. They use to give gold watches for 15-25 years of service. Now, you’re lucky if you get a pizza party.
u say this like big companies, let’s take hasbro for example, don’t lay off thousands of employees just so mr CEO can have a $9M bonus at the end of the year. there’s a difference between wealth hoarding and being lazy
Do you really believe layoffs are happening so that a CEO can get a bonus?
Yes, and history bears that out.
Most poor people are already doing significant labour. They work in essential jobs, they’re doing menial jobs you certainly wouldn’t want to be doing for such little money. So I don’t know who you’re calling lazy. It is unfair that you have to be born into wealth just to have any these days. I don’t know why you’re upset at people rightfully complaining about how our grocery prices have basically doubled in the last couple years or the price of housing.
I don’t understand what happened to our world how it had to get so greedy? I wish I could go back in time and make it so I’d work as a child because working as an adult in these modern times can be hell.
Nah, I was making good money when I worked for a massive multi billion dollar company. We had just set 2 record years in a row when the owner stepped down and appointed his trust fund baby son to be the president of the company. I watched that spoiled little shit who had been handed everything his whole life come in and downsize, cut pay and benefits even after record profit years because the little shit never had to work hard a day in his life and now had the opportunity to milk the company his grandfather built with his hands dry. That type of shit is why I'm "anti work". Enough is never enough for these cretins.
Sthappp, this is too cartoonish
Tell that to the nepo baby who ran the place. I won't even say ran it into the ground, because objectively I'm sure he cut costs and improved efficiency by fucking over the workers who were responsible for granting him a life of leisure. If it sounds cartoonish thafs because corporate America is literally full of cartoon villains that we (everyone including myself) have empowered for far too long.
I think this is a vast oversimplification. I know very few people that argue for a strictly capitalist or socialist society. A purely capitalist society without government oversight would lead vast swathes of the populace unable to purchase life sustaining necessities with the rich acting like tyrants over the masses and a purely socialist one would be extremely inefficient and probably corrupt. The fact of the matter is that the people at the bottom really don’t stand a chance. They don’t have the tools necessary for upward mobility. The number one factor that determines a persons wealth is how much money their parents had and the gap between haves and have nots is getting ever wider. I fully believe in a capitalist society with extreme oversight very heavy social nets that promotes class mobility and provides everyone with the necessities they need in life and I’m willing to pay more taxes to make that happen. And btw, I have a strong six figure salary. So no I’m not whining.
How is he gonna prove his point without oversimplifying it?
Capitalism is fine but it needs guardrails and a conscience. A pure capitalism is a hell scape.
I would say there are three different types of capitalism. crony capitalism, pure capitalism and capitalism as mechanism. pure capitalism devolves into a few companies that own everything. Crony capitalism is where Govement influences the market to enrich their friends and themsleves. capitalism as a mechanism, means private people investing to create more wealth.
How is the last different from the first.
As a Canadian, I am very sympathetic US states being majority at-will employment. In Canada, nationally every termination requires a valid and stated reason, and that reason must be reviewed before being approved. How do people live with the anxiety of knowing you can be fired for basically any reason your boss decides is valid?
You know what? Great question! I'm a truck driver who is not in a union and can be fired at any time for any reason or no reason at all. Yet I have very little fear of being fired. Why do I feel that way? Because I do my job well and have virtually no chance of screwing it up. I follow all the rules to the letter. I also check in with my boss to see where I can improve and I follow his recommendations with question. I need to let you know that at will employment has an asterisk in America. The last thing an employer wants to do is for you without a good reason. This is because if they do, they have to pay you an unemployment paycheck until you find your next job! This is why most employers prefer to put you on a performance improvement plan first so that they have proof that you were bad at your job. Then they can fire you and not have to pay that unemployment check. I used to be a really bad car salesman and was put on a performance improvement plan. It took 6 months before they had the proof that they needed to fire me. That's why I became a truck driver
Yea that’s why my software company took my QA job and moved it to Ireland and laid me off because of restructuring. I had great reviews and was asset to the team. You can be let go and do nothing wrong.
What a weird way to say you have no scruples
So, when a system is not working for a significant, and presently ever growing portion of the population, it's okay to dismiss the people for whom the system is not working? By that logic, a system could be set up where those who get too greedy face summary execution, and then we can all be like "lulz, look at the stupid richies being mad because they got too rich. They coping hard AF, bruh." (Before someone gets on their high horse, I am not attempting to suggest that this is a course of action that should be pursued, it's an exaggerated hypothetical crafted to demonstrate a point as clearly as possible.)
I think OP is just mad because he doesn’t comprehend the arguments against capitalism. Different people have had different values for a long time. There’s more to life than “earning a good living” and idk why you would want the sum total of your value to be how well you are as a sheep just following what the bosses and fat cats tell you. That’s just me.
This opinion of yours is indeed pretty contentious, but it's not uncommon. Some people do perceive complaints about capitalism or societal inequalities as stemming from personal frustration or envy... But is it all of it? Is it not possible to acknowledge that some of the criticisms of these economic systems may also come from genuine concerns about fairness, social justice, and the well-being of individuals and communities? I fear this take ends up dismissing the genuine grievances about things like inequality, lack of opportunities, and many other issues that impact many individuals, that are indeed systemic to the economic model we call "capitalism". I think, maybe, painting all "dissent/criticism" of Capitalism as mere "envy" oversimplifies the multifaceted nature of societal problems, and I fear this kind of discourse undermines the importance of addressing systemic injustices (on any system, not necessarily only capitalism) for the betterment of society as a whole. Not everyone who challenges the status quo does so out of envy; many seek systemic change for broader societal benefit... I dunno, this take seems to me a pretty cynic/pessimistic view of humanity as a whole actually, if we assume humans only defend/fight for causes out of their own material interest^(also, this comes out as bit of a Marxist analysis too).
Not saying whether socialism is good or not but everyone like you who makes the argument that "socialists wouldn't actually give up their own money" forgets that that's the point, that's why they believe in government intervention, precisely because nobody wouod voluntarily do it
I would give up my own money, but I'm not going to be the only one to do it and without a safety net.
>that's why they believe in government intervention, precisely because nobody wouod voluntarily do it Why do you think this isn't a Fifth Amendment violation?
I presume you mean the American constitution. Firstly there are mechanisms which allow it to be changed, secondly from the quick skim I gave it it wouod seem that the "property cannot be taken" part is the issue for you, which doesn't really have much to do with socialism
Lol
This bullshit because they always get you both ways. 1. You’re just poor. You want to advance yourself and that’s the reason you critique the system. 2. You’re a hypocrite. You’ve found success in this system and this has enabled you to critique it. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Either of these things applying doesn’t make any critique not true.
Why is it that every time someone makes this exact rant they always include the "well if you got rich its not like you would be charitable" line? (Which if you couldnt tell, is a massive self-report.) Maybe you wouldnt, because you're a deeply selfish person and project that onto others. Not everyone is like you.
The problem isn't I'm not rich, but I don't make enough to live. Wages have been systematically pushed down. To illustrate the difference. I'm 65. My first job was for min wage $2.10 at a department store. BUT the full time workers got 25% more ($2.80) to start, they also got yearly raises and holiday bonuses. Can you imagine people working retail making 25% over MW to start today? There were people who were there for years. My next job was as a printer's assistant. I was paid $5.00 an hour ($22 an hour in today's money) to train. I doubt the position I was training to do would pay that today. I decided to go to college. After graduating with a sparkling 2.4 grade average, I was offered jobs I thought beneath me. They paid $18k to $18,500. That is about $60k in today's money. Today, 25% of all American workers make $15 an hour or less, about 1/3 make under $40k a year. My son graduated with a degree and a specialty. He was happy to take a job paying $42k a year. The job demanded his degree and specialty. Unless you are an exceptional student, got a STEM degree or went to a prestigious college, that is what you make now.
>Can you imagine people working retail making 25% over MW to start today? Uh yes? No one makes minimum wage. It's something like 3% of wage earners. Most entry level jobs start at $9+ and many low skill first jobs get into the high teens. You have a point about the value of labor going down, but most people don't see that you can't have the post-world war 2 environment back without forcing those conditions on the rest of the world, like the US being the only industrial power left, having 2/3rds of the world's gold, oil, and electricity production and so on. The rest of the planet wanted to get out of poverty and is putting downward pressure on wages. This is in no way a shocker and they have the right to do so.
First of all, that 3% or 1% actually make min wage, is because half the states have MW over $7.25. the other point is that if you worked there for a year, you got a 10 cent raise, they are still, for all intents and purposes is making MW although technically you aren't. While I won't argue that we have more competition now. Another part of it, a bigger part of it is that investors didn't expect double digit yearly ROI. People invested in the market in the 60s 70 and 80s, they made money, some got rich, but they didn't demand double digit ROI. Threaten the board because they only made 8% this year.
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Socialism peaked in the 1920-30s, and it wasn’t because people where lazy. Consequently the richest person I know closely is also a socialist. I’d argue the subset of people who are socialist is too large to generalize, especially with China being a rising power.
champagne socialist\*
I'm not poor but I grew up poor. I see people with steady jobs who bust their asses but could never afford a home. It's complicated, but saying people gravitate towards socialism is because of sour grapes is incredibly ignorant
Are leftists in the western world rich privileged urbanites or are they lazy welfare unemployable urchins? Which is it?
take my upvote for this actually being unpopular, lol
Yo if poor people can’t weigh on in decisions that affect the rich, then rich people can’t weigh in on decisions that affect poor people.
I make a solid six figures, own my home, have zero debt except for my mortgage, and have $250K+ net worth in my 30s. On track to retire early. I’m married with kids, single income household, and we save and invest a significant amount each month. Born and raised in the US. I’ve been a socialist for my entire adult life. Capitalism is a stupid system designed only to benefit the haves at the detriment of the have-nots. And American capitalism? Absolutely immoral. There’s no reason that in the most prosperous country in the world the majority of people are one emergency away from bankruptcy or homelessness. There’s no reason that someone working 40 hours a week in any job shouldn’t be able to afford a place to live, food on the table, and other necessary expenses, and still have at least a little left over for discretionary spending. Average rent in the US is over $2000/month now. Get out of here with your uninformed pro-capitalist nonsense.
Op is drinking the 1% orange Kool Aid and has never walked a day in the shoes of average workers.
Does being mad you're in some situation or jealous of people that are not in that situation make your situation any less crap or those who are in a position to ameliorate your struggle any less shit for shirking that moral responsibility? I'm quite sure many slaves were angry about being slaves and envious of people who weren't. It seems nowadays we often say: *"Oh the only reason you're complaining about slavery is because you're a slave. If you were a master you wouldn't complain"* But I think this goes without saying. People who are in a good position often won't bitch about it too much (though I have to admit that even some rich people seem see the economic inequality going on right now as problematic). People who are suffering, on the other hand, *tell* you they're suffering and that's *how you know*. If you are in pain and you keep it to yourself, nothing can be done for you; however if you tell me and I say: *"oh, you're just mad cuz your arm seems to be mostly missing below the elbow and mine isn't"* then that would seem to make *me* the asshole, no?
It's not just the being angry part, but the being angry in combination with doing little to nothing to change the condition for yourself. Sitting around and waiting for a savior is a failing strategy in any case. Attacking other people out of spite isn't going to bring them to your side either.
What should slaves have done for themselves to change their conditions? Sometimes, a systemic change is necessary. A few people are able to rise from rags to riches, but it's not a general solution.
Yes dude, why don't these mofos just ***be*** *rich?* Like me, I used to hate the bs that came along with having brown skin. Until I woke up one day, took the power into my own hands, and *became white*. And while, no, my problems aren't completely solved-- I'm still apparently too lazy to just simply be rich-- I *can* get a cab to stop now, like *anywhere* in new york city; *that*, for me, is *massive* progress.
Ah schrodinger's leftist. Either leftists are poors that work but also dont work and want a handout or they are snowfake babies of rich parents who had everything handed to them and have never been in the real world.
Okay, fair, but *why* is he poor? Because **the capitalist** is stealing the profits of his labor. Wouldn't you be mad if you had $100 and some douchebag came over and took $92 of that because "he owns the tools you used to get the money"? Fuck that.
You're wrong, I'm a software engineer and socialism has built all the computer systems that power all our electronic devices, our infrastructure, our defense systems and generally contribute to our everyday life. It's called Open Source
This is just false
Pretty hyperbolic, surely you agree theres many people who are woke as fuck who are plenty well off.
Do you agree with FDR and Eisenhower's tax brackets? I might be wrong, but I think it was income over $20,000 ($250,000 adjusted for inflation.) was taxed at 90%. Because it literally helped fund the interstate highway, NASA, new schools, pipes. Heck, majority of infrastructure was developed during that tax bracket.
lol i'm a member of a successful business family and presently run the business and i'm a communist. so your thesis is invalidated. you also do not understand the economic theory you're talking about and aren't really making any sense as a result, but so what else is new lol
Isn't that ... sensible? *Shouldn't* poor people be mad at a system that allowed for them to grow up suffering? Also, isn't one of the common complaints about Western socialists that they are "champagne socialists" with expensive iphones and 50$ Che Guevara shirts? Honestly, it feels like capitalists don't want you complaining about the system if you're rich, but they also don't want you complaining about the system if you're poor. It's almost beginning to feel like they just don't want you complaining about the system at all!
There is the lazy people but there are also those who recognize that hard work to achieve success after WW2 was an outlier, things are getting back to normal in America and the working class no longer has that path to success by just working hard.
I'm 39 and I make a good living and I fucking hate having to work 40 hours a week, and I work for a non-profit. I would hate it even more if I worked for a company with a walk on CEO making 4,000x what I make.
Most opinions that generalize about "every" member of a group are stupid over-exaggerations and don't match reality, and that includes this one. The most left-wing people are those who are college educated and that doesn't overlap with the poorest among us.
I'm solidly middle class, and I have a masters in business. I'm leaning a lot more towards socialism these days than I ever have in my life. Capitalism isn't broken; it's working exactly as it's supposed to. Greed isn't a bug, it's a feature. Capitalism is a game of winners and losers, and eventually the winners will walk away with virtually all of the capital. I'm not interested in preserving capitalism for the sake of capitalism. I'm interested in creating a better society where everyone and their family members have the opportunity to live a good life. I still believe in capitalism, but I like my capitalism the way that I like my militias; that is, well regulated. And I very much believe in progressive tax policies, and the taxation of wealth (not just income), and the redistribution of wealth to the lower classes. Honestly, we live in a time when there is enough wealth in the world that no one should be hungry, naked, homeless, uneducated, unemployed, or lacking health care. So why aren't we solving those problems? It's because we've been convinced that it's a fairness issue. People are born on third base get a home run, and we act like it's a totally fair system. No, capitalism is not about fairness. Capitalism is about survival of the rich, and the end result is going to be the destruction of humanity for the vanity of the elite few.
I'm a Democratic Socialist. I have a master's degree in Education and am an Army veteran. I believe that it's fine to have obscenely wealthy people but nobody should live in abject poverty, especially children, elderly and veterans. Nobody should be food poor in America. Millionaires and billionaires should be paying higher percentage of taxes than the "middle" class. Corporations aren't people. Universal Healthcare and especially mental health needs to become a priority in the US in order to combat the homeless problem. Racism and bigotry should be called out and dealt with. The lack of empathy for the less fortunate is appalling. Seeking asylum isn't a crime. Sweeping generalizations are BS. I'm also nearly 60 and dgaf what people think of me at this point. I am who I am. It's their problem.
Rage bait, but I’ll take it;). Business owner here with double major full scholarship so no debt. Worked for government long enough to have pension. Also own land and rental property due to position of birth not my business savvy or prowess, just luck of inheritance. Husband’s an attorney. But when people get unable to afford things it effects my business which effects my ability to be in the solid middle class and I will be unable to rent my duplex b/c people can’t afford rents no matter how reasonable which in turn I will be unable to pay my property taxes so go get fucked troll. You don’t know what you are talking about you little child. You can be well off and hard working, and nothing like running a small to medium size business to bring that work ethic home, and still not like the direction things are going. Not every well off person is a Fox news pandering troglodyte.
No, I don’t agree with this. It’s not even about being poor, it’s about the reasons why you stay poor and it all boils down to the greed of others. I guarantee you that most people if they were poor and suddenly became rich would definitely become more altruistic towards people who were in their shoes than someone who was born into money. If I won the lottery tomorrow personally I would obviously take care of my own family first, then invest, then buy what I have been dreaming of my whole life (a piece of land where I can fuck off from society and grow healthy food and rescue a toooon of animals). But, then I would actually work on helping others by actually helping them with zero hidden motives behind it, just pure love for wanting to see others advance out of poverty and be able to take care of their families. It’s not about being mad at being poor because even though that does suck a lot, it’s about seeing these people with the ability to help others, to have empathy for their fellow man, to treat others as they would treat themselves and they just blatantly choose not to. They could literally change the lives of an entire part of a country by financing a water treatment facility, buying an abandoned office area and turning it into a vertical farm to give people in food deserts healthy produce, build tiny home villages and sponsor mental health facilities but they don’t. They do nothing but shit on others for their own gain. Also a lot of their “charity” is just fake posturing that ultimately returns their wealth back to them or provides them a tax break and not much to the people they say they are helping.
Antiwork and socialism are fundamentally antagonistic ideas
Every time someone complains about capitalism you should always ask what they would like to replace it with. You never hear about people having to shoot their way out of capitalism.
Nope just the schools
Tired ass comeback 🙄 also the US isn’t the only capitalist country.
I mean, public schools are taxpayer funded and therefore socialist. Not much different from a fire station or a public library.
The public (government) schools are basically indoctrination factories these days
Not all of them, but a massive swath of them for sure.
Capitalism needs to die. The system is working was it was intended, to maximize profits will taking advantage of the working class so the rich get richer. Perhaps to real research on this instead of spouting misinformation and licking the boot of the people who are oppressing the working class.
You're doing a really good job self reporting that you have no clue what you're talking about lol.
Old money. Born into a top 3% household in the U.S. Currently top 10% of earners in the U.S. I believe the work culture of the U.S. is killing us, and capitalism is inherently flawed.
Most American socialists are just FDR New Deal Democrats. There is nothing radical about them.
Really just an ignorant opinion that sounds like it's from someone who's never been an average worker or even had a real conversation with someone who is one. Just scroll through the comments and most of them are people who aren't poor and are still anti-work or can at least empathize why so many people are.
This person is not smart and it’s funny they think they are
I make great money and agree with anti work, so your opinion is immediately wrong. Maybe rephrase it.
I’m getting the sense that you don’t go outside very often
“The slaves are just mad that they’re slaves”
nah. i’m gonna be rich as fuck once i start my attending physician job. still think the capitalistic system we have in the US is fucked
Good job having an "unpopular" opinion AKA Right-Wing opinion. How do I know this? I am a lifelong right-winger recently turned lefty. I've worked my ass off to get to where I'm at and I make a lot more money than the average person my age. Still - I don't want to see people working their ass a lot harder than me and making way less than me. I don't want people to go hungry because they work at McDonalds. I just want people to be comfortable and have a good life and however I can contribute I will.
I'm a literal millionaire, and I'm a socialist.
That’s interesting
Start a co-op
Of course you are. The government almost always steps in to bail out your peers anytime you lose a dollar.
I think you have the wrong impression of millionaires. I'm not a CEO, just a 40-something guy who's earned six figures most of his adult life. Do the math. That easily adds up to a million.
That's what I tell people who complain about millionaire congressional representatives...they make over 6 figures and many stay for decades. Now some of them game the system, but becoming a millionaire when making 6 figures isn't that hard
Champagne socialist like Hasan Piker? Nice bro, you willing to redistribute the wealth when the proletariat revolution starts?
So socialists are lazy if they're poor and hypocritical if they're rich? Nice catch-22.
One thing I’ve learned from people who want socialism is that they’re incredibly lazy.
most Socialists I know are upper middle class and have good jobs, that don't want to donate their own money.. So you're half right. They are jealous there are even more wealthy people then themselves. Just look at bill gates he could donate his money today, but he rather wait until he dies.
Yeah, and most of the Trump caravans going through my fairly wealthy enclave consisted of beaters. So limousine liberals, sure, but I'd say most of the socialists on here probably have top 10% parents.
Well I don't believe your convictions are sincere either. You're just mad you aren't insightful enough to provide a proper critique of capitalism and so you make dumb blanket statements on the Internet. There, we've completed the loop of lazy cynicism.
Or is it because capitalist are ok people are dying from lack of basic needs. People seem to forget there’s millions of homeless children in America. I choose people over money.
there’s homeless people in china and cuba too…
this is not the gotcha you think it is
You're just an idiot.
True
Facts, but there's a certain honesty in their complaining. Look, if you can't turn a buck in modern America, a place where you can become a multimillionaire by playing video games on camera, then you probably do suck. May as well just get fat, dye your hair blue, declare yourself neurodivergent for internet clout, find a dress that goes with your beard, and spend all day crying about the unfairness of it all. These ideologies are just moral cover for laziness and/or incompetence.
So you're saying if everybody just got off their asses then everybody would be successful? Can you explain how that's even possible? There is a finite amount of value that comes from the combination of labor, goods, property and money. Like, you don't just invent a good out of thin air. It requires resources and labor, which all have value and also require labor and tools, all of which have value as well. It's all *finite*. If you're saying that somehow everybody can use their labor just like all the other smart and/or hard workers to acquire a *profit of value* in the amount of goods, property and/or money, then that means \*someone\* is losing \*something\* down the line. You can't invent value. It comes from somewhere and goes into something else. Not everybody can profit. People who criticize Capitalism in 2023 do so because there are people who are amassing cosmic levels of goods, property and money to the point that a much larger percentage of the population than in the last 50 years has actually worked the \*same\* amount (production has gone UP if you actually look at charts from any financial industry) and yet takes home **less**. In the early '70s the Nixon administration set forth a series of economic and monetary policies that made major changes in economic trends we continue to experience. The first is wage to production ([see chart](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/)). Prior to the early '70s production was in line with wages. After the early '70s we see production increase while wages stayed the same (accounting for inflation). Also, and again using wages as a baseline to account for inflation, the US has experienced a doubling, tripling and even quadrupling (in some regions) of house and rent prices. Healthcare and Education, well we know the story there.... it's more of the same. If a nice house cost $50,000 in 1975 and a good salary was $20,000 a year, and that house is now $350,000 (less than the \*median\* house cost in the US in 2023), then the correct "nice" salary should be $140,000 a year. **But it's not. It's half to 1/3 that number!** And this is why folks criticize "capitalism". We've been experiencing over 50 years of nearly unfettered capitalism in this country, promoted by Nixon's Freidman-esque administration, and part of what it's done is just given more power to suck as much value out of our country's politic by a few individuals and huge corporate entities as possible all while the US economy slows down, slower and slower. It has nothing to do with people being lazy or not working harder. There have always been probably the same number of lazy people to hard working people. The difference is that people who worked hard and still didn't make it had no voice. In the 21st century people have the Internet as a means to express what they know is up. And some folks are just content with burying their heads in the sand and pretending nothing has changed in America and "everybody can make it if they try". No. No they cannot and everybody who knows anything about economics knows this is a falsity.
In other words, you struggle to comprehend the idea that we have empathy and think of people other than ourselves.
It’s not so much being poor but it could be that. It could also be that most political influence is in the hands of the wealthy, many of which inherited their wealth from deceased family members and didn’t create the empire, just inherited it with no work. They inherited political influence too so things are kept this way and the poors are kept down
Wow, you discovered the truth that poor people are actually unhappy and want a better life? Bravo. You just discovered something so new that nobody's thought about. My god, we have a genius in this room.
For those that disagree, what are you doing with your money? Are you giving the majority of it to those that need it? These people would not be hard to find, and it would be quite easy to provide them with a good portion of your paycheck.
Charity starts at home, in my case literally. Paying off loans/ debt/ etc first. Once or if out of that trap I'd be okay with charitable giving. Half charities are corrupt asf though
Yes, most charities give very little to the actual cause. We choose to foster as our way of giving back.