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Anybody that’s offended by burger flippers making as much as them should be pointing that anger in the right direction. Towards their employer.
I’m an EE with utility clients. If a lineman/wireman started making the same as me, I would feel the same way.
All the money is sucked out by equity holders.
This economy makes me think of Hamilton’s “Dragon”, where everyone sank most of their paycheck back into the company to get a high enough “stake”, to even get a chance at a meaningful job, at said company.
I’m not even sure when this good little Republican became radicalized. I’ve done pretty well for myself and yet I would happily watch it all burn down to the fucking ground if it meant everyone actually got a meaningful standard of living and healthcare.
Well I come from a long line of bucket crabs
When the minimum wage was instituted, the intention was one full-time worker would be able to support the family of four suburban lifestyle. They’ve been gaslighting us for a long time.
Or from a more selfish perspective: an increase in burger flipping wages greatly increases your bargaining power in your own salary negotiations.
“For that wage I could just as well be flipping burgers, and that comes with much lower risk of personal injury.”
Never forget that solidarity benefits you personally, no matter how much the owning class and media try to pit us against each other. Also death to Israel.
I make waaaaaay too much money for the value I provide to society, especially compared to e.g. a teacher.
It’s something I am struggling with so much right now. A huge part of me (like almost every fiber of my being) wants to walk away and dedicate my entire life to something more meaningful, but I have 4 other people counting on me right now. In truth, I could probably still provide for them, but I wrestle with forcing them to drastically reduce their standard of living just because I am ready to.
It’s not like I’m rich or even comfortably wealthy. But in this society, in this economy, I am certainly uncomfortably wealthy.
My thought, if you don’t think someone preparing your food deserves to make a living wage to prepare your food, you shouldn’t get that food…
I don’t care how simple a job is time is not free, we should all make a living wage
Yeah it’s weird when people typically assume you would resent people getting something you don’t have, or getting it with less effort than it took you - because they would resent this and they assume your mind must work the same way theirs does.
Genuinely I think building power lines sounds like an easier job. A lot less stressful at least. Assuming that both have the exact same hours and wage, I know which one I’d choose. If anything the burger flipper should earn more.
Oddly, though, they’re all massive bootlickers and will try to find any reason why billionaires are totally fair and good hardworkers. TheyMre just pathetic.
Oddly not tho. Surprisingly I also see this very clear assumption coming from people who are very anti-billionaire.
It’s more about the owner class than anything. If you deny support to politicians seeking to raise the minimum wage and/or vote for politicians who talk about how the minimum wage concept is evil then you almost certainly are not taking any actions which are anti-billionaire/anti-owner class.
They think rich people are really smart and deserve what they “worked very hard for”. They genuinely believe that the rich “assume the risk so deserve the money” despite them never facing consequences while having incredibly basic ideas. They hate that someone “beneath” them would make money and can’t think hard enough to understand that that would mean they’d get to demand more pay, too. There are even people who think that owners can do whatever they want as long as its legal and they deliberately ignore any nuance regarding what legality is and they jump straight over the concept of baseline morality to tell you that it’s your fault for not changing jobs, as if that’s something you can just do easily(and is if there are better bosses readily available).
All of those examples are what you get when you listen to centrist and conservative media that’s shilling for aggressive capitalism(with state-funded safety nets for corporations, of course). If you say “I don’t think billionaires should be allowed, but all the systems which lead to them are fine” then you’re a complete moron.
Having more than your neighbors is a huge drive to human happiness. House size has no impact on happiness. Having the biggest house on the block is a huge happiness boost. Above the level needed for minimum sustainable food and shelter, wages have no impact on happiness. Making more money than your friends is a huge happiness boost.
It’s something about how we are wired as humans. Many of us have other drivers that are stronger than the drive to have more than others in our community, but to get social support any strategy for raising the living standard floor needs to acknowledge the issue of this hard-wired drive.
I don’t care, go live in your fancy gold mansions, just let me have a decent, low-maintenance room with AC and air filtration. I will sleep my ass off, then go volunteer for something.
Too much to ask for, sadly.
If you want them to flip burgers for you, pay them what you’d want to make flipping burgers for them.
And I’ll even say, I don’t want to flip burgers. The thing I want to do most is my job, and other people can do other jobs. I feel like there’s always this fear, oh, who will do the skilled/educated jobs! Like, smart folks will not suddenly be like “Eh, I don’t want to be a doctor anymore because people can survive on flipping burgers.”
I just said something along these lines in a different comment, but … I have been both a barista (1 week of training-ish) and a physical therapist (4 year bachelor’s and 3 year clinical doctorate). At times, I really enjoyed both. However, doing either full time either bored me or burned me out. I would love to swip-swap between those positions (and others) just because I could because my ability to stay in my home would not be dependent on having a “high skill” job.
I get it, I love my career, but burning out is a real problem in high skill labor as is. This is especially the case for medicine. But I think the bigger concern is people dropping out of the education. Engineering school was brutal, and there were points I considered dropping out, but stuck around because it offered a better life than anything I could hope for if I dropped out. Medical school is even worse for that. Trades are physically difficult, often dangerous, and require education.
I don’t think even most people would drop their career in that scenario, but I do think we’d find ourselves in a position where there’s very little competition for jobs like these and a lot of competition for currently low wage jobs, though that would probably push more people into training for more stable employment.
Minimum wage still needs to be livable though
It’s kind of sad that people are so motivated by jealousy. Like why would I care if other people have it better?
The US was build on the “fuck you I got mine” mentality.
I don’t think it is fair for a person dedicating years of life towards higher education and becoming a professional to earn the same as someone who doesn’t. Its not jealousy, its just unfair. If earnings are flat, what motivates someone from getting educated and growing as a person?
I think jealousy gets a bad rap. It tells you what you want, and what you personally or society could work toward.
Everyone loves Nietche but no one is actually living Nietche. Sure it’s a useful tool if you stop, analyze this emotion and built from it but how many people are actually capable of this in practice? Instead people just get captured by the emotion and never progress.
I don’t think pop culture will ever view jealousy as a positive emotion until we collectively learn emotions.
You gotta start somewhere.
Jealousy and envy are not the same thing, although the nuance is subtle. What you’re talking about is closer to envy. You can be envious of something or someone without the hostility that turns it into jealousy.
I disagree. I believe that you choose for it to be envy or jealousy by your definition.
It’s not my definition. That is the subtle difference between the two words. But, most people use both words for the same thing, and most people only use the word jealousy for both things.
Merriam Webster has an interesting paragraph on the page for jealousy about it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jealousy
You can also check the definitions of jealous and envious yourself, you’ll see that one is defined through hostility of some sort.
The nuance is usually clear through context no matter which word you use, though. But I think that when you use it in a generic manner like you did, using the right word is best.
Again, both words are responses to the emotion and a choice.
No, they stem from different emotions.
Don’t blow their mind by pointing out how emotions take objects and how that scuttles their position.
What my friend was conveying is that envy is the want for something–usually that another has–and jealousy is the fear of losing something that one already has.
The interchangeable usage, e.g. by teenagers, based on a vague understanding is just that (for adults it crystalizes into something normative though they’re probably unaware of it, ego defense mechanisms lol).
Seeing what someone else has and taking that as information to then decide what you want is not jealousy. Jealousy is seeing what someone else has and hating them for it. It deserves a bad rap.
You’re talking about ambition, or something else.
Capitalism pretends to be positive sum, but it trains us all to act as if society is a zero sum game.
Crabs in a bucket
The crab will legit only escape and live if it gets enough other crabs under it to reach the rim of the bucket. I guess you’re saying people act like that even when they don’t need to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
The metaphor is derived from anecdotal claims about the behavior of crabs contained in an open bucket: if a crab starts to climb out,[3] it will be pulled back in by the others, ensuring the group’s collective demise.[4][5][6]
Ohhhhhh
kids are indoctrinated from school to seek out “high skill” jobs and look down on anyone making less
So… Putting in effort to advance yourself should not be rewarded? I don’t get it.
A rising tide lifts all boats.
It does. It also lifts all the turds.
You know how to make them boats get lifted even quicker? Join the tide. Invest in yourself. Make yourself better.
Are the “turds” referenced here actual people? Because that’s really all that matters.
It’s up to employers who they employ. It’s not for you or I to decide what job or what person are suitable.
But if your skilled enployees are switching to burger flipping because they can make the same money then you aren’t paying the new market rate.
In what way is working a more physically demanding job “advancing yourself”?
Besides, I’d also argue that most customer facing jobs are just as demanding as most physical trade jobs. They just fuck you up mentally instead of physically.
Not even degrees mean much anymore, a lot of job positions require one cause they can, not cause you’d actually benefit from that knowledge. Spending all that time and money to get a piece of paper can Aldo hardly be called "advancing yourself’.
In what way is working a more physically demanding job “advancing yourself”?
It’s not the physical part - which isn’t even all that great of a difference - but getting familiar with physics. Working your brain rather than your muscle. That’s an advance.
There’s also a risk element - you fuck up on a powerline - you’re potentially dead. Fuck up a burger? You get yelled at.
Besides, I’d also argue that most customer facing jobs are just as demanding as most physical trade jobs. They just fuck you up mentally instead of physically.
All jobs suck the soul out of you. If you don’t want that - build a career. That requires one doing something one’s great at. It requires an internal drive.
Not even degrees mean much anymore, a lot of job positions require one cause they can, not cause you’d actually benefit from that knowledge. Spending all that time and money to get a piece of paper can Aldo hardly be called "advancing yourself’.
You’re not wrong about job requirements, but I’d argue your whole world view is skewed.
You get a degree to advance your understanding of a thing you give a shit about. If you get one because your parents told to or whatever - then of course it’s useless. Many reasons for that, but one of them is going that to that internal drive.
Quick personal example: I got a CS degree. Out of ~150 people who started ~40 graduated (which I think is probably usual), but of those 40 only 3 were people actually interested in computers. Others were there for all kinds of wrong reasons. Some of those people are now loudly screaming into the ether how degrees are useless. It worked out very well for the 3 of us. As of upcoming August, I will have literally 10x the income I had before starting my degree in 2016. Now, granted, small numbers are easy to get impressive multiplication on, but I’m still proud of it.
No work is less valuable than others.
all work is equal
I think work that requires you to study and learn and experience for ages should be paid higher than work you can do without prior experience or know-how.
But you know, reasonably higher. Like 3x at most.
I don’t care much about pay differences, as long as everybody can afford to live comfortably and nobody can afford to buy politicians.
Fair enough
This is my stance. If you’re working full time you should get a living wage. If you’ve got more experience or have learned more specialized skills then you should get more on top of that baseline living wage. I think 3x is less than what I would set the cap as but when I say that I’m thinking of people with highly specific technical skills or medical professionals, not CEOs. 3x is a fine cap for them.
I show the same respect to any workers, but, some work is much less specialized.
I wouldn’t say a vibe coder is as valuable as a software developer as an example
Also, influencers… Generally not useful at all, and are just trying to score freebies…
Entertainers are valuable and skilled workers. They don’t want to have to advertise to make ends meet, that’s just how our economy is right now.
Well, vibe coding isn’t working. That’s just letting the machine think for you.
However, even non specialized work is essential. Burger flippers, street cleaners, bus drivers, librarians… They may not have a career as long and specialized as a doctor’s, but they’re still essential people, and their work should be valued.
Librarian is a job requiring a masters degree. Library clerks don’t need formal training however. Bus drivers also require a CDL which I would argue also makes it skilled labor. I wouldn’t be surprised if street cleaners also need one.
But yes, many jobs are essential for our society that don’t require certifications, education, or formal training. Though I will say that some jobs are more necessary than others. There are both bullshit jobs and jobs where while the labor is real, the benefits of it to society are less than the value produced by it.
I consider influencers as part of the advertisement industry.
What about ICE?
Even Marx knew that’s just not true at all. And I’m not even talking about the usual ‘garbage collector vs doctor’ bullshit.
I’m talking fastfood worker vs cafeteria worker, where one is reheating some chemical wastes to poison people for corporate gains; whereas the other is serving cheap and nutritious food for his local community.
I think both of those examples are wild generalizations.
Not as much as the original claim, so I’m fine with that
all work is equal
It isn’t.
What work isn’t equal to others?
Sweeping the floor is not equal to doing a heart transplant, stop getting lost in platitudes and get a grip.
Your ability to completely de-humanize janitorial work says so much about you. Heart transplants cannot happen unless someone sweeps the floor.
Every job is important. Every job matters. Someone working at McDonald’s matters to that surgeon who shows up at 2am after a 16 hour day and needs food.
Your ability to completely de-humanize janitorial work says so much about you.
cool strawman bro. Saying sweeping up dust is less important than saving a life is not saying “and you’re a worm if you ever sweep a floor”
I love how people tell on themselves by projecting their own prejudices and then get mad at the person they did it at, as though they had anything to do with the process
I have a prejudice that I believe every job is important and every job is worth doing? And every job is required for other jobs to succeed?
When the fuck did I find myself back on reddit?
it was never as important as someone’s life.
It could never have happened without someone cleaning the operating room.
Serious question. Are you intentionally being dense? Or just come by it accindently?
“ah but what if I change the example you used to a different example”
ok man have fun playing with your strawmen. Sweeping the floor of a warehouse is still not equally as important as life saving medical work. People who detail cars are not as important to society as paramedics.
Noone’s gonna fucking die if you miss a spot when sweeping
In a hospital surgical room? Yeah they can.
You wouldn’t sweep an OR you would mop or squeegee. Kinda like the example I used was ‘sweeping a floor’ and not your straw example of ‘sanitizing a surgical theater.’
Here’s hoping you’re just trolling, because I wouldn’t want to insult a lobotomite
The unnecessary one.
It is. It’s TIME.
One hour of your life isn’t more precious than one hour of mine.
Person A and person B have to do the same exact task e.g. fix a car or whatever. It takes person A one hour to do the job. Person B is more skilled and experienced, and thus can do the exact same job in 30 minutes. Correct me if I’m wrong, but by your logic I understand that person A should be paid double of what person B is paid, because they gave double of their equally important time. One could argue that since it’s the same job being done, they should be paid the same. I would argue person B deserves even more pay for the exact same job that person A did, because they SAVED time. I agree time is valuable, thus doing a job faster is more valuable than doing the exact same job but slower.
You are not required to judge the value of work based on its output. While some types of work may produce output that is relatively more beneficial to society than is other work, a society can choose to believe that the value of the work lies in the effort rather than the output. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. This is the core tenet of Marxism. It’s entirely a matter of which paradigm you choose to accept. There is no right answer to this question, only reflections of what you value.
society can choose to believe that the value of the work lies in the effort rather than the output
Beliefs won’t feed you. Raw output won’t feed you either. What feeds you is an output of things society actually needs. There’s no reasonable way of gathering information of what every single member of society needs, worse some members will lie to get more resources than they should. That approach has fundamentally unsolvable problems
The problems you list are solvable, but you have apparently lacked the intellectual curiosity to investigate how they can be solved. I won’t debate the basic tenets of Marxism with you because it will take too much time and effort, and I have no way to know if you’re genuinely interested or just another troll. But you can find numerous reading lists here if you want to understand.
The problems you list are solvable
They aren’t. Every solution proposed by Marxists is fatally flawed.
The problems they listed are unsolvable, but you have apparently lacked the intellectual curiosity to investigate why the supposed solutions would not actually work. I won’t debate the basics of the impracticability of Marxism in large and interconnected societies with you because it will take too much time and effort, and I have no way to know if you’re genuinely interested or just another troll.
See, others can do it too ;)
Hell yeah! Guard labor is real labor! FOP unions are real unions! Solidarity with the guys who tear gas you!
i mean i really believe that in general, but some people really do provide unique services. it’s hard to reconcile the two concepts especially because people are allowed their contradictions so whatever
I think if you decouple capital and earning from skill this “more or less valuable” thing sorts itself out. If I’m hungry, I’d rather have a farmer and a chef around. If I sprain my ankle, I’d rather have a doctor and a PT around. My needs of the moment are not what I always need. My abilities at this moment, are not what my abilities always will be. for example, if I sprain my ankle, I probably can’t help the farmer bring in the cattle, but I could help the doctor by setting up the autoclave for surgical tools.
I also feel like if my ability have a home and live in a community and not starve were separated from how my time is spent, I would get to choose both less specialized things and I would probably get to cycle through different things (and prevent burnout). I would adore a schedule that lets me do significant physical labor for 2-4 hours in the morning, child care 2 days a week, geriatric health care 2 days a week, barista another day or two, and creative endeavors the rest of the time. That’s not really a job that can or does exist these days and if I tried to cobble it together from part time work, lean staffing would never let it be regular enough to manage all of them without flaking out on someone.
The ONLY risk of a minimum wage or Living Wage is that companies that highly skilled workers earning the same might move to less skilled jobs. For this, the only rational action is to pay your skilled workers accordingly. FAIR PAY is not difficult when an executive team earn millions or billions.
Also, Tax Wealth, Not Work.
FAIR PAY is difficult when the exec team funnels the money to themselves. Funding of their raises/bonuses shouldn’t be at the expense of ours
The health benefits and insurance can be sig ificant portion of pay. The min wage burger flippers likely dont get that, even with laws increasing min wage.
Employees like this are kept under the minimum hours to qualify for benefits on purpose.
Yeah in decent countries the min wage and being able to afford a broken leg (or similar accident) aren’t as closely related. Mean maybe only got so many sick / vacation days but the actual cost of treatment isn’t what you’re worried about. At worse you’d be out the money you’d make during non working days, not much of an actual cost (okay in Canada I had to pay for the crutches when I twisted my knee one close to Xmas time slipping on ice, unfortunately didn’t realize it just needed a good knock in to get right till that happened)
There are worse situations but that’s probably the worst case scenario (well outlying cases exist) that most people come into for the most part is all. Of course some worst cases exist but expecting someone to pay 5 plus digits (okay I know that’s even low) of expenses for medical is insane.
In some countries there is workers compensation to cover accidents that happen on the job like breaking a leg. Then the cost of treatment is covered by the healthcare system a person has already paid into their whole life through taxes.
