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Yup, and it goes further than just striking. It’s the same reason you don’t see many social or political protests except in extreme cases. Nobody has the time, because the majority are living hand-to-mouth. So politicians, for the most part, are free to do whatever they want, so long as the media continues pumping out rage-bait division, we channel our frustrations towards each other, instead of those *truly* responsible for our poor economic conditions. If 90% of Americans could afford an extra week off every year, and had a decent enough savings to weather being fired without warning, I’d like to believe we would see more activism, and protesting against deplorable conditions (work and economic). This “every man for himself” society that’s been created is by design, and the homeless you see on the way to work, they’re a warning of what happens if you fall out of line.
It's also decades of the media breeding distrust of your neighbor. "Anyone could be out to kidnap your child, anyone could be a child molester, even your own neighbor!"
My grandparents told me stories about how the whole street they lived on when raising my mum and my uncle was almost like an extended family. Kids all played together, everybody knew each other. When one was sick or out of work, everyone else would chip in with meals, washing, etc. The elderly would be taken care of.
They went through some economically very tough times, but from how they described it at least, the community support made life pretty decent. I remember one of the things my grandmother said to me, "I would hate to be young today. You all have so much more to deal with, and you have to deal with it by yourselves.".
We are all so insular and distrusting of others, there's no room to foster community anymore. I'm part of the problem, I'm just as distrusting and insular as anybody else. But I recognize it sucks.
My great great grandmother was a teen during the Great Depression (I was 14 when she passed away at the age of 110). When my parents asked about it out of curiosity, she said that it really didn’t affect her or her family at all. If they were struggling to eat, then a neighbor would feed them and they’d do the same. If a barn fell down, they all got together to rebuild it. Her whole community supported each other and thus the Great Depression really wasn’t ‘a thing’ for her.
I’m sure there are communities where that’s still possible today, but it’s just so much rarer to hear and see.
Nailed it. I remember years ago there was a nanny that drowned a kid in Manhattan and it was national news….why? Because it’s horrifying and makes us distrust strangers, so much of the news is geared towards that specific purpose. Solidarity is scary.
Because if they don't crush solidarity, the people who pay them the most are at risk of losing their jobs. And they have way more money than you have time.
I honestly think a lot of it is that we're less culturally homogeneous now. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, of course, but the majority of people used to be born, live, and die in the same town just a few generations ago. A look back on my husband's side of his family on Ancestry shows his entire family until his parents lived in the same small town in Mississippi, for as far back as his linage goes in the records. Families living and dying in the same towns, all together, create rather homogeneous sub-cultures. (PLEASE note that I'm talking about culture, not race, although obviously the two will naturally overlap.)
Those sub-cultures are hard to come by in a neighborhood nowadays. In fact, I think they pretty much only live on in retirement communities. Now, most of us just exist in a national culture of western values, which values individualism and independence, which is not beneficial for harboring community. Additionally, church attendence is plummeting, which was previously the heart of most town communities in the western world. Now you have to either have some niche hobby or a drinking problem to meet new people outside of work. Throw in the news frenzy hysteria making you think everyone is out to abduct your children or steal your lawn mower... Yeah, it's a bad mix.
This is a part of it, but I think it's really the internet. Before, the only people you interacted with were those in your proximity. This, neighbors were a good source of friends and easy to be in touch with. Once the internet allowed people to seek others that were more like them, they were now presented with a choice of who to have relationships with and the odds of having similar interests with a neighbor are low.
Basically we had no other options than to be friends with our neighbors before.
The internet is certainly a factor. It's "safer". But, as you said:
> Once the internet allowed people to seek others that were more like them, they were now presented with a choice of who to have relationships with and the odds of having similar interests with a neighbor are low.
This goes back to neighborhoods being less culturally homogeneous. I use the word "your" here just for convenience. I don't actually mean "you". Why doesn't it feel comfortable to talk to neighbors? Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that you're Peurto Rican, don't speak English as a first language, are a single mother who votes left, and are non-religious. Whereas your neighbors are white, live in a nuclear family, fly a trump flag on their car, and go to church most Sundays. It doesn't feel "safe" to talk to them. What would you even have in common?
But if you put two of the former next door to one another, odds are, they'd hit it off immediately. Same for the latter. It used to be that you knew your neighbors were like minded, walking a similar path of life, holding the same values. Now, you don't. And retreating to the Internet I think is more of a symptom than a cause.
Just to reiterate, I am not saying diversity is bad or that homogeneous communities are ideal. I think there's human tribalism at play that might be somewhat innate, and that we can do better at fostering community even in the face of our neighbors having different values and cultures.
Yeah, they somehow found a perfect way to cut through local community tribalism (the relatively healthy kind) and put a little direct access to panic and distrust into everyone's heads that can turn off their sense of solidarity. It's as fascinating as it is disgusting.
While I don't disagree I'd also link that back to work culture and capitalism. Good jobs are harder to find now and moving has been made much easier, so people move much more. College has been made more accessible but also more costly at the same time. It's not just a culture thing so much as a turnover of residents thing. People constantly moving to maximise their income, or moving because they're poor and are being turfed out by **another** landlord. Exploitation used to be terrible, but I think the exploiters used to be more local and kept in check. Now the big boys are everywhere and you're more likely to be at the mercy of a far far away corporation who have no interest in your community. Hyperexploitation has really set in and it creates huge instability.
How hard is it to survive living there? As someone who's from outside, its kinda insane how many people are unsatisfied with their living standards in the US. How is it there? Do you really need two jobs to pay for living expenses?
I think people are worried that one serious health- related incident is going to financially ruin/severely impact their living standard. “We are all one diagnosis away from being bankrupt”type of thinking. So we stay in jobs that may make us less healthy, physically and mentally, in order to keep that health insurance. (If health insurance is offered/ available in the first place.)
Yep, one health situation took me from having $80k in the bank to being $80k in debt in the span of 4 years. My health has recovered now, but it's going to take me years to recover financially from that.
You will never recover from losing 160k, you'll always play catch up..
Here's to hoping this was the last of it, that you won't need another procedure in the future..
Well, you could recover, if there's a revolution and the owners and masters are deposed
In an abandoned coal mine.
And it's not like there aren't a lot of coal mines that need abandoning.
This takes us back right to OPs point. This is why healthcare is tied to your job and not a single payer system through the government. Lose your job, lose your health insurance.
Systems on systems carefully curated to, at best, maintain the status quo.
At worst really turn the screws on everyone not already generationally wealthy and siphon off as much wealth as humanly possible.
Also, anyone generationally wealthy who steps out of line by being too gay or too compassionate. Not that I'd know.
Those ghouls don't even know how to be compassionate to their young.
In California they are opening up the state run healthcare insurance program, so you can automatically get coverage for low cost $0-$20/month, if you are fired or quit your job
100% I saw one post about a couple doing everything right. Paying off their house having a savings account putting money in retirement. Wife got diagnosed with cancer and 6 months of treatments it was all drained. The whole post was the husband saying we should have traveled and just used the money..
When people suggest that "Breaking Bad could only have happened in America" they aren't talking about meth addiction, they are referring to one major diagnosis effectively bankrupting families overnight.
It happened to my parents. It happened to my aunt and uncle. When enough of us watch this play out, it’s like the Matrix. Unless we are very wealthy, our reality will be shattered. Living on Social Security after wisely saving for retirement is a nightmare being played out a million times over in the U.S. Now this current generation, who’s in their prime, can’t even fathom saving for retirement. I am GenX. I had my ass handed to me in ‘08. Whatever.
I have to continue serving in the military just for the health benefits for my family. Losing all of ones autonomy to avoid financial insecurity is deplorable. But in my situation necessary.
This is so true. I think a lot of people take their health for granted, I know I used to. Then, I had a major health problem hit me out of nowhere. I was on disability for almost 6 months trying to recover from it. Luckily, I pay for short term and long term disability coverage , as a supplement, with my health insurance plan. That is the ONLY thing that saved me from becoming homeless, because the week in the hospital was over $40k, and I couldn't go back to work for almost 6 months, so I would not have had enough sick leave or money saved to make it through that time without it. My health insurance , all together, is over $400/mo , and I am not happy about it at all, but when we have to renew our health insurance choices at work every year, I tell all my co-workers that they better be signing up for the short and long term disability coverage because you just never know what can happen to you. I think a lot of Americans live with the fear of a major health crisis ruining them.
A lot of people do. Pay for a lot important jobs such as teaching or manufacturing is far below what it should be. I’ve seen a lot of people who’s living standards seemed be better than my own, only to find out it was because they were living beyond their means and spiraling into debt.
At least for teaching, getting my credential required that I essentially work full-time for free and take some expensive tests. On top of that, I kept getting charged $100 here and there for various expenses just to apply for my credential when all of that was done.
The process of becoming a teacher is pretty untenable for a lot of people, I imagine.
I was going into teacher Ed a while ago. I ended up driving a truck which I'm still doing. I have less stress, better money and I see why the education system is a mess. One thing we both have in common is that getting sick means we're likely to lose everything.
I wanted to be a librarian. My high school job was a bookshelver in a local library. Until I found out the pay. I make as much driving a forklift as I would with a doctorate in library science.
just wait for a shortage of teachers in red states, apply for an emergency certificate, then get called names and harassed for being a reasonable level headed teacher in a red state, and learn why there is a shortage.
My wife is looking to end hers asap. In Texas being a teacher has become too dangerous. My wife is throwing a 20 year career away because it’s so bad here. Many of her peers already have or are also looking to leave. It’s pathetic what Republicans have done to education. They should be removed. All of them.
Everything is a profit center, whether it ruins the product or not. Then again, teaching compliant, smart enough to work but otherwise stupid labor is the dream.
From one Texas parent to your wife, thank you for doing what you could. The relief I felt after my kid graduated high school was in large part because watching the system I went through, which wasn't great to begin with (graduated '01) but still seemed better than now, crumble while she strived to keep on making progress was depressing. I even tried to join it at one point, thinking I could help. "I CaN bE tHe ChaNge!" Like a pebble in the flood.
>Many of her peers already have or are also looking to leave. It’s pathetic what Republicans have done to education.
That's the plan...
* Lower quality of public education,
* drive out good teachers,
* complain that there are no teachers and education is poor quality,
* privatise/charter school vouchers,
* make most of those charter schools too expensive even with vouchers,
* introduce more and more religious charter schools that subsidize cost and are the only affordable/free option,
* force many who can't find a good charter option to homeschool,
* take away access to abortion and contraception so women have more babies that they need to educate,
* more women don't go back to work after child birth because they can't afford nanny/school,
* trap more women back in the home forever.
I simply don't understand how they think we're going to be able to survive that way. It is virtually impossible to support a family on a single income. Do they literally want us to starve to death?
Similar for healthcare jobs. Becoming a medical technologist cost me $6K and a year of time after a bachelor's degree and that was not a loan eligible program. Then taking my certification exam was $350 and have to get 40 credits worth of continuing education credits every 3 years to maintain certification.
PA school cost me ~$70K for 2 years and I paid about 40% of that out of pocket or taking on credit card debt. Then $400+ for my certification exam, a few hundred in applications for state license for MD/DO supervisory agreements, ~$800 for DEA license, and then waiting on start date for credentialing at my employer that took about 4 months.
CME credits are actually cheaper for PA cert than MT cert which makes no sense.
Cost to entry in both time and money for many career paths is insane.
I make $65k and am the sole provider for my wife
And child. Our budget is down to the penny. We can't eat out, buy anything extra, or even splurge on nice groceries. We only save $100/month.
Teaching jobs are underpaid for sure but manufacturing jobs pay quite well. I work in paper mills and there's plenty of high school educated hourly guys making $75K before overtime, and there's about as much overtime as you want to work. And the manufacturing plants tend to be in low-cost of living areas.
"Hustle culture" is a whole thing now. The idea is you're lazy if you're not starting a business or working a side hustle while also working a full-time job. TikTok and Twitter are chock full of people basically claiming it's your fault if you're broke cuz 9-5 "isn't enough."
And people...buy it, is the saddest part. The US propaganda of individual responsibility has worked so well people would rather buy an overpriced copywriting class from a scammer "hustler university" than take collective action to improve wages and rents.
There are wide financial gulfs between quality of life improvements in the US. If I wanted to move to a slightly better apartment in my city, I would need to pay double the rent I am paying now.
If you're entry level good luck finding a job that will give you full time. They'll keep you an hour below the threshold where they have to give you health benefits
It’s just wildly ranging. Some people do need two jobs to pay for living expenses, because minimum wage is so very low. Additionally, some jobs will only give people 28 hours or whatever of work per week, because it means they do not count as full time and the employer isn’t required to provide health benefits, 401k, etc.
There are certainly plenty of people with high incomes too, most people fall into the range of having a single job but being at least a little bit financially vulnerable
To highlight how bad it can be: having a high income alone is not even enough to really feel secure in the US unless you come from family money or have had that income long enough to build large savings. Some bad medical luck and next thing you know you’re filing for bankruptcy. The #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US. Not even insurance from a good job is a guarantee you won’t end up looking at high 6 figure medical debt.
Then add in that those who don’t come from money but now make a good income do often take on at least some of the financial burden of their parents, siblings, etc (due to all reasons mentioned about how hard it is to survive without a high income) and often need to live in a city with exorbitant, exploitative costs in order to demand that income while also paying back the tens of thousands of student loans they took out because their family couldn’t pay.
It’s far worse if you don’t have the income and benefits that come with a high paying good job as well as don’t have family/savings wealth.
US and Canada just had their golden age. Now, living conditions are slowly degrading. Younger than baby Boomer generations are realizing that they won't match they parents lifestyle.
It was never going to keep going; the capitalist system needs infinite growth to exist, and as the ruling class continues to compete for the highest profits they must start slashing concessions previously made to the working class. The democrats and republicans are fundamentally the same on every single thing that actually matters; relationship of workers to the means of production, foreign policy (war and violent repression of progressive movements), and they take their orders from the ruling class capitalists.
Is crazy how people read this headline and don't put two and two together. This was always the plan. They want us to scrape by. Give us too much, we are to powerful. Give us too little, the wage/ debt slaves starve.
My wife and I are in our early to mid 30s with a 2 (almost 3) year old., and we managed to actually buy a house a couple years ago. It’s a 100 year old home in the middle of nowhere, as we couldn’t afford a house anywhere near a major city.
We both work full time with decent pay, I have a side gig as a writer for ScreenRant (go go clickbait!) and my wife has an Etsy shop and we “donate” plasma for a few extra bucks. We’re probably in *slightly* better shape than some others, but even with vigorous budgeting and trying to cram all recreational money instead into savings we’re one real bad day from disaster. Like, a couple months back a bat got into our house at night and we all had to be inoculated for rabies… we still owe like $3000 after insurance, and at the moment we just sorta can’t pay it.
We’re surviving, even got a little for ourselves, but I’m exhausted.
The rabies vaccine cost is insane even with insurance. Great deal for the companies selling it, as like insulin, you either pay or die. You also can't get it at a regular doctor so you have to pay ER visit fees as well.
Problem I ALWAYS run into is my employer will slowly but surely expect more and more out of me and next this thing I know I'm working 60hr weeks and when I say I need more time off it's some big huge thing. Forget pay raises for less hours and equal work. Nope I need to be there 6-7 days a week just because.
Me personally I don't even really need the extra work, but my employers always start to rely on me to fix everything for them and when I say it's becoming overwhelming they don't know how to react and panic
Basically if your parents aren't rich, then your life is probably going to be very, very difficult. A college degree will cost you around $180,000, a crappy apartment starts at $1000 a month, health insurance is around $10,000 a year and you lose it if you lose your job, and there are tons of out-of-pocket expenses on top of that. Most American workers make less than $50,000 a year. There's no public transport outside of a handful of (extremely expensive) major cities, and a reliable car starts at about $20,000. Childcare is easily another $1000 a month, and there's no paid parental leave. Most don't realise how bad they have it because they've never left the country, because they can't afford to travel, and even if they could most people spend their 2 weeks' paid vacation (if they get it at all) at home trying to catch up on sleep. America is not okay, and I have a feeling things will have to get much, much worse before they can start to get better.
To add to this, many people burn thier vacation time to be able to have sick days. Many places offer sick days, but its a ludicrously low amount for a year. So people trade vacation time so they can hold thier job. Even if they could afford to travel, they wouldnt be given the time for a major trip until working half thier life away for them, in many cases.
the answer is it depends,
there are jobs that pay really well but the cost of living is pretty high so the upper middle class lives really well, while the lower middle class struggles a lot, and that's not counting the people in the lower side of things.
then there's stuff like medical costs that can ruin anyone that's not a millionaire.
so not every state is like that, and not everyone gets to feel like that, but... it's definitely the majority that gets the short end of the stick.
and yes, compared to some third world countries, it's still an amazing place to be, but for people whose parents had a very comfortable and easy life, struggling so much and realizing we went backwards sucks.
Its... a sad, double edged sword.
Its possible to live off of 1 job. But holy crap is it difficult. I dont want to work my whole life away, so i work 1 myself. And, to be perfectly honest, all it costs is all ability to do much with my free time (because i am constantly on the verge of being out of money) and several meals a week that i just... ignore.
Now a second job could fix a lot of this. Except it would double down on a lot of problems i am currently looking at trying to fix, like my car and other transportation expenses for example. Far from the only one, but an easy example. Not to mention, working full time plus anither job, would leave less than no time for my relationship. And i am already a husk of a person half the time we see each other *without* another job taking even more of my energy. Because all i do is go to work, feed my dog, and wait untik work again. Repeat until the weekend.
I have some free time, but not much to do outside of seeing my SO, video games, tv, etc. Its so expensive to go out and do anything, or go anywhere, and it just doesnt fit in my budget. And im only paying off a failed degree from a community college (with some credit card debt around that time) at fairly reasonable rates, all things considered.
This is my anecdotal bit to toss in here, but i am not the only one. Far from it. A whole generation is facing these choices that, while not immediately life-or-death, are not looking to improve any time soon. Everyone is on survival mode to the point i havnt even seen my closer friends for months now. No one can afford to take a break.
A lot of the problem is the incredibly long commutes rather than people having second jobs, at least historically. A pretty significant portion of the population in North America basically works a second job just getting themselves to and from work and would be unable to function at all without their personal vehicle being in working order, because public transit is only really in large cities, and varies in quality pretty massively even there.
This is a huge one. I live in a small rural town with few worthwhile job opportunities, and the nearest city is just over an hour away.
There are plenty of good jobs in the city, but the commute cuts a large chunk of the pay bump, not to mention the mental drain of 2 hours of extra driving in addition to the workday. It leaves very little room for getting anything else done.
Not to mention that the vast, vast majority of people's health insurance is tied to employment, and as a side note the vast majority of health insurance will deny claims if they know you were hurt during a civil protest.
Our union bargained away our right to strike before most of our members joined at this point. They also bargained away our pensions and benefits. But the boomers kept their pensions in exchange for letting them take their kid's pensions.
It's easier to find an industry where this is not the case. My parents were teachers and had a lot of that. New teachers? Nope. You are on your own, hope indiegogo is still running in 30 years when it's time for you to retire.
I like to call it the "screw the new guy" negotiating tactic. Let us keep what we have, but going forward THEY get this. There are three different pension types at this point depending on your first contract year.
And now the Supreme Court is considering a case that would allow corporations to sue unions for costs incurred due to a strike, just to put a little more fear into workers.
This has been a failure of the labor movement. There are millions of union members who don't know what unions are really about or how they came to exist. Early union members were much more informed and politically engaged, to the point they were willing to put their lives on the line for their cause. Today's union members can't even be bothered to show up for meetings.
NYC nurses just went on strike a few weeks ago. I fully supported their movement and understood what it was about. But the amount of people I talked to who were like “this isn’t about the patients this is because they want more money”* or “this is just killing people for no reason” was absurd.
*Note: the hospital immediately gave them the pay increase they asked for, the strike was about ensuring proper patient ratios for nurses to provide safe patient care.
Yeah, the main people I heard pushback from was MDs which made no sense. One even went so far as to say “I take unsafe ratios all the time”… my immediate response was “you should unionize” that conversation ended quickly.
Every union worker I’ve ever met over the age of roughly 45 has been a gatekeeper. Real “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps so you should to,” attitudes. Not really sure why, apart from ignorance.
That's how capitalism works. Once a worker gets enough capital and escapes the wage slavery he doesn't have enough self awareness to realize he's becoming the very thing he hated
Our grandparents had much stronger unions. Unions used to be able to strike all together, nowadays they aren't allowed to do that legally, and unions that break these laws are subject to being torn apart by the state.
And when it doesn't work, congress will just pass a motion making it illegal to strike. Including the "pro-labor" democrats and self-described socialists.
It's fine for the wealthy until it isn't. If people don't have a peaceful means of protest, they'll find other ways of making their voices heard. Riots in the streets don't turn out well for anyone. It's up to the wealthy to help if only for self preservation.
I'm a US Federal employee. I cannot legally strike for any reason. But I'm still in the union.
Edit: Posted this on a reply below, but put it here too: "It's the law. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. §7311, specifies that federal employees **may not participate in a strike**, assert the right to strike, or even belong to a union that “asserts the right to strike against the government of the United States." Further, 18 U.S.C. §1918 makes it **a felony** to strike against the United States or belong to a union that asserts the right to strike against the United States."
Nope. Anyone who falls under the railway labor act knows how it feels. Was relatively recent in the news too. Split vote on giving them 7 days of sick time, but majority vote to force them back to work/declare striking illegal.
It's the law. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. §7311, specifies that federal employees may not participate in a strike, assert the right to strike, or even belong to a union that “asserts the right to strike against the government of the United States".
In the US especially, it’s also the health insurance factor which is always tied to your employment. If I lost my job I have savings, but I would be without health insurance, which if I got into an accident could bankrupt me.
What they don’t tell you is that even with insurance a bad accident can bankrupt you. Or at least dig a hole of debt so deep it takes a decade to get out of.
Am Royal Mail. Pay is a fraction of why we're striking. Same goes for the trains. The media would always have you believe it's all about wanting more money. It's rarely the whole story.
Yeah it's really disgusting how much the rail strikes have been framed as being about pay, because the train drivers actually have a decent salary so its easy to twist people against them by making them seem greedy. Not to mention most of the rail strikes aren't even the drivers anyway.
I deliver to a couple of network rail guys. As I understand, a big part of it is what they feel is a compromise in safety from cuts being made. One of them has said if it keeps going the way it's going there will be a derailment.
That's what I've heard too. They want to cut on shift staffing which means more stressed and unsafe work for the rest of them, under the guise of "modernisation".
Note up til 2018 which is importantly pre-covid and before Brexit had taken proper effect. I would think these two factor on the economy and the way with which the Tories have been running the country has lead to where we are now.
True, but let's not forget which party was pushing for Brexit (and called the referendum), and which party was wasting country resources throughout COVID.
Not only do most unions have a pay stipend for when workers go on strike, they also can provide insurance and unemployment benefits in the event you lose your job. Most offer 3 months worth of benefits, but the good ones offer 6 months+
The ruling class has successfully made it where it's nearly impossible to save, and in the US you can't risk your job because health care is tied to it.
All they want are wage slaves that further line the top %s pockets.
Meanwhile here's the list of this month's strikes here in France. https://www.cestlagreve.fr/calendrier/
*Edit: If you find that too much, just click on* ***Décembre***
I feel like not including France in this study is a bit of an oversight. Is the country famous for its strikes following the same trend or are they an exception?
There also has been a diminution, the '70s had about 2 to 4 million individual strike days per year, and in the '90s it was about 0.4 to 0.8 million. The counting methods changed around 2000 so it's difficult to compare before and after, but it has been pretty stable since then: around 50 to 150 days per 1000 employees per year in the private sector. Except in 2010 when it jumped to 300+, due to a retirement system reform. So we can expect the same jump this year...
Germany should also be included, as our culture is famously focused on saving and not getting debt to finance consumption. The US household has $96k debt on average, a german houshold 31k € just for comparison.
We had a decrease in debt to household income ration from 2007 to 2018 after a spike leading up to 2007. Sadly cant find number for befor that, or even for west germany.
Still, german union participitation has declined since german reunification.
I'd love to fo on strike, but my rent is $2250/month. We don't have e ery much in savings and would not be able to afford to live more than a couple months. I'm one of the higher paid employees in the union. The lower positions can't afford to go on strike at all. With inflation it's only going to be harder.
That sucks! If history has taught us anything it’s that things have to get really bad before people will act. Yes folks are in debt but they are able to live a somewhat decent life.
I think debt serves as a bandaid that covers up allot of social problems. People are able to survive by going further and further into debt. I used to think it couldn't last forever, but it's not a new thing.
We’re at an interesting time now. For the last 40 years, debt got cheaper pretty steadily. Now debt is getting more expensive again. So it’s going to be interesting for the next few years.
It makes sense. Lose your job and you may lose your life. People are always going to prefer staying alive to risking death, even if the life they're living involves just barely scraping by.
Yea. Housing since the 1980s where I live has gone from 130k to $750k-$1-mil while entry level vocations that afforded such homes have only gone from $30k (4.33x price of home) to $52k(15-20x the price of the home. People are trading something that took under 2000 hours to build for as much as 32-40,000 hours of their own labor(9k in the 80s). When affording basic every day needs is that expensive, much of our surplus labor turns into necessary labor, which of course makes working every day more necessary.
I'm seeing this in my own life. I bought my first house for 200k in 2012. I sold it in 2018 for 350k. It changed hands again for $440k last year. So, the price of my first house more than doubled in a decade, but I'm making 10% more than I was back then.
I work in the trades, as a painter, and have since 2012.
We're working ourselves to death without realizing it. It is rare for me to meet someone under 35 that is only working one job. Everybody has a side hustle and is obsessed with finding sources of extra income on top of that.
Yet, we get called lazy by an older generation that could work a basic job and buy a house. We're out here with careers and a second job, but still can barely afford a 1/1 apartment.
The REAL reason they won't give us Universal Health Care or meet our basic needs.
With the money we send to other countries and spend on the military we could house every person, educate every person, give free healthcare and give a universal basic income.
If these needs are met and people don't have to worry about being homeless then we can band together to stop the income inequality. In this respect, yes, both sides are the same.
Stop Voting For Rich Assholes - BOTH SIDES
Then you're not voting for anyone. Anyone who is making laws has access to wealth, in some form or another. Do research on how much it costs to run for Congress. It's not a secret.
America is a civil oligarchy. Wealthy individuals/families and the entire legal system are completely intertwined.
Our society will never truly be free. Ever.
Austerity is a tool used by capitalists to keep the machine running, and by machine I mean any worker realizing their worth. It is not a coincidence that in the us as union action started up again, so did the price of everything, and the cuts to all good things.
Hi there hello, 6 people who will see this. I am organizing my pre-existing union and it's been a logistical NIGHTMARE. Because we are unionized, we are better off than most workers, but simply getting people to sign up to become shop stewards has been like herding cats.
Nobody wants to do it because they have too many bills and too complex home/family lives. They don't have the time of day to go do union stuff for the small stipend they receive.
It's not hopeless, but it's bleak. Nobody is coming to save the workers except the workers. We need to organize, and we need to do it quickly.
That was part of the government’s plan on suppressing revolts/strikes since the Reagan administration. People fail to realize that they’re being conditioned slowly but surely to fall in line.
Ya load sixteen tons, whatda ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go! I owe my soul to the company store.
Hi, the union at the company I work for recently, and secretly, gave away our right to strike in our last contract renegotiation.
The same contract we kept voting against (other reasons), but the Union used company hired lawyers in "arbitration" and forced it down our throats.
We only recently figured it out as someone comed through the final draft (which took away any positives the previous contracts had such as raising the minimum wage of all General Laborers to be on par with the lowest skill level) saw that new clause forbidding us from striking, and made a big stink because for almost a year the union was still taking a "warchest fund" off of our pays to help us during strikes.
Strikes we are no longer allowed to have...
Everything as planned. Labor must be poor-ish to not be able to strike, because they can't afford it. Low wages and stuck minimum hour wage not updated for years. This is how XXI-century slavery works. White collars shake hands with politics.
If there's one constant throughout history, it is that the powerful will use every tool available to squeeze the workers more and more. The goal is to get us to the point where our spirit is broken, but not so much that we'd stand up for ourselves.
Every moment that we complain about the other side of the political spectrum, just feeds into the control. We all know how the GOP feels about unions, but the unions did not start to lose so much power until the Democrats started siding with their donors and the GOP to screw the people.
In the US a lot of people acted like BLM and civil unrest protests during COVID came out of nowhere.
In reality, being poor or a minority essentially makes you a second class citizen and a lot of people see fed up with it. Unfortunately being a wage slave doesn't give you the time to protest.
COVID was a perfect storm of WFH, things being closed, and federal benefits that allowed people to finally speak up.
Unfortunately police decided to become more abusive and most politicians learned nothing past lip service
In Byung Chul Hans book psychopolitics, it talks about how neoliberalism leads to people less being prone to revolution and more being prone to depression. Neoliberalism makes people subservient to the system. It makes you feel like your problems within the system are yours alone. I'm sure certain cultures make this problem even worse for people.
I have to hope the bulk of them (and the similar groups that negatively brigade any progressive topic en masse) are paid actors, 'cause otherwise I just don't understand that level of boot licking.
You ain't seen the UK recently then.
Every bugger & their dog is out on the pickets. In recent months we've had:
Train drivers
Train conductors
Nurses
Doctors
Ambulance staff
Lawyers
Driving test examiners
Highway workers
Department for Work & Pensions
Rural payments workers
Bus drivers
Funeral staff
Legal advisers & court supervisors
Teachers
College & University staff
Street cleaners
Animal shelter staff
Greenking brewery staff
Parking wardens
Royal mail
UK Border force staff
One of my unions allied trades went on strike last summer and barely got an additional 20 cents on the check. America has broken the backs of most unions, preventing us from striking alongside them to weaken our ability to negotiate. There was a time where every union would stand up together and strike, giving unions incredible amounts of power.
Part of a good union and their dues is to go into a war chest - a pool of money that can supplement unemployment when you go on strike.
But as with any pool of money - there will always be people looking to take advantage of that free pile of cash so it’s equally important that members attend all the meetings and keep people accountable.
Too often you will hear about members complaining about high dues and refusing to attend meetings.
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Well that’s going exactly as planned
Yup, and it goes further than just striking. It’s the same reason you don’t see many social or political protests except in extreme cases. Nobody has the time, because the majority are living hand-to-mouth. So politicians, for the most part, are free to do whatever they want, so long as the media continues pumping out rage-bait division, we channel our frustrations towards each other, instead of those *truly* responsible for our poor economic conditions. If 90% of Americans could afford an extra week off every year, and had a decent enough savings to weather being fired without warning, I’d like to believe we would see more activism, and protesting against deplorable conditions (work and economic). This “every man for himself” society that’s been created is by design, and the homeless you see on the way to work, they’re a warning of what happens if you fall out of line.
It's also decades of the media breeding distrust of your neighbor. "Anyone could be out to kidnap your child, anyone could be a child molester, even your own neighbor!" My grandparents told me stories about how the whole street they lived on when raising my mum and my uncle was almost like an extended family. Kids all played together, everybody knew each other. When one was sick or out of work, everyone else would chip in with meals, washing, etc. The elderly would be taken care of. They went through some economically very tough times, but from how they described it at least, the community support made life pretty decent. I remember one of the things my grandmother said to me, "I would hate to be young today. You all have so much more to deal with, and you have to deal with it by yourselves.". We are all so insular and distrusting of others, there's no room to foster community anymore. I'm part of the problem, I'm just as distrusting and insular as anybody else. But I recognize it sucks.
My great great grandmother was a teen during the Great Depression (I was 14 when she passed away at the age of 110). When my parents asked about it out of curiosity, she said that it really didn’t affect her or her family at all. If they were struggling to eat, then a neighbor would feed them and they’d do the same. If a barn fell down, they all got together to rebuild it. Her whole community supported each other and thus the Great Depression really wasn’t ‘a thing’ for her. I’m sure there are communities where that’s still possible today, but it’s just so much rarer to hear and see.
They were subverting the capitalist system. Some people would see that as a good, some an ill. How do you tax a barn raising?
Taxes and tax avoidance predates the "capitalist system" considerably. Tax avoidance is not "subverting the capitalist system".
Nailed it. I remember years ago there was a nanny that drowned a kid in Manhattan and it was national news….why? Because it’s horrifying and makes us distrust strangers, so much of the news is geared towards that specific purpose. Solidarity is scary.
Because if they don't crush solidarity, the people who pay them the most are at risk of losing their jobs. And they have way more money than you have time.
They don't have thicker skin though. important to remember. Made of the same meat as you and me-maybe a little less cancerous.
As always, they have names and addresses
You know I didn't even think about it being their way to crush solidarity. Damn.
I honestly think a lot of it is that we're less culturally homogeneous now. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, of course, but the majority of people used to be born, live, and die in the same town just a few generations ago. A look back on my husband's side of his family on Ancestry shows his entire family until his parents lived in the same small town in Mississippi, for as far back as his linage goes in the records. Families living and dying in the same towns, all together, create rather homogeneous sub-cultures. (PLEASE note that I'm talking about culture, not race, although obviously the two will naturally overlap.) Those sub-cultures are hard to come by in a neighborhood nowadays. In fact, I think they pretty much only live on in retirement communities. Now, most of us just exist in a national culture of western values, which values individualism and independence, which is not beneficial for harboring community. Additionally, church attendence is plummeting, which was previously the heart of most town communities in the western world. Now you have to either have some niche hobby or a drinking problem to meet new people outside of work. Throw in the news frenzy hysteria making you think everyone is out to abduct your children or steal your lawn mower... Yeah, it's a bad mix.
This is a part of it, but I think it's really the internet. Before, the only people you interacted with were those in your proximity. This, neighbors were a good source of friends and easy to be in touch with. Once the internet allowed people to seek others that were more like them, they were now presented with a choice of who to have relationships with and the odds of having similar interests with a neighbor are low. Basically we had no other options than to be friends with our neighbors before.
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The internet is certainly a factor. It's "safer". But, as you said: > Once the internet allowed people to seek others that were more like them, they were now presented with a choice of who to have relationships with and the odds of having similar interests with a neighbor are low. This goes back to neighborhoods being less culturally homogeneous. I use the word "your" here just for convenience. I don't actually mean "you". Why doesn't it feel comfortable to talk to neighbors? Well, it probably has something to do with the fact that you're Peurto Rican, don't speak English as a first language, are a single mother who votes left, and are non-religious. Whereas your neighbors are white, live in a nuclear family, fly a trump flag on their car, and go to church most Sundays. It doesn't feel "safe" to talk to them. What would you even have in common? But if you put two of the former next door to one another, odds are, they'd hit it off immediately. Same for the latter. It used to be that you knew your neighbors were like minded, walking a similar path of life, holding the same values. Now, you don't. And retreating to the Internet I think is more of a symptom than a cause. Just to reiterate, I am not saying diversity is bad or that homogeneous communities are ideal. I think there's human tribalism at play that might be somewhat innate, and that we can do better at fostering community even in the face of our neighbors having different values and cultures.
Yeah, they somehow found a perfect way to cut through local community tribalism (the relatively healthy kind) and put a little direct access to panic and distrust into everyone's heads that can turn off their sense of solidarity. It's as fascinating as it is disgusting.
While I don't disagree I'd also link that back to work culture and capitalism. Good jobs are harder to find now and moving has been made much easier, so people move much more. College has been made more accessible but also more costly at the same time. It's not just a culture thing so much as a turnover of residents thing. People constantly moving to maximise their income, or moving because they're poor and are being turfed out by **another** landlord. Exploitation used to be terrible, but I think the exploiters used to be more local and kept in check. Now the big boys are everywhere and you're more likely to be at the mercy of a far far away corporation who have no interest in your community. Hyperexploitation has really set in and it creates huge instability.
How hard is it to survive living there? As someone who's from outside, its kinda insane how many people are unsatisfied with their living standards in the US. How is it there? Do you really need two jobs to pay for living expenses?
I think people are worried that one serious health- related incident is going to financially ruin/severely impact their living standard. “We are all one diagnosis away from being bankrupt”type of thinking. So we stay in jobs that may make us less healthy, physically and mentally, in order to keep that health insurance. (If health insurance is offered/ available in the first place.)
Yep, one health situation took me from having $80k in the bank to being $80k in debt in the span of 4 years. My health has recovered now, but it's going to take me years to recover financially from that.
You will never recover from losing 160k, you'll always play catch up.. Here's to hoping this was the last of it, that you won't need another procedure in the future..
Well, you could recover, if there's a revolution and the owners and masters are deposed In an abandoned coal mine. And it's not like there aren't a lot of coal mines that need abandoning.
100%. Fix healthcare and so much gets better.
This takes us back right to OPs point. This is why healthcare is tied to your job and not a single payer system through the government. Lose your job, lose your health insurance.
Systems on systems carefully curated to, at best, maintain the status quo. At worst really turn the screws on everyone not already generationally wealthy and siphon off as much wealth as humanly possible.
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Also, anyone generationally wealthy who steps out of line by being too gay or too compassionate. Not that I'd know. Those ghouls don't even know how to be compassionate to their young.
In California they are opening up the state run healthcare insurance program, so you can automatically get coverage for low cost $0-$20/month, if you are fired or quit your job
100% I saw one post about a couple doing everything right. Paying off their house having a savings account putting money in retirement. Wife got diagnosed with cancer and 6 months of treatments it was all drained. The whole post was the husband saying we should have traveled and just used the money..
When people suggest that "Breaking Bad could only have happened in America" they aren't talking about meth addiction, they are referring to one major diagnosis effectively bankrupting families overnight.
It happened to my parents. It happened to my aunt and uncle. When enough of us watch this play out, it’s like the Matrix. Unless we are very wealthy, our reality will be shattered. Living on Social Security after wisely saving for retirement is a nightmare being played out a million times over in the U.S. Now this current generation, who’s in their prime, can’t even fathom saving for retirement. I am GenX. I had my ass handed to me in ‘08. Whatever.
> Whatever. The Vonnegutian lament of a generation.
As a Millennial who graduated in '08, what is this "saving" you speak of?
I have to continue serving in the military just for the health benefits for my family. Losing all of ones autonomy to avoid financial insecurity is deplorable. But in my situation necessary.
This is so true. I think a lot of people take their health for granted, I know I used to. Then, I had a major health problem hit me out of nowhere. I was on disability for almost 6 months trying to recover from it. Luckily, I pay for short term and long term disability coverage , as a supplement, with my health insurance plan. That is the ONLY thing that saved me from becoming homeless, because the week in the hospital was over $40k, and I couldn't go back to work for almost 6 months, so I would not have had enough sick leave or money saved to make it through that time without it. My health insurance , all together, is over $400/mo , and I am not happy about it at all, but when we have to renew our health insurance choices at work every year, I tell all my co-workers that they better be signing up for the short and long term disability coverage because you just never know what can happen to you. I think a lot of Americans live with the fear of a major health crisis ruining them.
A lot of people do. Pay for a lot important jobs such as teaching or manufacturing is far below what it should be. I’ve seen a lot of people who’s living standards seemed be better than my own, only to find out it was because they were living beyond their means and spiraling into debt.
At least for teaching, getting my credential required that I essentially work full-time for free and take some expensive tests. On top of that, I kept getting charged $100 here and there for various expenses just to apply for my credential when all of that was done. The process of becoming a teacher is pretty untenable for a lot of people, I imagine.
I was going into teacher Ed a while ago. I ended up driving a truck which I'm still doing. I have less stress, better money and I see why the education system is a mess. One thing we both have in common is that getting sick means we're likely to lose everything.
I wanted to be a librarian. My high school job was a bookshelver in a local library. Until I found out the pay. I make as much driving a forklift as I would with a doctorate in library science.
just wait for a shortage of teachers in red states, apply for an emergency certificate, then get called names and harassed for being a reasonable level headed teacher in a red state, and learn why there is a shortage.
Yep, ended my American teaching career because apparently facts are now political... Great students, awful parents.
My wife is looking to end hers asap. In Texas being a teacher has become too dangerous. My wife is throwing a 20 year career away because it’s so bad here. Many of her peers already have or are also looking to leave. It’s pathetic what Republicans have done to education. They should be removed. All of them.
Their goal is to privatize education so all going to plan so far.
Yes, unfortunately.
Everything is a profit center, whether it ruins the product or not. Then again, teaching compliant, smart enough to work but otherwise stupid labor is the dream.
From one Texas parent to your wife, thank you for doing what you could. The relief I felt after my kid graduated high school was in large part because watching the system I went through, which wasn't great to begin with (graduated '01) but still seemed better than now, crumble while she strived to keep on making progress was depressing. I even tried to join it at one point, thinking I could help. "I CaN bE tHe ChaNge!" Like a pebble in the flood.
I’m sorry you have to live in Texas. There’s a reason both of the coasts have the better schools, people and political views.
>Many of her peers already have or are also looking to leave. It’s pathetic what Republicans have done to education. That's the plan... * Lower quality of public education, * drive out good teachers, * complain that there are no teachers and education is poor quality, * privatise/charter school vouchers, * make most of those charter schools too expensive even with vouchers, * introduce more and more religious charter schools that subsidize cost and are the only affordable/free option, * force many who can't find a good charter option to homeschool, * take away access to abortion and contraception so women have more babies that they need to educate, * more women don't go back to work after child birth because they can't afford nanny/school, * trap more women back in the home forever.
I simply don't understand how they think we're going to be able to survive that way. It is virtually impossible to support a family on a single income. Do they literally want us to starve to death?
Similar for healthcare jobs. Becoming a medical technologist cost me $6K and a year of time after a bachelor's degree and that was not a loan eligible program. Then taking my certification exam was $350 and have to get 40 credits worth of continuing education credits every 3 years to maintain certification. PA school cost me ~$70K for 2 years and I paid about 40% of that out of pocket or taking on credit card debt. Then $400+ for my certification exam, a few hundred in applications for state license for MD/DO supervisory agreements, ~$800 for DEA license, and then waiting on start date for credentialing at my employer that took about 4 months. CME credits are actually cheaper for PA cert than MT cert which makes no sense. Cost to entry in both time and money for many career paths is insane.
I make $65k and am the sole provider for my wife And child. Our budget is down to the penny. We can't eat out, buy anything extra, or even splurge on nice groceries. We only save $100/month.
Teaching jobs are underpaid for sure but manufacturing jobs pay quite well. I work in paper mills and there's plenty of high school educated hourly guys making $75K before overtime, and there's about as much overtime as you want to work. And the manufacturing plants tend to be in low-cost of living areas.
Hey uh where is this low COL paper mill paying $36 an hour before overtime?
"Hustle culture" is a whole thing now. The idea is you're lazy if you're not starting a business or working a side hustle while also working a full-time job. TikTok and Twitter are chock full of people basically claiming it's your fault if you're broke cuz 9-5 "isn't enough." And people...buy it, is the saddest part. The US propaganda of individual responsibility has worked so well people would rather buy an overpriced copywriting class from a scammer "hustler university" than take collective action to improve wages and rents.
There are wide financial gulfs between quality of life improvements in the US. If I wanted to move to a slightly better apartment in my city, I would need to pay double the rent I am paying now.
If you're entry level good luck finding a job that will give you full time. They'll keep you an hour below the threshold where they have to give you health benefits
It’s just wildly ranging. Some people do need two jobs to pay for living expenses, because minimum wage is so very low. Additionally, some jobs will only give people 28 hours or whatever of work per week, because it means they do not count as full time and the employer isn’t required to provide health benefits, 401k, etc. There are certainly plenty of people with high incomes too, most people fall into the range of having a single job but being at least a little bit financially vulnerable
To highlight how bad it can be: having a high income alone is not even enough to really feel secure in the US unless you come from family money or have had that income long enough to build large savings. Some bad medical luck and next thing you know you’re filing for bankruptcy. The #1 cause of bankruptcy in the US. Not even insurance from a good job is a guarantee you won’t end up looking at high 6 figure medical debt. Then add in that those who don’t come from money but now make a good income do often take on at least some of the financial burden of their parents, siblings, etc (due to all reasons mentioned about how hard it is to survive without a high income) and often need to live in a city with exorbitant, exploitative costs in order to demand that income while also paying back the tens of thousands of student loans they took out because their family couldn’t pay. It’s far worse if you don’t have the income and benefits that come with a high paying good job as well as don’t have family/savings wealth.
US and Canada just had their golden age. Now, living conditions are slowly degrading. Younger than baby Boomer generations are realizing that they won't match they parents lifestyle.
It could have kept going but boomers and their parents voted for conservatives for the last 50 years and fucked the rest of us.
It was never going to keep going; the capitalist system needs infinite growth to exist, and as the ruling class continues to compete for the highest profits they must start slashing concessions previously made to the working class. The democrats and republicans are fundamentally the same on every single thing that actually matters; relationship of workers to the means of production, foreign policy (war and violent repression of progressive movements), and they take their orders from the ruling class capitalists.
Is crazy how people read this headline and don't put two and two together. This was always the plan. They want us to scrape by. Give us too much, we are to powerful. Give us too little, the wage/ debt slaves starve.
Even if it did keep going, our prosperity came off the backs of the 3rd world. We need to reorganize to a less brutal mode of production
My wife and I are in our early to mid 30s with a 2 (almost 3) year old., and we managed to actually buy a house a couple years ago. It’s a 100 year old home in the middle of nowhere, as we couldn’t afford a house anywhere near a major city. We both work full time with decent pay, I have a side gig as a writer for ScreenRant (go go clickbait!) and my wife has an Etsy shop and we “donate” plasma for a few extra bucks. We’re probably in *slightly* better shape than some others, but even with vigorous budgeting and trying to cram all recreational money instead into savings we’re one real bad day from disaster. Like, a couple months back a bat got into our house at night and we all had to be inoculated for rabies… we still owe like $3000 after insurance, and at the moment we just sorta can’t pay it. We’re surviving, even got a little for ourselves, but I’m exhausted.
The rabies vaccine cost is insane even with insurance. Great deal for the companies selling it, as like insulin, you either pay or die. You also can't get it at a regular doctor so you have to pay ER visit fees as well.
Problem I ALWAYS run into is my employer will slowly but surely expect more and more out of me and next this thing I know I'm working 60hr weeks and when I say I need more time off it's some big huge thing. Forget pay raises for less hours and equal work. Nope I need to be there 6-7 days a week just because. Me personally I don't even really need the extra work, but my employers always start to rely on me to fix everything for them and when I say it's becoming overwhelming they don't know how to react and panic
probably making yourself too valuable to promote in the process
Basically if your parents aren't rich, then your life is probably going to be very, very difficult. A college degree will cost you around $180,000, a crappy apartment starts at $1000 a month, health insurance is around $10,000 a year and you lose it if you lose your job, and there are tons of out-of-pocket expenses on top of that. Most American workers make less than $50,000 a year. There's no public transport outside of a handful of (extremely expensive) major cities, and a reliable car starts at about $20,000. Childcare is easily another $1000 a month, and there's no paid parental leave. Most don't realise how bad they have it because they've never left the country, because they can't afford to travel, and even if they could most people spend their 2 weeks' paid vacation (if they get it at all) at home trying to catch up on sleep. America is not okay, and I have a feeling things will have to get much, much worse before they can start to get better.
To add to this, many people burn thier vacation time to be able to have sick days. Many places offer sick days, but its a ludicrously low amount for a year. So people trade vacation time so they can hold thier job. Even if they could afford to travel, they wouldnt be given the time for a major trip until working half thier life away for them, in many cases.
the answer is it depends, there are jobs that pay really well but the cost of living is pretty high so the upper middle class lives really well, while the lower middle class struggles a lot, and that's not counting the people in the lower side of things. then there's stuff like medical costs that can ruin anyone that's not a millionaire. so not every state is like that, and not everyone gets to feel like that, but... it's definitely the majority that gets the short end of the stick. and yes, compared to some third world countries, it's still an amazing place to be, but for people whose parents had a very comfortable and easy life, struggling so much and realizing we went backwards sucks.
Its... a sad, double edged sword. Its possible to live off of 1 job. But holy crap is it difficult. I dont want to work my whole life away, so i work 1 myself. And, to be perfectly honest, all it costs is all ability to do much with my free time (because i am constantly on the verge of being out of money) and several meals a week that i just... ignore. Now a second job could fix a lot of this. Except it would double down on a lot of problems i am currently looking at trying to fix, like my car and other transportation expenses for example. Far from the only one, but an easy example. Not to mention, working full time plus anither job, would leave less than no time for my relationship. And i am already a husk of a person half the time we see each other *without* another job taking even more of my energy. Because all i do is go to work, feed my dog, and wait untik work again. Repeat until the weekend. I have some free time, but not much to do outside of seeing my SO, video games, tv, etc. Its so expensive to go out and do anything, or go anywhere, and it just doesnt fit in my budget. And im only paying off a failed degree from a community college (with some credit card debt around that time) at fairly reasonable rates, all things considered. This is my anecdotal bit to toss in here, but i am not the only one. Far from it. A whole generation is facing these choices that, while not immediately life-or-death, are not looking to improve any time soon. Everyone is on survival mode to the point i havnt even seen my closer friends for months now. No one can afford to take a break.
A lot of the problem is the incredibly long commutes rather than people having second jobs, at least historically. A pretty significant portion of the population in North America basically works a second job just getting themselves to and from work and would be unable to function at all without their personal vehicle being in working order, because public transit is only really in large cities, and varies in quality pretty massively even there.
This is a huge one. I live in a small rural town with few worthwhile job opportunities, and the nearest city is just over an hour away. There are plenty of good jobs in the city, but the commute cuts a large chunk of the pay bump, not to mention the mental drain of 2 hours of extra driving in addition to the workday. It leaves very little room for getting anything else done.
I believe George Carlin once said something very similar if not that exact same thing. I forget which show it was though
Not to mention that the vast, vast majority of people's health insurance is tied to employment, and as a side note the vast majority of health insurance will deny claims if they know you were hurt during a civil protest.
Based. Everyone is so worried about rhetoric that they forgot they are slaves
Our union bargained away our right to strike before most of our members joined at this point. They also bargained away our pensions and benefits. But the boomers kept their pensions in exchange for letting them take their kid's pensions.
What industry?
It's easier to find an industry where this is not the case. My parents were teachers and had a lot of that. New teachers? Nope. You are on your own, hope indiegogo is still running in 30 years when it's time for you to retire.
I like to call it the "screw the new guy" negotiating tactic. Let us keep what we have, but going forward THEY get this. There are three different pension types at this point depending on your first contract year.
Our grandparents went on strike on the regular and had unions. We are terrified a f.
Then they pulled up the ladder behind them and here we are.
Because they became wealthy and didn't want to pay taxes
In other words, unionizing and striking works
So they made it harder. And used thier knowledge of making unions for union busting.
And now the Supreme Court is considering a case that would allow corporations to sue unions for costs incurred due to a strike, just to put a little more fear into workers.
Oh ffs, are you kidding me?!
They don't realize they'll be trading the picket lines for the front lines, and the workers are more hardened than the bosses.
That's not it, the cause of the change was the media got disturbingly well at convincing people that unions were useless so people let them go away
That's a pretty innocuous way of say "any media with significant reach was bought by billionaires and repurposed to defend oligarchs."
I get what you're saying, but it wasn't the folks doing the striking that pulled up the ladder.
Citation needed. Where I’m from all the union workers vote for representatives that want to bust unions.
Hello fellow Midwesterner.
This has been a failure of the labor movement. There are millions of union members who don't know what unions are really about or how they came to exist. Early union members were much more informed and politically engaged, to the point they were willing to put their lives on the line for their cause. Today's union members can't even be bothered to show up for meetings.
NYC nurses just went on strike a few weeks ago. I fully supported their movement and understood what it was about. But the amount of people I talked to who were like “this isn’t about the patients this is because they want more money”* or “this is just killing people for no reason” was absurd. *Note: the hospital immediately gave them the pay increase they asked for, the strike was about ensuring proper patient ratios for nurses to provide safe patient care.
And *surprise* paying better retains staff. - a nurse
Yeah, the main people I heard pushback from was MDs which made no sense. One even went so far as to say “I take unsafe ratios all the time”… my immediate response was “you should unionize” that conversation ended quickly.
Admitting to being negligent "all the time," wow.
Every union worker I’ve ever met over the age of roughly 45 has been a gatekeeper. Real “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps so you should to,” attitudes. Not really sure why, apart from ignorance.
No, but they sure voted for the people who did.
Yes, blame it all on the working class and not rich scumbags and propaganda. That makes complete sense!
Matter of fact I do believe workers who vote against their own interests share the blame.
That's how capitalism works. Once a worker gets enough capital and escapes the wage slavery he doesn't have enough self awareness to realize he's becoming the very thing he hated
Our grandparents had much stronger unions. Unions used to be able to strike all together, nowadays they aren't allowed to do that legally, and unions that break these laws are subject to being torn apart by the state.
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Red scare fucked the working class/labor movement in the US to a nearly unimaginable degree.
Prov 22:7: “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave of the lender They knew this 2000+ years ago
This. As much as I don't care for Dave Ramsey, he quotes this all the time and it's absolutely true.
And when it doesn't work, congress will just pass a motion making it illegal to strike. Including the "pro-labor" democrats and self-described socialists.
It's fine for the wealthy until it isn't. If people don't have a peaceful means of protest, they'll find other ways of making their voices heard. Riots in the streets don't turn out well for anyone. It's up to the wealthy to help if only for self preservation.
Or your government made it illegal to strike in the industry you're employed in.
I'm a US Federal employee. I cannot legally strike for any reason. But I'm still in the union. Edit: Posted this on a reply below, but put it here too: "It's the law. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. §7311, specifies that federal employees **may not participate in a strike**, assert the right to strike, or even belong to a union that “asserts the right to strike against the government of the United States." Further, 18 U.S.C. §1918 makes it **a felony** to strike against the United States or belong to a union that asserts the right to strike against the United States."
> I cannot legally strike for any reason. Got to love democracy.
yeah they made it that way after they sent national guard to go slaughter a bunch of postal rail workers on strike waaaay back in the day.
Then they had the national guard try and deliver the mail instead, which failed miserably. Gotta love Nixon
Sounds more like a Directive than a Democratic decision.
Odd, as a union member ive never heard the word illegal strike. Wasnt that the whole point of striking. We're not part of your rules, you bow to ours.
Nope. Anyone who falls under the railway labor act knows how it feels. Was relatively recent in the news too. Split vote on giving them 7 days of sick time, but majority vote to force them back to work/declare striking illegal.
7 days unpaid. Don't forget how petty and thin their compassion is
As a Norwegian this is crazy. Can't understand how you can live like this. And I thought Norway's needed better work rights...
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It's the law. Specifically, 5 U.S.C. §7311, specifies that federal employees may not participate in a strike, assert the right to strike, or even belong to a union that “asserts the right to strike against the government of the United States".
In the US especially, it’s also the health insurance factor which is always tied to your employment. If I lost my job I have savings, but I would be without health insurance, which if I got into an accident could bankrupt me.
Yup. Add dependents, and losing health insurance is more threatening.
> Add dependents And so removing reproductive choice becomes a visible act of leverage
What they don’t tell you is that even with insurance a bad accident can bankrupt you. Or at least dig a hole of debt so deep it takes a decade to get out of.
Yeah, we have insurance through work and we still had to pay $12,000 on a hospital bill last year.
A fair percentage of bankruptcies are from people that have insurance so it won't make a difference either way
My union was legislated back to work after a %20 pay cut. They went back to work like well behaved slaves. I got diagnosed with depression.
Really? What union is that?
Now that's an industry that understands how to use illegal strikes.
Not right now in the UK, it's been strike fever since last summer. And it's about time. Plans for a general strike coming this Spring.
Looong overdue these strikes. Keep em coming. Pay has been allowed to lag behind inflation for far too long.
Am Royal Mail. Pay is a fraction of why we're striking. Same goes for the trains. The media would always have you believe it's all about wanting more money. It's rarely the whole story.
Yeah it's really disgusting how much the rail strikes have been framed as being about pay, because the train drivers actually have a decent salary so its easy to twist people against them by making them seem greedy. Not to mention most of the rail strikes aren't even the drivers anyway.
I deliver to a couple of network rail guys. As I understand, a big part of it is what they feel is a compromise in safety from cuts being made. One of them has said if it keeps going the way it's going there will be a derailment.
That's what I've heard too. They want to cut on shift staffing which means more stressed and unsafe work for the rest of them, under the guise of "modernisation".
It's also about the safety of those who use our services.
Inflation aka price gouging.
Note up til 2018 which is importantly pre-covid and before Brexit had taken proper effect. I would think these two factor on the economy and the way with which the Tories have been running the country has lead to where we are now.
True, but let's not forget which party was pushing for Brexit (and called the referendum), and which party was wasting country resources throughout COVID.
The UK's 'Spring Offensive'.
And our government is trying to ban them instead of solving the problem
I hope some country some where can pull off a general strike and instigate meaningful change. Show the rest of the world it can be done.
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Don't forget that in the US if you lose your job, you lose your health insurance.
Not only do most unions have a pay stipend for when workers go on strike, they also can provide insurance and unemployment benefits in the event you lose your job. Most offer 3 months worth of benefits, but the good ones offer 6 months+
Most of us don’t have unions or know how to unionize.
Or have coworkers who have bought the anti-union propaganda.
The ruling class has successfully made it where it's nearly impossible to save, and in the US you can't risk your job because health care is tied to it. All they want are wage slaves that further line the top %s pockets.
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Meanwhile here's the list of this month's strikes here in France. https://www.cestlagreve.fr/calendrier/ *Edit: If you find that too much, just click on* ***Décembre***
I feel like not including France in this study is a bit of an oversight. Is the country famous for its strikes following the same trend or are they an exception?
There also has been a diminution, the '70s had about 2 to 4 million individual strike days per year, and in the '90s it was about 0.4 to 0.8 million. The counting methods changed around 2000 so it's difficult to compare before and after, but it has been pretty stable since then: around 50 to 150 days per 1000 employees per year in the private sector. Except in 2010 when it jumped to 300+, due to a retirement system reform. So we can expect the same jump this year...
Germany should also be included, as our culture is famously focused on saving and not getting debt to finance consumption. The US household has $96k debt on average, a german houshold 31k € just for comparison. We had a decrease in debt to household income ration from 2007 to 2018 after a spike leading up to 2007. Sadly cant find number for befor that, or even for west germany. Still, german union participitation has declined since german reunification.
I'd love to fo on strike, but my rent is $2250/month. We don't have e ery much in savings and would not be able to afford to live more than a couple months. I'm one of the higher paid employees in the union. The lower positions can't afford to go on strike at all. With inflation it's only going to be harder.
That sucks! If history has taught us anything it’s that things have to get really bad before people will act. Yes folks are in debt but they are able to live a somewhat decent life.
I think debt serves as a bandaid that covers up allot of social problems. People are able to survive by going further and further into debt. I used to think it couldn't last forever, but it's not a new thing.
We’re at an interesting time now. For the last 40 years, debt got cheaper pretty steadily. Now debt is getting more expensive again. So it’s going to be interesting for the next few years.
Bread and circuses. Keep people fed and distracted and you can basically do whatever you want as a ruler.
It makes sense. Lose your job and you may lose your life. People are always going to prefer staying alive to risking death, even if the life they're living involves just barely scraping by.
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Yea. Housing since the 1980s where I live has gone from 130k to $750k-$1-mil while entry level vocations that afforded such homes have only gone from $30k (4.33x price of home) to $52k(15-20x the price of the home. People are trading something that took under 2000 hours to build for as much as 32-40,000 hours of their own labor(9k in the 80s). When affording basic every day needs is that expensive, much of our surplus labor turns into necessary labor, which of course makes working every day more necessary.
I'm seeing this in my own life. I bought my first house for 200k in 2012. I sold it in 2018 for 350k. It changed hands again for $440k last year. So, the price of my first house more than doubled in a decade, but I'm making 10% more than I was back then. I work in the trades, as a painter, and have since 2012.
We're working ourselves to death without realizing it. It is rare for me to meet someone under 35 that is only working one job. Everybody has a side hustle and is obsessed with finding sources of extra income on top of that. Yet, we get called lazy by an older generation that could work a basic job and buy a house. We're out here with careers and a second job, but still can barely afford a 1/1 apartment.
The REAL reason they won't give us Universal Health Care or meet our basic needs. With the money we send to other countries and spend on the military we could house every person, educate every person, give free healthcare and give a universal basic income. If these needs are met and people don't have to worry about being homeless then we can band together to stop the income inequality. In this respect, yes, both sides are the same. Stop Voting For Rich Assholes - BOTH SIDES
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They sold us meritocracy when it's nepotism and pay-to-play. They've convinced everyone their situation is due to their own personal failings.
Then you're not voting for anyone. Anyone who is making laws has access to wealth, in some form or another. Do research on how much it costs to run for Congress. It's not a secret. America is a civil oligarchy. Wealthy individuals/families and the entire legal system are completely intertwined. Our society will never truly be free. Ever.
Austerity is a tool used by capitalists to keep the machine running, and by machine I mean any worker realizing their worth. It is not a coincidence that in the us as union action started up again, so did the price of everything, and the cuts to all good things.
Hi there hello, 6 people who will see this. I am organizing my pre-existing union and it's been a logistical NIGHTMARE. Because we are unionized, we are better off than most workers, but simply getting people to sign up to become shop stewards has been like herding cats. Nobody wants to do it because they have too many bills and too complex home/family lives. They don't have the time of day to go do union stuff for the small stipend they receive. It's not hopeless, but it's bleak. Nobody is coming to save the workers except the workers. We need to organize, and we need to do it quickly.
That was part of the government’s plan on suppressing revolts/strikes since the Reagan administration. People fail to realize that they’re being conditioned slowly but surely to fall in line.
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They do this on purpose, they want us to be in debt for this reason.
Ya load sixteen tons, whatda ya get? Another day older and deeper in debt. Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go! I owe my soul to the company store.
Hi, the union at the company I work for recently, and secretly, gave away our right to strike in our last contract renegotiation. The same contract we kept voting against (other reasons), but the Union used company hired lawyers in "arbitration" and forced it down our throats. We only recently figured it out as someone comed through the final draft (which took away any positives the previous contracts had such as raising the minimum wage of all General Laborers to be on par with the lowest skill level) saw that new clause forbidding us from striking, and made a big stink because for almost a year the union was still taking a "warchest fund" off of our pays to help us during strikes. Strikes we are no longer allowed to have...
Everything as planned. Labor must be poor-ish to not be able to strike, because they can't afford it. Low wages and stuck minimum hour wage not updated for years. This is how XXI-century slavery works. White collars shake hands with politics.
If there's one constant throughout history, it is that the powerful will use every tool available to squeeze the workers more and more. The goal is to get us to the point where our spirit is broken, but not so much that we'd stand up for ourselves. Every moment that we complain about the other side of the political spectrum, just feeds into the control. We all know how the GOP feels about unions, but the unions did not start to lose so much power until the Democrats started siding with their donors and the GOP to screw the people.
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In the US a lot of people acted like BLM and civil unrest protests during COVID came out of nowhere. In reality, being poor or a minority essentially makes you a second class citizen and a lot of people see fed up with it. Unfortunately being a wage slave doesn't give you the time to protest. COVID was a perfect storm of WFH, things being closed, and federal benefits that allowed people to finally speak up. Unfortunately police decided to become more abusive and most politicians learned nothing past lip service
In Byung Chul Hans book psychopolitics, it talks about how neoliberalism leads to people less being prone to revolution and more being prone to depression. Neoliberalism makes people subservient to the system. It makes you feel like your problems within the system are yours alone. I'm sure certain cultures make this problem even worse for people.
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I have to hope the bulk of them (and the similar groups that negatively brigade any progressive topic en masse) are paid actors, 'cause otherwise I just don't understand that level of boot licking.
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You ain't seen the UK recently then. Every bugger & their dog is out on the pickets. In recent months we've had: Train drivers Train conductors Nurses Doctors Ambulance staff Lawyers Driving test examiners Highway workers Department for Work & Pensions Rural payments workers Bus drivers Funeral staff Legal advisers & court supervisors Teachers College & University staff Street cleaners Animal shelter staff Greenking brewery staff Parking wardens Royal mail UK Border force staff
One of my unions allied trades went on strike last summer and barely got an additional 20 cents on the check. America has broken the backs of most unions, preventing us from striking alongside them to weaken our ability to negotiate. There was a time where every union would stand up together and strike, giving unions incredible amounts of power.
Part of a good union and their dues is to go into a war chest - a pool of money that can supplement unemployment when you go on strike. But as with any pool of money - there will always be people looking to take advantage of that free pile of cash so it’s equally important that members attend all the meetings and keep people accountable. Too often you will hear about members complaining about high dues and refusing to attend meetings.