This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America's economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2026
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
Our Goals
- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
- Better worker representation, including but not limited to unions.
- Better and fewer working hours.
- Stimulating a massive wave of worker organizing in the United States and beyond.
- Organizing and supporting political causes and campaigns that put workers first.
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I cannot stop seeing this idea overlaid on every thing that I see or do or hear about. Every action is filtered through the lens of it being extractive and manipulative.
I feel extremely stressed because I see the bars of the cage and no one else around me wants to acknowledge them.
I do not like this. I would like it to stop please.
Reject consumerism, make things instead.
We have friends coming over, instead of ordering food from a mega corporation I am going to make pizza and potato wedges.
Where do the ingredients come from? Are you growing your own grain and milling it into your own flower? Do you have your own cows or goats to make your own cheese? Did you build your own oven? Fired with wood you cut down yourself?
Not buying the very last link in the chain doesn't matter. It only makes you feel like you're doing something.
You'd be more effective buying the pizza from a locally owned place.
Don't let perfect be in the way of better.
I'm not.
I'm asking people to not treat better as the solution; They way they do with rent controls and school loan forgiveness. Buying locally is fine to do, for you in your life, but it has no effect on the larger problem. Too many people pretend it does.
When making something nice I would buy the ingredients from local independents where I can. I can almost see the farm I get cheese and garlic from on a clear day but there is a hill in the way.
Its also risky though, they sell fucking massive slabs of halloumi style cheese. Its a lot of money but also a lot of cheese.
Can't do it for every ingredient with every recipe, but I am fed up of the just give up attitude I often hear simply because something isn't 100% perfect in every way and using that as a reason to not even try. So I do what I reasonably can.
Also, ingredients are cheaper than a fast food place. Better quality too.
Like I said, it makes you feel better, that's fine.
But don't pretend it's fighting the fight. Though if you don't pretend, it may not make you feel better.
Other than refusing to consume, what do you suggest doing that will achieve more and is easy for most people to do?
Organizing, protesting, voting and voter registration drives, marketing and coms. Even starting a union owned business, or something similar. Those kinds of things make a difference. Individual purchasing decisions don't.
Many of those are much more difficult for most people to do, are of questionable benefit or they already do.
Refuse to give them money, it is the only language they understand.
If you play the "vote with your wallet" game, the biggest wallet wins.
Who's wallet is bigger?
Also, no battle worth fighting has ever been easy. You should let go of that idea.
If I vote with my wallet and stop buying pizza. And I get my friends to do the same. And they get their friends to do the same. Then I don’t think it really matters the size of the wallet. Are billos suddenly going to start buying up all the pizza to make up for it? I doubt it.
Now you're organizing, like I suggested. But as you said that's very difficult. And that's even the more difficult goal to organise around.
Part of the fossil fuel play book in the 80's and 90's, was the idea of the "Individual Carbon Footprint'. They created that idea, specifically to shift the burden of climate change from them, to the consumer. They did so because they new the collective action need to make change that way, was far more difficult than pushing lawmakers to change the laws.
Is my message here not a part of organising?
No. It's more marketing, and coms.
Which is the least useful of the bunch. There's already plenty of that on social media. Organizing is action in the real world, not online.
Or did you mean bringing friends over for home made pizza?
That might be. If your helping them learn to cook for themselves, and teach others.
But your phrasing didn't suggest the goal weas the pizza. It was just a choice you made for a gathering that was happening anyway.
I am doing things in the real world and encouraging others to do so too.
Sure, but that has nothing to do with the post about it here.
Hey everyone. You want to change society? Just start a business. Easy peesy! Don't make small changes in your life, make massive financial overhauls.
That was just one, of a few suggestions.
Obviously not everyone can start a business. Who will work at your business every everyone else started their own?
But yah, if you want to make big changes fast, you need to make big moves.
It absolutely does. You're cutting out the part with highest markup. Skipping an entire manufacturing process.
You can get the ingredients for a fraction of the cost compared to a finished product.
Maybe. But price wasn't the argument being made. That's a non sequitur.
I'm sorry where do you think profit comes from? It's not grown on profit trees, it's baked into the price. Higher markup, higher price, higher profit.
Non sequitur my ass
The idea is capitalism. As in, buying from large corporations. Whatever the price or profit, the topic was about who and where you're buying from, not for how much.
"You want to change society. Yet you participate in it. Curious...."
I buy the majority of my groceries from a local farmers market. Things I can't get there I buy from Wal Mart. I buy pizza from a local mom and pop shop, where they live above their restaurant. I do everything I can to make buying from mega corps a last choice decision. My partner and I will be starting our garden next year and growing a lot of our own vegetables. We'll be raising pork pigs so we don't have to buy factory pork. There's so many little things you can do as an individual to choke off the billionaires.
But if you want to keep bending over like you seem to be acting, more power to you. Just don't blame others for society collapsing.
Those things are all good to do, because they support your local economy, and probably have better quality food for your own health.
But Walmart doesn't care, and doesn't view your local farmer's market as competition. As you said they don't have everything, and you still go to Walmart when you need to. I'm just saying be honest about your reasons. Buying from your farmers market isn't fighting capitalism. It's just buying better local food.
Both can be true. If I spend $80 at my market, and $20 at Wal Mart, the mega corp is only getting a fifth of what I planned on spending for groceries. I really don't give a shit personally if Wal Mart doesn't feel the sting of not getting an extra $80 from me, I feel better as a person spending that locally on small individual markets.
I'm not trying to take down Wal Mart by myself. But I can do little things individually that helps.
And unlike you, I am honest in my reasons. You seem to be projecting some serious animosity against those who are doing little things to shake the bird cage.
I'm pointing out that the "little things" don't actually shake the bird cage. At best they just make some noise.
Besides, shaking the bird cage only annoys or maybe hurts the birds. You need to open the door to actually free them from the cage.
Dismissing the average person doing small things is incredibly disingenuous of you, let alone anyone, to believe.
I'm hoping it motivates people to do more, if they truly believe in effecting change.
I don't expect them to like me for it.
Affecting change*. If you're gonna criticize people from doing little things to shake up the system at least be literate.
Some people can't do more. Some people don't have the means to do more. People on disability don't have the financial means to do more. So little things like spending less at mega corps vs supporting local is a little thing they can do. I won't expect someone with severe PTSD who is on permanent disability like my actual partner is from trying to start a unionized business. But they can certainly try and spend less at the major grocery corporations.
But I'm curious. What are you doing to change society, other than vomiting bullshit on the Internet and claiming the high ground?
I'm not criticizing people for doing little things.
I'm criticizing people for over inflating those little things. I'm criticizing people for telling themselves and others, those little things are going to "shake the system".
Also
Affect vs Effect
Take back power anyway you can.
Tenant unions, worker unions, worker cooperatives, community land trusts, tool libraries.
Work towards owning your business and your home and your community WITH your coworkers and your neighborhood and your community.
We can overcome the tyrants if we work together. Federal elections are only one small piece of the puzzle and no one will save us but ourselves.
Then do something. Why does someone else need to rattle the cage for you to break free? Why are Americans, who masturbate to the 2nd amendment, so afraid of taking back their country? There's 350 million of you, trillions of guns, and merely a few hundred of them. Start turning the streets red.
Because those who see what you see are in areas where they would be alone, considered a lone madman. Rest assured, people are gathering and talking.
"All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustimed."