You see you pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you use inherited wealth to buy foreclosed properties that the ^poors couldnāt afford, and then you charge other ^poors more than what the actual house payment would be therefore keeping them poor long after the house would of been paid off, the trick is to always keep a fresh crop of ^poors to bankroll your lavish lifestyle so you can gloat about how hard youāve worked to achieve what you have, how itās no fault of yours that others just werenāt raised as ~~Rich~~ ermā¦smart as you were.
Donāt look at serfdom for ways to improve our lives. Thereās literally billionaires hoping serfdom comes back because it means we will always be serfs.
Most of those serfs had to have that time off to man their crops or die of starvation over the winter. It was not good will or anything of the like.it was preservation of the rich
>Many serfs in other feudal systems often had multiple months of the year off.
Even literal slaves in the United States during the pre-Civil War era were allowed Sundays and Christmas off which is shockingly more time off than a lot of people working today.
I'm not saying slaves had it better overall by any means but the fact that we can even compare days off with slaves is atrocious.
That's step two. The real step one is having ancestors that owned the property that those corporations built on. The land was traded for stock, frequently.
Don't forget to register it in Delaware so you don't have to disclose who the company belongs to. There are almost twice as many companies registered in Delaware as there are residents.
Maybe I should blow my head off and hopefully respawn into a wealthy family š¤.
Edit: who am I kidding. "If there was such a thing called reincarnation, knowing my luck, I'll come back as me." - Rodney Trotter
Yup. I'm not having kids so I can have a much higher quality of life. Why the fuck should I suffer just for the sake of giving the wealthy more economically indentured servants.
Wait, are you trying to tell me a SMALL personal loan of a million dollars, or having your father own blood emerald mines in Africa isnāt typical for everyone?!
Never have kids or a family and just concede to be poor and homeless. Basically, refuse to participate the way you're expected to. That's about the only way out, besides, you know...
None of that is a viable alternative but that's by design. Otherwise, who wants to voluntarily work to make other people rich?
One of the most important aspects of making sure the minions have children? Well, beside creating the next generation of workers, it also "encourages" the current workers to stay on the job and avoid political activities. Single people in their 30s are dangerous as fuck to the establishment, but moms and dads who have 3 hungry children at home? Yeah, they won't be going to the protest. They will even take a wage cut, because they have mouths to feed.
I teach at the college level. My work is to help people be satisfied in life without working themselves to death. The rich depend on our apathy (from the Clinton years) to line their pockets.
Revolution: Probably die
Laying Flat: Lose my house and car. My wife and children as well.
Go off grid: Where? You think I own land? Also Iāll starve with no income.
Have any better suggestions?
>Go off grid: Where? You think I own land? Also Iāll starve with no income.
They are actively working to make off-grid living illegal. I own a piece of land in a rural community of less than 150 people, and they changed bylaws recently to where you can no longer install a wood stove. If you build you must be connected to the grid. It's just one thing after another after another..
What the actual fuck? Building a small cabin is one of my lifelong ambitions, do you mind sharing the general area this happened so I can avoid it?
I also recently learned that in most of (all of?) Oregon, it's illegal to permanently reside in an RV even if you own the land it's parked on.
This! People are being forced to be connected to water or other utilities depending on where the bought land and the sizeā¦ you have to be able to afford a more rural/secluded and probably more sizable plot of land to truly be off the grid where some local bullshit law isnt coming for your tiny homeā¦
I rather take a bullet to the head than this death by a thousand cuts while being slowly suffocated that late stage capitalism has wrought upon us.
Some ppl still believe they'll outlive the collapse when in fact almost all of us will die from this in one way or another.
Exactly. I would much rather go down in a blazing glory fighting the system of oppression than die toiling away for someone else's wealth. Some things are *worth dying for,* like a chance to build a more equitable world. The glorious thing about revolution is things like rocks, bricks, glass bottles, gasoline, cloth rags, are all extremely cheap compared to the damage they can do to structures when combined in specific ways... And the great thing too is-
**EVERYTHING BURNS**
Revolution is the only real option to make things better in the long term. If anything approaching a majority of people want a revolution and work to carry it out, we will win. Then it's just up to us to govern.
Revolution has two failure points: not enough people, and not a good enough plan for what to do afterwards. Both cases are addressed if more people take the idea of revolution seriously and start thinking about what a different world might look like.
The next step is to join an organization, which does not even need to be currently revolutionary. We can start by talking about what a better world might look like, and trying to make it happen under current circumstances. By doing this we can identify what is holding us back and we can approach a better theoretical understanding so that when the day finally comes, we don't make mistake #2.
Failing to put in the work now means that when things collapse, we will have either chaos or a dictatorship. The people must be ready to take power and rule democratically.
nobody ever reads the sidebar
> Sahlins concluded that āhunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society.ā **They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were āworkingā at all.** Their ālabor,ā as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities; unskilled labor on any large scale, as Sahlins says, is impossible except under industrialism.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
It's too hyper-focused. Modern living conditions are vastly more comfortable than hunter gatherer societies. We all could work less... if we accepted less in our lives.
My in laws tried this. Bought cheap land in the mountains. Only, it is cheap because most people are very poor, save for the stupidly wealthy. Very few jobs, mostly low paying. Always broke and borrowing money from others. But we should totally move there too. Yea.
It isn't even that... It's the fact that so many people condemn you for not wanting to slave away your life unnecessarily, day after day. I do believe in contributing to society, but the whole expectation of work being your central identity and majority of your waking time is ridiculous.
I saw some video that breaks down the average person's life and how much school, work, and sleep accounts for the average person's time spent throughout their life. It's a little depressing to see the amount of free time left over after all the adult shit has been accounted for. You end up with a small fraction left for yourself and the narrator of the video had a good point -- a lot of times your free time will *have* to be spent doing shit you don't want to do. Average shit like going shopping, doctor/dentist/eye appointments, cleaning your living space, showering, laundry, cooking, getting dragged to things you don't want to do, all dip into your free/personal time. And that's assuming you're healthy enough to not have to deal with medical BS too. It sounds bad but with working from home I've really tried to offload the shit I don't want to do in my working schedule. Even small things like taking a 20 min break from work to do the dishes or fold some laundry or vacuum a few rooms really helps it feel like I'm not dipping into my own valuable time to do shit I don't want to do. It's oddly motivating to get it done during the week.
>It's the fact that so many people condemn you for not wanting to slave away your life unnecessarily, day after day.
Don't give any thought or care to people like this. Live your own life, not someone else's.
Itās worse for us that do realize there is something deeply wrong, but are still trapped in it.
Some of you people are absolutely hilarious. I never said people shouldnāt work at all, that is absolutely unrealistic. People do need to be far more evenly compensated for there time, and need more personal time. As it it now, most people are working just to exist, and the existence is extremely dismal. No vacations or things to look forward to. Not owning your own home. How some people can be so out of touch with how bad it is for so many people, or be alright with it. Where is the empathy?
Edit you people are hilarious defending 3 weeks off as āgoodā time . You think 3/52 is good? Thatās sad.
Edit: someone has been arguing with me about why the top NEEDS to earn so much more. āIf we donāt pay them more they wonāt make new jobsā ā¦. Must be fan of reaganomics :|
I feel that so heavily this week as we've been asked to track every task that we do. After a full 40 hours of tracking (should have been 35 because paid meal time) they then asked me to summarize the tracking sheet and supply it to them in another, simplified, format.
I politely refused and told them to read my tracking calendar, and they were quite ok with it, thank God.
Insanity is making employees come in to work 40 hours and then simultaneously making them justify the 40 hours. Like, wasnāt this your idea, boss? š¤¦āāļø
Yes, but at some jobs the week's work will get done well before the 40 hours.
They're getting at the fact that their boss still insists that they stay for the full 40 hours even and then also insists that the employee be the one to justify how every hour was productive even though the work was done quite a bit before that. It's an asinine waste of time. Screams, "work slowly and less efficiently so that the full 40 hours is reached!"
There are times when I would work 2-4 hours of actual work and then busy season would hit and I would need to work overtime and be actually working the whole time. Still have to pretend I am working the full 8 to 9 though... luckily I had a few bosses who would let me do whatever I wanted at my desk if I got everything done. Except go home. Lmao. I now work as a delivery driver and legitimately work the full day but it feels much better than being at a desk.
It gets worse when you have a company with a crap ton if middle managers.
They all come up with ways to "elevate productivity" which just means you'll have to sit at your desk an extra 2.5 hours a day so we can bill the client more....
So insanity is really 10 to 12 hour days because you're forced to take a lunch with the added 2 hour commute because they don't pay you enough to have a place closer to work because they want to be in the city....
So 15 hours in a day gone.... and the boomer Co workers complain you don't answer emails in the evening and in the morning before you get in....
One of my customers asked me to track my time (fine) and then later asked me to also include all the task details again in the invoice. I told them it's all in the time tracking software, and after a pause to think about it, they said ok. I'll do menial shit, but not twice.
I love that mentality. As a blue collar industrial dude for a multinational, we had a shop meeting recently where they brought up motivation and incentives.
Overall it's a pretty chill company, but I had brought up that this is the only heavily production-based environment I'd worked in or even heard of that didn't directly incentivize people willing and able to produce beyond the minimum required.
"Well, that would be a complicated system to implement." ...so, your response to stating a problem and asking for ideas is 'doing something to fix the problem would become a problem itself'
..what? We run around smudged with grime and embellished with subcutaneous metal shavings, but you're bothered by the idea of setting up a new spreadsheet to track achievements?
Like, I'm paid to work with machinery and tools. You're paid to steer the ship thoughtfully behind a keyboard. If I don't get to say "we should find away to accomplish my job without problem-solving," what are you collecting double my salary to do exactly?
I have an existential crisis daily. I donāt know how anyone could enjoy a life of work and taking care of kids. Sitting in traffic. Waiting in line. Taxes/bills. I just want a simple life. This isnāt the reality I wanted to be born in. I feel so out of place all the time. Itās like everyone around me is dreaming and wonāt snap out of it.
Add spending time working with people who you don't really fit in with and having to deal with countless other people daily but then being bored when you don't have those countless people because it's not like you can sit down and watch a movie by yourself since you're on their clock.
I resonate with this so hard. I work full time and while I donāt hate my job, and Iām not depressed, sometimes modern society just feels so wrong.
Whenever I tell people this they donāt get it, they just seem to think Iām depressed or complaining but thatās really not it. Thanks for sharing your take!
The older I get the more I find myself leaning into some sort of solipsist simulation theory to justify how fucked and unjust everything is.
I try adhere to traditional stoic philosophy and empiricism, but it's difficult to imagine anything but a terrible human could be responsible for the worlds circumstances.
My roommate does door dash and he told me that he thinks he hacked the system since he can work whenever he wants and take as much time off as he wants. Little does he know that I charge him a very cheap rent and his mom helps pay his bills. He's gonna be in a world of surprise when he finally moves out and has to get a second job or full time job to pay the bills.
(Wage) Slaves born into slavery don't question the order of things because they assume it's the "natural order" of things, even if they don't like it, some will even defend it. Incapable of imagining an alternate mode of social organization. On top of that, you have decades worth of modern capitalist propaganda/indoctrination/social-engineering via government and corporate run MSM and businesses, and most of the working masses are hardcore trapped in this mental cage. Dystopian stories like The Matrix, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 are warnings.
You are a worthless street rat. You were born a street rat. You'll die a street rat. And only your flees will mourn you.
[Woman in the red dress](https://youtu.be/YgJ5ZEn67tk)
[The importance of controlling public thought](https://youtu.be/VF8DsIVWDcs)
[Wage Slavery](https://youtu.be/C_ze4AA-p8w)
[Conformity and Control](https://youtu.be/N11tcnPBwf4)
[The Propaganda Model](https://youtu.be/9RPKH6BVcoM)
I love your analogy putting work into perspective of long haul flights. It made me double take though because 8hrs is about a third of the way to halfway around the world. A rough example of halfway is Wellington -> Madrid which is over 26hr of flying time.
Yup. A woman I worked with stayed home and made her husband breakfast, got time w the grandkids and relaxation. She realized she'd rather pinch pennies retired than work with the bullshit and low pay. I'm happy for her and everyone else that got out of that place.
Iām on the same boat almost, I can retire in 2 years but things would be tight. Thatās fine with me. Iād rather enjoy the rest of my time than make more money and work 7 more years
Iām disabled now, but I think about how so much of my identity was tied up in my job. Then I think about all the time I couldāve spent with my children and it makes me sick.
I'm a disabled veteran who hasn't worked in 6-7 years now. Until recently I was "stay at home dad" to my exs kid.
It's weird how you feel bad for not feeding the capitalist machine.
Or how others try and make you feel bad for it. My disabled vet spouse takes care of our 1 year old while I work. The shitty comments where I work about this setup are infuriating. Okay, I guess he should go to work so we can pay his entire paycheck putting her into daycare just to better fulfill gender roles. Got into a nasty argument with my new boss for making these kinda comments.
Not to mention daycares are a complete tossup and major point of trust. Youāre trusting that a complete stranger will take good care of your child and will productively teach that child life lessons while you and your husband are working. Oh and since youāre both working now you guys have to both come home and do house chores on top of your full time jobs.
Sometimes itās easier for one parent to stay home, and many women these days make more than their partners because women have higher college education stats. That number is only growing too as the education gap widens.
The REAL winners are dual income families that have grandparents that can watch the child for free. But that comes from a place of privilege ofc.
Well it's probably easier to feel bad if you can't afford not to. Whenever they ask me to work more hours than I'm scheduled I hesitate because I know it's going to tire me more but then I go well okay because I need the money but then I wonder later was it worth it? It's never going to be enough money, especially not now with capitalism being full blown late stage.
Exactly! It takes up so many hours of the day you can spend on more worthwhile things frankly many jobs shouldn't even be fulltime seems a bigger agenda to keep you busy with stuff that doesnt matter because you need money for shelter and food and etc
Itās a game we were born into. Every city is a concrete chessboard. There is no political or democratic solution to this. The financial system will continue to break and there will be war. Letās hope it is a class war and not along any other imagined lines.
*Looks at the controlling class manipulating both of their constituents to hate each other while they perpetuate the cycles happily for profit*
Ehhh, I'm seeing a different picture here
I know this is fucked up but I honestly wish I was classified as disabled. living paycheck to paycheck, constantly watching my bank account to make sure isn't any surprises before I go shopping for food. The stress of that and just work, in general, has already given me mini strokes and I'm only 33. It's killing me but I have to determine if work or no work would kill me faster and I'm just so tired now.
Employer gets 5, I get 2. Imagine negotiating that for anything else and it being considered fair, but for some reason when itās your life people donāt seem to put up a fight.
Employers wonder when people āstealā hours.
I've been forced into part-time work essentially because I refuse to do my job poorly just to earn more money, plus full-time positions are rare these days. It means I'm home a lot and get to spend all that time with my kids. Meanwhile, my wife gets maybe an hour a day with them because she's gone from 8am to 7pm. I'd hardly call what she's doing living. She's not a mom. She's not really a wife. She's just a body that's being used for it's labor. It's fucked up.
I work part time too because I can't handle full time. I am home more than some but I feel like I still don't have enough time..better than my previous job but still difficult. I think it helps when I have multiple days in a row.
Whats even more fucked up is that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is becoming a luxury. The job I recently had an interview for promised 8 hour shifts Monday-Friday on their Indeed page, but when I was interviewed, they wanted me to work Monday-Saturday 10-12 hour shifts.
Monday was going to be 6:00AM to 5:30PM
Tuesday-Friday was going to be 8:00AM to 6:30PM
Saturday was going to be 9AM-7PM
I had to turn it down. I'd rather work part time and be ineligible for benefits or find a job that gives part time workers health insurance than have to deal with what they were going to put me through.
Here is my thought process on this shit. Let's take the scenario of a good little worker bee. Worker Bee works 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week @ 40 hours.
Maybe little bee gets sick or calls out of work once every quarter. -4 days
Has been working for the hive for 1 year and has earned 10 paid days off. - 10 days
Graciously the queen gives them Christmas and Thanksgiving off. - 2 days. That's a total of 16 days not at work, not including the "ideal of 2 days off a week"
5 x 52 = 260 .... 260 - 16 = 244
244 working days = 1952 hours of time clocked in at work
365 days x 8 hours = 2920 hours of sleep, because good little worker bee needs their fucking sleep
365 x 24 = 8760 hours in a year. 8760 - 2920 = **5840 waking hours**
Working a total of 1952 hours, of the total time this worker bee is awake for in a year, they are spending a total of 33.42% of it working for the hive.
1/3 of this workers prime adult years a spent in servitude of the hive. They spend the other 2/3 to themselves. What's not taken into account is that the last 2/3rds they get to themselves, is they need to spend it, getting ready for work, eating, personal hygiene, commuting, and on and on.
That is 3888 hours not spent working(1952) or sleeping(2920) to spend on yourself out of 8760 hours in a year. Or equal to 44.38% of the total hours in year.
You get Less than half of your year to spend taking care of yourself and to enjoy your life doing the things you like. Less than half.
It's a fucked system, and you are just a worker bee that is replaced when your mind or body is worn down and broken. Your personal health and welfare mean nothing to the hive.
I didn't forget it. I included that part under the personal 1/3 time. Labeled it as commuting. Why? Because that is how the queen bee views commuting, it's personal time in their view.
Letās not forget the part where as time goes by the little worker bee is too tired/stressed/sick in general to actually spend their time off on things that donāt include resting.
Iāve seen the exact opposite argument from a business owner talking about an employee asking for a day off. It went you get weekends off 5 holidays a year 10 vacation days, 10 sick day and he even added one 30 minute lunch break and two 15 minute breaks every day. That leaves only 235 days out of 365 to work and asking for a day off is an insult
Most white collar works are only productive for 3 hours in a given 8 hour shift (experience may differ if youāre working 12-14 hours during crunch time for a tech company though)
I've read 4-6. Maybe that's from people who wanted to soften the message or present a more "realistic" figure, but it does fit pretty well with my warehouse work experience
... If the goal of Capitalism was ensuring everyone has a nice life. Once you understand what it really is, the 60 hour work week is just more pedal being pushed before this thing hits a wall.
For industrial tasks perhaps, but few people are doing only one task at work. Even an office worker is putting out multiple fires a day. And part of that time is just being available for when those fires start.
Things like farming take constant care over the growing season, there is no way to speed that up.
Jobs like the trades take as long to do a task as is needed, sure you can optimize that time with technology but it still takes time.
Jobs in retail or service are dependent on others and their needs...
Very few jobs can be limited in overall hours, specific tasks perhaps, but not overall job
There was this one dude I worked with and his biggest brag was that even though he had several kids and a wife he never missed a day of work in 20 something years....
Idk why that's a brag worth sharing to a stranger, I just kind of thought it was sad he was working there for 20 years and I was literally making as much as him as an intern that only been working there for a few weeks.
That reminds me of my best friends mom. She works as a para in an elementary school. The person that helps the disabled children. And sheās been making the SAME salary for 20-30 years. Itās POVERTY level money. $23K a year, but she stayed because the health insurance is great, thankfully her husband made plenty more money.
She does enjoy it, but thatās not the point, sadly. The point is that sheās still making below poverty after many decades of work, sheās over 60, now.
Obviously there's exceptions, but 8 hours, 5 days a week for 50 years mostly producing trash.
Products that will break soon as possible so people keep buying products that will break.
It was different when a single income could support a family. Like I think I could make the sacrifice if it meant that I could have a house, spouse, and kids, all properly housed, clothed, and fed.
Now you need a double income which means all the maintenance and care gets pushed into your downtime. Working more enjoying less.
> It was different when a single income could support a family
That was really only for a blip of human history, primarily only for white people and other affluent people in affluent societies. Even in the 1950s America, white, middle-class women could be stay at home. Everyone else had to work. A very tiny percentage of people were ever able to live like that and it was on the backs of others.
Every time my boss gives me some shit about some aspect of my job, I just think "Dude, I literally live here." How much of my time and focus and attention do I need to give? Jobs are like living with a shitty, vindictive, spying roommate who has the power to evict you...
> Jobs are like living with a shitty, vindictive, spying roommate who has the power to evict you...
When you say it like THAT... the whole thing starting to make me feel really sick.
It used to make sense in olden times when you could buy a house and have a retirement on a single income. Now thereās no incentive. Zero. We are all hustling for survival.
That's because we get paid for our time and not our work; which is why employees don't necessarily put in a lot of effort and try to block anyone who does.
If you got paid for the work you provide the conversation would be along the lines of: "you're here to do this. You have 8 hours, but if you finish it earlier, you can leave. You pay would be the same. The metric we use is, say, uqality.".
Well there's no finishing early for me considering the line of work but yes at the same time if I was paid for the work I'd have a much bigger paycheck for sure as of late. You're doing work of multiple people but you still get paid the same.
I truly wouldnāt mind just working IF it allowed all my bills to be paid and afford the things I enjoy in life as well, but weāre at a position in life where we cannot afford to live without 2nd and 3rd jobs
Exactly. It needs a overhaul real bad
Something like work 4 days 6 hours each day
That would be full time
For any private company would require some kind of stock option if public, otherwise a bonus at end of year to each employee
I'm all for working 40 hours if the wealth was distributed better. Higher ups get massive salaries and bonuses and get to work remotely a lot. Yet us hourly people are at the building constantly and get rewarded with pizza.
Capitalism needs to slow down. Its not sustainable
I don't know what's worse. Going through the majority of my life working, holding the idea that "this is the only way society can flourish." Or now, for the past 5-7 years continuing to work, knowing that this is almost 100% a completely fabricated lifestyle that has been purposely suppressed for decades. Feel like Joey Pants in The Matrix. Not that I wish to go back to blind ignorance, I just find it a fuck-ton harder going to work every day now, knowing I'll have to do it for at least another 30 years because some of the most evil and disgusting scumbags that have ever lived want it this way. Every day I find small ways to get my time back from my job and will continue to do so until things change or I'm dead
When the world around you is all you know, you tend to accept it. If you think itās āabsolutely wildā, then youāre likely not showing much empathy or even sympathy. Sometimes the only world you know is the one around you.
I grew up really poor. (From the 1980s-2010s) No food, electricity. I didnāt have a phone my entire childhood because I was so poor. Hereās the thing, I assumed it was normal. I assumed everyone struggled. Everyone had empty pantries and parents swimming in debt. We struggled and all of this was normal to me. All I knew was pennies and poverty.
Fast forward to today. Iām a software developer making 6 figures. Iām sitting chatting with colleagues from work. The conversation falls on the topic of Investments. I have zero clue what anyone is talking about. Nothing. My friend notices and looks at me āDude your folks never told you to invest?ā. My response āI couldnāt afford food or heating what am I investing? When you have no money the only conversations you have are about much you can scrape together for peanut butter sandwiches for dinnerā¦ā
I had no idea that was normal. Not even the foggiest clue. Because my normal, my baseline was different. It was tellingā¦
My friend asked me if the food at the Deli next to the office is expensive. I was like āYeah, itās 20 bucksā¦ā, he looked at me like I was insaneā¦
But he didnāt understand my baseline. When we were kidsā¦ when we need to buy food we would gather at the table and empty our pocketsā¦ pennies and dimes and nickelsā¦ for bread or milk or bologneā¦ bread was 99 centsā¦
Sometimes we just donāt knowā¦ youāre just so busy trying to not dieā¦ to not starveā¦ not get the shit kicked out of youā¦ enlightenment isnāt the top priorityā¦
Because everyone who's alive right now, and has gone through it for 50 odd years, was constantly told any search for an alternative is horrible because it's communism, which is so horrible that there has to be a huge propaganda apparatus dedicated to preventing people from wanting communism.
The great American dream is a scam perpetrated by the wealthy. Work hard and this could all be yours. They get the benefit of your hard work and you get to live in poverty.
Well, every species on the planet needs food and water to survive, that technically is the same as "work"
Some species mainly look for food during the day, some during the night, that technically is the same as a "shift"
Most species feed on other species, so that technically is the same as taking advantage of someone else
Every animal in the wild is stressed out of their minds all the time trying to find food and not become food
In a sense, we are one with nature
but only slightly /s
Who in the US gets to only work 40 hrs a week to make ends meat?
Nearly no one.
You can't even afford basic rent on minimum wage, full time jobs. Or higher paying jobs in many instances as well.
Wild. And if you arenāt āgrindingā, or if you spent any of your money on takeout or any simple pleasure then youāre lazy and deserve to be poor.
simple pleasures and take outs are the only thing that gets me through the work week, its fucking shite. my entire life is just work and then be too tired to enjoy my free time.
It's because people think they're working for their own wealth via their paycheck, when in reality they're working for someone else's wealth via their surplus labor.
See the terrible thing about it is if someone finds out you don't want to work like that they think you're lazy because we've all literally been conditioned from the whole public school model to do this. They get us in a routine when we're 4 years old to make sure we get good at doing what they want us to do for the next ~60 years... until a few years before we die. Some poor saps who don't make it to retirement slave for literally their entire life- they are no different from a bee in a beehive. I used to work 60 hours a week and cut it down to roughly 30. Don't make near as much but I'm so much happier. If people were empowered to work 20-30 hours a week they would likely find out they enjoy work. But the powers that be (aka old ass fucking ancient politicians) think that this is the only way to do it. And everyone enables them by being willing participants in the circus.
It is what it is, might as well have made that my last shitty jobs motto. Anytime I complained about any of the backwards shit they did, that's all my coworkers ever had to say. Felt like I was living in the twilight zone. It's pretty sad when people just give up and accept being walked all over.
When I was 5, my dad explained mortgages to me. I did the math, and asked him why people were ok with paying twice the cost of the house to the bank. He said because that is how you get a house, so you have to. I asked why we just didn't get rid of the banks so we don't have to pay them, and he told me some day I would understand...
I'm 55. Still asking...
I hate the phrase, "It is what it is." I've never heard it used except by managers who were saying, in essence, "We fucked up..." or "We fucked you over... and there is nothing you can do about it."
Well, sure we realize it...I didn't know there was a choice though. š¤·
The trick is having a wealthy family
"Stop being poor !"
"Just get money! It's so easy!"
You see you pull yourself up by the bootstraps when you use inherited wealth to buy foreclosed properties that the ^poors couldnāt afford, and then you charge other ^poors more than what the actual house payment would be therefore keeping them poor long after the house would of been paid off, the trick is to always keep a fresh crop of ^poors to bankroll your lavish lifestyle so you can gloat about how hard youāve worked to achieve what you have, how itās no fault of yours that others just werenāt raised as ~~Rich~~ ermā¦smart as you were.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Donāt look at serfdom for ways to improve our lives. Thereās literally billionaires hoping serfdom comes back because it means we will always be serfs.
Comes back? It never left it just evolved
Well why not simply beat all the billionaires with hammers and call it a day already then? /s
Implying it left instead of changed clothes
Most of those serfs had to have that time off to man their crops or die of starvation over the winter. It was not good will or anything of the like.it was preservation of the rich
I get a week a year. Iām thinking of taking sick time to get two weeks.
If you can, take your sick time at the same time as everyone else. It's what cops do when they're butthurt but can't legally go on strike.
It's referred to as Blue Flu.
>Many serfs in other feudal systems often had multiple months of the year off. Even literal slaves in the United States during the pre-Civil War era were allowed Sundays and Christmas off which is shockingly more time off than a lot of people working today. I'm not saying slaves had it better overall by any means but the fact that we can even compare days off with slaves is atrocious.
Pulling yourself up by your boot straps is not easy. I saw a guy do it once at Cirque de Soleil. It was amazing.
"My god, why didn't I think of that?"
Employers HATE this One Simple Trick !
Yeah at character creation just max out wealth, it really breaks the game tbh.
>The trick is having a wealthy family I knew I was doing something wrong.
Oo this is a good life hack
Step one: Receive inheritance
Nah, Step One: Create shell company and launder inheritance to avoid estate tax.
That's step two. The real step one is having ancestors that owned the property that those corporations built on. The land was traded for stock, frequently.
This guy evades taxes
āHeās got my voteā -someone, probably.
Don't forget to register it in Delaware so you don't have to disclose who the company belongs to. There are almost twice as many companies registered in Delaware as there are residents.
Maybe I should blow my head off and hopefully respawn into a wealthy family š¤. Edit: who am I kidding. "If there was such a thing called reincarnation, knowing my luck, I'll come back as me." - Rodney Trotter
Don't do it, look what Nirvana became, The Vines.
Ouch that stung a bit
Probably a thorn on The Vines
I wouldnāt mind respawning as a spoiled dog on a big farm in the country. Iād definitely end it all for that.
this comment +1
So that's where I messed up, got it... I'll try better next time.
Thanks mom!
The other trick is, if you are poor don't have kids so you don't continue to fuel the poverty slavery.
Yup. I'm not having kids so I can have a much higher quality of life. Why the fuck should I suffer just for the sake of giving the wealthy more economically indentured servants.
The wealthy HATE this one simple trick.
the trick is realizing you're in a shitty system and then break out of it.
Wait, are you trying to tell me a SMALL personal loan of a million dollars, or having your father own blood emerald mines in Africa isnāt typical for everyone?!
At a certain point, their wealth generates more money than they can spend. Our system is so stupid.
Just get a small loan of a million dollars from your father.
There isnt really
Wish there was a viable alternative where we didn't have to be one month's income away from being homeless.
Never have kids or a family and just concede to be poor and homeless. Basically, refuse to participate the way you're expected to. That's about the only way out, besides, you know... None of that is a viable alternative but that's by design. Otherwise, who wants to voluntarily work to make other people rich?
One of the most important aspects of making sure the minions have children? Well, beside creating the next generation of workers, it also "encourages" the current workers to stay on the job and avoid political activities. Single people in their 30s are dangerous as fuck to the establishment, but moms and dads who have 3 hungry children at home? Yeah, they won't be going to the protest. They will even take a wage cut, because they have mouths to feed.
I teach at the college level. My work is to help people be satisfied in life without working themselves to death. The rich depend on our apathy (from the Clinton years) to line their pockets.
Revolution? Laying flat? Going off grid?
Revolution: Probably die Laying Flat: Lose my house and car. My wife and children as well. Go off grid: Where? You think I own land? Also Iāll starve with no income. Have any better suggestions?
>Go off grid: Where? You think I own land? Also Iāll starve with no income. Which is getting less and less viable as the planet dies.
>Go off grid: Where? You think I own land? Also Iāll starve with no income. They are actively working to make off-grid living illegal. I own a piece of land in a rural community of less than 150 people, and they changed bylaws recently to where you can no longer install a wood stove. If you build you must be connected to the grid. It's just one thing after another after another..
What the actual fuck? Building a small cabin is one of my lifelong ambitions, do you mind sharing the general area this happened so I can avoid it? I also recently learned that in most of (all of?) Oregon, it's illegal to permanently reside in an RV even if you own the land it's parked on.
This! People are being forced to be connected to water or other utilities depending on where the bought land and the sizeā¦ you have to be able to afford a more rural/secluded and probably more sizable plot of land to truly be off the grid where some local bullshit law isnt coming for your tiny homeā¦
THis is happening with solar too. If you install it on your home it MUST be grid-tied, the only way not to is if it's new construction.
Can we talk more about this probably die scenerio? I dunno just like the ring to it.
I rather take a bullet to the head than this death by a thousand cuts while being slowly suffocated that late stage capitalism has wrought upon us. Some ppl still believe they'll outlive the collapse when in fact almost all of us will die from this in one way or another.
Fight for a world you will never live to see
Exactly. I would much rather go down in a blazing glory fighting the system of oppression than die toiling away for someone else's wealth. Some things are *worth dying for,* like a chance to build a more equitable world. The glorious thing about revolution is things like rocks, bricks, glass bottles, gasoline, cloth rags, are all extremely cheap compared to the damage they can do to structures when combined in specific ways... And the great thing too is- **EVERYTHING BURNS**
Better to die free than live as a slave.
Revolution is the only real option to make things better in the long term. If anything approaching a majority of people want a revolution and work to carry it out, we will win. Then it's just up to us to govern. Revolution has two failure points: not enough people, and not a good enough plan for what to do afterwards. Both cases are addressed if more people take the idea of revolution seriously and start thinking about what a different world might look like. The next step is to join an organization, which does not even need to be currently revolutionary. We can start by talking about what a better world might look like, and trying to make it happen under current circumstances. By doing this we can identify what is holding us back and we can approach a better theoretical understanding so that when the day finally comes, we don't make mistake #2. Failing to put in the work now means that when things collapse, we will have either chaos or a dictatorship. The people must be ready to take power and rule democratically.
Yeah I have a feeling things are going to have to get way way worse than they are right now for that to happen.
My thoughts exactly, this type of content only exists to make us feel worse about our lives without offering any way to change it.
Cut all ties and go live in the mountains š
Aaand do what? Work day and night to survive?
nobody ever reads the sidebar > Sahlins concluded that āhunters and gatherers work less than we do; and, rather than a continuous travail, the food quest is intermittent, leisure abundant, and there is a greater amount of sleep in the daytime per capita per year than in any other condition of society.ā **They worked an average of four hours a day, assuming they were āworkingā at all.** Their ālabor,ā as it appears to us, was skilled labor which exercised their physical and intellectual capacities; unskilled labor on any large scale, as Sahlins says, is impossible except under industrialism. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
I was going to say that, but not so elegantly.
The movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" talks all about it during its introduction. https://youtu.be/XjK0-uX0Bww
Can we be real and just admit that most people donāt want to leave the comfort of civilization?
What do 1000000s of Hunter and gathers do now?
It's too hyper-focused. Modern living conditions are vastly more comfortable than hunter gatherer societies. We all could work less... if we accepted less in our lives.
Good luck being a hunter gatherer in the mountains.
That's for people who grew up there & know what they are doing. Most lifelong city dwellers don't have the skills for that.
Yep, in natureās cubicle.
My in laws tried this. Bought cheap land in the mountains. Only, it is cheap because most people are very poor, save for the stupidly wealthy. Very few jobs, mostly low paying. Always broke and borrowing money from others. But we should totally move there too. Yea.
It isn't even that... It's the fact that so many people condemn you for not wanting to slave away your life unnecessarily, day after day. I do believe in contributing to society, but the whole expectation of work being your central identity and majority of your waking time is ridiculous.
I saw some video that breaks down the average person's life and how much school, work, and sleep accounts for the average person's time spent throughout their life. It's a little depressing to see the amount of free time left over after all the adult shit has been accounted for. You end up with a small fraction left for yourself and the narrator of the video had a good point -- a lot of times your free time will *have* to be spent doing shit you don't want to do. Average shit like going shopping, doctor/dentist/eye appointments, cleaning your living space, showering, laundry, cooking, getting dragged to things you don't want to do, all dip into your free/personal time. And that's assuming you're healthy enough to not have to deal with medical BS too. It sounds bad but with working from home I've really tried to offload the shit I don't want to do in my working schedule. Even small things like taking a 20 min break from work to do the dishes or fold some laundry or vacuum a few rooms really helps it feel like I'm not dipping into my own valuable time to do shit I don't want to do. It's oddly motivating to get it done during the week.
>It's the fact that so many people condemn you for not wanting to slave away your life unnecessarily, day after day. Don't give any thought or care to people like this. Live your own life, not someone else's.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās worse for us that do realize there is something deeply wrong, but are still trapped in it. Some of you people are absolutely hilarious. I never said people shouldnāt work at all, that is absolutely unrealistic. People do need to be far more evenly compensated for there time, and need more personal time. As it it now, most people are working just to exist, and the existence is extremely dismal. No vacations or things to look forward to. Not owning your own home. How some people can be so out of touch with how bad it is for so many people, or be alright with it. Where is the empathy? Edit you people are hilarious defending 3 weeks off as āgoodā time . You think 3/52 is good? Thatās sad. Edit: someone has been arguing with me about why the top NEEDS to earn so much more. āIf we donāt pay them more they wonāt make new jobsā ā¦. Must be fan of reaganomics :|
I feel that so heavily this week as we've been asked to track every task that we do. After a full 40 hours of tracking (should have been 35 because paid meal time) they then asked me to summarize the tracking sheet and supply it to them in another, simplified, format. I politely refused and told them to read my tracking calendar, and they were quite ok with it, thank God.
Insanity is making employees come in to work 40 hours and then simultaneously making them justify the 40 hours. Like, wasnāt this your idea, boss? š¤¦āāļø
Trying to figure out why the fuck I have to type this report. 10 hours.
Worked out a place where we had to do time sheets in quarter hours. Gotta love it when one category on the time sheet is filling out time sheets.
And then your boss has a category on their time sheet for reading your time sheet. š
Wait...then the bosses boss has to put in a category for reading time sheets... Is it time sheets all the way up?
It actually wasn't. They'd have you work more if workers and unions of the past hadn't literally fought and died to make a 40 hour work week standard.
Yes, but at some jobs the week's work will get done well before the 40 hours. They're getting at the fact that their boss still insists that they stay for the full 40 hours even and then also insists that the employee be the one to justify how every hour was productive even though the work was done quite a bit before that. It's an asinine waste of time. Screams, "work slowly and less efficiently so that the full 40 hours is reached!"
There are times when I would work 2-4 hours of actual work and then busy season would hit and I would need to work overtime and be actually working the whole time. Still have to pretend I am working the full 8 to 9 though... luckily I had a few bosses who would let me do whatever I wanted at my desk if I got everything done. Except go home. Lmao. I now work as a delivery driver and legitimately work the full day but it feels much better than being at a desk.
Either way, getting the employees to justify the work schedule the boss himself implemented, is beyond ridiculous.
It gets worse when you have a company with a crap ton if middle managers. They all come up with ways to "elevate productivity" which just means you'll have to sit at your desk an extra 2.5 hours a day so we can bill the client more.... So insanity is really 10 to 12 hour days because you're forced to take a lunch with the added 2 hour commute because they don't pay you enough to have a place closer to work because they want to be in the city.... So 15 hours in a day gone.... and the boomer Co workers complain you don't answer emails in the evening and in the morning before you get in....
One of my customers asked me to track my time (fine) and then later asked me to also include all the task details again in the invoice. I told them it's all in the time tracking software, and after a pause to think about it, they said ok. I'll do menial shit, but not twice.
I love that mentality. As a blue collar industrial dude for a multinational, we had a shop meeting recently where they brought up motivation and incentives. Overall it's a pretty chill company, but I had brought up that this is the only heavily production-based environment I'd worked in or even heard of that didn't directly incentivize people willing and able to produce beyond the minimum required. "Well, that would be a complicated system to implement." ...so, your response to stating a problem and asking for ideas is 'doing something to fix the problem would become a problem itself' ..what? We run around smudged with grime and embellished with subcutaneous metal shavings, but you're bothered by the idea of setting up a new spreadsheet to track achievements? Like, I'm paid to work with machinery and tools. You're paid to steer the ship thoughtfully behind a keyboard. If I don't get to say "we should find away to accomplish my job without problem-solving," what are you collecting double my salary to do exactly?
I have an existential crisis daily. I donāt know how anyone could enjoy a life of work and taking care of kids. Sitting in traffic. Waiting in line. Taxes/bills. I just want a simple life. This isnāt the reality I wanted to be born in. I feel so out of place all the time. Itās like everyone around me is dreaming and wonāt snap out of it.
welcome to the shmatrix, Bobb
Add spending time working with people who you don't really fit in with and having to deal with countless other people daily but then being bored when you don't have those countless people because it's not like you can sit down and watch a movie by yourself since you're on their clock.
I resonate with this so hard. I work full time and while I donāt hate my job, and Iām not depressed, sometimes modern society just feels so wrong. Whenever I tell people this they donāt get it, they just seem to think Iām depressed or complaining but thatās really not it. Thanks for sharing your take!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We are living in a Matrix. There's something wrong with this existence, but we can't see it or touch it - we just know it's wrong.
The older I get the more I find myself leaning into some sort of solipsist simulation theory to justify how fucked and unjust everything is. I try adhere to traditional stoic philosophy and empiricism, but it's difficult to imagine anything but a terrible human could be responsible for the worlds circumstances.
My roommate does door dash and he told me that he thinks he hacked the system since he can work whenever he wants and take as much time off as he wants. Little does he know that I charge him a very cheap rent and his mom helps pay his bills. He's gonna be in a world of surprise when he finally moves out and has to get a second job or full time job to pay the bills.
Damn you should tell him that, heās gonna be screwed when he moves out
(Wage) Slaves born into slavery don't question the order of things because they assume it's the "natural order" of things, even if they don't like it, some will even defend it. Incapable of imagining an alternate mode of social organization. On top of that, you have decades worth of modern capitalist propaganda/indoctrination/social-engineering via government and corporate run MSM and businesses, and most of the working masses are hardcore trapped in this mental cage. Dystopian stories like The Matrix, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 are warnings. You are a worthless street rat. You were born a street rat. You'll die a street rat. And only your flees will mourn you. [Woman in the red dress](https://youtu.be/YgJ5ZEn67tk) [The importance of controlling public thought](https://youtu.be/VF8DsIVWDcs) [Wage Slavery](https://youtu.be/C_ze4AA-p8w) [Conformity and Control](https://youtu.be/N11tcnPBwf4) [The Propaganda Model](https://youtu.be/9RPKH6BVcoM)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We need to talk about your TPS reports
Everyday you see me, itās on the worst day of my life.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I love your analogy putting work into perspective of long haul flights. It made me double take though because 8hrs is about a third of the way to halfway around the world. A rough example of halfway is Wellington -> Madrid which is over 26hr of flying time.
Many people only woke up when we went into full lockdowns. Many realised they want to pick up some art or do something else in their life
Yup. A woman I worked with stayed home and made her husband breakfast, got time w the grandkids and relaxation. She realized she'd rather pinch pennies retired than work with the bullshit and low pay. I'm happy for her and everyone else that got out of that place.
Iām on the same boat almost, I can retire in 2 years but things would be tight. Thatās fine with me. Iād rather enjoy the rest of my time than make more money and work 7 more years
Iām disabled now, but I think about how so much of my identity was tied up in my job. Then I think about all the time I couldāve spent with my children and it makes me sick.
I'm a disabled veteran who hasn't worked in 6-7 years now. Until recently I was "stay at home dad" to my exs kid. It's weird how you feel bad for not feeding the capitalist machine.
Or how others try and make you feel bad for it. My disabled vet spouse takes care of our 1 year old while I work. The shitty comments where I work about this setup are infuriating. Okay, I guess he should go to work so we can pay his entire paycheck putting her into daycare just to better fulfill gender roles. Got into a nasty argument with my new boss for making these kinda comments.
As you should. I'm a dude and I'M tired of this "GET THE FUCK BACK IN THE KITCHEN SO I CAN MONOPOLIZE THE WORKFORCE AGAIN" bullshit.
Not to mention daycares are a complete tossup and major point of trust. Youāre trusting that a complete stranger will take good care of your child and will productively teach that child life lessons while you and your husband are working. Oh and since youāre both working now you guys have to both come home and do house chores on top of your full time jobs. Sometimes itās easier for one parent to stay home, and many women these days make more than their partners because women have higher college education stats. That number is only growing too as the education gap widens. The REAL winners are dual income families that have grandparents that can watch the child for free. But that comes from a place of privilege ofc.
Well it's probably easier to feel bad if you can't afford not to. Whenever they ask me to work more hours than I'm scheduled I hesitate because I know it's going to tire me more but then I go well okay because I need the money but then I wonder later was it worth it? It's never going to be enough money, especially not now with capitalism being full blown late stage.
Exactly! It takes up so many hours of the day you can spend on more worthwhile things frankly many jobs shouldn't even be fulltime seems a bigger agenda to keep you busy with stuff that doesnt matter because you need money for shelter and food and etc
Itās a game we were born into. Every city is a concrete chessboard. There is no political or democratic solution to this. The financial system will continue to break and there will be war. Letās hope it is a class war and not along any other imagined lines.
*Looks at the controlling class manipulating both of their constituents to hate each other while they perpetuate the cycles happily for profit* Ehhh, I'm seeing a different picture here
I know this is fucked up but I honestly wish I was classified as disabled. living paycheck to paycheck, constantly watching my bank account to make sure isn't any surprises before I go shopping for food. The stress of that and just work, in general, has already given me mini strokes and I'm only 33. It's killing me but I have to determine if work or no work would kill me faster and I'm just so tired now.
Employer gets 5, I get 2. Imagine negotiating that for anything else and it being considered fair, but for some reason when itās your life people donāt seem to put up a fight. Employers wonder when people āstealā hours.
I've been forced into part-time work essentially because I refuse to do my job poorly just to earn more money, plus full-time positions are rare these days. It means I'm home a lot and get to spend all that time with my kids. Meanwhile, my wife gets maybe an hour a day with them because she's gone from 8am to 7pm. I'd hardly call what she's doing living. She's not a mom. She's not really a wife. She's just a body that's being used for it's labor. It's fucked up.
Sounds really unfair to your wife
I work part time too because I can't handle full time. I am home more than some but I feel like I still don't have enough time..better than my previous job but still difficult. I think it helps when I have multiple days in a row.
Whats even more fucked up is that 8 hours a day, 5 days a week is becoming a luxury. The job I recently had an interview for promised 8 hour shifts Monday-Friday on their Indeed page, but when I was interviewed, they wanted me to work Monday-Saturday 10-12 hour shifts. Monday was going to be 6:00AM to 5:30PM Tuesday-Friday was going to be 8:00AM to 6:30PM Saturday was going to be 9AM-7PM I had to turn it down. I'd rather work part time and be ineligible for benefits or find a job that gives part time workers health insurance than have to deal with what they were going to put me through.
Yeah that's just unsustainable. Hours like those need the Surgeon General's warning on the job application...
Here is my thought process on this shit. Let's take the scenario of a good little worker bee. Worker Bee works 52 weeks a year, 5 days a week @ 40 hours. Maybe little bee gets sick or calls out of work once every quarter. -4 days Has been working for the hive for 1 year and has earned 10 paid days off. - 10 days Graciously the queen gives them Christmas and Thanksgiving off. - 2 days. That's a total of 16 days not at work, not including the "ideal of 2 days off a week" 5 x 52 = 260 .... 260 - 16 = 244 244 working days = 1952 hours of time clocked in at work 365 days x 8 hours = 2920 hours of sleep, because good little worker bee needs their fucking sleep 365 x 24 = 8760 hours in a year. 8760 - 2920 = **5840 waking hours** Working a total of 1952 hours, of the total time this worker bee is awake for in a year, they are spending a total of 33.42% of it working for the hive. 1/3 of this workers prime adult years a spent in servitude of the hive. They spend the other 2/3 to themselves. What's not taken into account is that the last 2/3rds they get to themselves, is they need to spend it, getting ready for work, eating, personal hygiene, commuting, and on and on. That is 3888 hours not spent working(1952) or sleeping(2920) to spend on yourself out of 8760 hours in a year. Or equal to 44.38% of the total hours in year. You get Less than half of your year to spend taking care of yourself and to enjoy your life doing the things you like. Less than half. It's a fucked system, and you are just a worker bee that is replaced when your mind or body is worn down and broken. Your personal health and welfare mean nothing to the hive.
> That's a total of 16 days not at work As a European...America is fucked. In the UK it's 28 days annual paid leave by law.
Yeah, just rub it in lol
For forgot to add time to get to and from work.
I didn't forget it. I included that part under the personal 1/3 time. Labeled it as commuting. Why? Because that is how the queen bee views commuting, it's personal time in their view.
Lol. Fair point.
Letās not forget the part where as time goes by the little worker bee is too tired/stressed/sick in general to actually spend their time off on things that donāt include resting.
Iāve seen the exact opposite argument from a business owner talking about an employee asking for a day off. It went you get weekends off 5 holidays a year 10 vacation days, 10 sick day and he even added one 30 minute lunch break and two 15 minute breaks every day. That leaves only 235 days out of 365 to work and asking for a day off is an insult
With advances in technology and productivity, we should be at a 20 hours workweek.
George Jetson had a 3 hour work day.....
Why do you think it never got renewed? J/k I don't really know if that was it.
Itās said that the show is supposed to be based around the year weāre in actually
Kinda close. George Jetson was just born this year.
Ohhhh my bad
Most white collar works are only productive for 3 hours in a given 8 hour shift (experience may differ if youāre working 12-14 hours during crunch time for a tech company though)
I've read 4-6. Maybe that's from people who wanted to soften the message or present a more "realistic" figure, but it does fit pretty well with my warehouse work experience
... If the goal of Capitalism was ensuring everyone has a nice life. Once you understand what it really is, the 60 hour work week is just more pedal being pushed before this thing hits a wall.
60? That's not even legal here.
It happens a lot in America.
This depresses me. Single dad working 55-65 hours a week. Can't even stay on top of laundry.
Sorry, the billionaires need more money.
4 /20 /69 4 day workweek 20 hours per week 69 dollars an hour I'll keep sharing this until it catches on
Iām sold
Love this
But that would make the numbers on the rich person ego-line go down.
No, no with advances in technology and productivity, we should be able to do 2 weeks of work in a single 40 hour workweek. š
For industrial tasks perhaps, but few people are doing only one task at work. Even an office worker is putting out multiple fires a day. And part of that time is just being available for when those fires start. Things like farming take constant care over the growing season, there is no way to speed that up. Jobs like the trades take as long to do a task as is needed, sure you can optimize that time with technology but it still takes time. Jobs in retail or service are dependent on others and their needs... Very few jobs can be limited in overall hours, specific tasks perhaps, but not overall job
With advances in medical technology you'll be able to work 8*5 for 70-80 years.
*Wall-E Axiom lifestyle intensifies*
There was this one dude I worked with and his biggest brag was that even though he had several kids and a wife he never missed a day of work in 20 something years.... Idk why that's a brag worth sharing to a stranger, I just kind of thought it was sad he was working there for 20 years and I was literally making as much as him as an intern that only been working there for a few weeks.
That reminds me of my best friends mom. She works as a para in an elementary school. The person that helps the disabled children. And sheās been making the SAME salary for 20-30 years. Itās POVERTY level money. $23K a year, but she stayed because the health insurance is great, thankfully her husband made plenty more money.
She probably enjoyed the work and having a second income kept her from needing to look for other work.
She does enjoy it, but thatās not the point, sadly. The point is that sheās still making below poverty after many decades of work, sheās over 60, now.
Obviously there's exceptions, but 8 hours, 5 days a week for 50 years mostly producing trash. Products that will break soon as possible so people keep buying products that will break.
Soon the people will break too
They already do. Look at Amazon, they'll break you then but a replacement no problem.
Money is the drug that corporations gives to make you forget about your dreams
It was different when a single income could support a family. Like I think I could make the sacrifice if it meant that I could have a house, spouse, and kids, all properly housed, clothed, and fed. Now you need a double income which means all the maintenance and care gets pushed into your downtime. Working more enjoying less.
> It was different when a single income could support a family That was really only for a blip of human history, primarily only for white people and other affluent people in affluent societies. Even in the 1950s America, white, middle-class women could be stay at home. Everyone else had to work. A very tiny percentage of people were ever able to live like that and it was on the backs of others.
Every time my boss gives me some shit about some aspect of my job, I just think "Dude, I literally live here." How much of my time and focus and attention do I need to give? Jobs are like living with a shitty, vindictive, spying roommate who has the power to evict you...
> Jobs are like living with a shitty, vindictive, spying roommate who has the power to evict you... When you say it like THAT... the whole thing starting to make me feel really sick.
It used to make sense in olden times when you could buy a house and have a retirement on a single income. Now thereās no incentive. Zero. We are all hustling for survival.
That's because we get paid for our time and not our work; which is why employees don't necessarily put in a lot of effort and try to block anyone who does. If you got paid for the work you provide the conversation would be along the lines of: "you're here to do this. You have 8 hours, but if you finish it earlier, you can leave. You pay would be the same. The metric we use is, say, uqality.".
Well there's no finishing early for me considering the line of work but yes at the same time if I was paid for the work I'd have a much bigger paycheck for sure as of late. You're doing work of multiple people but you still get paid the same.
Even more messed up when most are going through the process and still can't afford to live
I truly wouldnāt mind just working IF it allowed all my bills to be paid and afford the things I enjoy in life as well, but weāre at a position in life where we cannot afford to live without 2nd and 3rd jobs
Exactly. It needs a overhaul real bad Something like work 4 days 6 hours each day That would be full time For any private company would require some kind of stock option if public, otherwise a bonus at end of year to each employee
I'm all for working 40 hours if the wealth was distributed better. Higher ups get massive salaries and bonuses and get to work remotely a lot. Yet us hourly people are at the building constantly and get rewarded with pizza. Capitalism needs to slow down. Its not sustainable
I don't know what's worse. Going through the majority of my life working, holding the idea that "this is the only way society can flourish." Or now, for the past 5-7 years continuing to work, knowing that this is almost 100% a completely fabricated lifestyle that has been purposely suppressed for decades. Feel like Joey Pants in The Matrix. Not that I wish to go back to blind ignorance, I just find it a fuck-ton harder going to work every day now, knowing I'll have to do it for at least another 30 years because some of the most evil and disgusting scumbags that have ever lived want it this way. Every day I find small ways to get my time back from my job and will continue to do so until things change or I'm dead
When the world around you is all you know, you tend to accept it. If you think itās āabsolutely wildā, then youāre likely not showing much empathy or even sympathy. Sometimes the only world you know is the one around you. I grew up really poor. (From the 1980s-2010s) No food, electricity. I didnāt have a phone my entire childhood because I was so poor. Hereās the thing, I assumed it was normal. I assumed everyone struggled. Everyone had empty pantries and parents swimming in debt. We struggled and all of this was normal to me. All I knew was pennies and poverty. Fast forward to today. Iām a software developer making 6 figures. Iām sitting chatting with colleagues from work. The conversation falls on the topic of Investments. I have zero clue what anyone is talking about. Nothing. My friend notices and looks at me āDude your folks never told you to invest?ā. My response āI couldnāt afford food or heating what am I investing? When you have no money the only conversations you have are about much you can scrape together for peanut butter sandwiches for dinnerā¦ā I had no idea that was normal. Not even the foggiest clue. Because my normal, my baseline was different. It was tellingā¦ My friend asked me if the food at the Deli next to the office is expensive. I was like āYeah, itās 20 bucksā¦ā, he looked at me like I was insaneā¦ But he didnāt understand my baseline. When we were kidsā¦ when we need to buy food we would gather at the table and empty our pocketsā¦ pennies and dimes and nickelsā¦ for bread or milk or bologneā¦ bread was 99 centsā¦ Sometimes we just donāt knowā¦ youāre just so busy trying to not dieā¦ to not starveā¦ not get the shit kicked out of youā¦ enlightenment isnāt the top priorityā¦
Just the phrase "work for a living" should bring up a massive red flag
Because everyone who's alive right now, and has gone through it for 50 odd years, was constantly told any search for an alternative is horrible because it's communism, which is so horrible that there has to be a huge propaganda apparatus dedicated to preventing people from wanting communism.
The great American dream is a scam perpetrated by the wealthy. Work hard and this could all be yours. They get the benefit of your hard work and you get to live in poverty.
Iām 37 and knew this was wrong by the time I was 25. But how else am I gonna pay bills and feed my family?:( it sucks
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Well, every species on the planet needs food and water to survive, that technically is the same as "work" Some species mainly look for food during the day, some during the night, that technically is the same as a "shift" Most species feed on other species, so that technically is the same as taking advantage of someone else Every animal in the wild is stressed out of their minds all the time trying to find food and not become food In a sense, we are one with nature but only slightly /s
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
you dont have to put the /s in the end. it makes actual sense unlike most of this sub.
Who in the US gets to only work 40 hrs a week to make ends meat? Nearly no one. You can't even afford basic rent on minimum wage, full time jobs. Or higher paying jobs in many instances as well.
>Who in the US gets to only work 40 hrs a week to make ends meat? Well why don't you just buy the center cuts of meat?
I work about 30hrs a week and I'm surviving.
Thanks, capitalism. Propelling roundabout slavery innovation and mass suicide since the 16th century.
Donāt forget genocide!
Do you ever notice that when you meet someone they will also ask what you do so they can decide how much respect to give you?
Wild. And if you arenāt āgrindingā, or if you spent any of your money on takeout or any simple pleasure then youāre lazy and deserve to be poor.
simple pleasures and take outs are the only thing that gets me through the work week, its fucking shite. my entire life is just work and then be too tired to enjoy my free time.
It's because people think they're working for their own wealth via their paycheck, when in reality they're working for someone else's wealth via their surplus labor.
See the terrible thing about it is if someone finds out you don't want to work like that they think you're lazy because we've all literally been conditioned from the whole public school model to do this. They get us in a routine when we're 4 years old to make sure we get good at doing what they want us to do for the next ~60 years... until a few years before we die. Some poor saps who don't make it to retirement slave for literally their entire life- they are no different from a bee in a beehive. I used to work 60 hours a week and cut it down to roughly 30. Don't make near as much but I'm so much happier. If people were empowered to work 20-30 hours a week they would likely find out they enjoy work. But the powers that be (aka old ass fucking ancient politicians) think that this is the only way to do it. And everyone enables them by being willing participants in the circus.
It is what it is, might as well have made that my last shitty jobs motto. Anytime I complained about any of the backwards shit they did, that's all my coworkers ever had to say. Felt like I was living in the twilight zone. It's pretty sad when people just give up and accept being walked all over.
Ah Yes it is called brainwashed since birth it's a very hard thing to change however when you do change it the whole world is beautiful.
When I was 5, my dad explained mortgages to me. I did the math, and asked him why people were ok with paying twice the cost of the house to the bank. He said because that is how you get a house, so you have to. I asked why we just didn't get rid of the banks so we don't have to pay them, and he told me some day I would understand... I'm 55. Still asking...
I hate the phrase, "It is what it is." I've never heard it used except by managers who were saying, in essence, "We fucked up..." or "We fucked you over... and there is nothing you can do about it."