Read an interesting op-ed type piece and I thought about starting a new thread for it. But since this thread is still moderately active and I feel the article fits in here, I'm going to post it on this one.
I think this piece does a good job of contrasting the story of what can be accomplished by an individual but also how it is structurally problematic for wider society:
https://thinkprogress.org/do-the-impossible-never-complain-live-the-dream-the-dark-morals-of-todays-feel-good-stories-63b38b4a4953/?fbclid=IwAR38L5p9ybrH9DqH3md8cHZ8FYWj6vchHTGnPMTjuovVPO6OoXEK8DqWa4w
It is a quick read, but does a nice job summarizing.
Oh come on, this is the kind of shit that:
A) is making the western world weak
B) is holding us back from real progress
When the global ecological and economic systems collapse from climate change, no one is going to give a two hoots about paid maternity leave, mobility for low income families, or any of this shit that is nowadays considered “basic and vital.”
Basic and vital is food, water, a place to keep out of the elements, and weapons to defend against Viking raiders. Everything else is not basic nor vital.
The rich control the world. Money is power. Everything on the progressive agenda - minimum wage, single payer healthcare, equal rights, maternity leave, yada yada yada - it’s all a sideshow. It’s misdirection by the world’s greatest magicians. The elite want you fighting for that. And they’ll keep giving it to you, bit by bit, making you think the world is getting better. Making you think that progress is happening. Meanwhile they flood our streets with opium and erect barriers to employment and sell us on worthless college degrees.
I went to a pride rally the other week. It was fun. But you know who had a float parading down the street? Fucking Lowes! Every single major company in the city treated the parade as their personal billboard and the revelers as their captive audience to sell them their shit. The great American capitalist machine has swallowed up what used to be a symbol of defiance and co-opted it for their profit machine.
You want to give workers more power? Here’s an easy one. Eliminate the payroll tax. Get the revenue somewhere else. Get it from corporate taxes. Another easy one. Eliminate the employer mandate. There are other ways to ensure the less well off get health care if that’s what we want to do as a society. How to pay for it? Income tax increase, as progressive as you like it. Capital gains tax increase. Corporate profits. Corporate revenues over 100 billion. ANYTHING BUT A DIRECT FUCKING
DETERRENT TO HIRING SOMEONE.
Why in the world - why oh why oh why - why in the world would we ever endorse anything that makes it more costly to hire someone? You make it easy for companies to say “yes” to robots. You make it easy for them to say “yes” to shipping jobs from America to Bangladesh.
(For the record, I am okay with both robots and Bangladeshis. Robots are cool and economic progress is driven by making processes simpler and more efficient. But that should happen at the natural pace, not because government has disincentivized labor. And I don’t think Americans deserve more or better jobs than Bangladeshis, but I find it abhorrent when our labor disincentives, which ostensibly is meant to help American workers, actually send jobs overseas where workers work in factories with no smoke detectors and inadequate fire exits)
The truly elite are happy to let us plebes have our higher minimum wage, our maternity leave, etc. etc. We can have it, doled out bit by bit, as they find new ways to keep us debt riddled consumers.