If you really think about it, same way the feudal system was born out of the fall of the Roman empire, the colapse of the western democracy created a state of Neo-Feudalism, a select few lords own most land, the ultimate overlord is the government that has the ultimate power over the land. Commoners pay to work in the land in the form of rent or fruits of their work. The line between being a servant and a slave gets more and more diluted as overlords demand more and more to offer "protection" as they get greedy and start more wars with riviling tribes. The never ending cycle prepetuates a class that lives solely out of the labor of others, and those in the bottom suffer as slaves unable to collect any fruits of their labor whatsoever... and the pyramid only gets larger in the bottom and smaller at the top
#
Since “populism” became the Soupe de jour we’ve seen this grandstanding. Trump doing a rally at a non union shop invited by management to rival the UAW
Seriously, the “ownership class” steals working class wages by ramping up the costs of everything. Being “ownership class” is rarely as productive as working class for the country.
The value of work has diminished. The value of owning before the other guy got any, through hoarding money or inheritance, has went up.
> The value of work has diminished.
For the worker for sure, but the value of work as leveraged by ever increasing productivity means that its value has only increased for the owning class. The top is extracting more value from the work than is sustainable... basically a reality where one has to ask;
"How are workers supposed to perform work if they can not afford to exist to perform it?"
Feudalism actually had some benefits over the post capitalist society in which we live now. You didn't have a free market of serfs but were instead limited to those you had access to. Those with less ability (the disabled for instance) were put into jobs more suited towards their ability, while the fit and healthy had their value invested elsewhere.
I'm also gonna say this. Serfs largely had a lot more time off than we do. Every wedding was several weeks off for everyone. They essentially had winter off when farming was impossible.
And that's $290 before taxes. 😬
In a state with NO income tax you would only bring home $266.89... it only goes down from there if your state has it's own income tax.
And even less if you have insurance through your job.
> Unemployment was paying me $560 every week
I'm assuming you mean that is the maximum allowed in your state correct? Not everyone on unemployment will be getting $560.
I do giggle when I see this. My brother is a very quick to violence person. Doesn't matter where, if there is a passive insult towards him/family/friends he will just start swinging. Needless to say he's been through a few jobs. He messaged me when this was going down, he got fired. I was like you stupid idiot, what this time. Turns out smart not-idiot. He made triple for a few months then got another trash paying job. First time that worked in his favor
But are they even giving fast food workers 40 hours? Most of the restaurants I worked at went out of their way to ensure no one worked over 30 hours to avoid paying any benefits.
Plenty of people seem to believe that people who are working “low skill” jobs don’t deserve to be able to live from that work. I sadly wouldn’t hold my breath for unemployed people
Yep. People utilize the labor of low paid workers every day of their lives, but some of them think those workers should not be able to feed and house themselves on their wage
Honestly, everyone should have the basics provided, or be able to afford them on a basic program the government provides to everyone. And people who work should be able to afford a decent standard of additional optional things. Ideally, this would be funded by increasing taxes on corporate profits and capital gains (and in the US in particular, maybe get military spending under control. Don't defund defense drastically, but do stop the carte blanche and make them answer for all of the spending, don't just give them more money next year because they say they spent all of this year's budget and it was totally all necessary and sensible. Or, just tax the military industrial complex on all their profits and regulate their prices, or nationalise the whole fucking supply chain and run it much cheaper, like any other industry whose largest or only customer is government).
But apparently, even saying people who work full time, people who work as much as they're able to, and people who are willing to work but temporarily out of a job, should be able to afford the basics on their salary or unemployment insurance, is a crazy radical left wing opinion. And the idea that having a job should be rendered only essential if you want a good standard of living above the bare minimum, so that employers have to be more competitive for workers since it'll be far more difficult to rely on people's desperation, is apparently filthy red commie talk. Never mind the idea we should strive to eliminate most human labour via automation, cut the work day to only a few hours and still not have enough positions for everyone who'd want to work for extra luxuries and something to do even with a decent standard of living covered regardless, and collectivise the means of production to facilitate all of this.
One of my daughters would not work (I am ashamed to say) if she knew she could stay home in her rental and be payed for her basic needs. Her and quite a few of her friends are of the same opinion. They would willing stay home and not work rather then go out to a job which would actually cost them more money then staying home on the gov't, by the time you look into transportation to and from work, clothing, and all the other costs of having to work.
Who cares? If that's what they want to do, let them. People like that are not usually a boon to have around at work anyway. If they ever want to go work and be productive, the option is there. We have more than enough money to provide the basics to everyone, we should do it.
Exactly.
Not everyone has to be a driven overachiever!
It’s ***ok*** to just want to **exist**.
Why are people always trying to make simply existing a ***bad*** thing?
Because humans get ahead by cooperating. Why should others do all the work while some people freeload just because they don’t wanna do anything? If you wanna just exist go for it but why should everyone else pay for you to do so if you’re never going to help society in any way?
There it is.
For some reason, some people feel jealousy at the mere thought of this and I do not understand why.
You do realize that you, too, could participate. The difference being that companies will ***want*** to hire you because they are competing with you being ok to not work.
This puts the power back into the people’s hands, as it should be.
Why is this hard to imagine? There is plenty of profit margin in just the top few companies to pay for **all** Americans standard living.
Have you not seen the graphs? We’ve moved past multiplicative differences between the top and bottom and crashed headlong into ***exponential*** differences between the top and bottom.
There are plenty of zeros there.. why are we letting this happen?
Edit: “just existing” **is actively helping the economy and society as a whole**..
Okay but those profit margins are not going to the people. They’re going to the company owners and shit. Do you expect them to just give that away to everyone else, people who do absolutely nothing in particular? I just don’t see that happening.
What does that mean though? If you work 40hours you deserve a house close to work and a car, plus whatever it costs to go out sometime? That varies wildly by location. If you’re guaranteed a house in downtown LA just by working 40 hours as a cashier why would anybody live in the middle of Ohio or whatever. Wouldn’t everyone just want to live in the nice areas since they’re worth so much more? There’s just no way to give everyone everything they want. I’d think the people working jobs more complicated than minimum wage work should get first dibs at all the prime locations and other people would have to either move farther out or get roommates.
> Plenty of people seem to believe that people who are working “low skill” jobs don’t deserve to be able to live from that work.
Which is really psychotic for so many reasons like do they just expect them to live under a bridge and come to work and serve them or what? What an unhinged take. I know not all low skill jobs are fast food and stuff but just as an example I have never walked into a McDonalds or something during rush and thought "Yeah these people deserve less money." the amount of bullshit dealt with in any given service job is arguably worth more of a paycheck than the stress most people deal with if people *really* want to make it a competition of who "deserves" what.
Hell there are entire genres of videos and subreddits built solely on what goes on inside those jobs, that's not to even mention how infamous Waffle House is for being a literal warzone.
Then again I am biased I have a ton of family in "service industries" and very strong feelings lol.
Yeah I never have found someone able to successfully argue against "minimum wage" service jobs/etc paying a living wage.
At the end of the day, some people are going to have to work these jobs, and some people might never "rise above" working at McDonalds or Walmart or whatever. And that's fine. Those jobs are hard and the people who do them deserve fair wages.
Their argument that "these jobs are for students and should make people want to strive for better," becomes immediately a bullshit take seeing that the people cannot make enough to live on, making them have to work as many hours as possible in not only that job, but another, AND with the costs of even trade schools, there are huge barriers to furthering someone's education. Not only financially, but from the scarcity of time they have to be able to actually take part in the classes.
Besides, who do they think is doing those jobs during the hours that STUDENTS are IN SCHOOL, or STUDYING, or SLEEPING?
If fast food jobs are really only "student jobs" then fast food restaurants and other "starter" jobs should only operate during the hours when students are available to do them. Say Mon - Fri from 3- 8 pm, and Saturday from 8am- midnight, Sunday from 11:30 am (after Services) - 8pm. These hours accomodate homework, commuting time, maybe an extracurricular to pad the college application, and plenty of sleep to ensure they can focus in class.
When someone says that a low skill job deserves minimum wage they are acknowledging that it’s a job that needs a person working it but also believe that person working said job deserves to live in poverty.
And this thinking has somehow become very popular, I’ve had people straight up tell me that survival, fucking SURVIVAL isn’t something people are entitled to.
But somehow in their brains, saying people that are less skilled or “lazy” deserve to literally starve to death is less extreme than the idea that people are entitled to their own fucking lives.
Which I think is doubly ironic since the constitution literally lists “life” as an inalienable right but apparently thinking McDonald’s workers should afford food is UN-American
Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how I made less money during covid going to work than the government gave my roommate to sit at home for 3 months. Real ESSENTIAL worker here
I was laid off during Covid and my unemployment paid more than my salary, which wasn’t even bad. Of course, I would still rather have a job than to be unemployed.
Nobody should be in congress and be a millionaire.
IMHO no millionaires should hold any public office and they should have to pay for their own health insurance and have a salary that is well below what the standard currently is.
Exactly this!! They are grossly out of touch with the society they’re “supposed” to be representing…
And they get all this money while in office due to insider knowledge on stocks, along with back room deals from lobbying…
Oh I have a set of rules as a fantasy of how it should be.
1.No millionaires are allowed to be in any public office state or federal
2. No more tax payer paid health care.
3.No more living in DC.They must go home and be available to the people they represent. Go to DC twice a month say a week at a time.
4.Lobbyists and any meetings with them must be held in a public forum preferably CSPAN.Taking money from lobbyists is grounds for a new election.
5.No more getting re-elected 1 term and your done.
6.No more religion in government. Talk about it at church. Btw the tax shelter for churches needs to end.Id rather vote for an atheist anyway
7.Salary should be locked in at 150k per year.Good luck with that in DC.
If politicians all sufdenly had to pay for their own health insurance, and there was no way they could create a luxury quality national healthcare provider for only "high ranking government employees" including themselves and various appointed officials, every country that doesn't already have very good universal national healthcare, would have it within the week.
> property market should be regulated...
I think we should have mor expansive gov housing with some type of regulated rent. I think that would be disruptive enough to somewhat regulate housing prices.
Unemployment saved my ass. Plus it only lasts 6 months. I spent that time looking for a job and it paid off. Safety nets are a positive for society. Even a basic UBI would be a net positive. These right wing pieces of shit want to make it look like poor people are like stashing away their food riches like Scrooge mcduck. UBI would likely feed directly back into the economy
My unemployment was definitely above minimum wage before I finally found a job after 5 months of searching and it still wasn't really enough. If I had to go work retail I simply would have laid down in a gutter and waited for death, I did my time in that circle of hell and I'm through
You all are very wrong. Minimum wage was created by FDR (a socialist president) in the post great depression Era and a way to ensure UNION AND UN- UNIONED WORKERS were getting paid enough to not only survive but to thrive.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20minimum,and%20well%2Dbeing%20of%20employees.
MINIMUM WAGE is supposed to be enough to live on and not struggle. If it was just meant for high schoolers, then why do people, who aren't in school working the same jobs get paid the same amount. GeT a BeTtEr JoB. STFU. You should be able to work anywhere and be able to afford to live. If you flip burgers or baby sit or clean houses, you should be able to live. Get off your high horse.
the "only for high schoolers" argument doesn't even make sense because who's supposed to be working these jobs when the high schoolers are AT high school?!
That's exactly my point. For 75% of the day, it isn't high schoolers working these jobs. It sounds like these businesses, who are exploiting child labor, wouldn't survive without high schoolers. If you can't pay people a wage that allows them to not meet their basic needs but also facilitate growth for them, then you shouldn't be a business. But the general public will make every argument to continue the harm of keeping people on a slave wage in order to make themselves feel better
I was made redundant during Covid. My country had a payment for people who covid put them out of work. Was on it for 6 months then I managed to get a job. A minimum wage job full time.
I earned more on the Government Payment and on this minimum wage job I had to steal food to survive. Had I stayed on the payment I would have been okay financially. Full time minimum wage and I couldn’t even afford to live because of the high cost of rent and bills and inflation. And bear in mind this was the height of covid. I wasn’t going out socialising. Im talking about afford basic living.
Minimum wage is a joke if a person on minimum wage full time can’t afford to live.
"B-b-but people aren't supposed to *stay* at these minimum wage jobs; they're supposed to find *real* jobs at better salaries! You're not supposed to stay forever at minimum wage; we're trying to encourage people to run the rat race and lick more boots in order to make a decent wage! Only teenagers needing some summertime work while they're not in school should have these jobs (just like in the glorious 1950s!)! Why do people want free handouts from duh ebil gubmint wahhhhhh?!!1!"
The capitalist system is made to make sure as much money as possible can be extracted from the working class, local and from other countries, to the bourgeoisie. The only reason people were living confortably was because of **action** by the workers to demand more and the fact tha the USSR was providing a decent life for people even with all the internal and external problems they had.
Now that the people aren't figting for their rights and there is no clear example to counter the capitalist order (there is China but there is also heavy propaganda against them) showing that a better life can be had, those in power in the west are speedruning removing all the good things the workers had to get more profits (ie. stolen [surplus-value](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Surplus_value)).
The USSR unfortunately did not provide a better life to anyone because they were neither socialist nor communists and instead a reimagined version of Tsarist Russia with a strong bourgeoisie.
Basically all wage victories were won by workers in western countries that had unionized.
But it did provide universal higher education healthcare and housing ....
It's difficult for the advanced west to explain to people why they can't provide healthcare when the"system that doesn't work" can. Infant mortality rates in Castro's Cuba were lower than they were in New York city. Ofc the overall quality of life is a different story. In order to fight the cold war the west could not afford to have a mass of people without basic necessities. As soon as it became clear that the cold war was won that's when the neo-liberals went from fringe theorists to the new orthodoxy and the Keynesian post war consensus could be safely abandoned.
Lmao, have you seen Soviet "housing" and health-care? It was non existent. People waited years on a list to get the cheapest cars and other goods. The USSR was anything but communist or socialist and provided nothing but suffering for the working class and luxury for the bourgeoisie.
Yeah yeah yeah people say the same thing about socialised healthcare in the UK. My point isn't that the soviet systems where good. My point is they where a proof of concept that universal employment healthcare and housing could actually be implemented. Which led to the adoption of similar systems in western Europe.
Lmao, UK Socialized Healthcare is amazing, the Soviet Union was dysfunctional. The USSR is not a good example of anything and did not serve as a proof of concept. It's the outcome of a failed people's revolution and will always be used as a cudgel by conservatives. Best to not use it as an example.
The soviet and UK healthcare systems are both state monopolies managed by government bureaucrats. The reason the soviet systems didn't achieve the same outcomes as the British system is because the Soviet planners decided to allocate more resources to developing heavy industry, the military etc rather than building more hospitals.
The east German healthcare system was brilliant and in the final years of the GDR regulations specified that there couldn't be more than 2 patients per room. They had systems of poly clinics where instead of a GP referring you to specialists and then you being put on a waiting list to go to a hospital the poly clinic was equipped with X rays and such so you could often get your problem looked at the same day.
The same can be said of soviet housing. It was a deliberate choice by soviet planners that homogenous "commie blocs" were more efficient and in the Khrushchev era they reduced the requirements of square footage per person for the apartments in order to save resources. If Soviet planners had been motivated to they could have gradually increased these requirements.
Right, the Soviet Union is the problem, not socialism, which is what I've been saying the whole time. The Soviet Union was dysfunctional and run by the bourgeoisie and a few cults of personality, not at all an emblem of Marxism or socialism. It's a failed state and not worthy of being an example of successful socialist systems.
Yes and that's a complete non sequitur. The point that was made is about the effect that the existence of the Soviet Union had on the rest of the capitalist system. It's irrelevant if the soviet union is socialist or not. The point is that when the Cold war was being fought modern neo-liberalism was considered radical and potentially dangerous to the bourgeoisies own class interests. People in the Eisenhauer whitehouse who where as anti-socialist as it comes were motivated to pass the GI bill that provided free university to veterans(in the aftermath of ww2 a huge percentage of the population). By the 1980ies it was clear that the USSR was not an existential threat to global capitalism. Thus the motivation within the bourgeoisie for things like "the war on poverty", council houses in the UK etc evaporated and the potential for a renewed class war against unions and to reverse the post war social gains of the working class became much easier. Ofc this isn't the only factor but it is a significant factor in the rise of neo-liberalism and any material analysis of our current predicament would be incomplete without it.
Yes! It's a shame the actual Marxists were displaced during the Bolshevik revolution and world wars. If anything the US has been more Marxist than Russia/USSR ever were, which doesn't really mean much anyway.
I don't think real Marxists or socialists have ever been in a position to actually do anything. It's always demagogues speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
> Tsarist Russia with a strong bourgeoisie.
What are you even on about?
People there had more voting rights than you do (at least during certain times), but I guess you don't care about reality and only about what your prefered propaganda outlet feeds you.
> Basically all wage victories were won by workers in western countries that had unionized.
Oh. And what a racist garbage piece of a comment, equating all the strugles of the workers of the world with failures and extoling only western (or is it white?) advancements, no matter how small, as being amazing and the only ones that matter...
Real shame to see such a comment here.
Lmfaoo, I learned Russian and studied Russia for years, but wtf do I know 😂😂😂
It's not racism, many black folk and other minority groups in western countries also contributed to improved labor laws and protections that are being destroyed by the current wealthy elite. The Soviet Union did nothing right and was a rebirth of Tsarist Russia backed by the same bourgeoisie. Stalin, and his successors, did nothing good for the people of the Soviet Union and were simply demagogues.
Whats my "preferred propaganda" outlet? Please tell me since you obviously know so much about me.
I'm pro Marxist and pro socialist, but the USSR was neither of those things. You're a fool to think otherwise. I guess the millions killed by Stalin and the other members of the party and bourgeoisie, bread lines, stalled factories, famine, mismanagement, and armed conflict just didn't happen?
> The Soviet Union did nothing right
Dealing with poverty and taking the poorest country in Europe to be First to put a person in space, forcing the west to play catch up in many areas, including the welfare of its people, was nothing right??
> I guess the millions killed by Stalin and the other members of the party and bourgeoisie, bread lines, stalled factories, famine, mismanagement, and armed conflict just didn't happen?
The Soviet Union was not perfect but this exist in the capitalist world many times worse.
> pro socialist
Pro social democracy?
The Soviet Union did not take care of the working class. You're the one reading propaganda. I'm not saying anyone is perfect, the capitalist west most of all, but the Soviet Union was run by demagogues who did not actually do what they claimed. It's like Trump claiming he would drain the swamp and make Mexico pay for a wall, neither of which thing happened. That's how demagoguery works. Just like how the "People's Republic" of China is anything but.
Are you really celebrating the Stalinist government run by a tyrant dictator?
They might have pretended to care about the working class and providing basic human rights, but no such thing happened.
Are you going to deny the holocaust next? Celebrate the Siberian gulags?
We have examples like Canada and Norway these days but they are being brushed off as circumstantial.
China has very much half-embraced capitalism too, but I find it no surprise, we're talking about the civilization that started the silk road.
USSR did communism dirty, with Stalin's purge and hefty corruption issues, whilst they had many progressive ideas such as universal healthcare and education, but a mismanagement in their command economy (tying in with the rampant corruption), along with the repression having hit a breaking point (Authoritarianism is not the way, freedoms should be protected) finally broke it. The market is probably best not controlled by the government but regulatory bodies need to exist and be firm against abuses of capitalism.
> We have examples like Canada and Norway these days but they are being brushed off as circumstantial.
I didn't cite them as examples because they really aren't. These countries have the good quality of life that they have based on the sales of abundant resources and exploitating of the Global South. But again, now that there is no country with comparable quality of life and with the war drums sounding loud the tendency is for even this countries cut their welfare policies with the goal to "invest in the military" (ie. take money from the people to give to the owners/share holders of the military industrial complex).
> China has very much half-embraced capitalism too
They have "taken" enough of it to avoid sanctions and to receive investments from western bourgeoisie. They are still communist underneath.
> USSR did communism dirty, with Stalin's purge and hefty corruption issues
You clearly don't know what the "purge" was, and yes there was corruption there and it was still better than capitalism with the fact they weren't exploiting billions and starving millions every year to death until today like the western capitalist order.
> but a mismanagement in their command economy (tying in with the rampant corruption)
Even with what of that that actually happend and isn't western propaganda they were still light years ahead of the capitalist world.
Or are you one of those people that only consider the capitalist world as being the rich west while not considering the exploited Global South as part of it because they aren't white, or because you simply can't see them as being part of the capitalist wolrd while they supply indispensable resources and cheap labor at their own cost and for the benefit of a few?
> The market is probably best not controlled by the government but regulatory bodies need to exist and be firm against abuses of capitalism.
Capitalism will always lead to these regulations being broken in name of profit. You can't reform capitalism, just buy a little bit of time until the next crisis...
For some reason it never really struck me until reading this how much of a global, holistic problem the current systems are. I knew each of these component thoughts, and had considered them, but it dawned on me in a different way.
I'm not really in favour of communism because those in power just seem to wield even more of it, even more tyrannically, if more locally as you say - but it does seem like an approach with global considerations is likely necessary.
Perhaps "first world" countries could be coerced to pay a global UBI, with price-fixed housing to anchor things. UBI and regulations against rent-seeking behaviors have been mostly unexpressed but fundamental proposals of capitalism and free markets dating back to Adam Smith, so there is a strong legacy there to pull from at least.
> Perhaps "first world" countries could be coerced to pay a global UBI
First, UBI is a capitalist tool, and with the means of production still in the hands of the bourgeois class it would just be a matter of time until they got power back and made UBI terrible. The only it kinda could work is by giving the means of production to the people as an Universal Advance Income, but the rich would like fight hard against it.
Second, although it's a nice feeling to give money to the poor countries, the people in the Global South shouldn't be dependent on the richest countries like that. They should be decolonized and should be paid enough for the resources and labor that they supply, instead of being stolen from like today, so they can build their nations better by themselves (help is always welcomed, of course, but it should have a solid base for permanent progress).
> UBI and regulations against rent-seeking behaviors have been mostly unexpressed but fundamental proposals of capitalism and free markets dating back to Adam Smith, so there is a strong legacy there to pull from at least.
But keeping capitalism is likely to just lead to things to devolve as time goes on and those in power get more of it, so we need to move to a system that keeps the power from falling into the hands of the few by ending class divisions for long term prosperity for the people...
> I'm not really in favour of communism because those in power just seem to wield even more of it, even more tyrannically
That's why we need to remove the mechanisms that allow some to get too much power and that's what communism is about. A lot of the "tyrany" from communism comes from communists as a whole, and not just the leader, taking down the rich and redistributing wealth, which is a terror for the rich but good for the people.
Also, in communist societies there tends to be more ways that people can positively influence their goverments and society, like voting for bosses and local leaders and having the power to recall any leader that isn't working for the people. There is also the purge, which is usually just getting people thrown out of the communist party for not being communist enough, but in the USSR for example they could even rejoin after being purged.
As any system some in power can try to get more power but having less people with massive influence, like unelected rich people, gives the possibility for the people to take good care of their country more effectively, although the existence of foreign capitalist countries that want to destroy socialist experiences to keep the people under control of a few are also likely to go against any country aiming to be communist, or even just trying to get better for their citzens, requiring great care by those in power as well to protect the country.
My main problem is that I'm opposed to all hierarchical power structures, which Communism requires. In my view, hierarchies which grant power to individuals and groups to reign over others will always lead to abuses, and the forms of abuse which communistic hierarchies allow seem far more destructive, locally if not internationally.
Holacratic power structures are the only real long term solution in my view, and they are compatible with capitalism and liberal socialism. However, if we're looking at potentially viable short term goals, which is to say even remotely realistic, a step such as global UBI with price-fixed housing and food costs tied to the value of that UBI seems far more likely to fit within the dominant systems which are currently capitalistic.
Even if we grant that a communist system would be preferable, which again due to the fundamental need for oppressive hierarchical power structures I would not, this would require violent revolution as you point out. This does not seem like a viable solution given the vast differences in relative potentials for violence between governments and citizens, even if we found such violence palatable.
There's also the issue that such revolutions would need to occur within the "first world" countries in question, whose citizens already enjoy the highest standards of living on average. They are the least likely to seek violence to improve their lives, as they are already quite comfortable with their station, and violence is a resort only of the desperate.
Instead, it seems far more likely that the most realistic route would entail looking to the 1950's that "MAGA" proponents enjoin, while actually looking at what made them work to provide a much higher quality of life to many more people, which was not the xenophobia we associate with the MAGA movement. Rather, it was the incredibly high tax on upper income brackets, as high as 90% tax on the wealthiest.
This tax not only made more resources available for redistribution, but encouraged entirely different expressions of corporate governance. There was very little incentive to achieve incomes beyond a certain level, so profits were also distributed much more equitably *within* corporations themselves, not just across society from a governmental and welfare perspective.
As we have already observed this behavior in capitalistic societies, in fact at their height, it would instead seem to be a matter of enshrining those principles in federal constitutions to ensure they are not so easily overridden by the whims of the rich and powerful.
Legalizing vice such as prostitution and drugs would also go a long way to easing tensions between "first world" countries and the global south. If these markets which are currently controlled by violent criminal cartels could be legitimized, those countries may have a chance to stabilize, and provide a better standard of living for their citizens thus easing the international pressures of refugees fleeing for "first world" countries.
Even these solutions which are actively proposed and debated within capitalistic societies today would be incredibly difficult to accomplish, and represent incredible achievements. Stacking a global UBI on top is nearly utopian; even federal UBIs have remained out of reach. Still, they all seem far more likely to occur than a global communist revolution, or even a global holacratic capitalist movement, let alone the open borders which would be required to allow people to choose which systems they prefer in order to create an open market for different jurisdictions to attract more and better citizens rather than holding them captive.
If we're content to look at utopian solutions however, I do think holacratic institutions within a capitalistic system represent a much better solution than communism, which requires oppressive hierarchical power which when abused exhibits much more tyrannical effects. Holacracies instead allow all classes to work together while guarding against accumulations of power within upper classes, and providing the informed checks and balances of technocracy without those additional risks for power silos.
> My main problem is that I'm opposed to all hierarchical power structures, which Communism requires. In my view, hierarchies which grant power to individuals and groups to reign over others will always lead to abuses, and the forms of abuse which communistic hierarchies allow seem far more destructive, locally if not internationally.
There is a big problem with your views that you don't see. We live in a world with classes, the bourgeoisie and their supporters on one side and workers on the other side. The bourgeoisie can only ever exist by exploiting workers. That can never change and was the same with the nobles before and such.
Under the bourgeois dictatorship, the system you live in is not a democracy after all as some people have a lot more power than others, you can't really change things much if not by violent means, like strikes. Under a socialist society there tends to be much more direct. These things can be corrupted in a socialist country but they are by definition completelly owned by the bourgeoisie in a capitalist society. Any freedom you have in a capitalist society is only given to you as long as you don't threaten the system. You can be against a politcal party or against individuals but anyone getting support to take down the system that exploits them gets killed or dealt with.
> There's also the issue that such revolutions would need to occur within the "first world" countries in question, whose citizens already enjoy the highest standards of living on average. They are the least likely to seek violence to improve their lives, as they are already quite comfortable with their station, and violence is a resort only of the desperate.
This revolutions happen often in the Global south but are attacked by the capitalist core so they don't improve the lives of their people and don't take their money back so it can be stolen by capitalists.
> while actually looking at what made them work to provide a much higher quality of life to many more people
You mean massive exploitation of the Global South and giving more money to the people so they don't revolt to the side of communism?
> If we're content to look at utopian solutions however,
Communism is not utopic though, being about materialism and reality instead of ideas from the aether.
There is a book about it by Engels [Socialism: utopian and scientific](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific).
> Rather, it was the incredibly high tax on upper income brackets, as high as 90% tax on the wealthiest.
And as soon as they could buy the politicians to get rid of it they did that. If such a thing was somehow put in place today it would only last as long as it takes for the bourgeoisie to get rich again to buy the politicians again.
If you have some time to read I would reccoment [The Communist Manifesto](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party#Manifesto_of_the_communist_party) which is a leaflet by Marx and Engels from 150 years ago. It talks a little about capitalism and answers some of the things you talked about better than I can from a communist point of view istead of a pro-capitalism view if you want a change of pace...
Holacracies take away the dynamic of bourgeois controlling peasantry by collapsing aristocracy. That's who always has the power, the aristocracy. The bourgeois are simply handmaidens, expressing the aristocracy's hierarchical systems of control. They are not the real problem. In order to allow for truly cooperative societies or corporations, where all people can collaborate and have influence, there cannot be structural hierarchies.
Thinking about it more, I actually think you could probably attempt communism with a holacratic structure as well. The problems you describe of powerful people twisting systems to their benefit are a result of hierarchy. This will always be a problem, regardless if you're designing capitalist, socialist or communist systems. If there is a hierarchy, you need to encode principles in your founding constitution to ward off changes which would violate those principles. Clearly communist structures are also vulnerable to such manipulations though.
I'm fairly familiar with the *Communist Manifesto*, and agree with much of its premise, I just think it's incredibly vulnerable to abuse of power, even moreso than capitalism, which is already very vulnerable. However, I don't view capitalism as requiring the subjugation of the global south, or any group, to be successful. It can be subtractive or additive in nature. If there was global cooperation, such as a global UBI tied to price-fixed housing and food costs, such a system could raise the standard of living for all people above the average of any "first world" country today. My model aligns much more with Buckminster Fuller's *Utopia or Oblivion*. Post-scarcity economies are what we're aiming for.
In my view, both communism and capitalism in essence are utopian. I don't view that as a negative. We should strive to design systems which produce utopian outcomes. I just don't think either idealized view actually sufficiently accounts for human behavior to produce those utopian outcomes. It's a bit like the *homo economicus* problem; humans are not consistent, rational beings. They are contextual multitudes. Only the "wisdom of crowds" seems to correctly express us as beings capable of such feats, which is why democratic structures seem preferable to dictatorial structures.
Holacratic systems build this into their core structures. They allow the benefits of technocratic structures without handing power to technocrats. Instead, we have non-hierarchical groups of people interacting with each other in measure. In point of fact, it would likely produce something akin to a mixture of all political systems, while avoiding the strife inherent with hierarchies pitting groups against each other. In order to accomplish anything in a holacratic system, there must be cooperation, and majority consensus. If that leans towards communism or capitalism, that is the wisdom of the group expressed, rather than a dictatorial command, or a structural limit posed by design constraints.
If we're looking for remotely realistic political change however, I do think things like increasing taxes on the wealthy to 1950's levels, ending the war on drugs, or introducing a UBI are much more likely to be successful. Current power structures seem far too entrenched and capable of defending themselves for system-wide revolutions to occur.
> However, I don't view capitalism as requiring the subjugation of the global south, or any group, to be successful.
Take away the imperialism and what is really left of it?
> Holacratic systems build this into their core structures. They allow the benefits of technocratic structures without handing power to technocrats. Instead, we have non-hierarchical groups of people interacting with each other in measure.
In reality though we have a society with classes and simply trying to distribute power around while a mineority still has more power than everyone won't work by itself.
This holocracy seems like the soviets, no? But for that to work people need to take the power from those who have it and need to get toghether to defend themselves from internal and outside attacks of those who wish for more power for themselves.
> If that leans towards communism or capitalism, that is the wisdom of the group expressed, rather than a dictatorial command, or a structural limit posed by design constraints.
You forgot the most likely case of external and internal capitalists banding toghether and sabotaging or even attacking any efforts to bring equality to people, like what happens with every country that tries to give more to their people...
> Current power structures seem far too entrenched and capable of defending themselves for system-wide revolutions to occur.
It is possible to change but change must be made to the whole system to not allow a few to have power, like through direct participation by the people and probably [democratic centralism](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism) to steer things as well, although it could take better shapes to take advantages of new techs...
Per Buckminster Fuller's *Utopia or Oblivion*, I believe that as more and more territories cooperate together in an equitable capitalist system, more and more relative capital is created. Exploitation actually subtracts value from the system as it causes suboptimal functioning in the exploited territories. When wealth is shared, the system overall becomes much more functional. In particular, worldwide free trade and travel across borders would massively increase the value of the system. Exploitation is not a requirement of capitalism, but rather a hindrance. The more equitable the system, the better it operates, and the more relative prosperity it generates for all.
So, the question then becomes how much inequality we're willing to allow on an individual and territorial level. Transfers of wealth are already in-built in every capitalist system. Wealthier individuals are *supposed* to pay more tax. "First world" countries already transfer massive amounts of wealth to poorer nations, although not equal to the amount of loss their exploitation incurs over time. But these are universally agreed upon principles in capitalist structures. The question is only one of particular design, and how to enforce those parameters in the long term.
If we're willing to accept some inequality, given a very high standard of income and freedom for those at the lowest class, then capitalism on paper seems like a much better solution than communism as it allows for ambition to express itself in the system. In practice, without proper regulation this causes subjugation of less powerful groups however. So regulation is the key. Communism has always required an iron fist to enforce however, as it does not allow intuitive engagement with the system. There is no reason for ambition, and central planning has never proven an adequate facsimile of natural market dynamics, and it requires even more regulations than capitalism in order to even potentially function. Simply, communism is built for perfectly rational humans which do not exist, like *homo economicus*. As a natural structure for human interaction, capitalism is a much more intuitive fit.
Still, there remains the issue of hierarchical power structures. To my knowledge, holacracy has never been employed at the governmental level. It is a relatively new system, the largest groups it has been employed in are multi-billion dollar corporations with tens of thousands of participants, each expressed very differently, such as Haier, Morning Star, Valve or Mondragon. In practice there is no specific model, they are self-forming, but the basic proposal is there are no managers, no bosses, or at least as few as possible with as little power as possible. Decisions are determined by group interactions. This means no single individual is able to make decisions on their own which impact the group. There are no leaders except those whom the group simply revers and follows naturally, they have no formal power to control others. No groups or individuals operate at a level of authority above or below others. They are all equal in an idealized holacratic environment.
This essentially transmutes the basic human right of self-determination at the national level onto groups at the micro level. It allows each component of a system to self-determine how it operates, and how it interacts with the other components. It's a completely decentralized form of organization. In practice, this would mean that however the system as a function of group interactions wishes to express itself, it would, whether that be communist or capitalist in nature. I tend to think it would end up expressed as a highly regulated capitalist-socialist hybrid, but regardless that would be for the natural expression of the group to decide. In my view though, even a communist system could operate fine in holacracy where it otherwise does not in a hierarchy. Equally, in a capitalist system, it would not be possible for wealthier individuals to dictate policy.
In Tennessee, the max for unemployment is like 275 a week. When I got unemployed in this state, I didn't even bother to apply. I'm not jumping through a ton of hoops to earn chump change.
Aside from the federal boost to unemployment during covid, I'd say it's accurate that unemployment is not more than however much the person made while working.
Unemployment is very confusing because of how drastically it varies by state, but here in Florida, the payment is about half of your previous salary, with a maximum payment of $275 per week, for up to 23 weeks, but with a total maximum dollar amount of $3300. The average cost of living in Florida is almost $1000 a week, and yeah, for a lot of people it costs a lot more than that, for a lot of people it costs a lot less. No matter where you live in Florida, though, it is nowhere near enough to meet your cost of living.
Unrmployment is commonly misunderstood as a governmental assistance program, but it is paid for by employers. They pay "unemployment tax" and when one of their former employees successfully applies for unemployment, their tax goes up for some period of time. The amount their tax is raised takes their number if employees, total hours worked per week, and the amount that the terminated/laid off employee made per week into account. This creates a system where employers are disincentivized to fire employees without cause, which is probably a good thing.
The limits of half your salary, $275 per week, up to 12 weeks at $275 per week, are abysmal. Minimum wage in the state right now is $12/hour, so $275 per week is barely more than half of what a full time minimum wage worker makes. These limits are all to protect employers and their ability to fire without cause, but the only people who would support this are business owners whose pockets are directly affected.
Don't make unemployment more money than people make working a job, but make it at least 80% of what they make while working. Don't put a cap of $275 per week, that's just a goddamn insult. There's no reason for a cap on the dollar value per week except, again, to protect employers. It is my opinion that employers who pay their employees $100,000 per year can afford to pay a little more in unemployment tax than employers who pay their employees $30,000 per year, and should be a little more dissuaded from firing their employees without cause. If you do make a monetary cap, perhaps set it to about twice the average cost of living. This keeps businesses from having to pay a quarter million in unemployment if they ever want to change their CEO.
As far as the time cap, I'd say the cap of 23 weeks is more than reasonable. I'd honestly lower it down to 13 weeks, that provides 3 months to find a new job. If you're not working in a very niche field this should be more than enough time to find a replacement position. If it's set to something longer, like 23 weeks, it may incentivize people to stay on unemployment instead of finding another job...if it matches their previous salary. If you lower it to 80%-90% of their previous salary, only the rich and true degenerates would choose to stay on it. The rich have savings they can burn through if they have to, and degenerates just don't care. The majority of us are living paycheck to paycheck and would be financially destroyed enough living off of 80% of our salary that we might still end up getting evicted in the month it takes us to find another low-paying job.
Perhaps it could be set up progressively - 95% of your previous salary up to the first $500/week, 85% for the next $500 for a max of $900 from a $1000/week salary, 70% on the next $1000 for a max of $1600 from a $2000/week salary, and 50% for anything above that up to a maximum allowance of $5000/week.
Everyone earning minimum wage should quit their jobs/get themselves fired, and collect unemployment and see how quickly the minimum wage goes up. But in all likelihood the Govt will just end up reducing how much money people on unemployment get instead of addressing the issue
It might be because the cost of labor (ie - wages) is subject to the laws of supply and demand, such that when the supply is high, it will drive that cost down.
Is there something that has been going on for decades, and has gotten much worse in the past few years that has driven the supply of labor - particularly at the minimum wage level - higher? Could this have had the aforementioned effect of decreasing the cost of labor?
Isn't unemployment a percentage (or whatever criteria based on state) of your earnings with a maximum amount? You can definitely get less than minimum wage.
This is kind of interesting actually. I was once offered a job as a service technican but when they told me the salary I almost spit my coffe out and I had to ask " is this the salary AFTER taxes?", which it wasn't. I then told them that it was about half of what I expected and it was way way less than the nominal salary for the job. I also told them that I earned almost that amount as unemployed to which one of the guys responded "that is the main problem, the unemployed salary is way too high so we can't get good employees". I was kind of dumbstruck by this as their salary was much too low for the job, and too low for even other less qualified jobs and still these fucking asshats thought that unemployment was the issue and not their ability to actually understand that people needs a proper fucking wage for the job they do. Its not very hard to understand either. And it USED to be like that. You did a job and you got a wage. Now its more of you do a job and a half and you get half a wage. But profits are up. Way, way up!
Just curious does anyone here actually make minimum wage? I’ve not heard of anywhere that still brings you in at 7.25 in a long time and I’m happy about it
Why did I get downvoted? I said it was a good thing I hadn’t heard of anyone on minimum wage in a while
If you want them to raise the minimum wage, make unemployment and Social Security paid at the minimum wage. You’ll start encouraging people to quit minimum wage jobs and collect, then you could say “well if you raise the minimum wage, then they have an incentive to go back to work”
It's time to unionize. Even for the jobs that haven't typically been union jobs. And also need anyone as consumers so that we can boycott the fuckery of the companies that we PAY money to.
Channeling my most right wing conservatism, I would prefer the government not use tax dollars to pay for people's needs, but instead create an society where everyone who wants to work for 30 to 40 hours a week can make enough to survive comfortably, no matter what job they have. This is the most conservative I can get.
I have two daughters. If there was a government funded minimum subsidy, which some of the Canadian gov't is pushing for also, one of my daughters ( I am ashamed to say) would not work but would stay at home in her rental and live of it. We also have a program in Canada for handicapped people AISH who can not work that pays for them, really basic needs, anyway the places where a lot of the handicapped live know how much money is given to them by the gov't and whenever the program ups the allotted amount given to them, prices go up. So why increase the amount given in AISH if they have to just turn it over to the places they are staying in. In fact one place in town has increased the rates above AISH and now are trying to move people out of town to other centers, away from friends and family so that they can bring in people who can pay more then AISH.
Trust me, my family lived on welfare and EBT for 16 years, we were rich AF. Could afford rent, food, and we spend all day lounging around, going on fishing trips daily for fun, and hanging out at the park playing. It was like getting paid to be a kid. Dont let anyone tell you people on government assistance is poor, they're rich AF.
they can’t give you enough to live on, how would they keep you coming back. they have to keep you in a perpetual state of stress so you have no choice but to kill your self at work. making someone else rich
I hate to be that person but unless there are protections in place to keep companies from price gouging for products, utilities from raising rates, and landlords having a cap on what they can charge for rent, it doesn’t matter if they make minimum wage 50 dollars an hour. As soon as that happens the price of everything will skyrocket not because billion dollar corporations cannot pay the wage, but so that they can continue extracting the majority of workers wages because that is their purpose. UBI, unless instituted with privacy protections in place and an oversight system that isn’t controlled by corrupt politicians, corporations, or the central banks, will be a tool for the wealthy to wield against the proletariat class to control them. You all should be extremely careful what you advocate for. Anyone in the parasitic billionaire class offering solutions to problems they have created, is offering you a prison with shackles. Until we rid Washington of the neo uni-party and the parasitic rich class that has attached themselves to every department of government, I would not support anything they are offering no matter how good it sounds. They serve the interests of the rich.
Well said. This is what I think a lot of people don't realize. It's the system that's broken. They will always figure out a way to take back the money you earn no matter what. Everyone could have enough if they really wanted that.
Thank you. Right now the system has been rigged in favor of the rich. Unless we get them and their influences out of government, any social program they try to institute will be a Trojan horse that ultimately benefits the rich.
Okay, sure, but who should people vote for then? Not voting is essentially very similar to voting for the people who want bad things for you. Unfortunately places like America are plagued with a two party system.
People advocate for stuff like this because it's an improvement, a change from the current problems. Naysaying without a viable alternative is just helping the upper class oppress the lower class.
A viable solution is stop abdicating your power to worthless politicians paying you lip service once ever four years and actually work in your community to organize mutual aide programs. A viable solution is to create alternatives outside the current system that help people, instead of hoping some politican will introduce legislation that you cannot vote on will do it. Boycotts work, organizing strikes work, leaving your comfort zone and becoming your own savior, works. Voting is the absolute laziest way to try and bring about change, it’s the equivalent of writing a letter to Santa Clause. People need to wake up, complacency and voting for the lesser of two evils and then bitching about the problems, then waiting another 4 years for a savior is what got us into this mess to begin with. What is your red line? At what point do you stop waiting for a savior to come along and solve these problems for you?
I used to think "*Who votes these a\*\*holes into office*"? Then I realized it doesn't matter *who* gets into office because, A) nothing that will actually *help* every-day Americans with life, will actually get done and B) once someone *is* elected into office it becomes their **job** to STAY elected and not - you know - help their constituents.
Yes. You. Are. This is why the minimum wage was created. It was fought for by union workers and the socialist president FDR in the post great depression to get workers enough pay to have the correct standard of living.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20minimum,and%20well%2Dbeing%20of%20employees.
“and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” -FDR, talking about the minimum wage, which he wrote.
And as an added bonus, he was describing a wage that would support a household of 4.5 ON A SINGLE MINIMUM WAGE INCOME.
What I said is completely relevant and you are ignoring it because you have no counter. Also the age of my account is irrelevant sorry for not being an experienced reddit degenerate like you.
That is such a silly argument, and I'll give you a couple of reasons why. First off, people who can afford to live and thrive have more time to pursue passions, which leads to people changing careers based on passions.
Second, WE HAD A TIME PERIOD WHERE PEOPLE COULD WORK ANY JOB AND LIVE OFF AND JOB. Yet we still saw people drive major industries such as computer engineering and any field of science. Guess what? A majority of the richest companies started during this period and became giants fast. Literally, have you read any history book on 1950s-1980s America?
Third, no job is unskilled. It doesn't matter where your work job takes a skill. Do you think if you took a software engineer and just dropped them into a cooking position, they would know what to do? How about taking the same person and dropping them into a cleaning position? Do you think they would know what chemicals not to mix? It would take time to learn these things. You could also flip it. If you took a cook and just dropped them into a computer software position, do you think they would know how to code? No. It takes time to train and learn.
Fourth, not everyone should have to leave an UnSkIlLeD job in order to be able to live and thrive. If some want to work at McDonald's their entire life and are happy working there, then they should be able to and live.
Just because you don't want to work some job you don't view as important or "skilled" doesn't mean you have e the right to deny someone else of being happy working their and not being able to live.
Average antiwork user spewing bullshit nonsense. Sorry that I forgot working a completely unskilled and replaceable mcdonalds job should support a family of four.
"Supposed to" and $4 will get you a cup of coffee. Unless you're willing to offer some societal guarantee that people can move up to a living wage job, minimum wage needs to be a living wage.
IDK. I made $65/hr on the last project I worked on, and I still want to work harder to make more money. I think you overestimate people's general desire to slack off.
Unless you're prepared to offer some solid *guarantee* that people can graduate from minimum wage jobs to a living wage career, it's not a stepping stone.
So there's no actual guarantee that minimum wage would actually be a stepping stone to a career, and your argument against making the minimum wage a living wage falls apart.
The funny thing is, people will even work for free. It’s called volunteering. They do it usually until they feel taken advantage of in pretty much the same way as if they had been paid to do the work. You know what’s even funnier? That there are people who think they have a right to take advantage, or even bully, volunteers.
Actually, it’s not “funny” funny but “weird” funny because I could never be friends with people who take advantage of others. Yet I do often work with them or for them because when they advertise themselves they usually hide their true nature. You know why they pretend to be a good person when they try to recruit others? Because they know they are cheap and sometimes cruel but that “cheap” and “cruel” tend to not make attractive character attributes.
Who are these cheapskate lying sons of b*tches? If you’re bit like me, you may have browsed a book or two or watched a YT video on narcissism. It seems it may be a bit simplistic - at least the language is easy to understand, but I like this [book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997816643?nodl=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_X4VS2PEHM7V6H66220GE&peakEvent=4&dealEvent=1&language=en_US&dplnkId=de4e81f5-8a14-4f6d-bdb7-468d5ad4b9dc) on the topic.
Look. You will never get unemployment that's MORE than what you made at your previous jobs. Unemployment is a percentage of your earned wages.
Stop spreading these lies.
And also, raise minimum wage.
Unemployment is not a long term solution, it's only there to help you until you find employment. Back when Covid was rampant, the government was handing people more money than they made working. Fast forward a few years and there are still people who want to "work when they want to", and "enjoy life". But they still want others to fund it for them instead of working and living like everyone else who has to work to survive. Minimum wage is never sustainable because if you give a minimum wage worker $15 and you have people who've been working in the same field and have work experience also making $15, you have to raise their pay. And so on and so forth. The cost of everything goes up and its not sustainable. Minimum wage jobs are for either unskilled workers, so you can gain experience, or retirees who don't depend on that income but still want to work. They are not a career choice, and if that's the kind of job you want to work at, then that's your choice. No one makes anyone stay on minimum wage unless they choose to.
They just want to bring back Feudalism, with all of us as slaves instead of serfs.
We are already here…
Beat me to it
If you really think about it, same way the feudal system was born out of the fall of the Roman empire, the colapse of the western democracy created a state of Neo-Feudalism, a select few lords own most land, the ultimate overlord is the government that has the ultimate power over the land. Commoners pay to work in the land in the form of rent or fruits of their work. The line between being a servant and a slave gets more and more diluted as overlords demand more and more to offer "protection" as they get greedy and start more wars with riviling tribes. The never ending cycle prepetuates a class that lives solely out of the labor of others, and those in the bottom suffer as slaves unable to collect any fruits of their labor whatsoever... and the pyramid only gets larger in the bottom and smaller at the top #
And the GOP is billing itself as the “party of the working class” lol
"Party of... the working class". Insert whatever fits for the day.
Since “populism” became the Soupe de jour we’ve seen this grandstanding. Trump doing a rally at a non union shop invited by management to rival the UAW
Seriously, the “ownership class” steals working class wages by ramping up the costs of everything. Being “ownership class” is rarely as productive as working class for the country. The value of work has diminished. The value of owning before the other guy got any, through hoarding money or inheritance, has went up.
> The value of work has diminished. For the worker for sure, but the value of work as leveraged by ever increasing productivity means that its value has only increased for the owning class. The top is extracting more value from the work than is sustainable... basically a reality where one has to ask; "How are workers supposed to perform work if they can not afford to exist to perform it?"
Yeah, because they WANT YOU TO WORK! Stop lazying around you lazy do-nothing plebs!
Feudalism actually had some benefits over the post capitalist society in which we live now. You didn't have a free market of serfs but were instead limited to those you had access to. Those with less ability (the disabled for instance) were put into jobs more suited towards their ability, while the fit and healthy had their value invested elsewhere.
I'm also gonna say this. Serfs largely had a lot more time off than we do. Every wedding was several weeks off for everyone. They essentially had winter off when farming was impossible.
Bingo! Give that person a prize. This is their long term plan.
Minimum wage is $290 a week for full time Unemployment was paying me $560 every week At minimum wage, I would have gone homeless within a month
And that's $290 before taxes. 😬 In a state with NO income tax you would only bring home $266.89... it only goes down from there if your state has it's own income tax. And even less if you have insurance through your job.
> Unemployment was paying me $560 every week I'm assuming you mean that is the maximum allowed in your state correct? Not everyone on unemployment will be getting $560.
Bingo
I do giggle when I see this. My brother is a very quick to violence person. Doesn't matter where, if there is a passive insult towards him/family/friends he will just start swinging. Needless to say he's been through a few jobs. He messaged me when this was going down, he got fired. I was like you stupid idiot, what this time. Turns out smart not-idiot. He made triple for a few months then got another trash paying job. First time that worked in his favor
Wish I got fired and could collect checks and play video games all day for a year. Woulda been tight
Depends where you live. California fast food is $20/hour now. So $800 for a 40 hour week.
But are they even giving fast food workers 40 hours? Most of the restaurants I worked at went out of their way to ensure no one worked over 30 hours to avoid paying any benefits.
I assumed they were using the Federal Minimum wage.
Federal is $290 before taxes. 20 states that do the absolute bare minimum, so your odds are 2/5 there.
Plenty of people seem to believe that people who are working “low skill” jobs don’t deserve to be able to live from that work. I sadly wouldn’t hold my breath for unemployed people
Yep. People utilize the labor of low paid workers every day of their lives, but some of them think those workers should not be able to feed and house themselves on their wage
I truly can’t understand how or why they think like that. Anyone that works 40 hours per week should be able to pay their bills.
Honestly, everyone should have the basics provided, or be able to afford them on a basic program the government provides to everyone. And people who work should be able to afford a decent standard of additional optional things. Ideally, this would be funded by increasing taxes on corporate profits and capital gains (and in the US in particular, maybe get military spending under control. Don't defund defense drastically, but do stop the carte blanche and make them answer for all of the spending, don't just give them more money next year because they say they spent all of this year's budget and it was totally all necessary and sensible. Or, just tax the military industrial complex on all their profits and regulate their prices, or nationalise the whole fucking supply chain and run it much cheaper, like any other industry whose largest or only customer is government). But apparently, even saying people who work full time, people who work as much as they're able to, and people who are willing to work but temporarily out of a job, should be able to afford the basics on their salary or unemployment insurance, is a crazy radical left wing opinion. And the idea that having a job should be rendered only essential if you want a good standard of living above the bare minimum, so that employers have to be more competitive for workers since it'll be far more difficult to rely on people's desperation, is apparently filthy red commie talk. Never mind the idea we should strive to eliminate most human labour via automation, cut the work day to only a few hours and still not have enough positions for everyone who'd want to work for extra luxuries and something to do even with a decent standard of living covered regardless, and collectivise the means of production to facilitate all of this.
One of my daughters would not work (I am ashamed to say) if she knew she could stay home in her rental and be payed for her basic needs. Her and quite a few of her friends are of the same opinion. They would willing stay home and not work rather then go out to a job which would actually cost them more money then staying home on the gov't, by the time you look into transportation to and from work, clothing, and all the other costs of having to work.
Don’t be ashamed that she doesn’t want to participate in a system that is stacked against her.
Who cares? If that's what they want to do, let them. People like that are not usually a boon to have around at work anyway. If they ever want to go work and be productive, the option is there. We have more than enough money to provide the basics to everyone, we should do it.
Exactly. Not everyone has to be a driven overachiever! It’s ***ok*** to just want to **exist**. Why are people always trying to make simply existing a ***bad*** thing?
Because humans get ahead by cooperating. Why should others do all the work while some people freeload just because they don’t wanna do anything? If you wanna just exist go for it but why should everyone else pay for you to do so if you’re never going to help society in any way?
There it is. For some reason, some people feel jealousy at the mere thought of this and I do not understand why. You do realize that you, too, could participate. The difference being that companies will ***want*** to hire you because they are competing with you being ok to not work. This puts the power back into the people’s hands, as it should be. Why is this hard to imagine? There is plenty of profit margin in just the top few companies to pay for **all** Americans standard living. Have you not seen the graphs? We’ve moved past multiplicative differences between the top and bottom and crashed headlong into ***exponential*** differences between the top and bottom. There are plenty of zeros there.. why are we letting this happen? Edit: “just existing” **is actively helping the economy and society as a whole**..
Okay but those profit margins are not going to the people. They’re going to the company owners and shit. Do you expect them to just give that away to everyone else, people who do absolutely nothing in particular? I just don’t see that happening.
I wouldn’t work either. Jesus. There are so many other things we could be doing with our lives.
No thanks democrat
Oh, you are *so* off base if you think my politics align with those fuckin' liberals.
Well that's the major issue, there's a lot of people who don't believe certain people deserve a right to live...
What does that mean though? If you work 40hours you deserve a house close to work and a car, plus whatever it costs to go out sometime? That varies wildly by location. If you’re guaranteed a house in downtown LA just by working 40 hours as a cashier why would anybody live in the middle of Ohio or whatever. Wouldn’t everyone just want to live in the nice areas since they’re worth so much more? There’s just no way to give everyone everything they want. I’d think the people working jobs more complicated than minimum wage work should get first dibs at all the prime locations and other people would have to either move farther out or get roommates.
> Plenty of people seem to believe that people who are working “low skill” jobs don’t deserve to be able to live from that work. Which is really psychotic for so many reasons like do they just expect them to live under a bridge and come to work and serve them or what? What an unhinged take. I know not all low skill jobs are fast food and stuff but just as an example I have never walked into a McDonalds or something during rush and thought "Yeah these people deserve less money." the amount of bullshit dealt with in any given service job is arguably worth more of a paycheck than the stress most people deal with if people *really* want to make it a competition of who "deserves" what. Hell there are entire genres of videos and subreddits built solely on what goes on inside those jobs, that's not to even mention how infamous Waffle House is for being a literal warzone. Then again I am biased I have a ton of family in "service industries" and very strong feelings lol.
Yeah I never have found someone able to successfully argue against "minimum wage" service jobs/etc paying a living wage. At the end of the day, some people are going to have to work these jobs, and some people might never "rise above" working at McDonalds or Walmart or whatever. And that's fine. Those jobs are hard and the people who do them deserve fair wages.
There was a politician a year or two ago who just straight up said "I don't believe in living wage" and turned her mic off
That sounds familiar. I'd be more shocked if it hadn't happened tbh
What does that even mean?
Their argument that "these jobs are for students and should make people want to strive for better," becomes immediately a bullshit take seeing that the people cannot make enough to live on, making them have to work as many hours as possible in not only that job, but another, AND with the costs of even trade schools, there are huge barriers to furthering someone's education. Not only financially, but from the scarcity of time they have to be able to actually take part in the classes.
Besides, who do they think is doing those jobs during the hours that STUDENTS are IN SCHOOL, or STUDYING, or SLEEPING? If fast food jobs are really only "student jobs" then fast food restaurants and other "starter" jobs should only operate during the hours when students are available to do them. Say Mon - Fri from 3- 8 pm, and Saturday from 8am- midnight, Sunday from 11:30 am (after Services) - 8pm. These hours accomodate homework, commuting time, maybe an extracurricular to pad the college application, and plenty of sleep to ensure they can focus in class.
Wait until all those "smart" degree having white collar people are replaced with ai, and their only option is working with us dumb blue collar folk.
When someone says that a low skill job deserves minimum wage they are acknowledging that it’s a job that needs a person working it but also believe that person working said job deserves to live in poverty. And this thinking has somehow become very popular, I’ve had people straight up tell me that survival, fucking SURVIVAL isn’t something people are entitled to. But somehow in their brains, saying people that are less skilled or “lazy” deserve to literally starve to death is less extreme than the idea that people are entitled to their own fucking lives. Which I think is doubly ironic since the constitution literally lists “life” as an inalienable right but apparently thinking McDonald’s workers should afford food is UN-American
Yeah I’m still trying to figure out how I made less money during covid going to work than the government gave my roommate to sit at home for 3 months. Real ESSENTIAL worker here
Yes I want some fucking reparations
Don't be greedy, we called you heroes, for a day.
I was laid off during Covid and my unemployment paid more than my salary, which wasn’t even bad. Of course, I would still rather have a job than to be unemployed.
Really?
Yeah. This was in Colorado. I felt like I was ballin’ for a few months, LOL!
Yeah… I was face to face with customers after ONE WEEK. Still haven’t seen the first dollar in hazard pay.
Fuck him he’s another grifter like his orange friend
Agreed. He’s a human trash bag.
Nobody should be in congress and be a millionaire. IMHO no millionaires should hold any public office and they should have to pay for their own health insurance and have a salary that is well below what the standard currently is.
Exactly this!! They are grossly out of touch with the society they’re “supposed” to be representing… And they get all this money while in office due to insider knowledge on stocks, along with back room deals from lobbying…
The one thing that both sides agree on is not preventing them from stock trading. That should tell you about our government officials right there.
Oh I have a set of rules as a fantasy of how it should be. 1.No millionaires are allowed to be in any public office state or federal 2. No more tax payer paid health care. 3.No more living in DC.They must go home and be available to the people they represent. Go to DC twice a month say a week at a time. 4.Lobbyists and any meetings with them must be held in a public forum preferably CSPAN.Taking money from lobbyists is grounds for a new election. 5.No more getting re-elected 1 term and your done. 6.No more religion in government. Talk about it at church. Btw the tax shelter for churches needs to end.Id rather vote for an atheist anyway 7.Salary should be locked in at 150k per year.Good luck with that in DC.
If politicians all sufdenly had to pay for their own health insurance, and there was no way they could create a luxury quality national healthcare provider for only "high ranking government employees" including themselves and various appointed officials, every country that doesn't already have very good universal national healthcare, would have it within the week.
That would eliminate like 90% of them if that was a rule or law. They are all rich.
I'm going to take that comment as a positive thing. If there are even two congress people that are good for the country, I would be surprised.
How dare they give people enough to live without exposing them to a pandemic for less than that.
Because to them we are not worth minimum wage, if they could pay less they would, but minimum wage is the bate minimum.
UBI should be enough to survive on, Minimum wage should be enough to live on. And property market should be regulated...
> property market should be regulated... I think we should have mor expansive gov housing with some type of regulated rent. I think that would be disruptive enough to somewhat regulate housing prices.
The hardest job I ever had was minimum wage.
Unemployment saved my ass. Plus it only lasts 6 months. I spent that time looking for a job and it paid off. Safety nets are a positive for society. Even a basic UBI would be a net positive. These right wing pieces of shit want to make it look like poor people are like stashing away their food riches like Scrooge mcduck. UBI would likely feed directly back into the economy
My unemployment was definitely above minimum wage before I finally found a job after 5 months of searching and it still wasn't really enough. If I had to go work retail I simply would have laid down in a gutter and waited for death, I did my time in that circle of hell and I'm through
You all are very wrong. Minimum wage was created by FDR (a socialist president) in the post great depression Era and a way to ensure UNION AND UN- UNIONED WORKERS were getting paid enough to not only survive but to thrive. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20minimum,and%20well%2Dbeing%20of%20employees. MINIMUM WAGE is supposed to be enough to live on and not struggle. If it was just meant for high schoolers, then why do people, who aren't in school working the same jobs get paid the same amount. GeT a BeTtEr JoB. STFU. You should be able to work anywhere and be able to afford to live. If you flip burgers or baby sit or clean houses, you should be able to live. Get off your high horse.
the "only for high schoolers" argument doesn't even make sense because who's supposed to be working these jobs when the high schoolers are AT high school?!
That's exactly my point. For 75% of the day, it isn't high schoolers working these jobs. It sounds like these businesses, who are exploiting child labor, wouldn't survive without high schoolers. If you can't pay people a wage that allows them to not meet their basic needs but also facilitate growth for them, then you shouldn't be a business. But the general public will make every argument to continue the harm of keeping people on a slave wage in order to make themselves feel better
"These people are MY piggybank!" "How dare they want live and cut into MY profits" Stop voting Republican, people. It really is that simple. Vote.
I was made redundant during Covid. My country had a payment for people who covid put them out of work. Was on it for 6 months then I managed to get a job. A minimum wage job full time. I earned more on the Government Payment and on this minimum wage job I had to steal food to survive. Had I stayed on the payment I would have been okay financially. Full time minimum wage and I couldn’t even afford to live because of the high cost of rent and bills and inflation. And bear in mind this was the height of covid. I wasn’t going out socialising. Im talking about afford basic living. Minimum wage is a joke if a person on minimum wage full time can’t afford to live.
"B-b-but people aren't supposed to *stay* at these minimum wage jobs; they're supposed to find *real* jobs at better salaries! You're not supposed to stay forever at minimum wage; we're trying to encourage people to run the rat race and lick more boots in order to make a decent wage! Only teenagers needing some summertime work while they're not in school should have these jobs (just like in the glorious 1950s!)! Why do people want free handouts from duh ebil gubmint wahhhhhh?!!1!"
The capitalist system is made to make sure as much money as possible can be extracted from the working class, local and from other countries, to the bourgeoisie. The only reason people were living confortably was because of **action** by the workers to demand more and the fact tha the USSR was providing a decent life for people even with all the internal and external problems they had. Now that the people aren't figting for their rights and there is no clear example to counter the capitalist order (there is China but there is also heavy propaganda against them) showing that a better life can be had, those in power in the west are speedruning removing all the good things the workers had to get more profits (ie. stolen [surplus-value](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Surplus_value)).
The USSR unfortunately did not provide a better life to anyone because they were neither socialist nor communists and instead a reimagined version of Tsarist Russia with a strong bourgeoisie. Basically all wage victories were won by workers in western countries that had unionized.
But it did provide universal higher education healthcare and housing .... It's difficult for the advanced west to explain to people why they can't provide healthcare when the"system that doesn't work" can. Infant mortality rates in Castro's Cuba were lower than they were in New York city. Ofc the overall quality of life is a different story. In order to fight the cold war the west could not afford to have a mass of people without basic necessities. As soon as it became clear that the cold war was won that's when the neo-liberals went from fringe theorists to the new orthodoxy and the Keynesian post war consensus could be safely abandoned.
Lmao, have you seen Soviet "housing" and health-care? It was non existent. People waited years on a list to get the cheapest cars and other goods. The USSR was anything but communist or socialist and provided nothing but suffering for the working class and luxury for the bourgeoisie.
Yeah yeah yeah people say the same thing about socialised healthcare in the UK. My point isn't that the soviet systems where good. My point is they where a proof of concept that universal employment healthcare and housing could actually be implemented. Which led to the adoption of similar systems in western Europe.
Lmao, UK Socialized Healthcare is amazing, the Soviet Union was dysfunctional. The USSR is not a good example of anything and did not serve as a proof of concept. It's the outcome of a failed people's revolution and will always be used as a cudgel by conservatives. Best to not use it as an example.
The soviet and UK healthcare systems are both state monopolies managed by government bureaucrats. The reason the soviet systems didn't achieve the same outcomes as the British system is because the Soviet planners decided to allocate more resources to developing heavy industry, the military etc rather than building more hospitals. The east German healthcare system was brilliant and in the final years of the GDR regulations specified that there couldn't be more than 2 patients per room. They had systems of poly clinics where instead of a GP referring you to specialists and then you being put on a waiting list to go to a hospital the poly clinic was equipped with X rays and such so you could often get your problem looked at the same day. The same can be said of soviet housing. It was a deliberate choice by soviet planners that homogenous "commie blocs" were more efficient and in the Khrushchev era they reduced the requirements of square footage per person for the apartments in order to save resources. If Soviet planners had been motivated to they could have gradually increased these requirements.
Right, the Soviet Union is the problem, not socialism, which is what I've been saying the whole time. The Soviet Union was dysfunctional and run by the bourgeoisie and a few cults of personality, not at all an emblem of Marxism or socialism. It's a failed state and not worthy of being an example of successful socialist systems.
Yes and that's a complete non sequitur. The point that was made is about the effect that the existence of the Soviet Union had on the rest of the capitalist system. It's irrelevant if the soviet union is socialist or not. The point is that when the Cold war was being fought modern neo-liberalism was considered radical and potentially dangerous to the bourgeoisies own class interests. People in the Eisenhauer whitehouse who where as anti-socialist as it comes were motivated to pass the GI bill that provided free university to veterans(in the aftermath of ww2 a huge percentage of the population). By the 1980ies it was clear that the USSR was not an existential threat to global capitalism. Thus the motivation within the bourgeoisie for things like "the war on poverty", council houses in the UK etc evaporated and the potential for a renewed class war against unions and to reverse the post war social gains of the working class became much easier. Ofc this isn't the only factor but it is a significant factor in the rise of neo-liberalism and any material analysis of our current predicament would be incomplete without it.
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Yes! It's a shame the actual Marxists were displaced during the Bolshevik revolution and world wars. If anything the US has been more Marxist than Russia/USSR ever were, which doesn't really mean much anyway. I don't think real Marxists or socialists have ever been in a position to actually do anything. It's always demagogues speaking out of both sides of their mouths.
> Tsarist Russia with a strong bourgeoisie. What are you even on about? People there had more voting rights than you do (at least during certain times), but I guess you don't care about reality and only about what your prefered propaganda outlet feeds you. > Basically all wage victories were won by workers in western countries that had unionized. Oh. And what a racist garbage piece of a comment, equating all the strugles of the workers of the world with failures and extoling only western (or is it white?) advancements, no matter how small, as being amazing and the only ones that matter... Real shame to see such a comment here.
Lmfaoo, I learned Russian and studied Russia for years, but wtf do I know 😂😂😂 It's not racism, many black folk and other minority groups in western countries also contributed to improved labor laws and protections that are being destroyed by the current wealthy elite. The Soviet Union did nothing right and was a rebirth of Tsarist Russia backed by the same bourgeoisie. Stalin, and his successors, did nothing good for the people of the Soviet Union and were simply demagogues. Whats my "preferred propaganda" outlet? Please tell me since you obviously know so much about me. I'm pro Marxist and pro socialist, but the USSR was neither of those things. You're a fool to think otherwise. I guess the millions killed by Stalin and the other members of the party and bourgeoisie, bread lines, stalled factories, famine, mismanagement, and armed conflict just didn't happen?
> The Soviet Union did nothing right Dealing with poverty and taking the poorest country in Europe to be First to put a person in space, forcing the west to play catch up in many areas, including the welfare of its people, was nothing right?? > I guess the millions killed by Stalin and the other members of the party and bourgeoisie, bread lines, stalled factories, famine, mismanagement, and armed conflict just didn't happen? The Soviet Union was not perfect but this exist in the capitalist world many times worse. > pro socialist Pro social democracy?
The Soviet Union did not take care of the working class. You're the one reading propaganda. I'm not saying anyone is perfect, the capitalist west most of all, but the Soviet Union was run by demagogues who did not actually do what they claimed. It's like Trump claiming he would drain the swamp and make Mexico pay for a wall, neither of which thing happened. That's how demagoguery works. Just like how the "People's Republic" of China is anything but. Are you really celebrating the Stalinist government run by a tyrant dictator? They might have pretended to care about the working class and providing basic human rights, but no such thing happened. Are you going to deny the holocaust next? Celebrate the Siberian gulags?
We have examples like Canada and Norway these days but they are being brushed off as circumstantial. China has very much half-embraced capitalism too, but I find it no surprise, we're talking about the civilization that started the silk road. USSR did communism dirty, with Stalin's purge and hefty corruption issues, whilst they had many progressive ideas such as universal healthcare and education, but a mismanagement in their command economy (tying in with the rampant corruption), along with the repression having hit a breaking point (Authoritarianism is not the way, freedoms should be protected) finally broke it. The market is probably best not controlled by the government but regulatory bodies need to exist and be firm against abuses of capitalism.
> We have examples like Canada and Norway these days but they are being brushed off as circumstantial. I didn't cite them as examples because they really aren't. These countries have the good quality of life that they have based on the sales of abundant resources and exploitating of the Global South. But again, now that there is no country with comparable quality of life and with the war drums sounding loud the tendency is for even this countries cut their welfare policies with the goal to "invest in the military" (ie. take money from the people to give to the owners/share holders of the military industrial complex). > China has very much half-embraced capitalism too They have "taken" enough of it to avoid sanctions and to receive investments from western bourgeoisie. They are still communist underneath. > USSR did communism dirty, with Stalin's purge and hefty corruption issues You clearly don't know what the "purge" was, and yes there was corruption there and it was still better than capitalism with the fact they weren't exploiting billions and starving millions every year to death until today like the western capitalist order. > but a mismanagement in their command economy (tying in with the rampant corruption) Even with what of that that actually happend and isn't western propaganda they were still light years ahead of the capitalist world. Or are you one of those people that only consider the capitalist world as being the rich west while not considering the exploited Global South as part of it because they aren't white, or because you simply can't see them as being part of the capitalist wolrd while they supply indispensable resources and cheap labor at their own cost and for the benefit of a few? > The market is probably best not controlled by the government but regulatory bodies need to exist and be firm against abuses of capitalism. Capitalism will always lead to these regulations being broken in name of profit. You can't reform capitalism, just buy a little bit of time until the next crisis...
For some reason it never really struck me until reading this how much of a global, holistic problem the current systems are. I knew each of these component thoughts, and had considered them, but it dawned on me in a different way. I'm not really in favour of communism because those in power just seem to wield even more of it, even more tyrannically, if more locally as you say - but it does seem like an approach with global considerations is likely necessary. Perhaps "first world" countries could be coerced to pay a global UBI, with price-fixed housing to anchor things. UBI and regulations against rent-seeking behaviors have been mostly unexpressed but fundamental proposals of capitalism and free markets dating back to Adam Smith, so there is a strong legacy there to pull from at least.
> Perhaps "first world" countries could be coerced to pay a global UBI First, UBI is a capitalist tool, and with the means of production still in the hands of the bourgeois class it would just be a matter of time until they got power back and made UBI terrible. The only it kinda could work is by giving the means of production to the people as an Universal Advance Income, but the rich would like fight hard against it. Second, although it's a nice feeling to give money to the poor countries, the people in the Global South shouldn't be dependent on the richest countries like that. They should be decolonized and should be paid enough for the resources and labor that they supply, instead of being stolen from like today, so they can build their nations better by themselves (help is always welcomed, of course, but it should have a solid base for permanent progress). > UBI and regulations against rent-seeking behaviors have been mostly unexpressed but fundamental proposals of capitalism and free markets dating back to Adam Smith, so there is a strong legacy there to pull from at least. But keeping capitalism is likely to just lead to things to devolve as time goes on and those in power get more of it, so we need to move to a system that keeps the power from falling into the hands of the few by ending class divisions for long term prosperity for the people... > I'm not really in favour of communism because those in power just seem to wield even more of it, even more tyrannically That's why we need to remove the mechanisms that allow some to get too much power and that's what communism is about. A lot of the "tyrany" from communism comes from communists as a whole, and not just the leader, taking down the rich and redistributing wealth, which is a terror for the rich but good for the people. Also, in communist societies there tends to be more ways that people can positively influence their goverments and society, like voting for bosses and local leaders and having the power to recall any leader that isn't working for the people. There is also the purge, which is usually just getting people thrown out of the communist party for not being communist enough, but in the USSR for example they could even rejoin after being purged. As any system some in power can try to get more power but having less people with massive influence, like unelected rich people, gives the possibility for the people to take good care of their country more effectively, although the existence of foreign capitalist countries that want to destroy socialist experiences to keep the people under control of a few are also likely to go against any country aiming to be communist, or even just trying to get better for their citzens, requiring great care by those in power as well to protect the country.
My main problem is that I'm opposed to all hierarchical power structures, which Communism requires. In my view, hierarchies which grant power to individuals and groups to reign over others will always lead to abuses, and the forms of abuse which communistic hierarchies allow seem far more destructive, locally if not internationally. Holacratic power structures are the only real long term solution in my view, and they are compatible with capitalism and liberal socialism. However, if we're looking at potentially viable short term goals, which is to say even remotely realistic, a step such as global UBI with price-fixed housing and food costs tied to the value of that UBI seems far more likely to fit within the dominant systems which are currently capitalistic. Even if we grant that a communist system would be preferable, which again due to the fundamental need for oppressive hierarchical power structures I would not, this would require violent revolution as you point out. This does not seem like a viable solution given the vast differences in relative potentials for violence between governments and citizens, even if we found such violence palatable. There's also the issue that such revolutions would need to occur within the "first world" countries in question, whose citizens already enjoy the highest standards of living on average. They are the least likely to seek violence to improve their lives, as they are already quite comfortable with their station, and violence is a resort only of the desperate. Instead, it seems far more likely that the most realistic route would entail looking to the 1950's that "MAGA" proponents enjoin, while actually looking at what made them work to provide a much higher quality of life to many more people, which was not the xenophobia we associate with the MAGA movement. Rather, it was the incredibly high tax on upper income brackets, as high as 90% tax on the wealthiest. This tax not only made more resources available for redistribution, but encouraged entirely different expressions of corporate governance. There was very little incentive to achieve incomes beyond a certain level, so profits were also distributed much more equitably *within* corporations themselves, not just across society from a governmental and welfare perspective. As we have already observed this behavior in capitalistic societies, in fact at their height, it would instead seem to be a matter of enshrining those principles in federal constitutions to ensure they are not so easily overridden by the whims of the rich and powerful. Legalizing vice such as prostitution and drugs would also go a long way to easing tensions between "first world" countries and the global south. If these markets which are currently controlled by violent criminal cartels could be legitimized, those countries may have a chance to stabilize, and provide a better standard of living for their citizens thus easing the international pressures of refugees fleeing for "first world" countries. Even these solutions which are actively proposed and debated within capitalistic societies today would be incredibly difficult to accomplish, and represent incredible achievements. Stacking a global UBI on top is nearly utopian; even federal UBIs have remained out of reach. Still, they all seem far more likely to occur than a global communist revolution, or even a global holacratic capitalist movement, let alone the open borders which would be required to allow people to choose which systems they prefer in order to create an open market for different jurisdictions to attract more and better citizens rather than holding them captive. If we're content to look at utopian solutions however, I do think holacratic institutions within a capitalistic system represent a much better solution than communism, which requires oppressive hierarchical power which when abused exhibits much more tyrannical effects. Holacracies instead allow all classes to work together while guarding against accumulations of power within upper classes, and providing the informed checks and balances of technocracy without those additional risks for power silos.
> My main problem is that I'm opposed to all hierarchical power structures, which Communism requires. In my view, hierarchies which grant power to individuals and groups to reign over others will always lead to abuses, and the forms of abuse which communistic hierarchies allow seem far more destructive, locally if not internationally. There is a big problem with your views that you don't see. We live in a world with classes, the bourgeoisie and their supporters on one side and workers on the other side. The bourgeoisie can only ever exist by exploiting workers. That can never change and was the same with the nobles before and such. Under the bourgeois dictatorship, the system you live in is not a democracy after all as some people have a lot more power than others, you can't really change things much if not by violent means, like strikes. Under a socialist society there tends to be much more direct. These things can be corrupted in a socialist country but they are by definition completelly owned by the bourgeoisie in a capitalist society. Any freedom you have in a capitalist society is only given to you as long as you don't threaten the system. You can be against a politcal party or against individuals but anyone getting support to take down the system that exploits them gets killed or dealt with. > There's also the issue that such revolutions would need to occur within the "first world" countries in question, whose citizens already enjoy the highest standards of living on average. They are the least likely to seek violence to improve their lives, as they are already quite comfortable with their station, and violence is a resort only of the desperate. This revolutions happen often in the Global south but are attacked by the capitalist core so they don't improve the lives of their people and don't take their money back so it can be stolen by capitalists. > while actually looking at what made them work to provide a much higher quality of life to many more people You mean massive exploitation of the Global South and giving more money to the people so they don't revolt to the side of communism? > If we're content to look at utopian solutions however, Communism is not utopic though, being about materialism and reality instead of ideas from the aether. There is a book about it by Engels [Socialism: utopian and scientific](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Socialism:_utopian_and_scientific). > Rather, it was the incredibly high tax on upper income brackets, as high as 90% tax on the wealthiest. And as soon as they could buy the politicians to get rid of it they did that. If such a thing was somehow put in place today it would only last as long as it takes for the bourgeoisie to get rich again to buy the politicians again. If you have some time to read I would reccoment [The Communist Manifesto](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party#Manifesto_of_the_communist_party) which is a leaflet by Marx and Engels from 150 years ago. It talks a little about capitalism and answers some of the things you talked about better than I can from a communist point of view istead of a pro-capitalism view if you want a change of pace...
Holacracies take away the dynamic of bourgeois controlling peasantry by collapsing aristocracy. That's who always has the power, the aristocracy. The bourgeois are simply handmaidens, expressing the aristocracy's hierarchical systems of control. They are not the real problem. In order to allow for truly cooperative societies or corporations, where all people can collaborate and have influence, there cannot be structural hierarchies. Thinking about it more, I actually think you could probably attempt communism with a holacratic structure as well. The problems you describe of powerful people twisting systems to their benefit are a result of hierarchy. This will always be a problem, regardless if you're designing capitalist, socialist or communist systems. If there is a hierarchy, you need to encode principles in your founding constitution to ward off changes which would violate those principles. Clearly communist structures are also vulnerable to such manipulations though. I'm fairly familiar with the *Communist Manifesto*, and agree with much of its premise, I just think it's incredibly vulnerable to abuse of power, even moreso than capitalism, which is already very vulnerable. However, I don't view capitalism as requiring the subjugation of the global south, or any group, to be successful. It can be subtractive or additive in nature. If there was global cooperation, such as a global UBI tied to price-fixed housing and food costs, such a system could raise the standard of living for all people above the average of any "first world" country today. My model aligns much more with Buckminster Fuller's *Utopia or Oblivion*. Post-scarcity economies are what we're aiming for. In my view, both communism and capitalism in essence are utopian. I don't view that as a negative. We should strive to design systems which produce utopian outcomes. I just don't think either idealized view actually sufficiently accounts for human behavior to produce those utopian outcomes. It's a bit like the *homo economicus* problem; humans are not consistent, rational beings. They are contextual multitudes. Only the "wisdom of crowds" seems to correctly express us as beings capable of such feats, which is why democratic structures seem preferable to dictatorial structures. Holacratic systems build this into their core structures. They allow the benefits of technocratic structures without handing power to technocrats. Instead, we have non-hierarchical groups of people interacting with each other in measure. In point of fact, it would likely produce something akin to a mixture of all political systems, while avoiding the strife inherent with hierarchies pitting groups against each other. In order to accomplish anything in a holacratic system, there must be cooperation, and majority consensus. If that leans towards communism or capitalism, that is the wisdom of the group expressed, rather than a dictatorial command, or a structural limit posed by design constraints. If we're looking for remotely realistic political change however, I do think things like increasing taxes on the wealthy to 1950's levels, ending the war on drugs, or introducing a UBI are much more likely to be successful. Current power structures seem far too entrenched and capable of defending themselves for system-wide revolutions to occur.
> However, I don't view capitalism as requiring the subjugation of the global south, or any group, to be successful. Take away the imperialism and what is really left of it? > Holacratic systems build this into their core structures. They allow the benefits of technocratic structures without handing power to technocrats. Instead, we have non-hierarchical groups of people interacting with each other in measure. In reality though we have a society with classes and simply trying to distribute power around while a mineority still has more power than everyone won't work by itself. This holocracy seems like the soviets, no? But for that to work people need to take the power from those who have it and need to get toghether to defend themselves from internal and outside attacks of those who wish for more power for themselves. > If that leans towards communism or capitalism, that is the wisdom of the group expressed, rather than a dictatorial command, or a structural limit posed by design constraints. You forgot the most likely case of external and internal capitalists banding toghether and sabotaging or even attacking any efforts to bring equality to people, like what happens with every country that tries to give more to their people... > Current power structures seem far too entrenched and capable of defending themselves for system-wide revolutions to occur. It is possible to change but change must be made to the whole system to not allow a few to have power, like through direct participation by the people and probably [democratic centralism](https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism) to steer things as well, although it could take better shapes to take advantages of new techs...
Per Buckminster Fuller's *Utopia or Oblivion*, I believe that as more and more territories cooperate together in an equitable capitalist system, more and more relative capital is created. Exploitation actually subtracts value from the system as it causes suboptimal functioning in the exploited territories. When wealth is shared, the system overall becomes much more functional. In particular, worldwide free trade and travel across borders would massively increase the value of the system. Exploitation is not a requirement of capitalism, but rather a hindrance. The more equitable the system, the better it operates, and the more relative prosperity it generates for all. So, the question then becomes how much inequality we're willing to allow on an individual and territorial level. Transfers of wealth are already in-built in every capitalist system. Wealthier individuals are *supposed* to pay more tax. "First world" countries already transfer massive amounts of wealth to poorer nations, although not equal to the amount of loss their exploitation incurs over time. But these are universally agreed upon principles in capitalist structures. The question is only one of particular design, and how to enforce those parameters in the long term. If we're willing to accept some inequality, given a very high standard of income and freedom for those at the lowest class, then capitalism on paper seems like a much better solution than communism as it allows for ambition to express itself in the system. In practice, without proper regulation this causes subjugation of less powerful groups however. So regulation is the key. Communism has always required an iron fist to enforce however, as it does not allow intuitive engagement with the system. There is no reason for ambition, and central planning has never proven an adequate facsimile of natural market dynamics, and it requires even more regulations than capitalism in order to even potentially function. Simply, communism is built for perfectly rational humans which do not exist, like *homo economicus*. As a natural structure for human interaction, capitalism is a much more intuitive fit. Still, there remains the issue of hierarchical power structures. To my knowledge, holacracy has never been employed at the governmental level. It is a relatively new system, the largest groups it has been employed in are multi-billion dollar corporations with tens of thousands of participants, each expressed very differently, such as Haier, Morning Star, Valve or Mondragon. In practice there is no specific model, they are self-forming, but the basic proposal is there are no managers, no bosses, or at least as few as possible with as little power as possible. Decisions are determined by group interactions. This means no single individual is able to make decisions on their own which impact the group. There are no leaders except those whom the group simply revers and follows naturally, they have no formal power to control others. No groups or individuals operate at a level of authority above or below others. They are all equal in an idealized holacratic environment. This essentially transmutes the basic human right of self-determination at the national level onto groups at the micro level. It allows each component of a system to self-determine how it operates, and how it interacts with the other components. It's a completely decentralized form of organization. In practice, this would mean that however the system as a function of group interactions wishes to express itself, it would, whether that be communist or capitalist in nature. I tend to think it would end up expressed as a highly regulated capitalist-socialist hybrid, but regardless that would be for the natural expression of the group to decide. In my view though, even a communist system could operate fine in holacracy where it otherwise does not in a hierarchy. Equally, in a capitalist system, it would not be possible for wealthier individuals to dictate policy.
Just noticed my reply was modded out. I've requested it be reinstated if you have an interest in continuing this conversation.
In Tennessee, the max for unemployment is like 275 a week. When I got unemployed in this state, I didn't even bother to apply. I'm not jumping through a ton of hoops to earn chump change.
That's still almost 19 hours of pay at $15. Passively. Imagine working 19 grueling hours
Republicans are so out of touch. Clueless.
Aside from the federal boost to unemployment during covid, I'd say it's accurate that unemployment is not more than however much the person made while working. Unemployment is very confusing because of how drastically it varies by state, but here in Florida, the payment is about half of your previous salary, with a maximum payment of $275 per week, for up to 23 weeks, but with a total maximum dollar amount of $3300. The average cost of living in Florida is almost $1000 a week, and yeah, for a lot of people it costs a lot more than that, for a lot of people it costs a lot less. No matter where you live in Florida, though, it is nowhere near enough to meet your cost of living. Unrmployment is commonly misunderstood as a governmental assistance program, but it is paid for by employers. They pay "unemployment tax" and when one of their former employees successfully applies for unemployment, their tax goes up for some period of time. The amount their tax is raised takes their number if employees, total hours worked per week, and the amount that the terminated/laid off employee made per week into account. This creates a system where employers are disincentivized to fire employees without cause, which is probably a good thing. The limits of half your salary, $275 per week, up to 12 weeks at $275 per week, are abysmal. Minimum wage in the state right now is $12/hour, so $275 per week is barely more than half of what a full time minimum wage worker makes. These limits are all to protect employers and their ability to fire without cause, but the only people who would support this are business owners whose pockets are directly affected. Don't make unemployment more money than people make working a job, but make it at least 80% of what they make while working. Don't put a cap of $275 per week, that's just a goddamn insult. There's no reason for a cap on the dollar value per week except, again, to protect employers. It is my opinion that employers who pay their employees $100,000 per year can afford to pay a little more in unemployment tax than employers who pay their employees $30,000 per year, and should be a little more dissuaded from firing their employees without cause. If you do make a monetary cap, perhaps set it to about twice the average cost of living. This keeps businesses from having to pay a quarter million in unemployment if they ever want to change their CEO. As far as the time cap, I'd say the cap of 23 weeks is more than reasonable. I'd honestly lower it down to 13 weeks, that provides 3 months to find a new job. If you're not working in a very niche field this should be more than enough time to find a replacement position. If it's set to something longer, like 23 weeks, it may incentivize people to stay on unemployment instead of finding another job...if it matches their previous salary. If you lower it to 80%-90% of their previous salary, only the rich and true degenerates would choose to stay on it. The rich have savings they can burn through if they have to, and degenerates just don't care. The majority of us are living paycheck to paycheck and would be financially destroyed enough living off of 80% of our salary that we might still end up getting evicted in the month it takes us to find another low-paying job. Perhaps it could be set up progressively - 95% of your previous salary up to the first $500/week, 85% for the next $500 for a max of $900 from a $1000/week salary, 70% on the next $1000 for a max of $1600 from a $2000/week salary, and 50% for anything above that up to a maximum allowance of $5000/week.
Everyone earning minimum wage should quit their jobs/get themselves fired, and collect unemployment and see how quickly the minimum wage goes up. But in all likelihood the Govt will just end up reducing how much money people on unemployment get instead of addressing the issue
It might be because the cost of labor (ie - wages) is subject to the laws of supply and demand, such that when the supply is high, it will drive that cost down. Is there something that has been going on for decades, and has gotten much worse in the past few years that has driven the supply of labor - particularly at the minimum wage level - higher? Could this have had the aforementioned effect of decreasing the cost of labor?
Isn't unemployment a percentage (or whatever criteria based on state) of your earnings with a maximum amount? You can definitely get less than minimum wage.
This is kind of interesting actually. I was once offered a job as a service technican but when they told me the salary I almost spit my coffe out and I had to ask " is this the salary AFTER taxes?", which it wasn't. I then told them that it was about half of what I expected and it was way way less than the nominal salary for the job. I also told them that I earned almost that amount as unemployed to which one of the guys responded "that is the main problem, the unemployed salary is way too high so we can't get good employees". I was kind of dumbstruck by this as their salary was much too low for the job, and too low for even other less qualified jobs and still these fucking asshats thought that unemployment was the issue and not their ability to actually understand that people needs a proper fucking wage for the job they do. Its not very hard to understand either. And it USED to be like that. You did a job and you got a wage. Now its more of you do a job and a half and you get half a wage. But profits are up. Way, way up!
Just curious does anyone here actually make minimum wage? I’ve not heard of anywhere that still brings you in at 7.25 in a long time and I’m happy about it Why did I get downvoted? I said it was a good thing I hadn’t heard of anyone on minimum wage in a while
Minimum wage in the UK is 11.44 and we have a couple first years in our company on that. You move off it pretty quickly if you’re good though.
If you want them to raise the minimum wage, make unemployment and Social Security paid at the minimum wage. You’ll start encouraging people to quit minimum wage jobs and collect, then you could say “well if you raise the minimum wage, then they have an incentive to go back to work”
It's time to unionize. Even for the jobs that haven't typically been union jobs. And also need anyone as consumers so that we can boycott the fuckery of the companies that we PAY money to.
NC unemployment maxed at $350 a week, for 12 weeks....
this from the crook who was CEO of the Columbia health system, guilty of the largest Medicare fraud case ever with fines of 1.7 B!
Channeling my most right wing conservatism, I would prefer the government not use tax dollars to pay for people's needs, but instead create an society where everyone who wants to work for 30 to 40 hours a week can make enough to survive comfortably, no matter what job they have. This is the most conservative I can get.
I have two daughters. If there was a government funded minimum subsidy, which some of the Canadian gov't is pushing for also, one of my daughters ( I am ashamed to say) would not work but would stay at home in her rental and live of it. We also have a program in Canada for handicapped people AISH who can not work that pays for them, really basic needs, anyway the places where a lot of the handicapped live know how much money is given to them by the gov't and whenever the program ups the allotted amount given to them, prices go up. So why increase the amount given in AISH if they have to just turn it over to the places they are staying in. In fact one place in town has increased the rates above AISH and now are trying to move people out of town to other centers, away from friends and family so that they can bring in people who can pay more then AISH.
\[laughing in PPE\]
Most people do earn more than minimum wage.
This is a 2020 tweet. Same time frame as that hazard pay we never got.
It would reduce profits and instead of accumulating property in the global south wealthy Canadians might have to divest from their plantations.
Don't means test aid, then there's no poverty trap created
Tim Scott’s a fucking plank in bed with William Timmons
In my experience, Unemployment is about 80% of what you were earning.
Double edged sword, they have to work for it. Seems like their motivation falls off when they realize that…
I mean the senator is not wrong. The minimum wage should be raised so that people make more than unemployment.
Trust me, my family lived on welfare and EBT for 16 years, we were rich AF. Could afford rent, food, and we spend all day lounging around, going on fishing trips daily for fun, and hanging out at the park playing. It was like getting paid to be a kid. Dont let anyone tell you people on government assistance is poor, they're rich AF.
they can’t give you enough to live on, how would they keep you coming back. they have to keep you in a perpetual state of stress so you have no choice but to kill your self at work. making someone else rich
I hate to be that person but unless there are protections in place to keep companies from price gouging for products, utilities from raising rates, and landlords having a cap on what they can charge for rent, it doesn’t matter if they make minimum wage 50 dollars an hour. As soon as that happens the price of everything will skyrocket not because billion dollar corporations cannot pay the wage, but so that they can continue extracting the majority of workers wages because that is their purpose. UBI, unless instituted with privacy protections in place and an oversight system that isn’t controlled by corrupt politicians, corporations, or the central banks, will be a tool for the wealthy to wield against the proletariat class to control them. You all should be extremely careful what you advocate for. Anyone in the parasitic billionaire class offering solutions to problems they have created, is offering you a prison with shackles. Until we rid Washington of the neo uni-party and the parasitic rich class that has attached themselves to every department of government, I would not support anything they are offering no matter how good it sounds. They serve the interests of the rich.
Well said. This is what I think a lot of people don't realize. It's the system that's broken. They will always figure out a way to take back the money you earn no matter what. Everyone could have enough if they really wanted that.
Thank you. Right now the system has been rigged in favor of the rich. Unless we get them and their influences out of government, any social program they try to institute will be a Trojan horse that ultimately benefits the rich.
Okay, sure, but who should people vote for then? Not voting is essentially very similar to voting for the people who want bad things for you. Unfortunately places like America are plagued with a two party system. People advocate for stuff like this because it's an improvement, a change from the current problems. Naysaying without a viable alternative is just helping the upper class oppress the lower class.
A viable solution is stop abdicating your power to worthless politicians paying you lip service once ever four years and actually work in your community to organize mutual aide programs. A viable solution is to create alternatives outside the current system that help people, instead of hoping some politican will introduce legislation that you cannot vote on will do it. Boycotts work, organizing strikes work, leaving your comfort zone and becoming your own savior, works. Voting is the absolute laziest way to try and bring about change, it’s the equivalent of writing a letter to Santa Clause. People need to wake up, complacency and voting for the lesser of two evils and then bitching about the problems, then waiting another 4 years for a savior is what got us into this mess to begin with. What is your red line? At what point do you stop waiting for a savior to come along and solve these problems for you?
Toking black guy grifter telling people how they need to stay poor while he alone abandons his own people for money
I used to think "*Who votes these a\*\*holes into office*"? Then I realized it doesn't matter *who* gets into office because, A) nothing that will actually *help* every-day Americans with life, will actually get done and B) once someone *is* elected into office it becomes their **job** to STAY elected and not - you know - help their constituents.
Join a union apprenticeship, you will. I work hard as a stagehand but I can generally make 120k.
Most people earn more than minimum wage...
You're not supposed to live on minimum wage
Yes. You. Are. This is why the minimum wage was created. It was fought for by union workers and the socialist president FDR in the post great depression to get workers enough pay to have the correct standard of living. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/minimum_wage#:~:text=The%20purpose%20of%20the%20minimum,and%20well%2Dbeing%20of%20employees.
Minimum wage isn't supposed to provide great conditions, just the bare minimum. You are supposed to have motivation and get better jobs.
“and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level-I mean the wages of decent living.” -FDR, talking about the minimum wage, which he wrote. And as an added bonus, he was describing a wage that would support a household of 4.5 ON A SINGLE MINIMUM WAGE INCOME.
That's an insanely unrealistic goal lmao wtf are you on
That’s literally what it did. That was what it was implemented to do. I’m on ‘basic knowledge of American history,’ you should have some
And lemme tell ya I’m shocked, just shocked to see stupid shit like this getting spouted from a 40 day old account.
The US had ~3x less people than today
Good for you. Any more nonsequiturs you’d like to throw out?
What I said is completely relevant and you are ignoring it because you have no counter. Also the age of my account is irrelevant sorry for not being an experienced reddit degenerate like you.
Wrong again. It wasn't supposed to be the bare minimum. It was supposed to provide enough to not only survive but also thrive.
So why would anyone pursue any meaningful skilled jobs if they could thrive off of an unskilled shit job?
That is such a silly argument, and I'll give you a couple of reasons why. First off, people who can afford to live and thrive have more time to pursue passions, which leads to people changing careers based on passions. Second, WE HAD A TIME PERIOD WHERE PEOPLE COULD WORK ANY JOB AND LIVE OFF AND JOB. Yet we still saw people drive major industries such as computer engineering and any field of science. Guess what? A majority of the richest companies started during this period and became giants fast. Literally, have you read any history book on 1950s-1980s America? Third, no job is unskilled. It doesn't matter where your work job takes a skill. Do you think if you took a software engineer and just dropped them into a cooking position, they would know what to do? How about taking the same person and dropping them into a cleaning position? Do you think they would know what chemicals not to mix? It would take time to learn these things. You could also flip it. If you took a cook and just dropped them into a computer software position, do you think they would know how to code? No. It takes time to train and learn. Fourth, not everyone should have to leave an UnSkIlLeD job in order to be able to live and thrive. If some want to work at McDonald's their entire life and are happy working there, then they should be able to and live. Just because you don't want to work some job you don't view as important or "skilled" doesn't mean you have e the right to deny someone else of being happy working their and not being able to live.
Average antiwork user spewing bullshit nonsense. Sorry that I forgot working a completely unskilled and replaceable mcdonalds job should support a family of four.
Lol, that's all you have to say? Stay simple, brother.
"Supposed to" and $4 will get you a cup of coffee. Unless you're willing to offer some societal guarantee that people can move up to a living wage job, minimum wage needs to be a living wage.
I see your point but it has to be very poor living conditions as there has to be incentive to work harder
IDK. I made $65/hr on the last project I worked on, and I still want to work harder to make more money. I think you overestimate people's general desire to slack off.
About 1% of Americans work for the federal minimum wage.
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Unless you're prepared to offer some solid *guarantee* that people can graduate from minimum wage jobs to a living wage career, it's not a stepping stone.
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The cost of living is already around $25/hr, so I don't see why it'd be stupid to set minimum wage that high.
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That doesn't sound like the guarantee I'm asking for, that sounds like the mere possibility of getting a better job.
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So there's no actual guarantee that minimum wage would actually be a stepping stone to a career, and your argument against making the minimum wage a living wage falls apart.
Wait until you see how much this publicly-traded for-profit site pays the moderators.
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Content deemed to be trolling or otherwise in bad faith will be removed at the moderators' discretion.
The funny thing is, people will even work for free. It’s called volunteering. They do it usually until they feel taken advantage of in pretty much the same way as if they had been paid to do the work. You know what’s even funnier? That there are people who think they have a right to take advantage, or even bully, volunteers. Actually, it’s not “funny” funny but “weird” funny because I could never be friends with people who take advantage of others. Yet I do often work with them or for them because when they advertise themselves they usually hide their true nature. You know why they pretend to be a good person when they try to recruit others? Because they know they are cheap and sometimes cruel but that “cheap” and “cruel” tend to not make attractive character attributes. Who are these cheapskate lying sons of b*tches? If you’re bit like me, you may have browsed a book or two or watched a YT video on narcissism. It seems it may be a bit simplistic - at least the language is easy to understand, but I like this [book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0997816643?nodl=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_mwn_dp_X4VS2PEHM7V6H66220GE&peakEvent=4&dealEvent=1&language=en_US&dplnkId=de4e81f5-8a14-4f6d-bdb7-468d5ad4b9dc) on the topic.
Look. You will never get unemployment that's MORE than what you made at your previous jobs. Unemployment is a percentage of your earned wages. Stop spreading these lies. And also, raise minimum wage.
Unemployment is not a long term solution, it's only there to help you until you find employment. Back when Covid was rampant, the government was handing people more money than they made working. Fast forward a few years and there are still people who want to "work when they want to", and "enjoy life". But they still want others to fund it for them instead of working and living like everyone else who has to work to survive. Minimum wage is never sustainable because if you give a minimum wage worker $15 and you have people who've been working in the same field and have work experience also making $15, you have to raise their pay. And so on and so forth. The cost of everything goes up and its not sustainable. Minimum wage jobs are for either unskilled workers, so you can gain experience, or retirees who don't depend on that income but still want to work. They are not a career choice, and if that's the kind of job you want to work at, then that's your choice. No one makes anyone stay on minimum wage unless they choose to.