wealth inequality

[Glorious Leader]

Which is what has happened throughout history. Businesses have far more leverage and negotiating power over people. People need a job or they starve. Businesses can turn down employees they do not like. A lot of the time people cannot turn down a job or else they have no income and starve. You ignorantly don't seem to see this imbalance of power on who has the most negotiating weight.

You know in a round about way I agree with him. The few protections we enjoy from the predations of concentrated private capital are the result of a lot of people doing alot of hard work. Alot of labor strife and struggle as working men and woman resisted domination. The history of labor violence in the US is fucking violent as hell. Nobody wants that back but we need people to riot again if we want anything better. The government can help this but it needs to be pushed as well. Now I don't think he's arguing for revolution but why not? That's a choice to isn't it? The state and the capitalist class will never grant the masses a better share in life's blessings and liberties unless they are forced to do so.

[Deleted]

No, it's what you want government to do, not me. You support the expanded role of government in your life. You want the government to force your beliefs onto others. I do not.

No, its what they are supposed to do, but for some weird reason you do not seem to want them to do. I do not want to government to force believes on anyone, as them being created to serve the people isn't an believe but rather a fact. Minimum wage has been something they have been regulating in most places, (very few countries have no use for them, like i think Denmark and Sweden don't have any of them but do have very strong unions and high wages) that you don't want them to is just you that don't want them to. Not me trying to push some agenda.

[petej0]

Then you should be more clear about it?!?

I was, I was stating why people seem to think that low paying jobs were for teens.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You do have a choice. Is there only one store within driving distance? How far away ios the next closest store? I've driven over 40 miles, and I doubt there's many places where you are more than 40 miles from a second store.

As far as I am aware there are only chain grocers in my area that is reasonable driving distance. The one exception is a farmer's market I go to, but I need far more in the way of groceries and household essentials than green beans, strawberries, honey, pecans, peaches and carrots. Even the small family owned places around here only pay $8 an hour.


Can you honestly tell me there is a grocery store in your area that pays $15/hr? Other than seattle, I don't see that happening. Funny how Seattle's $15/hr min wage is working out really really well for them.

[unfilteredJW]

Another great source of ire I have is this whole "I did it, you should too" donkey doo. I've been through some shitty situations myself, and I pulled myself out from it. Unlike these other folks, I don't wish my hardships on others. I couldn't possibly be that petty.

[Deleted]

I was, I was stating why people seem to think that low paying jobs were for teens.

But none of those are valid reasons to not pay a normal wage on those jobs. And that was exactly what i replied.

[Cthulhu 2020]

You know in a round about way I agree with him. The few protections we enjoy from the predations of concentrated private capital are the result of a lot of people doing alot of hard work. Alot of labor strife and struggle as working men and woman resisted domination. The history of labor violence in the US is fucking violent as hell. Nobody wants that back but we need people to riot again if we want anything better. The government can help this but it needs to be pushed as well. Now I don't think he's arguing for revolution but why not? That's a choice to isn't it? The state and the capitalist class will never grant the masses a better share in life's blessings and liberties unless they are forced to do so.

Well yeah, people fought and died for high wages, people knew got sick and tired of being paid utter and complete shit for doing hard labor. To try and suppress them many companies did use force of violence, and now we have people like him who want to undo what many people gave their lives for. He's apparently even willing to be paid far less to see such a thing happen.

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Blaming a business because people are lazy is ridiculous. You want to bring a gun to the bargaining table, but seem to want to whine if a business brings that exact same gun (government) to the table.That makes you a hypocrite.

That you continue to think businesses do nothing in this, that they do not deliberately take advantage of situations, that they do not actively push for loss of worker rights and lowered wages is beyond naive. It's deliberate ignorance.

[Theodarzna]

President Obama calls it the "Defining issue of our time," which seems sweeping, but honestly is not sweeping enough. Inequality in this sense is a bit too abstract, its just a short hand. A lot has been done to make the lives of a very few so very very delicious, whilst also making the lives of working class people so much more wretched and precarious. Wealth inequality is ultimately about a certain peculiar group of people who can find such incredible significance about the ceiling height of an entrance hall, the hop content of a beer, while a much larger group will never believe in anything again.

I live in a small town and almost ever place here hires above minimum wage, I see it advertised on the help wanted.

What is so great about the Internet is everyone literally invented bootstraps with which they then pulled themselves up by, and also good jobs are literally raining out of the sky ect. The main reason to spend more is you want better quality. At the end of the day, food from Wal-Mart is likely a lot less quality than food from elsewhere. It's why say Milk from Grocery Outlet (Which may be solely a westcoast chain) is usually going to expire literally the next day, or within two days of purchase were as Milk from Safeway you will have a good two weeks to finish it before it turns. Sure the milk from Grocery Outlet is cheaper, but you have basically empty the carton in a day.

Or the fact that a 10 dollar toaster is cheaper sure, but also its probably going to break in a short while.

[petej0]

But none of those are valid reasons to not pay a normal wage on those jobs. And that was exactly what i replied.

I never claimed they were.

[Cthulhu 2020]

Or the fact that a 10 dollar toaster is cheaper sure, but also its probably going to break in a short while.

This is much of what I described earlier in this thread, this brand of cheap consumerism that at the end of the day, makes poorer people pay more for the same product than someone with money. Someone who can afford a $200 top quality toaster will have that toaster for a long time, my family bought a high quality toaster oven two decades ago that we still use. Someone who is poor might pay $20 for a cheap one, but they'll end up buying a new one each year and pay $400 in the same time period. Rental furniture, rental appliances, all things designed on the surface to give poor people a way to have the essentials of life, but they either pay for it and never own it, or they rent to own and end up paying a good 20% more than the item would have cost had they bought it up front. People tell me that there is nothing that inherently keeps poorer people poorer than someone who makes middle class wages, and yet it's so blatantly obvious. People who rent apartments never get to own that apartment, that money disappears from their net worth, where someone who's paying a mortgage gets the value of that house and the mortgage they've paid off added to their net value.

[Theodarzna]

This is much of what I described earlier in this thread, this brand of cheap consumerism that at the end of the day, makes poorer people pay more for the same product than someone with money. Someone who can afford a $200 top quality toaster will have that toaster for a long time, my family bought a high quality toaster oven two decades ago that we still use. Someone who is poor might pay $20 for a cheap one, but they'll end up buying a new one each year and pay $400 in the same time period. Rental furniture, rental appliances, all things designed on the surface to give poor people a way to have the essentials of life, but they either pay for it and never own it, or they rent to own and end up paying a good 20% more than the item would have cost had they bought it up front. People tell me that there is nothing that inherently keeps poorer people poorer than someone who makes middle class wages, and yet it's so blatantly obvious. People who rent apartments never get to own that apartment, that money disappears from their net worth, where someone who's paying a mortgage gets the value of that house and the mortgage they've paid off added to their net value.

There is a great book on this called Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich that goes over this. In most ways its actually much more expensive to be poor than it is to be wealthy since there are just so many fee's and recurring losses and one is so incredibly dependent on the vagaries of luck and good fortune to get by. Being lower income is incredibly expensive.

[Cthulhu 2020]

There is a great book on this called Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich that goes over this. In most ways its actually much more expensive to be poor than it is to be wealthy since there are just so many fee's and recurring losses and one is so incredibly dependent on the vagaries of luck and good fortune to get by. Being lower income is incredibly expensive.

Yep, read it, great book. But there are many, even people here, who deny this sort of thing exists.

[Theodarzna]

Yep, read it, great book. But there are many, even people here, who deny this sort of thing exists.

The Internet is a curious place were everyone is a self made millionaire who came from being a homeless orphan to being bought by google for a gajillion dollars and they majored in all of STEM, have zero student debt, and worked for less than min. wage whilst also doing everything they wanted. Everyone also is the sexiest person alive, their dads all work for Nintendo, and their edgy opinions are all mana from heaven that they used to outsmart people to standing ovations IRL.

[Cthulhu 2020]

The Internet is a curious place were everyone is a self made millionaire who came from being a homeless orphan to being bought by google for a gajillion dollars and they majored in all of STEM, have zero student debt, and worked for less than min. wage whilst also doing everything they wanted. Everyone also is the sexiest person alive, their dads all work for Nintendo, and their edgy opinions are all mana from heaven that they used to outsmart people to standing ovations IRL.

You forgot that they work in IT so every time Blizzard servers have a problem they know exactly how it would be such an easy fix and Blizzard is lazy and cheap for not resetting the router.

[Endus]

You are being disingenuous. I never said it was easy, in fact, I know it's difficult. That does not mean it can't be done. If it were easy, then more people would be doing it. After all, humans are lazy and complacent.

The problem is that you're looking at this at an individual level, rather than at the level of an entire economy. It cannot scale up. The entire reason that an individual can go and get additional training and secure themselves better opportunities is because that training sets them apart from other workers. If you're suggesting that all those workers get that training, all you're doing is setting the new minimum baseline for "unskilled labor".

It is not possible for everyone in the economy to get themselves a better job. Literally not possible. Both because there aren't enough jobs, and because those lower-paying jobs would still exist, and need to be filled.

At this point, you're demonstrating how thoroughly your individualistic "fuck everyone else, I've got mine" attitude has rendered you completely incapable of grasping how this issue affects economies as a whole. STEM degrees are the hot trend right now. If all those burger flippers went out and got STEM degrees, you'd see burger flippers with STEM degrees, not a huge burst of STEM employment. Same reason that a Starbucks barista with an MA in English Lit or whatever is a cliche; there simply are no jobs for that particular specialization, and getting that education is no guarantee.


All this to fight the "oppressive" idea that maybe those burger flippers should be able to live a decent life as a burger flipper.

[Machismo]

You seem to want business to control your life, and even if you don't, what you propose leads to business control of your life. You're naive if you think they won't take advantage of a vacuum of power.

I oppose corporatism, which means I do not want business to control my life. That doesn't mean I want you to control it, either.

[Endus]

I oppose corporatism, which means I do not want business to control my life. That doesn't mean I want you to control it, either.

Arguing to minimize the strength of government allows corporations the power to act as they will. Which is effectively corporatism. Your arguments encourage and support this, they do not oppose it.

[Machismo]

No, its what they are supposed to do, but for some weird reason you do not seem to want them to do. I do not want to government to force believes on anyone, as them being created to serve the people isn't an believe but rather a fact. Minimum wage has been something they have been regulating in most places, (very few countries have no use for them, like i think Denmark and Sweden don't have any of them but do have very strong unions and high wages) that you don't want them to is just you that don't want them to. Not me trying to push some agenda.

It's what YOU want them to do, not me. We want different things from government, and you want one that is burdensome and oppressive. Oddly enough, that is exactly what the corporatists also want. I want the government to only restrict actions which create actual victims, nothing more, nothing less. Our definitions of "want" and "need" seem to be vastly different.

[Deleted]

The Internet is a curious place were everyone is a self made millionaire who came from being a homeless orphan to being bought by google for a gajillion dollars and they majored in all of STEM, have zero student debt, and worked for less than min. wage whilst also doing everything they wanted. Everyone also is the sexiest person alive, their dads all work for Nintendo, and their edgy opinions are all mana from heaven that they used to outsmart people to standing ovations IRL.

I don't know about all the other stuff, but my mom says im very sexy!
But really, I know there are allot of people lying on the interwebs, but it also is something that people want to hear. People do not care about how Joe Smug had a terrible life, or how everyone took a shit at Paul when he was down in the gutter. People only care when the person who has a difficult time looks good or has a really exceptional story, like people getting stuffed with medical bills after surviving two completely different plain crashes.
When people look at the future they want to bet on being the one that wins the lottery, people never think they are going to end up in deadendstreet.

[Machismo]

Well yeah, people fought and died for high wages, people knew got sick and tired of being paid utter and complete shit for doing hard labor. To try and suppress them many companies did use force of violence, and now we have people like him who want to undo what many people gave their lives for. He's apparently even willing to be paid far less to see such a thing happen.

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That you continue to think businesses do nothing in this, that they do not deliberately take advantage of situations, that they do not actively push for loss of worker rights and lowered wages is beyond naive. It's deliberate ignorance.

If a business pushed to restrict worker rights/freedoms, I will oppose them.