General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSomething I have always said about low wage workers
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grumpyduck
(6,220 posts)Further ensuring that people can only have low-paying jobs.
What's next? The threat of excommunication? Hey it worked in the Middle Ages.
homegirl
(1,427 posts)why Ronnie Reagan expressed concern on "the dangers of an educated proletariat"
Celerity
(43,057 posts)GenXer47
(1,204 posts)They're weak! Let's kick 'em in the ribs.
collectively we had the will and courage to do this
MayReasonRule
(1,460 posts)Bernardo de La Paz
(48,936 posts)grantcart
(53,061 posts)betsuni
(25,367 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)claim capitalist economy fails at something that's the job of governance. 100% fail every time built right into the massive deceit, the Huge Lie.
Doesn't matter which capitalism. And no need to expect those institutions whose job it is to do it or to blame them when they don't. Don't even need to know what they are -- the label "capitalism's" a dumpster for all problems.
Talk about built-in fails. If THIS was liberal, Democratic Party ideology, I'd HAVE to find another party. Me and 80 million other sensible voters. But of course it isn't.
dchill
(38,432 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Tell me exactly how business decides how YOU vote. One of liberal billionaire Bill Gatess brain implants?
Hell, we could just walk over the 70,000 or so families in the 0.01% and smash them into the ground. They know it when theyre in the mood to be afraid.
But voting only requires us to get our asses out of our recliners for a half hour or so every two years, every four for those who cant be bothered every two. IF that.
Right wing mindsuckers tell people Democrats steal elections. Left-wing mindsuckers say capitalists decide our elections.
Same tactics to destroy belief that we have anything worth fighting for. Same tactics to destroy commitment to protecting what we have from THEM.
dchill
(38,432 posts)I vote every time. There are other realities.
electric_blue68
(14,807 posts)somewhat of an over generalization.
See my post #31
FDR's Economic (2nd);Bill of Rights.
.
Thinking about the 1 example I know from being alive & cogent at those times back then, and the other by historical knowledge that sometimes great pain; physical, mental, emotional/psychological can bring about a great change in a person's thinking. Especially one who has been born to privilege.
Historical
FDR. Living through the times he did, and stricken by polio (since I've never read a biography on him) how did he come to be more of a champion for workers? Luckily, too, he had First Lady Eleanor to nudge him as well.
Look at his Economic (2nd) Bill of Rights
Does that sound like lazarie faire capitalism to you? Do that sound roughshard to you?
Personal and Historical
I was a baby more or less when the McCarthy Hearings happened. I do know my folks watched, or heard (radio) about them. Both my parents were liberals here in NYC. But being by say, 12 years old or so early-mid '60s I began to hear about them, and how terrible they were.
And we see it reflected even today especially either by educational knowledge as I learned, or by some of our DU'rs who remember it from experiencing it - and have "said to" Drumpf, and his cohorts, enablers, apologists etc "have you no shame?" The words that finally deflated McCarthy.
The personal intersects the historical as I started to follow my first Presidential Election: 1968.
I love/d TV, but I also have a thing for radio for music, and musings Later at night I found this talker (after Jean Shepard) - Barry Gray sometime in mid-late 1967. He started (or had had on before I listened) many of JFK's former people, and for eventually Bobby Kennedy a very young then Jeff Greenfield. I was 7 in '60, and I remember asking my older relatives who they were going to vote for. That might have been my first political question! And I was 9 for the Cuban Missle Crisis, smart enough to know what could happen, 10 in '63. So there was that.
So they were discussing - would RFK run for President?
Here was someone born to privilege, yet knowing the pain of losing the eldest brother although what he knew of him in a large family like that in such an age range, I don't know.
He also it turns out was a gentle soul that his father hated. So he hid it, and toughened up. I know my mom watched The McCarthy Hearings from earlier conversation, but she also said to me as either as people speculated about him, or when he started to run, "He's changed.".
The searing wound of losing JFK, and perhaps his father stricken speechless through a stroke somehow reopened that locked away empathy, and gentleness that people saw as he began to campaign. He brought working men and women, intellectuals, creatives, black, and white, Hugo Cheavez and the grape pickers (who also symbolized more immigrants of color, plus the younger of theirs born citizens), Native Americans, some of the Anti-War protestors etc together that we might have walked together. Perhaps in another timeline, or a parallel Earth that some respected physisists say might exist.
So these things, these events, our personal, and sometimes collective histories are, perhaps, more complicated, and sometimes more simple, more nuanced than they appear. Sometimes it's hard to know.
Sometimes we can, ?must ponder if we can.
Just A Box Of Rain
(5,104 posts)Abolishinist
(1,280 posts)I wonder which jobs the Shady Dame From Seville classifies as "shitty", I would love to see her list. Would they somehow cease to exist in her ideal, "non-capitalist" society?
And if that's not bad enough, apparently there are those in capitalist societies who do these jobs for free!
Bluesaph
(703 posts)Lol
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,936 posts)It narrowly applies to only a few variants of capitalism that are so extreme as to be almost non-existent: Robber baron totally unregulated capitalism.
If one allows, as one should, shades and degrees of applicability, then yes, the phrase "wage slave" has meaning. But only to some degree. Few workers in Scandinavia would consider themselves slaves and yet those societies have thriving capitalism. Norway for example has one of the largest masses of capital in the world.
A permanent underclass is NOT in any way a necessary condition for capitalism to function well.
ffr
(22,665 posts)they can convince these power working class drones that all their problems are the fault of Democrats, even though Democrats are doing everything they can to help them into the middleclass.
OMGWTF
(3,938 posts)Abolishinist
(1,280 posts)In the District of Columbia and 29 states that reported racial and ethnic data on abortion to the CDC, 39% of all women who had abortions in 2020 were non-Hispanic Black, while 33% were non-Hispanic White, 21% were Hispanic, and 7% were of other races or ethnicities.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/01/11/what-the-data-says-about-abortion-in-the-u-s-2/
MontanaMama
(23,294 posts)That's it in a nutshell. I don't think there is another plausible explanation.
Duppers
(28,117 posts)I agree, they want a slave class, but we simply do not have the resources to sustain the current growth for much longer.
Javaman
(62,497 posts)the whole will collapse.
history has show this to be true over and over and over again.
Trenzalore
(2,331 posts)No middle class no enforcers.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)everyone and keep them poor and helpless.
Foolish demonizing isn't just wrong, it destroys credibility and support. When it comes from some identifying as Democrats, it undermines support for the liberal Democratic Party among the wobbly voters we need.
We lost our large house majority and now control of the house entirely when the RW was able to equate the Democratic Party with offensively foolish and even scary far-left noise.
Here's a basic truth: It's not the job of capitalism to distribute the wealth it produces equitably (nor can socialized means of production do it either). Claiming it fails is like calling a can opener corrupt for not buttering toast.
Distributing the vast wealth produced by capitalism is the job of those we put in government to serve us. OUR job actually. Our government is constructed to enable We the People to do our job by, among other things we can do, putting a regulatory leash on business and using government to distribute the wealth WE create.
Abolishinist
(1,280 posts)AND, I'm going to work on a design for a can opener that can butter toast! Maybe I can make it to Shark Tank and find an investor!
Javaman
(62,497 posts)as long as there is a "them and us", people will never ever demand real accountability because they are too busy trying to "one up" each other.
and the rich laugh loud and obnoxiously at all of us.
Magoo48
(4,697 posts)Climate Catastrophe and a dystopian near future, while the lash of the GDP score card drives the crumbling system ever onward.
SharonAnn
(13,771 posts)SpamWyzer
(385 posts)does not lead to a complete lack of need for humans. Like genocide.
patphil
(6,144 posts)As a nation, 10's of millions of families are experiencing economic slavery.
10's of millions of women are experiencing reproductive slavery.
There's no like slavery about it. We are a nation of slaves and slave holders.
Bluesaph
(703 posts)They dont have to feed you or make sure you live.
electric_blue68
(14,807 posts)Also known as The Second Bill of Rights.
Which seemingly still not enough people know about.
Jan 11, 1944
Excerpted from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's message to Congress on the State of the Union. This was proposed not to amend the Constitution, but rather as a political challenge, encouraging Congress to draft legislation to achieve these aspirations. It is sometimes referred to as the "Second Bill of Rights."
It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.
This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.
As our nation has grown in size and stature, however as our industrial economy expanded these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
America's own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.
HISTORIC DOCUMENTS
This public-domain content provided by the Independence Hall Association, a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1942. Publishing electronically as ushistory.org. On the Internet since July 4, 1995.
And Thank you, Thom Hartman back on Air America Radio for teaching me this.
TeamProg
(6,018 posts)job.
Abolishinist
(1,280 posts)(the permanent underclass of people who work shitty jobs) to pop out babies - babies they've forced them to create and birth?
How does this work, exactly?
Johnny2X2X
(18,967 posts)This thread caused me to reflect on the talk of common sense personal finance that you hear so much about from older generations.
Well, as my career has progressed, and I'm making good money, boy does common sense become a heck of a lot easier. Past generations saw fair wages, their expenses were manageable with their incomes. They weren't some pillars of discipline, they simply made enough money to live on and even save. There wasn't so much an erosion of common sense as there was an erosion of real wages.
All the common sense in the world isn't going to help you save up an emergency fund if your rent is 50% of your income. All the common sense in the world won't help you if your income barely covers your expenses and your car breaks down.
That's why I'm mindful as my income has risen that I'm not some supoer disciplined person, I just have gotten to a point where I could eliminate debt, and save a little after my expenses are covered. The only reason I am able to is my income has risen quickly. I'm still very aware that I am not that far removed from barely scraping by like most of the country's workers are. So when I do get a raise, I don't add more expenses, but try to live the same way only with a little more cushion.
The people preaching about common sense are usually really high earners, or they were workers during an era where they were paid fair wages that allowed for things like savings.