this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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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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Controversial: how can illegal immigrants send money home but regular workers live paycheck to paycheck?
Rent would be cheaper if renters would unionize and wouldn't spend above an agreed on limit.
It's so hard to coordinate that only some workers can ask billionaires for better deals. Why? Why is not everybody ashamed that they cannot coordinate with their neighbors?
Roman's walked out of town once a year to remind the elite of their value. The west models itself after the Roman Republic but tries to skip on the hard parts.
They live six to a room.
Can confirm. I once had an apartment in NC. I was the only white guy in the complex. Everyone else was Latino. I had a one bedroom apartment. I was the ONLY single occupant in my building. The apartment below me was occupied by a guy, his wife, his infant child, his mother and at least one cousin. They were still the most gracious people I'd ever lived amongst. When his daughter was born they had a bigass cookout and invited everyone in our complex. That was the day that I learned I was the only white guy, and it was an amazing experience. I ended up letting some of the guys crash in my apartment while I was on the road, and I always came back to a clean house and a fridge full of leftovers.
Unfortunately I had to move back to OH after a year, but I'd go back to NC in a heartbeat if the situation allowed.
Given the shit-sandwich choice between OH and NC, I'd choose NC as well. It's almost civilized, if you can ignore the lock on the state legislature that the GOP has, fire ants, Aedes Egypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitos that don't give a fuck the sun is up, Lone Star ticks that make you allergic to consuming mammal, and an oppressively hot summer. Though I'd rather live in the mid-Atlantic or West Coast where the GOP hasn't gained as much traction.
And they're not sending that much back home.
...and the rest of their family spends those dollars on a 3rd world cost of living.
I don't know about "the West" -- literally most any western developed country besides the US understands what the "Bread" part of Bread & Circuses means. Labor laws, universal healthcare, paid vacation, paid parental leave, election laws designed to encourage voting and discourage election manipulation -- all of these things are, in some form or another, part of nearly every western developed country besides the USA.
Migrants are not sending money to strangers in their home countries. They are supporting families, just the same as those who are not migrants and live with their families.
But they also supposedly earn less. My point is that there are options to save money. The problem is bigger than having to increase wages.
In many cases someone will settle for a very low standard of living, and set aside a small amount to support family living in a country with a much lower cost of living.
Now, what is a low standard of living? We know that the world doesn't have the resources to let everybody live like an average American. Sooner or later, resource usage has to be reduced. Everybody will have a very low standard of living unless we figure out how to live comfortably with less.
In objective terms the lifestyle framed as the American ideal is unsustainable and inequitable, but much of the material value of the lifestyle carries little value in relative terms for genuine well being. Planning the built environment, cooperating in the community and workplace, and sharing benefits and burdens across our lives, would allow us to achieve a very high standard of living for everyone at a much more reasonable material cost.
I am not understanding the general theme of your various comments in relation to one another.
The theme is that I think that workers miss their opportunities when they frame the situation as a billionaire problem.
Fighting among ourselves for the crumbs left for us by those who pillage and hoard hardly seems the same as seizing the best opportunities.
Billionaires are the problem.
They hold all the power, but make no contribution. They shape society against the common interests of most of the population.
I prefer to think that billionaires are not the only ones who can bring an end to the infighting.
The population chooses to be shapen.
The population can choose differently, unless they reaffirm each other that only billionaires can create change.
Who claimed "only billionaires can create change?"
I figured because you wrote that they are the problem.
Billionaires are the problem.
They should not exist.
They are not able to create change, only to maintain the status quo, in which they continue to cause problems for everyone else.
Extra comment for billionaire contributions.
To put it bluntly: if they shape society, is that no contribution?
With some struggling, workers could invest part of their wages but they live paycheck to paycheck, of course often also not entirely by their own choice.
Instead of asking everybody to save, money is pooled in billionaires who don't struggle when they invest.
That creates an unfair power imbalance but workers could change everything with taxes if they suffered too much.
Billionaires shape society in their own interests, for unbounded accumulation of private wealth, generated from the labor of others, despite their not contributing any labor of their own, nor making any other contribution.