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Rob Filter posted:I don't think full employment would be implemented by America, but not because America can't, but because it won't. Why do we want full employment? You're talking about artificial job scarcity as if jobs are something that should be made available to everyone just because, but jobs are just work that needs to be done. If we don't need all those teachers, bus drivers, librarians, etc. then there's no reason for those jobs to exist at all and we'd be better off just paying those people for existing. It's hard for me to view this as any kind of artificial scarcity since the work doesn't necessarily exist at all.
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Dec 30, 2015 17:27
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SedanChair posted:Do you mean "is there enough money" or "will rich people cough up enough money"? Because there is definitely enough money. Fair enough. If my concern is about any variation of the latter, then it is actually about political viability. But it is also possible that even if the political will to raise enough taxes to support all these things, this is not a sustainable arrangement. Like, I'm not making this argument, this is an argument that fully convinces opponents of basic income, UHC, public education, etc. I'm a proponent of these things, but I also don't think that it's worth dismissing that possibility out of hand. But I also can't show that it actually is unsustainable either so it's just a vague concern.
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Dec 30, 2015 17:32
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GunnerJ posted:Fair enough. If my concern is about any variation of the latter, then it is actually about political viability. But it is also possible that even if the political will to raise enough taxes to support all these things, this is not a sustainable arrangement. Like, I'm not making this argument, this is an argument that fully convinces opponents of basic income, UHC, public education, etc. I'm a proponent of these things, but I also don't think that it's worth dismissing that possibility out of hand. But I also can't show that it actually is unsustainable either so it's just a vague concern. It is just resource (re)distribution, and unless you believe that the distribution method itself consumes a finite resource, there is no reason to assume it cannot be sustained.
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Dec 30, 2015 18:00
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Ytlaya posted:My main issue with a minimum income is that you would still probably end up with a bunch of people starving to death or homeless. Even if people technically have enough money, they might do dumb things (due to being financially illiterate or some other reason). While those things would, indeed, be dumb, I think it would still be bad if people starved to death because they spent too much of their mincome payment. This is especially true if the mincome is as tiny as the OP proposes. Plenty of people who work normal jobs don't spend their money correctly. Why are we not concerned with interceding with their budget? You're allowing the act of earning income to twist your judgement. Nearly everyone who would receive a mincome are no different from those earning a minimum wage job. There are going to be some who will spend money on the wrong things. We already have laws and enforcement measures that will eventually catch the really bad spenders. Even if, by some twisted god's humor, there are a thousand brain-scrambled junkies spending mincome on heroin to one well-adjusted citizen who spends mincome on only the things that they need, I would still advocate they be paid in cash. The junkies will learn in time, and while they do, I do not want to punish or embarrass the lone responsible person.
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Dec 30, 2015 18:08
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The whole idea that we need to tightly monitor and control the spending of people receiving public assistance is classist horseshit based on legends about welfare queens and a sense that welfare is some kind of noblesse oblige burden of THE TAXPAYER that gives "us" the right to make sure "our money is well spent" rather than a resource for public benefit that should be available to any who need it. People who are deprived of necessities are usually pretty capable of satisfying their needs when they are able to. I don't give a poo poo if they buy an X-Box with what's left over.
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Dec 30, 2015 18:14
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Ytlaya posted:My main issue with a minimum income is that you would still probably end up with a bunch of people starving to death or homeless. Even if people technically have enough money, they might do dumb things (due to being financially illiterate or some other reason). While those things would, indeed, be dumb, I think it would still be bad if people starved to death because they spent too much of their mincome payment. This is especially true if the mincome is as tiny as the OP proposes. This is my issue as well. Min income immediately raises alarms in my mind because of its over-simplicity. Right now we have dozens of programs designed to specifically target people in need (with spending per person in poverty already on the order of $10k/year). Some of them suck, but It's highly unlikely that a math formula is really the ticket. My preferred starting point would be a set of programs designed to encourage work and increase demand for low skilled workers (direct spending on infrastructure etc) and see where that leads us.
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Dec 30, 2015 18:17
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asdf32 posted:My preferred starting point would be a set of programs designed to encourage work and increase demand for low skilled workers (direct spending on infrastructure etc) and see where that leads us. I like this idea, but it should be a supplement to mincome. Start with a low and phased in slowly mincome, and do what you can take make work available to those who want to work, and make sure they are getting paid enough for that work to be worthwhile. Then roll out singlepayer and phase out the various programs being slowly made unnecessary. Where the mincome needs to end up long run isn't where it needs to start.
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Dec 30, 2015 18:56
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Universal healthcare should always exist because it costs less and has better outcomes, not because it's a necessary burden.
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Dec 30, 2015 19:05
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If you are discussing politically implausible ideas, mincome is about the worst there is. It works out one of three ways: - mincome is enough to provide everything anyone might want to live happily. Congratulations, you have implemented full communism. Now, if you could just show your working... - mincome is enough to provide a miserable standard of living that noone is satisfied with. Either noone relies on it , or some people do and are unhappy. Either way, what was the point? - mincome is enough to provide a decent standard of living to some; those who have money in the bank, own property, live in rural areas, and have time and energy to put into optimising their lifestyle to fit within a fixed figure. The latter is the worst case, as it turns the economy into one long game of monopoly. You end up with two classes, landlords and workers, where the landlords gather all the annual earnings from the workers and use that to buy new properties. Eventually you declare Donald Trump the winner. You try to start again, but he won't let you shuffle all his money and titles back to the bank...
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Dec 30, 2015 20:03
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I can't help but see mincome as a giant subsidy to employers offering low-paid positions (especially when it comes to countries with no universal minimum wage, like Finland). I mean, the only difference between mincome and regular welfare state long-term unemployment benefits is that you don't have to be unemployed or a jobseeker to get mincome. Well, and there's nothing to prevent making part of the mincome only available for people who have been employed within the last x months or similar. All that would require is that the state accesses its own database that it already has for tax collection purposes, and honestly, what right-wing government would implement mincome in any other way? The only people who benefit in the end are the ones who can afford to live frugally enough not to work and the ones who would be excessively targeted by workfare schemes or other humiliations. That's not bad by itself, but in my opinion the current Scandinavian model is better, as it's better able to target the limited benefits to people who need them. I would much rather see a job guarantee like explained here: http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=23719 Set benefits and the minimum wage through a state-provided jobs program where anyone can get a minimum wage job just by asking for one. If, for some reason, a job cannot be provided at the time or the individual can't work, they would still get the wage. At least when talking about a wage for a job, there's an implication that it should be enough to live on. And there's only so much bullshit companies like Wal-Mart can make a person endure for 50 extra cents per hour when they can just walk into a job where the bosses have no motive to treat them badly. Mincome, while similar in a way, doesn't seem as effective to me.
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Dec 30, 2015 21:19
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The "Scandinavian" model has it's own problems. There are many overlapping benefits and the bureaucracy involved in applying for them make irregular, low wage or part time employment unattractive since it may end up being a net negative on a persons income, and often you can't know beforehand what the outcome will be. The purpose of mincome, for a country like Finland anyway, is to replace (some) means tested benefits so more forms of employment would be profitable, and you wouldn't have to submit a bunch of forms about what you've been doing to several different bureaus any time something changes w/r/t your income.
doverhog fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Dec 30, 2015 |
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Dec 30, 2015 22:00
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asdf32 posted:My preferred starting point would be a set of programs designed to encourage work and increase demand for low skilled workers (direct spending on infrastructure etc) and see where that leads us. Work, especially low-skill work, is miserable. Why would you want to encourage it?
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Dec 31, 2015 00:12
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Mofabio posted:Work, especially low-skill work, is miserable. Why would you want to encourage it? It's not though. There are a large number of social, economic and political befits to encouraging work. Work in its various forms does, and always has formed a large part of our identities. There is no easy substitute for the gap its removal would create, especially in a period of time when organized social institutions of all kinds are on the decline (from men's clubs like the Elks to religious groups). Plenty of people have valid substitutes from parenting to hobbies, others don't and the consequences of that are many, from substance abuse to depression. Secondly a division in society between those that work and those that don't is a potential political disaster. It's already a challenge, and it could get worse. One snippet from the good Atlantic piece on this topic quote:In 1989, the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Judith LeFevre conducted a famous study of Chicago workers that found people at work often wished they were somewhere else. But in questionnaires, these same workers reported feeling better and less anxious in the office or at the plant than they did elsewhere. The two psychologists called this “the paradox of work”: many people are happier complaining about jobs than they are luxuriating in too much leisure. Other researchers have used the term guilty couch potato to describe people who use media to relax but often feel worthless when they reflect on their unproductive downtime. Contentment speaks in the present tense, but something more—pride—comes only in reflection on past accomplishments.
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Dec 31, 2015 00:32
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You've brought this up before, and you're completely ignoring the fact that our society is built to make people feel guilty for not working, so of course it's natural to feel anxious when you're "wasting" your time with leisure. We also do almost nothing to encourage hobbies or socially useful activities outside of work. The problem is that we're pretty much unavoidably heading for an employment crisis (or are already in one if you don't use unemployment as if it's a useful metric all on its own) and we're going to have to deal with the fact that not everyone will be working. It's not even like everyone works now - more than a third of working age Americans aren't even in the labor pool, and it's not all retirees and college students. Stubbornly stamping your feet and insisting that people have to work solves nothing. Job quality is what matters, and there are already too few quality jobs. We're in the midst of a decades long trend of job losses being replaced primarily by lower wage, lower quality positions. Edit- To be clear, the point of a mincome is not to get people to stop working. No mincome experiment has ever shown that to be a likely outcome either, since most of the people who end up staying home have goals separate from work (family, school, entrepreneurship). You're absolutely right that people won't want to sit around and do nothing, which is great. The point of a mincome is to help alleviate poverty at the low end and provide freedom that's essentially unavailable to anyone making less than an upper middle class salary and saving a large portion of their income. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 00:52
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asdf32 posted:It's not though. There are a large number of social, economic and political befits to encouraging work. Work in its various forms does, and always has formed a large part of our identities. There is no easy substitute for the gap its removal would create, especially in a period of time when organized social institutions of all kinds are on the decline (from men's clubs like the Elks to religious groups). Plenty of people have valid substitutes from parenting to hobbies, others don't and the consequences of that are many, from substance abuse to depression. Jesus, I disagree with just about everything you said, other than the fact there are economic benefits to work. Work is, in fact, miserable. People watch clocks, look forward to the weekend, spend their working hours planning their vacations from work, don't like their bosses, don't like alarm clocks, don't like taking orders, would rather spend time with friends than coworkers - and that's just #firstworldproblems. First, work hasn't always formed a large part of our identities. Proletarianization only began 200 years ago, after all. Second, the mass alienation of ourselves from our products and other humans is a result of work. Third, the only thing worse than work is not being allowed to work. It is depressing having to beg and mooch for food and shelter, because you can't sell your labor, because nobody will hire you. Humans have been around for millions of years: were people depressed before wagework became mandatory, without knowing why? Think about what you're saying.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:01
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Mofabio posted:Think about what you're saying. The worst part about his argument is that a mincome works in favor of workers anyway. It moves bargaining power back to workers by allowing them to hold out for better working conditions and better wages, and shrinks the overall labor pool by removing people who are only willing to do a bare minimum of work to survive. It's probably one of the best things we can do moving forward if we want to ensure that there are decent jobs for people who honestly want to work.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:14
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Mofabio posted:First, work hasn't always formed a large part of our identities. Yeah it's not like loads of people still have occupational surnames from centuries before that.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:23
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crabcakes66 posted:Yeah it's not like loads of people still have occupational surnames from centuries before that. Yeah let's put this to rest. In the context of human history you're fairly lucky if you even have a choice as to what you do. In the past gender roles often dictated everything and/or trades were passed down in families out of necessity, decree or bondage. Or parents decided. Women often had zero choice. The notion, being discussed now, that a large portion of a population might realistically have the option to "do nothing" is utterly uncharted territory. Mofabio posted:Jesus, I disagree with just about everything you said, other than the fact there are economic benefits to work. Work is, in fact, miserable. People watch clocks, look forward to the weekend, spend their working hours planning their vacations from work, don't like their bosses, don't like alarm clocks, don't like taking orders, would rather spend time with friends than coworkers - and that's just #firstworldproblems. This is obviously not true for everyone and appears to be you extrapolating your personal feelings or limited life experience onto everyone. That's not going to get us far. The question how society might actually react to a large chunk of the working age population not working, not how you would react or how you want society to react. It's demonstratively the case that a big chunk of people get an important peice of their identity from work.
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Dec 31, 2015 01:48
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Retirement makes people happier:quote:Retirement, contrary to popular opinion, is not the time in which your satisfaction with life declines and your health deteriorates. Instead, it’s the exact opposite: Retirement is likely to improve your overall happiness and health, according to a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research this year. The reason some previous articles/studies said the opposite is that many people retire involuntarily because of poor health, you have to control for that to see what the real effect of retirement is.
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Dec 31, 2015 02:42
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crabcakes66 posted:Yeah it's not like loads of people still have occupational surnames from centuries before that. That explains all the Jessica Monsantos and John Exxons I know. Work is very, very different now. There's no farm to go back to. Work, or mooching off workers, is now mandatory. asdf32 posted:This is obviously not true for everyone and appears to be you extrapolating your personal feelings or limited life experience onto everyone. That's not going to get us far. I admit that I form my opinions from what is in front of my nose. How do you form yours? The only people I know who make work part of their identity are in functions that have existed for millenia: farmers, teachers, doctors, artists, social workers. I don't know any corporate lawyers or lobbyists or pharmaceutical engineers or retail workers or subway sandwich artists who identify with work. Also, work is a primary enforcer of gender norms. My first job had a two-line dress code for men, and a two-page code for women. Jobs are gendered - line cooks are male, teachers are female. And the middle ages, pre-Witch Trials (gendered violence against women dissidents) had more fluid gender-work relations than you know. We haven't even touched on work's death toll, or environmental toll. During tomorrow's commute, as you idle in traffic, listen to the radio, see if there were any fatal accidents. The faster work ends, the better. Mofabio fucked around with this message at 03:11 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 03:06
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Not sure why, if work is such an uplifting part of human satisfaction with life, people will not engage in it outside of employment for wages.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:08
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They do actually, it's called grinding or farming, and it happens in MMOs and such. They get paid in gold or khyiber krystals or whatever, and perhaps more importantly in appreciation from their half-elf peers. Millions of people pay monthly fees to do it.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:18
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doverhog posted:They do actually, it's called grinding or farming, and it happens in MMOs and such. They get paid in gold or khyiber krystals or whatever, and perhaps more importantly in appreciation from their half-elf peers. Millions of people pay monthly fees to do it. I mean, for fun, I like to machine things on my lathe. Other people code for fun. Or care for elders. Or pick up litter. Or make music. People constantly engage in productive activities for personal growth, or just to be good people. Others do the exact same tasks for survival. Why does engaging in tasks for survival feel so much shittier?
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Dec 31, 2015 03:28
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Mofabio posted:That explains all the Jessica Monsantos and John Exxons I know. Move dem goalposts.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:31
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Paradoxish posted:Why do we want full employment? Well, I personally don't want full employment. I was arguing that, because the government doesn't have full employment, and then leaves people without a job in poverty, its the governments fault for setting up an economy where there isn't enough work for everyone, and people are punished with poverty for not having a job. Because the government could clearly employ everyone if it chose to do so. That said: myself posted:If there was such an abundance of employee's that none of those jobs were necessary anymore, you could lower the hours of every working person so that everyone worked 37 hours instead of 38, as low as you wanted. Rob Filter fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 03:39
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Mofabio posted:That explains all the Jessica Monsantos and John Exxons I know. Miller, Smith, Weaver, for example, those are all occupations but also common surnames.
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Dec 31, 2015 03:54
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Mofabio posted:That explains all the Jessica Monsantos and John Exxons I know. My father programmed COBAL for a power utility then a large bank. He got laid off in the 2001 recession and it devastated him. He was a COBOL programmer. Following the layoff I'd catch him muttering unconsciously but audibly under his breath how he'd rather die than take a low paying job. He wouldn't hear of taking any lower type of retail job even in the things that interested him (and plenty of things interested him). He wasn't even a good programmer, he was a history major but I think he liked programming because it was a challenge for him and he loved the middle class lifestyle it brought and the status he perceived to be associated with that position. His work group photos found their way to the family album. He liked putting on a suit to go to work everyday. Within 2 years he had actively cut himself off from friends and family out of shame, within 4 years he wouldn't contact me on my birthday (and besides bare necessity excursions I was the only one he saw) and within 6 years he was dead of cancer that he had hidden, probably for 2 years, until I dragged him to the emergency room because symptoms were becoming obvious. This is an extreme case and certainly not the primary basis of my opinion (the atlantic quote above cited a study showing that people are happier even at jobs they hate). One thing that we can agree on is that no one should attach this much value to a job in capitalism and this is a position I've argued elsewhere. But at the same time it's a reality, partly because it's been indoctrinated culturally. But also because a desire to participate and contribute to society is an obvious human desire and one that's always been primarily fulfilled by work. Yes, other things can fulfill that role but not necessarily easily. That means if we're headed down this path we can't glibly declare that "the faster work ends the better". We need to start the probably long and probably painful process of preparing individuals and society for a completely altered state of existence. The political realities are entirely separate and equally challenging. Perhaps half the population would be perfectly fulfilled with their hobbies but for society to function the working half has to agree as well.
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Dec 31, 2015 04:07
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Man, when is it not time to post this? In Praise of Idleness quote:Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: 'Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.' Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Being socialized to crave a job and despise yourself if you don't have one is not natural or "the way it has always been."
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Dec 31, 2015 04:22
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asdf32 posted:The notion, being discussed now, that a large portion of a population might realistically have the option to "do nothing" is utterly uncharted territory. The notion being discussed with mincome is far less that and far more that people might realistically have the option to do the work they're good at and which benefits them most. Work is not merely what you get paid to do, cleaning your house is work, raising your kids is work, cooking your dinner is work, everything you do to improve your condition is work. The problem currently is that people are often forced to take paid work in lieu of productive work. They are forced to benefit someone else because they can not be permitted to benefit themselves directly. See: buying pre-cooked food because people haven't the time to cook themselves, paying for childcare because they cannot stay home to raise their kids. Buying new clothes because they don't have time to learn how to fix their old ones. There are a great many integral tasks to an efficient life which are being eroded by the pursuit of pay rather than the pursuit of work. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 04:28
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Miller, Smith, Weaver, for example, those are all occupations but also common surnames. Oh yeah, it would be cool if people had a lot of free time to weave and learn smithing. Good call.
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Dec 31, 2015 04:31
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OwlFancier posted:The notion being discussed with mincome is far less that and far more that people might realistically have the option to do the work they're good at and which benefits them most. Generally people go to work when they're better off because of it. Society doesn't accurately value on everything but it really is the case that most people are better off keeping their day job and using the proceeds to purchase clothing from highly efficient factories than trying to sew it themselves. Min income is a moral policy (or a practical implementation of one), not primarily an economic policy. SedanChair posted:Man, when is it not time to post this? Don't I recall you saying how you're more focused and productive with a manager like a couple weeks back? asdf32 fucked around with this message at 05:25 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 05:22
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Some things are better done by industry and some things are better done by people for themselves. It is economically far preferable to take away people's ability to do things for themselves if you can present them with a way to buy the same thing back off you at a markup. People are certainly better off going to work right now because they die if they don't. But in the main, no, they're not better off working for pay and then paying for everything, because the entire existence of companies providing services is predicated on them getting less pay than they worked for and less value than they paid for. There are some things where the benefits of automation and economy of scale make paying for things often better than the alternative, but there are also plenty of things that aren't that way but we still are expected to live reliant on those services because the conditions of our existence make it very difficult to not be reliant on them. Childcare is probably the best example, you go to work to afford to pay someone else to look after your children while you go to work. That is such a patently ridiculous idea, but it's how things work, because if you don't go to work you get the sack and then you can't afford food either. When you can, you should work for yourself, because you gain the full value of your labour. Even if you're a bit less efficient than someone more experienced might be, you may still be better off than if you paid for someone else because your money is worth more in terms of the labour that acquired it, than what you can buy with it. Mincome is good because it allows people more opportunity to work for themselves. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 05:31
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asdf32 posted:Don't I recall you saying how you're more focused and productive with a manager like a couple weeks back? Sure, but there are other kinds of leaders I've had the same relationship with, like martial arts teachers or professors. And I only value the kind of job where a manager can provide the same kind of guidance and accountability. That's why I work in social services 
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Dec 31, 2015 05:34
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OwlFancier posted:Some things are better done by industry and some things are better done by people for themselves. It is economically far preferable to take away people's ability to do things for themselves if you can present them with a way to buy the same thing back off you at a markup. Its hard to take you seriously with your psudomarxist notions of value. Market transactions are in fact mutually beneficial which alone invalidates your second paragraph. That a company earns a surplus doesn't mean the consumer lost. Like for Christmas I bought a sewing machine and I'll keep the "full value of my labor" for every near-clueless hour I spend at it (I bought it for a specific project) but who gives a gently caress. The important thing when we're actually talking about poor people where value and productivity really matter is what benefits them the most in real life. It turns out that has poo poo to do with your definition of value and the majority of the time involves transacting with people and companies who are specialized. Also, as a parent as of about 3 weeks ago, tell me more about how it's necesarily rediculous to pay for childcare. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 05:50
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asdf32 posted:really sad story I'm sorry, dude  . I see what you mean and where you're coming from about the identity thing - how job identity is intertwined with class, and also the role in the family.
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Dec 31, 2015 05:59
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asdf32 posted:Generally people go to work when they're better off because of it. Society doesn't accurately value on everything but it really is the case that most people are better off keeping their day job and using the proceeds to purchase clothing from highly efficient factories than trying to sew it themselves. The reason those factories are "efficient" is because their labor force is underpaid, overworked, and kept in line with violence; exploited. Otherwise, the transport costs (which are only so low because fuel is also stolen through force) would prevent massively centralized clothing manufacture from being viable. Rob Filter fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 06:41
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asdf32 posted:That means if we're headed down this path we can't glibly declare that "the faster work ends the better". We need to start the probably long and probably painful process of preparing individuals and society for a completely altered state of existence. The point is that mincome is a way to put the brakes on this process and transition into a state where working for a living may not be a realistic possibility for many people. The alternative is a continued slow erosion of wages, loss of quality jobs, and increase in wealth and income inequality. Doing nothing means more people who could be doing productive work or learning new skills will instead be underemployed or simply move out of the labor pool altogether. It's absurd to think it's going to mean the end of work, unless you honestly believe people making a decent middle class income are going to decide to lie around doing nothing all day because they get the equivalent of a minimum wage check from the government. Like, I really feel this needs to be reiterated: minimum income is not about ending work. If a minimum income magically popped into existence tomorrow, people would still be employed. Life would go on.
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Dec 31, 2015 06:55
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Rob Filter posted:The reason those factories are "efficient" is because their labor force is underpaid, overworked, and kept in line with violence; exploited. Otherwise, the transport costs (which are only so low because fuel is also stolen through force) would prevent massively centralized clothing manufacture from being viable. And what does it mean that fuel is "stolen by force"? Is there a way to take stuff out of the ground where it's not "stolen by force"? Or are you just suggesting that Big Oil companies employ Sith for their extraction projects?
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Dec 31, 2015 07:25
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Cicero posted:And what does it mean that fuel is "stolen by force"? Is there a way to take stuff out of the ground where it's not "stolen by force"? Or are you just suggesting that Big Oil companies employ Sith for their extraction projects? Well, Dick Cheney. So, close. All of Iraq's oil got sold to the supermajors in the 2007 Iraqi Hydrocarbon Bill. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html The textile industry's been the horrific labor practice vanguard since the very dawn of capitalism though, oil or not. Basically stealing orphans to fill explosive factories 14 hours a day, modeled on plantation slave labor. Empire of Cotton's a great read on this, and it dovetails with another D&D favorite, Late Victorian Holocausts. The cotton famine from the US civil war caused the British Empire to bring wagework to India (via debt peonage), moved agriculture from food to cashcrops, and in the next ENSO droughts, 10-50 million people died. Textiles! It's all off the mincome topic, though. I honestly just read Empire of Cotton and wanted to dump facts on the internet.
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Dec 31, 2015 07:58
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asdf32 posted:My father programmed COBAL for a power utility then a large bank. He got laid off in the 2001 recession and it devastated him. He was a COBOL programmer. Following the layoff I'd catch him muttering unconsciously but audibly under his breath how he'd rather die than take a low paying job. He wouldn't hear of taking any lower type of retail job even in the things that interested him (and plenty of things interested him). Gotta wonder if part of the reason was also how social status and paycheck is tied into ideas of masculinity, which a lot of men and women buy into. I think there was a story going around on various progressive sites about about how college-educated women were frustrated by a lack of college-educated men. Naturally, the men who were in this scene kind of knew that and were exploiting it. But apparently the idea of dating a man who wasn't college educated didn't figure or wasn't acceptable, for some reason? rudatron fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Dec 31, 2015 |
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Dec 31, 2015 13:10
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