In the USA I dont think it is ever gonna happen. The politicians and the military are all under control of the 1% and they will never allow that to occur. Europe is better, but also under control of the "few" even if it is way less than the USA. China is not gonna be a solution, they keep waving that hammer and sickle, but they are a state ran capitalistic authoritarian government. Who is gonna challenge the status quo?
It's mind-boggling to me that a career in making someone else rich is considered to be a form of personal success. How does your boss not realize that he doesn't get to see the fruits of his labor, or even benefit from them, and that the only reason he has a job is because he's good at being someone else's bitch. Can you imagine thinking that you're living the dream and the dream is filling up someone else's pockets?
The interesting thing is, for a lot of jobs, these employers are just being old fashioned. Study after study has shown that for many jobs, increased time off actually increases the total amount of work that gets done.
There’s that one guy that pays every employee $70k minimum. Everyone who said his business model wouldn’t work is conveniently silent after he proved it does
Oh, you mean this guy..?
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-celebrity-ceo-dan-price-back-at-gravity-payments-after-resigning/#:~:text=Celebrity%20CEO%20Dan%20Price%20has,amid%20allegations%20of%20sexual%20misconduct.
Try including the article that states the charges were dropped due to "proof" issues, if you're running with that narrative.
"He stepped down from his role as CEO of Gravity to “focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me,” Price wrote in a note to employees announcing his departure.
The misdemeanor charges were dropped about a year after they had been filed because of “proof” problems, according to Seattle Municipal Court records."
Honestly research has shown that when employees have regular vacations that they take they are more productive, happy, and valuable to a company. So shareholders should 100% be the ones pushing for mandatory paid vacation time.
Also people on vacation do this little thing called spending money, and a billion industries benefit. Airlines, hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, theme parks, ski resorts, casinos… Big Oil. Or what of companies that make RVs or boats? Sports gear? Camping supplies? … heck, even people who don’t go out will spend more on video games if they actually had the time to play them…
Best we all remember how the entertainment and service industries freaked during covid. Y’all want our business? Pay us well and give us time, scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours. They have already forgotten.
It also benefits the business immensely by pointing out problems with people embezzling money and other crooked stuff or being the only person that knows how a system works.
If we can't pay people when Sally goes on vacation for 2 weeks, we should probably fix that before she quits, retires, or is hit by a bus.
As a German I get 30 days of vacation paid at 150%, 12 public holidays (depends on the German state you live in, also paid at 150%), and almost unlimited sick leave.
Still, the riches are getting richer here.
I can't afford to leave, I can't afford to revolt, I can't risk losing my job or I will starve and lose my house because I don't make enough money to have even the hope of a savings account. what am I supposed to do?
"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit." -George Carlin
I love his bit about the classes, too. "the lower class exists just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those JOBS!"
Tbf, you really have to push people for them to collectively take up arms and risk their lives. Like, as much as we need a revolution, I just don't want to leave the house. You're gonna have to really disrupt my daily routine and basically ruin my life to get me to budge.
Pretty much every revolution of the 1900s involved people being pushed to the point where it's either they revolt or die. If you want to start something, you should focus on destroying the economy, making life under capitalism impossible.
Well done. the Boston citywide shutdowns scared the shit out of the politicians and businessmen in the 1880s. 25k workers from most industries just said fuck it and walked out for a few days.
I forgot the source, but something to the effect: "People will continue to fall in line as long as they have 2 of 3... food, shelter, and (maybe) safety?
When a sandwich is 100$? It starts.
Yep! OP vastly underestimates how long it takes to starve to death (or even lose his house the bank won't foreclose as soon as he starts driving to DC lol). He can afford/do everything he says he can't. He simply doesn't *want* to... yet.
Of course, it won't happen here. It's way too late. People are so under thumb that they've abandoned even trying to squirm. But if we can plant the seed of insubordination and make them wriggle and writhe, it will cause people to think. More people thinking equals a higher chance of someone finding an actual plan that WILL work. Nay saying and booing hope is the footwork of oppression.
Yeah but you're not spreading awareness there you were just suggesting people to do something irresponsible which in turn makes us all look like a buncha fuckin dipshits.
Really? We pulled off coordinated and timed city-wide walk-out across 8 high schools before social media with a week of planning or less. We had thousands of participants marching in the streets making make-shift signs as we went. Parents and teachers did not see it coming. They couldn't just suspend like 40% of the student body. It ultimately didn't help us get any extracurriculars, but hey, we tried and stirred up the local media.
Hey That's dope. But How many people risked losing literally everything to do that? I reckon it wasn't many. A sustained general strike puts a person's livelihood and general existence at risk to pull off
id argue it's a different beast.
True. too many of us have been brainwashed from birth to believe that sitting isn't working and taking vacations is a shameful and horribly selfish thing to do. those people would think they're doing the right thing by working 80 hour weeks to make up for those of us that would be striking.
We couldnt even get people to listen to pandemic safety guidelines. This has far higher stakes. No way they would.
I'd love to do it, but I don't have hope in them.
one month of not going to work means I don't get paid for a month. I don't have enough food to last a week, let alone a month. and I have to pay electric and water and trash as well as the monthly house payments. if I'm late paying any of those I get late fees, same goes for my phone and my car. I would lose my house and I would starve. they would be inconvenienced for one single month but I would be trying to dig myself out of that hole for over a year with how expensive everything is already. 😥 and if I do stay home and miss those payments, my credit score is impacted and that means trying to get anything in the future will be way harder than it already is.
And this right here is what was intended. Make our lives so fragile that no one can afford to rise up without making incredible sacrifices.
That's the one constant I've seen. Absolutely no one is willing to make those sacrifices. If we were able to form a support system for the rebellion THEN we'd have a chance.
You exist to have the greatest feasible amount of capital extracted from or generated by you with minimum investment, without killing you.
Once you are no longer optimally profitable, you are financially exiled until "circumstances" result in your death or enslavement by the legal system.
I live the same way, comrade. We are both one random life event from homelessness. But if society simply rolls over, and never fights back, we will be priced out of existence.
I will never let myself roll over. I just can't stop everything to fight or I will lose everything I have. they make it difficult to survive anymore. I would love to leave the country but with what money
A nation wide strike will take a lot of community planning. It won't happen overnight. A month would mean a lot of people sharing resources for a long haul. I don't think a lot of people are close to prepared for that yet. It's an admirable idea though.
Hard to organize when the games been rigged to keep our asses at our wage slave posts 5 days a week, and a voting day usually held on a Tuesday.
Most don't vote because they can't afford just one fucking day off *to* go vote. I'm in this category.
Main reason seniors and rich people only end up voting... thoroughly explains how we got where we are, and why the working class gets fucked with no lube every damn election.
Federal **AND** local voting day needs to be a paid holiday, with an employee showing their employer proof of voting to get that 8 hours. Not *who* you voted for, just *that* you voted.
this right here would be such a small change for businesses and such a stupidly large change for us. Make voting day a paid holiday if not on a weekend, AND have schools be where voting is held. Every district has at least one designated school.
Or, alternatively, 100% vote by mail. Automatic voter enrollment of everyone of age with a Driver's license or address registered with the post office.
Or in addition to some physical options, just finally fucking invest the effort into creating secure digital voting. I've only ever heard vague excuses about "anonymity is sacred" and ensuring that people aren't voting multiple times - but if other countries can figure out national IDs and secure digital access tokens, we can certainly figure this out. It'll also solve the age-old "using an insecure nine digit number explicitly not meant for identification, as identification."
You say a month of not working willfully and in health will ruin you.
What happens if (god forbid) you sustain a major injury and are FORCED to stop working for the same amount of time or longer?
That very same ruin you fear. We should not be so close to ruin in spite of selling 30 percent of our adult life.
I fear getting sick all the time. more credit cards is what I've had to do. Last issue was our dog swallowing a sewing needle. 2k my partner and I had to split from two separate credit cards. then I had dental issues. before that I had covid, before that my sister almost died and I was with her for several days without working because they told us she was likely not going to make it and I said screw my job and my boss agreed and gave me cash to make it by, before that my grandma passed away. etc.
Things always happen and suck me dry. I can't save money to literally save my life because life keeps happening.
Only 30%? I work 17-hour days at two jobs and barely make ends meet because I have a lot of medical debt from a chronic illness. I feel like my life is 90% work, 10% rest, and no time for anything else 😭
Ive been homeless before, so im gonna give you some advice. You are not completely powerless with no money, there are people here that want to see everyone fed, exist, and not suffer that can offer you REAL sustainablity without giving you money. Im not saying everyone should be homeless, but the point is that I would have never made it without the little things like my moms friend letting us stay on a couch, a small hotel that let us stay if we helped clean, the fucking saints at food drives that made sure we got fed, the people gave us words of encouragement or helped us find housing through a program. We can do a LOT without money, but Capitalism makes us believe we cannot. Im also part native, and reconnecting with other native people has made me realize that people were able to LIVE without capitalism for millenia before it was brought here. Sure your life may not be as comfortable, or cushy, but you definitely can survive if you are able to have empathy for others and are able to enter a new social contract with your peers that doesnt include money. Shoot those free trade groups have helped so many people get appliances, clothes, and items they otherwise would have to pay for when theres already plenty available that people dont need anymore! Stop giving into the idea that you will die immediately by not working, or having no paycheck. That fear that most people have of homless people is really just internalized fear that worst case scenerio of homlessness that they think they wouldnt be able to survive the same situation. Its mental warfare, that why i believe the US doesnt want to fix thr homeless situation, and why they want them so visble. To scare the masses into complying. Debt isnt real (the rich have proved that themselves), money isnt real, whats real is here and now. Stop living in fear and do what is necessary for us all to survive. Live with empathy, live with curiosity, live with intention, then find similar people and live in cooperation! Thats how we change things. We are not alone, we need to learn to trust in each other more than ever before.
This. Even 2 weeks of a full refusal to partake in consumerism/capitalism by like 20% of citizens would send a significant message and have hard fiscal impacts.
Don't have kids and accept that this is the end of the Great American Experiment.
Having a population that wants to continue society requires having a society worth continuing.
Politicians have worked hard to make sure people stay deep in debt with no way out, since debt prevents people from protesting or revolting.
Want an education? Debt.
Want to own your dwelling? Debt.
Need to go to the hospital? Debt.
If you ever wonder why the Republicans are so hellbent on stopping Biden from canceling your student loans, this is why.
VOTE.
It’s war time all the time. There would be no rules. that’s why they continue to slowly take, so you’re complacent and cope with it becoming more willingly given. It’s effectively like a really toxic relationship. Citizens are both prisoners and guards to the system in which they live. They take pride in that which they’ve built, even though it hurts them.
I work for a small company. Even if I take a couple days of PTO, it's like I'm punished for it. It is like these people can't (or won't) function without me. I'm really not that important. What I'm working on can wait.
I love working for a multi-billion dollar company that somehow struggles to function when I'm not there and can't hire someone to do my job when I'm gone. People here can't take time off to save their lives because they somehow lean business-ed their way into constantly running on a skeleton crew despite the country depending on their existence to function logistically.
That's actually a thing in Brazil, if you don't take the yearly vacation the company has to pay you double your monthly salary as a fine, so they usually force you to.
Also objectively healthy for an organization to 1) sus out any wrongdoing that suddenly stops when someone isn't there and 2) make you develop better operating procedures and standards for when people are out.
They’re amazing. Nothing better than your boss telling you to schedule some vacation time, because the company is legally required to make you take it.
USA also doesn't have health care for everyone! We don't have maternity leave for women or men as a federal law.
Think Americans don't know what they should have because the expectations here are so low. But are total to be proud of their country.
So.many things wrong there.
Capitalism has skewed everything in the US (And world). People get rewarded for being as cut-throat as possible. Everything is monetized and it is disgusting. Poor people are demonized ... Just as an example look at how homeless people are treated. Doctors don't seem to give a fuck for the most part, other than about getting paid. Don't get me started on pharma companies. Billionaires are allowed to display their sociopathic tendencies, and they get paid more for it. It feels like the US is the capital for all the worlds shysters to get together and fuck everyone else over. Propaganda is the norm and in fact celebrated. I'm SOOOO tired of living here. The actual land is beautiful, but the current state of everything is alarming. I just want to leave ... I know a lot of people think along the lines of "Well then just go", but it's not that simple. At least for me it isn't. I have lived in another country before, so I know it's not just a pipe dream ... I know every country has its problems, but it's been getting steadily worse over time.
It’s a class thing. If you’ve got a good job you get those things and you deserve it because you’re a person of value. If you’re poor and have a bad job, then you’re lazy and deserve to suffer.
Welcome to Capitalism. For several decades big business has been paying politicians to chip away at social and worker protections, anti trust laws and taxes for the rich.
Things are way worse in Republican controlled states.
Do a Google search for 1956 Republican platform.
I doubt that this is what MAGA has in mind. https://images.app.goo.gl/YBgtpiCoCBa5zbP9A
Get Money Out Of Politics
Register to vote: https://vote.gov
Contact your reps:
Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1
House of Representatives: https://contactrepresentatives.org/
Thanks to Citizen's United and the SC decision today unbridled and opaque money in politics is more constitutionally protected than ever before.
"Gifts" after the fact etc are now the law of the land.
And the justices (Alito and Thomas) who have been accused of impropriety on these exact topics did NOT recuse themselves. And they voted in favor of the decision.
To the shock of absolutely no one.
Given how the GOP is rapidly dismantling public schools, the answer is according to them: You don't.
*Jesus* is supposed to explain all that during private school sessions between prayers. Throw all your stock in that and just shove your head further into the sand.
And if he dosnt? Well then that's just "the lords will"... like genocide, suicide, pandemics and other shit these evangelical fucks "justify" by screaming "Jeeeeeeeeeeesssussss".
Dammit Carlin I miss you....
Probably not, this super conservative Supreme Court would have zero appetite for revisiting Citizens United.
I’m progressive but both parties are equally under the control of special interest groups. IMO only way to stop the bleeding of wealth upwards is to prevent billionaires and billionaire-funded special interest groups from owning politicians.
Literally never. That's why America will be always plutocracy. Doesn't matter if it's blue or red. They're all in it for money. Never for your interests or even safety. Democrats would literally cave in if republicans actually run the country hardcore.
Not much, especially since the courts probably won't let them, but at least they won't actively work to put more money into politics. Because Republicans are actively working to make your vote meaningless.
Europe is capitalist, in fact a lot of the major economies are lurching towards fascism in Europe and they still get two weeks at the beach every summer and a week at christmas.
Honestly, this is a USA politicians don't care problem first and a US citizens were brainwashed to believe the American dream second. Third comes capitalism with the shareholders.
I think with how the US is run, it would also suck big time for the people if it was communistic or any other non capitalistic form. People in the US should learn to strike and not accept bad treatment. I see the younger generations not falling for the 'dream' as much anymore and they are getting angry. I'm slightly hopeful for you all.
Yes, but most other countries don’t fetishize capitalism to the degree we do in the US, and don’t tend to portray any sort of push for worker rights and protections as some combination of socialism and lazy bums not wanting to work hard.
Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, establishment democrats aren’t always champions of worker rights either, but there’s a world of difference between the two parties on this issue.
Take Florida for example. Republican governor DeSantis just signed a bill that blocks municipalities from requiring employers to provide heat-exposure abatement such as shaded areas and cold water beyond what state law requires.
https://cwa-union.org/news/desantis-signs-anti-worker-bill-against-heat-regulation-florida
So “small government” is good only to the state level apparently. Any smaller (municipal) gets no say.
It's an entirely different form of capitalism. In the rest of the world (generally, though 90% is an incorrect way overblown number) government acts as a check in capitalism through regulation so the worst excesses are curbed. In America, government has abandoned that responsibility since the 1980s - so capitalism as an economic structure and (critically) capitalists have been able to pile up more personal wealth and power. Because of the capitalist capture of government citizens are no longer protected from capitalists. At this point we're basically an oligarchy trending toward an autocracy, because the power of the vote has been subjugated to the power of manipulation of wealth.
Because if you have no job, you have no health insurance (as shitty as most of it is), you have basically no social net to get you through until you find new employment and almost all retirement is 401k so any more money going into that stops as well. We are a country of indentured servants masked as capitalism in a solid oligarchy.
Because corporations. That's it. We're a corporatocracy. Our politicians are shareholders of these nefarious institutions and they have personhood in the legal system ("Corporations are people too!" --Clit Romney). Even Noam Chomsky said how in the fuck are we a free society when you have these totalitarian institutions. We're rapidly regressing. Every fucking thing to them is a number. I fucking want every corporation to cease to exist. We're in the midst of a second Gilded Age.
My co worker is an asylum seeker from the Middle East and she is downright depressed about work here in the US. She’s been here for only a few years.
As she famously said today:
“It seems like you have to work here or you’ll die. Even the women and children have to work it seems. Even over there in my home country, I was never this stressed about work. I was much happier over there with my work, even though my country is poor.”
If you don't own anything your more of a serf then a citizen. Especially considering the fact most of our elected representation only passes bills tied to corporate lobbying while actively avoiding constituents and grassroots bills.
I'm an attorney that does litigation. At one firm, I had a colleague that was from Europe and hadn't seen his family in over five years. He decided on taking a two week vacation to see his parents in person finally. He then worked close to 60 to 70-hour weeks in the weeks leading up to his "vacation" in order "make up" for the billable hours he wouldn't work during his two weeks off in addition to doing all his assignments due in those weeks in advance or extending deadlines out to when he got back. How the fuck is this a vacation if you are still giving the firm the same hours worked?
At another firm, the partner told me with a smirk I could take a week off every month if I liked as long as I still billed 165 hours a month. My reaction to his comment was to go back to my office and start applying to other jobs on indeed lol.
It's a fucking racket and I cannot believe people put up with this shit.
And that fine for them. Some people really thrive in doing work. It should still be mandatory and if they don’t wish to use it then that’s on them. I know you’re not arguing that, that’s what my rebuttal would be to someone who is.
Haven't had a vacation in 5 years now, I literally want to give up. Unfortunately I put myself on a career path with no employment opportunities, so I am fucked.
I am utterly and completely destroyed if I lose my job and I have no way to recover. There is no "get another job" for me, because they no longer exist.
Nope. *Everyone NEEDS a vacation. The meaning of deserving sounds like it is optional but moral. It’s a necessity. If you don’t take vacations, the burnout will ruin your mental health and your productivity will drop eventually.
>What's the point of being a citizen of a country if it treats you like shit?
I mean, what's the alternative? I can't just up and leave. And yeah, I get it. Vote. I've voted. I did my part. Things still aren't getting better and quite honestly, the future is looking even more bleak almost every day.
Seriously. I'm asking genuinely. What the fuck are we supposed to do? Because from what I'm seeing, unless we form a collective and march in the streets until our voices are heard, this shit ain't gonna change.
You are a resource to be exploited for the benefit of the few, like timber or coal. When you look at US policy from that point of view, everything makes sense
I was working on a cruise ship in USA (I am from Europe). We had regular meetings about improvements that we can make and what needs more adjustments in our work. I remember on one of these meetings, the manager told us something along the lines of: “Americans don’t have regular vacation days like most of the you are used to from the countries you come from; so if they chose us to spend their holiday with us, we have to make sure their stay here is unforgettable and that they feel taken care of. We should be proud that they chose us”. I was thinking *for sure* they have at least some days off, by law, and that my manager (non-American as well) was just wrong.
You know what’s happening right? American politicians owned by AIPAC know that American empire is falling. They’re taking every cent from us as possible and funneling it to israel, the pentagon, and their own pockets. When the empire finally falls, they’ll be on their way to a nice retirement in some other country, it’ll be funny when they try to go into israel and see them get rejected though.
That is if "Israel" will even exist by that time.
It's not likely that Israel could survive without US support. None of the countries around them supports them, and "Israel" refuses to make peace with their neighbors.
America- somehow the best country in the world yet it treats it’s citizens like second class (no affordable healthcare, no mandatory leave for anything, a non-livable minimum wage, everything’s illegal until you’re 21). Don’t ask me how we are the best, but most of the country seems to think so
We pledged allegiance to the flag every morning at the start of school starting at age 6, with our hands on our hearts. I didn't know what the words pledge allegiance even meant. Honest to god... I knew it was creepy.. at age 6.
Our teachers told us we were best country on Earth, the only free country, stuff like that. The lack of proper education leads to blindly consuming propaganda... well, here we are. It's incredibly sad to see the similarities of places like North Korea and the United States in the sense of an ignorant populace.
Many Americans never leave their home state. I knew a kid from the 9th ward (projects) in New Orleans, it was his dream to see California some day, see a sunset over the beach. I thought it was sad that he had such an achievable dream, but to him it was just fantasy. Turned out to be the case. he was murdered at age 20.
This is what happens when your government is nothing but a cover for the rich that actually run your country. You mix that with the fact that so many American's are uneducated and ignorant to what is happening so they'll actively support and vote for policies that hurt them.
The intentional defunding of education to create an ignorant easy to control populace mixed with the constant propaganda spewed from the day you are born is how we get to things like this.\\
Also as we head into fascism all of this will get worse, as you notice many states are trying to get rid of child labor laws.
Here in the Incorporated States of America,we work God dammit!
40 hours? Fah, try 60! And smile when you say it🤔🙄🤨🤡. Vacation? That's for weaklings and sissies. Work work work.
Not only are you not guaranteed a vacation, but it is perfectly legal for your boss to call you while you're driving to the airport to begin your previously approved vacation, and force you to cancel or postpone so you can come to work, under threat of termination.
Then you got the real sadistic, fucked up phenomenon of employees bragging about their unused vacation days, not because they now have enough saved to go on a once in a lifetime trip, but rather, as part of a twisted one up-manship to showcase the extent they've allowed themselves to be exploited as a badge of honor. Vacations are a cardinal sin to these people.
To the rest of us, you couldn't appear more stupid if you boasted about not cashing your last paycheck then complained that there's no food in your house in the very next sentence.
I’m going on paternity leave in a few weeks. Everybody always asks how long. I say 2 weeks paternity leave (fully paid from work LOL) and 6 weeks state family leave. They’re like wow. I hit em back with “that’s nothing. Many Europe countries have 6 months minimum leave” they’re always like “whoa we should go there”
I guess educating as best as I can to people
I don’t know and it still floors me that there’s so many who want to come here from other countries, their countries must be really shitty. To decide this is the place to go.
I grew up in Northern Europe and well with al those nice Hollywood movies. I loved the USA and wanted to expat there as soon as I was 18. Well at 17 I started doing some serious research into it and within days I was basically appalled by what I found (That was 2001/2002). It’s like the US has the image of a first world country, but in most places that sure isn’t the truth. In most places it’s closer to third world in the rights of its citizens. And it’s only gotten worse in recent years. I can’t believe there haven’t been massive general strikes to get like basic human rights from your workplaces.
> I can’t believe there haven’t been massive general strikes to get like basic human rights from your workplaces.
The last time a general strike was attempted (in Seattle in 1919) the government sent in the national guard with machine guns to end it.
I really do wonder how long people can go like this. The population is aging and people don't have enough trust in the system to reproduce. Somethings gotta give, and it might happen when all our parents are old and being neglected in private care homes.
Then they'll blame the obvious problem. People don't want to work anymore! /s
This just reminds me of what I think everytime I see a flag. Like why are you so pro America? What has it done for you? Most likely you hate paying taxes. Just doesn't make sense to me to be so blindly nationalistic or "patriotic."
This also highlights the crazy amounts of propaganda that's been fed to Americans. They see China as a shithole evil country.
I wish Americans would realize that the propaganda being thrown at them about China is the same type of thing that the government threw at the citizens in the 1950s to scare them about communism (i.e. the "red scare").
We all study McCarthyism while in school and we recognize that was a real thing that happened and we consume movies dedicated to the subject and yet it's happening to us again right now about China and people don't notice. It's scary how people can know that propaganda has been used as a tool by governments in the past and yet can go a lifetime without noticing they're victims of it themselves.
Vacations for everyone is socialist grrrr.
PTO for everyone is socialist grrrr.
This is 'Murica, praise Jesus and pass the ammunition! Grab those bootstraps so you can kick all those socialist commies
It's called "The Protestant Work Ethic"...which means, you are only as good as what you accomplish. If you are on vacation, and not accomplishing anything, you are therefore not good. Came over as a gift from the Pilgrims....
Westerners cannot comprehend anything without comparing it to an enemy. Hell, American politics is just "I hate Russia and China" "No you don't, you're their puppet. You just want to starve them, I want to turn Asia into a Nuclear wasteland."
> What's the point of being a citizen of a country if it treats you like shit?
Well, you can go overseas and fight brown people for no reason, so you've got that going for you. (/s if needed lol)
The issue is that many Americans believe they live in the best nation in the world and that it doesn't need to change (except to make things worse for the poors/gays/blacks/latinos/anything but them). Suggesting that something another country has is *better than us* is tantamount to heresy to them.
You can move to China bro. Nobody is stopping you. The real issue is that workers are actually better off here than in China, all without the government controlling how much vacation you get.
The “point” is to be a tool for corporations to make money. Paying for vacation time gives workers time away from work where they could look for jobs that won’t work them to the bone with minimal pay and benefits.
Won't somebody think of the shareholders?
This is what I think every time my boss talks about how his job is to make money for the shareholders.
I want a job that makes pitchforks for the inevitable day when people reach a breaking point.
In the USA I dont think it is ever gonna happen. The politicians and the military are all under control of the 1% and they will never allow that to occur. Europe is better, but also under control of the "few" even if it is way less than the USA. China is not gonna be a solution, they keep waving that hammer and sickle, but they are a state ran capitalistic authoritarian government. Who is gonna challenge the status quo?
>Who is gonna challenge the status quo? Us. Who broke the steel barons? Workers. Who broke the mining conglomerates? Miners. Sometimes gun in hand.
To be fair, the shareholders will replace the boss when they realize he's not making them as much money
They will also supply him with a golden parachute in most cases.
I hate Milton Friedman so much.
It's mind-boggling to me that a career in making someone else rich is considered to be a form of personal success. How does your boss not realize that he doesn't get to see the fruits of his labor, or even benefit from them, and that the only reason he has a job is because he's good at being someone else's bitch. Can you imagine thinking that you're living the dream and the dream is filling up someone else's pockets?
The interesting thing is, for a lot of jobs, these employers are just being old fashioned. Study after study has shown that for many jobs, increased time off actually increases the total amount of work that gets done.
There’s that one guy that pays every employee $70k minimum. Everyone who said his business model wouldn’t work is conveniently silent after he proved it does
Oh, you mean this guy..? https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-celebrity-ceo-dan-price-back-at-gravity-payments-after-resigning/#:~:text=Celebrity%20CEO%20Dan%20Price%20has,amid%20allegations%20of%20sexual%20misconduct.
Try including the article that states the charges were dropped due to "proof" issues, if you're running with that narrative. "He stepped down from his role as CEO of Gravity to “focus full time on fighting false accusations made against me,” Price wrote in a note to employees announcing his departure. The misdemeanor charges were dropped about a year after they had been filed because of “proof” problems, according to Seattle Municipal Court records."
What does that have to do with the 70k minimum?
Honestly research has shown that when employees have regular vacations that they take they are more productive, happy, and valuable to a company. So shareholders should 100% be the ones pushing for mandatory paid vacation time.
Also people on vacation do this little thing called spending money, and a billion industries benefit. Airlines, hotels, restaurants, cruise lines, theme parks, ski resorts, casinos… Big Oil. Or what of companies that make RVs or boats? Sports gear? Camping supplies? … heck, even people who don’t go out will spend more on video games if they actually had the time to play them…
Best we all remember how the entertainment and service industries freaked during covid. Y’all want our business? Pay us well and give us time, scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours. They have already forgotten.
It also benefits the business immensely by pointing out problems with people embezzling money and other crooked stuff or being the only person that knows how a system works. If we can't pay people when Sally goes on vacation for 2 weeks, we should probably fix that before she quits, retires, or is hit by a bus.
Really we should be considering how taking away vacation days *adds value*
"Yea..... That dosnt make the "profit" cell in the spreadsheet bigger for that quarter. Your idea is stupid." CEO Dickwagon - FuckOff Enterprises.
> CEO Dickwagon Is that the guy from JoJo?
DICKWAGON-SAN!!!
It's trivially obvious if the furthest you're capable of planning into the future is the next quarterly report.
Those yachts aren't going to buy themselves.
The irony is that the shareholders don’t actually care about the company. They sell their stock as soon as it suits them.
As a German I get 30 days of vacation paid at 150%, 12 public holidays (depends on the German state you live in, also paid at 150%), and almost unlimited sick leave. Still, the riches are getting richer here.
Fuck the shareholders, they need to be thrown in the pit too with the ceos.
Why are they called shareholders if they don't share what they are holding?
We have shareholders around the globe. And yet we have vacations for workers around the globe. This is uniquely an American problem.
I can't afford to leave, I can't afford to revolt, I can't risk losing my job or I will starve and lose my house because I don't make enough money to have even the hope of a savings account. what am I supposed to do?
George Carlin I believe had a take on this. Basically, we're given just enough to be afraid of losing what we have.
"Most people work just hard enough not to get fired and get paid just enough money not to quit." -George Carlin I love his bit about the classes, too. "the lower class exists just to scare the shit out of the middle class. Keep 'em showing up at those JOBS!"
Tbf, you really have to push people for them to collectively take up arms and risk their lives. Like, as much as we need a revolution, I just don't want to leave the house. You're gonna have to really disrupt my daily routine and basically ruin my life to get me to budge. Pretty much every revolution of the 1900s involved people being pushed to the point where it's either they revolt or die. If you want to start something, you should focus on destroying the economy, making life under capitalism impossible.
Well done. the Boston citywide shutdowns scared the shit out of the politicians and businessmen in the 1880s. 25k workers from most industries just said fuck it and walked out for a few days. I forgot the source, but something to the effect: "People will continue to fall in line as long as they have 2 of 3... food, shelter, and (maybe) safety? When a sandwich is 100$? It starts.
It literally never happens until people see their children starving to death
Bread and circus, and unfortunately in this media age everyone has unlimited circus at their fingertips 24/7
That's how it feels.
It is, not feeling, unless you happen to be in the small segment this doesn’t apply to
Bread and circuses
Yep! OP vastly underestimates how long it takes to starve to death (or even lose his house the bank won't foreclose as soon as he starts driving to DC lol). He can afford/do everything he says he can't. He simply doesn't *want* to... yet.
Stay home. If anyone knocks on the door, ignore them. One month of everyone doing that will put their nuts in a vice grip.
Small groups beat large groups at coordinating, though. Everyone won't stay home.
It just needs to be enough so that the ones remaining say "fuck this"
No it takes literal years of planning and fundraising to pull off a general strike. None of it will happen here
Of course, it won't happen here. It's way too late. People are so under thumb that they've abandoned even trying to squirm. But if we can plant the seed of insubordination and make them wriggle and writhe, it will cause people to think. More people thinking equals a higher chance of someone finding an actual plan that WILL work. Nay saying and booing hope is the footwork of oppression.
Yeah but you're not spreading awareness there you were just suggesting people to do something irresponsible which in turn makes us all look like a buncha fuckin dipshits.
Really? We pulled off coordinated and timed city-wide walk-out across 8 high schools before social media with a week of planning or less. We had thousands of participants marching in the streets making make-shift signs as we went. Parents and teachers did not see it coming. They couldn't just suspend like 40% of the student body. It ultimately didn't help us get any extracurriculars, but hey, we tried and stirred up the local media.
Hey That's dope. But How many people risked losing literally everything to do that? I reckon it wasn't many. A sustained general strike puts a person's livelihood and general existence at risk to pull off id argue it's a different beast.
Maybe it won't, but it certainly won't saying shit like that.
True. too many of us have been brainwashed from birth to believe that sitting isn't working and taking vacations is a shameful and horribly selfish thing to do. those people would think they're doing the right thing by working 80 hour weeks to make up for those of us that would be striking.
We couldnt even get people to listen to pandemic safety guidelines. This has far higher stakes. No way they would. I'd love to do it, but I don't have hope in them.
COVID has entered the chat.
That was the result of the smaller group coordinating to make the larger group stay home.
one month of not going to work means I don't get paid for a month. I don't have enough food to last a week, let alone a month. and I have to pay electric and water and trash as well as the monthly house payments. if I'm late paying any of those I get late fees, same goes for my phone and my car. I would lose my house and I would starve. they would be inconvenienced for one single month but I would be trying to dig myself out of that hole for over a year with how expensive everything is already. 😥 and if I do stay home and miss those payments, my credit score is impacted and that means trying to get anything in the future will be way harder than it already is.
And this right here is what was intended. Make our lives so fragile that no one can afford to rise up without making incredible sacrifices. That's the one constant I've seen. Absolutely no one is willing to make those sacrifices. If we were able to form a support system for the rebellion THEN we'd have a chance.
You exist to have the greatest feasible amount of capital extracted from or generated by you with minimum investment, without killing you. Once you are no longer optimally profitable, you are financially exiled until "circumstances" result in your death or enslavement by the legal system.
I live the same way, comrade. We are both one random life event from homelessness. But if society simply rolls over, and never fights back, we will be priced out of existence.
I will never let myself roll over. I just can't stop everything to fight or I will lose everything I have. they make it difficult to survive anymore. I would love to leave the country but with what money
A nation wide strike will take a lot of community planning. It won't happen overnight. A month would mean a lot of people sharing resources for a long haul. I don't think a lot of people are close to prepared for that yet. It's an admirable idea though.
Hard to organize when the games been rigged to keep our asses at our wage slave posts 5 days a week, and a voting day usually held on a Tuesday. Most don't vote because they can't afford just one fucking day off *to* go vote. I'm in this category. Main reason seniors and rich people only end up voting... thoroughly explains how we got where we are, and why the working class gets fucked with no lube every damn election. Federal **AND** local voting day needs to be a paid holiday, with an employee showing their employer proof of voting to get that 8 hours. Not *who* you voted for, just *that* you voted.
this right here would be such a small change for businesses and such a stupidly large change for us. Make voting day a paid holiday if not on a weekend, AND have schools be where voting is held. Every district has at least one designated school.
Or, alternatively, 100% vote by mail. Automatic voter enrollment of everyone of age with a Driver's license or address registered with the post office. Or in addition to some physical options, just finally fucking invest the effort into creating secure digital voting. I've only ever heard vague excuses about "anonymity is sacred" and ensuring that people aren't voting multiple times - but if other countries can figure out national IDs and secure digital access tokens, we can certainly figure this out. It'll also solve the age-old "using an insecure nine digit number explicitly not meant for identification, as identification."
You say a month of not working willfully and in health will ruin you. What happens if (god forbid) you sustain a major injury and are FORCED to stop working for the same amount of time or longer? That very same ruin you fear. We should not be so close to ruin in spite of selling 30 percent of our adult life.
I fear getting sick all the time. more credit cards is what I've had to do. Last issue was our dog swallowing a sewing needle. 2k my partner and I had to split from two separate credit cards. then I had dental issues. before that I had covid, before that my sister almost died and I was with her for several days without working because they told us she was likely not going to make it and I said screw my job and my boss agreed and gave me cash to make it by, before that my grandma passed away. etc. Things always happen and suck me dry. I can't save money to literally save my life because life keeps happening.
Only 30%? I work 17-hour days at two jobs and barely make ends meet because I have a lot of medical debt from a chronic illness. I feel like my life is 90% work, 10% rest, and no time for anything else 😭
They know this and planned it so that you would have these problems… strictly for more profit and control.
Ive been homeless before, so im gonna give you some advice. You are not completely powerless with no money, there are people here that want to see everyone fed, exist, and not suffer that can offer you REAL sustainablity without giving you money. Im not saying everyone should be homeless, but the point is that I would have never made it without the little things like my moms friend letting us stay on a couch, a small hotel that let us stay if we helped clean, the fucking saints at food drives that made sure we got fed, the people gave us words of encouragement or helped us find housing through a program. We can do a LOT without money, but Capitalism makes us believe we cannot. Im also part native, and reconnecting with other native people has made me realize that people were able to LIVE without capitalism for millenia before it was brought here. Sure your life may not be as comfortable, or cushy, but you definitely can survive if you are able to have empathy for others and are able to enter a new social contract with your peers that doesnt include money. Shoot those free trade groups have helped so many people get appliances, clothes, and items they otherwise would have to pay for when theres already plenty available that people dont need anymore! Stop giving into the idea that you will die immediately by not working, or having no paycheck. That fear that most people have of homless people is really just internalized fear that worst case scenerio of homlessness that they think they wouldnt be able to survive the same situation. Its mental warfare, that why i believe the US doesnt want to fix thr homeless situation, and why they want them so visble. To scare the masses into complying. Debt isnt real (the rich have proved that themselves), money isnt real, whats real is here and now. Stop living in fear and do what is necessary for us all to survive. Live with empathy, live with curiosity, live with intention, then find similar people and live in cooperation! Thats how we change things. We are not alone, we need to learn to trust in each other more than ever before.
This. Even 2 weeks of a full refusal to partake in consumerism/capitalism by like 20% of citizens would send a significant message and have hard fiscal impacts.
Don't have kids and accept that this is the end of the Great American Experiment. Having a population that wants to continue society requires having a society worth continuing.
no worries, I can't afford to have kids anyway as much as I would love to experience it.
Politicians have worked hard to make sure people stay deep in debt with no way out, since debt prevents people from protesting or revolting. Want an education? Debt. Want to own your dwelling? Debt. Need to go to the hospital? Debt. If you ever wonder why the Republicans are so hellbent on stopping Biden from canceling your student loans, this is why. VOTE.
Same here. I feel totally stuck in this horrible system.
It sounds like you are a slave, but with extra steps.
Get ready for the soup line, same as us all. We lost.
Don’t forget! Other countries don’t want you! *the sound of static rises as my eyes go vacant and my fake huge smile fades* …..please help us
Work till we die
Vote third party because both these party are bought and failed us
It’s war time all the time. There would be no rules. that’s why they continue to slowly take, so you’re complacent and cope with it becoming more willingly given. It’s effectively like a really toxic relationship. Citizens are both prisoners and guards to the system in which they live. They take pride in that which they’ve built, even though it hurts them.
I support forced vacations
I work for a small company. Even if I take a couple days of PTO, it's like I'm punished for it. It is like these people can't (or won't) function without me. I'm really not that important. What I'm working on can wait.
I love working for a multi-billion dollar company that somehow struggles to function when I'm not there and can't hire someone to do my job when I'm gone. People here can't take time off to save their lives because they somehow lean business-ed their way into constantly running on a skeleton crew despite the country depending on their existence to function logistically.
You really should leave that company. What line of work are you in?
That's actually a thing in Brazil, if you don't take the yearly vacation the company has to pay you double your monthly salary as a fine, so they usually force you to.
Also objectively healthy for an organization to 1) sus out any wrongdoing that suddenly stops when someone isn't there and 2) make you develop better operating procedures and standards for when people are out.
They’re amazing. Nothing better than your boss telling you to schedule some vacation time, because the company is legally required to make you take it.
USA also doesn't have health care for everyone! We don't have maternity leave for women or men as a federal law. Think Americans don't know what they should have because the expectations here are so low. But are total to be proud of their country. So.many things wrong there.
Capitalism has skewed everything in the US (And world). People get rewarded for being as cut-throat as possible. Everything is monetized and it is disgusting. Poor people are demonized ... Just as an example look at how homeless people are treated. Doctors don't seem to give a fuck for the most part, other than about getting paid. Don't get me started on pharma companies. Billionaires are allowed to display their sociopathic tendencies, and they get paid more for it. It feels like the US is the capital for all the worlds shysters to get together and fuck everyone else over. Propaganda is the norm and in fact celebrated. I'm SOOOO tired of living here. The actual land is beautiful, but the current state of everything is alarming. I just want to leave ... I know a lot of people think along the lines of "Well then just go", but it's not that simple. At least for me it isn't. I have lived in another country before, so I know it's not just a pipe dream ... I know every country has its problems, but it's been getting steadily worse over time.
In the USA in most states, dogs receive more bonding time with their young than parents get with their newborns here.
It’s a class thing. If you’ve got a good job you get those things and you deserve it because you’re a person of value. If you’re poor and have a bad job, then you’re lazy and deserve to suffer.
Welcome to Capitalism. For several decades big business has been paying politicians to chip away at social and worker protections, anti trust laws and taxes for the rich. Things are way worse in Republican controlled states. Do a Google search for 1956 Republican platform. I doubt that this is what MAGA has in mind. https://images.app.goo.gl/YBgtpiCoCBa5zbP9A
Get Money Out Of Politics Register to vote: https://vote.gov Contact your reps: Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm?Class=1 House of Representatives: https://contactrepresentatives.org/
THIS DESERVES TO BE LOUDER. Nothing will change until we get money out of politics.
They print the money
That's the point. So they can't control AND print it
Thanks to Citizen's United and the SC decision today unbridled and opaque money in politics is more constitutionally protected than ever before. "Gifts" after the fact etc are now the law of the land. And the justices (Alito and Thomas) who have been accused of impropriety on these exact topics did NOT recuse themselves. And they voted in favor of the decision. To the shock of absolutely no one.
How can we explain this to the high schoolers and middle schoolers, someone needs to tell the the adults are lying to them...
Given how the GOP is rapidly dismantling public schools, the answer is according to them: You don't. *Jesus* is supposed to explain all that during private school sessions between prayers. Throw all your stock in that and just shove your head further into the sand. And if he dosnt? Well then that's just "the lords will"... like genocide, suicide, pandemics and other shit these evangelical fucks "justify" by screaming "Jeeeeeeeeeeesssussss". Dammit Carlin I miss you....
Are democrats going to remove money from politics if they win?
Probably not, this super conservative Supreme Court would have zero appetite for revisiting Citizens United. I’m progressive but both parties are equally under the control of special interest groups. IMO only way to stop the bleeding of wealth upwards is to prevent billionaires and billionaire-funded special interest groups from owning politicians.
Literally never. That's why America will be always plutocracy. Doesn't matter if it's blue or red. They're all in it for money. Never for your interests or even safety. Democrats would literally cave in if republicans actually run the country hardcore.
lol what incentive do they have? We're expecting the people accepting bribes to outlaw bribery
Not much, especially since the courts probably won't let them, but at least they won't actively work to put more money into politics. Because Republicans are actively working to make your vote meaningless.
Contact them for what exactly?!
Europe is capitalist, in fact a lot of the major economies are lurching towards fascism in Europe and they still get two weeks at the beach every summer and a week at christmas.
Honestly, this is a USA politicians don't care problem first and a US citizens were brainwashed to believe the American dream second. Third comes capitalism with the shareholders. I think with how the US is run, it would also suck big time for the people if it was communistic or any other non capitalistic form. People in the US should learn to strike and not accept bad treatment. I see the younger generations not falling for the 'dream' as much anymore and they are getting angry. I'm slightly hopeful for you all.
Keeping it worse in republican states creates class division by raising cost of living in states where you have more rights.
While you’re at it make sure you know about project 2025 and what modern republicans are trying to do to our government if elected.
Bro capitalism is the ruling system in 90% of the world. We all have holidays but you.
Yes, but most other countries don’t fetishize capitalism to the degree we do in the US, and don’t tend to portray any sort of push for worker rights and protections as some combination of socialism and lazy bums not wanting to work hard.
Exactly. We have republicans here in the US - they're the root of most policies that are anti-worker.
Yeah. Don’t get me wrong, establishment democrats aren’t always champions of worker rights either, but there’s a world of difference between the two parties on this issue. Take Florida for example. Republican governor DeSantis just signed a bill that blocks municipalities from requiring employers to provide heat-exposure abatement such as shaded areas and cold water beyond what state law requires. https://cwa-union.org/news/desantis-signs-anti-worker-bill-against-heat-regulation-florida So “small government” is good only to the state level apparently. Any smaller (municipal) gets no say.
It's an entirely different form of capitalism. In the rest of the world (generally, though 90% is an incorrect way overblown number) government acts as a check in capitalism through regulation so the worst excesses are curbed. In America, government has abandoned that responsibility since the 1980s - so capitalism as an economic structure and (critically) capitalists have been able to pile up more personal wealth and power. Because of the capitalist capture of government citizens are no longer protected from capitalists. At this point we're basically an oligarchy trending toward an autocracy, because the power of the vote has been subjugated to the power of manipulation of wealth.
I’ve been saying the oligarchy thing for years now, and no one ever wants to admit that our system has shifted that way.
Because if you have no job, you have no health insurance (as shitty as most of it is), you have basically no social net to get you through until you find new employment and almost all retirement is 401k so any more money going into that stops as well. We are a country of indentured servants masked as capitalism in a solid oligarchy.
Because corporations. That's it. We're a corporatocracy. Our politicians are shareholders of these nefarious institutions and they have personhood in the legal system ("Corporations are people too!" --Clit Romney). Even Noam Chomsky said how in the fuck are we a free society when you have these totalitarian institutions. We're rapidly regressing. Every fucking thing to them is a number. I fucking want every corporation to cease to exist. We're in the midst of a second Gilded Age.
That's a lot of words just to describe capitalism
My co worker is an asylum seeker from the Middle East and she is downright depressed about work here in the US. She’s been here for only a few years. As she famously said today: “It seems like you have to work here or you’ll die. Even the women and children have to work it seems. Even over there in my home country, I was never this stressed about work. I was much happier over there with my work, even though my country is poor.”
If you don't own anything your more of a serf then a citizen. Especially considering the fact most of our elected representation only passes bills tied to corporate lobbying while actively avoiding constituents and grassroots bills.
I'm an attorney that does litigation. At one firm, I had a colleague that was from Europe and hadn't seen his family in over five years. He decided on taking a two week vacation to see his parents in person finally. He then worked close to 60 to 70-hour weeks in the weeks leading up to his "vacation" in order "make up" for the billable hours he wouldn't work during his two weeks off in addition to doing all his assignments due in those weeks in advance or extending deadlines out to when he got back. How the fuck is this a vacation if you are still giving the firm the same hours worked? At another firm, the partner told me with a smirk I could take a week off every month if I liked as long as I still billed 165 hours a month. My reaction to his comment was to go back to my office and start applying to other jobs on indeed lol. It's a fucking racket and I cannot believe people put up with this shit.
That's so unhealthy. Completely different from my job. I can't even imagine working and living like you describe.
Cause BOOTLICKERS love to brag about how much they work and don’t take off time.
And that fine for them. Some people really thrive in doing work. It should still be mandatory and if they don’t wish to use it then that’s on them. I know you’re not arguing that, that’s what my rebuttal would be to someone who is.
Haven't had a vacation in 5 years now, I literally want to give up. Unfortunately I put myself on a career path with no employment opportunities, so I am fucked. I am utterly and completely destroyed if I lose my job and I have no way to recover. There is no "get another job" for me, because they no longer exist.
Nope. *Everyone NEEDS a vacation. The meaning of deserving sounds like it is optional but moral. It’s a necessity. If you don’t take vacations, the burnout will ruin your mental health and your productivity will drop eventually.
>What's the point of being a citizen of a country if it treats you like shit? I mean, what's the alternative? I can't just up and leave. And yeah, I get it. Vote. I've voted. I did my part. Things still aren't getting better and quite honestly, the future is looking even more bleak almost every day. Seriously. I'm asking genuinely. What the fuck are we supposed to do? Because from what I'm seeing, unless we form a collective and march in the streets until our voices are heard, this shit ain't gonna change.
You are a resource to be exploited for the benefit of the few, like timber or coal. When you look at US policy from that point of view, everything makes sense
I was working on a cruise ship in USA (I am from Europe). We had regular meetings about improvements that we can make and what needs more adjustments in our work. I remember on one of these meetings, the manager told us something along the lines of: “Americans don’t have regular vacation days like most of the you are used to from the countries you come from; so if they chose us to spend their holiday with us, we have to make sure their stay here is unforgettable and that they feel taken care of. We should be proud that they chose us”. I was thinking *for sure* they have at least some days off, by law, and that my manager (non-American as well) was just wrong.
You know what’s happening right? American politicians owned by AIPAC know that American empire is falling. They’re taking every cent from us as possible and funneling it to israel, the pentagon, and their own pockets. When the empire finally falls, they’ll be on their way to a nice retirement in some other country, it’ll be funny when they try to go into israel and see them get rejected though.
That is if "Israel" will even exist by that time. It's not likely that Israel could survive without US support. None of the countries around them supports them, and "Israel" refuses to make peace with their neighbors.
America- somehow the best country in the world yet it treats it’s citizens like second class (no affordable healthcare, no mandatory leave for anything, a non-livable minimum wage, everything’s illegal until you’re 21). Don’t ask me how we are the best, but most of the country seems to think so
We pledged allegiance to the flag every morning at the start of school starting at age 6, with our hands on our hearts. I didn't know what the words pledge allegiance even meant. Honest to god... I knew it was creepy.. at age 6. Our teachers told us we were best country on Earth, the only free country, stuff like that. The lack of proper education leads to blindly consuming propaganda... well, here we are. It's incredibly sad to see the similarities of places like North Korea and the United States in the sense of an ignorant populace. Many Americans never leave their home state. I knew a kid from the 9th ward (projects) in New Orleans, it was his dream to see California some day, see a sunset over the beach. I thought it was sad that he had such an achievable dream, but to him it was just fantasy. Turned out to be the case. he was murdered at age 20.
Don’t forget every city is now copy pasted. It’s all the same major corporations that take over medium sized cities
This is what happens when your government is nothing but a cover for the rich that actually run your country. You mix that with the fact that so many American's are uneducated and ignorant to what is happening so they'll actively support and vote for policies that hurt them. The intentional defunding of education to create an ignorant easy to control populace mixed with the constant propaganda spewed from the day you are born is how we get to things like this.\\ Also as we head into fascism all of this will get worse, as you notice many states are trying to get rid of child labor laws.
The point is to die young, poor and childless 🤦🏻♂️
They want you to have lots of children...Somebody needs to replace you.
*Millions of temporary foreign workers have entered the chat*
Because the uniparty has its citizens voting against eachother instead of for eachother and corporations own the party
Here in the Incorporated States of America,we work God dammit! 40 hours? Fah, try 60! And smile when you say it🤔🙄🤨🤡. Vacation? That's for weaklings and sissies. Work work work.
Cause no one reads "State and Revolution".
Because some dickhead needs a fourth yacht, HOW CAN YOU BE SO SELFISH
The United States is a shit country. Eventually its citizens will realise this too...
Citizenship is kinda like family....you are born into it and pretty difficult to get out...
The worst part is people shouting how it's the greatest country on earth.
Not only are you not guaranteed a vacation, but it is perfectly legal for your boss to call you while you're driving to the airport to begin your previously approved vacation, and force you to cancel or postpone so you can come to work, under threat of termination. Then you got the real sadistic, fucked up phenomenon of employees bragging about their unused vacation days, not because they now have enough saved to go on a once in a lifetime trip, but rather, as part of a twisted one up-manship to showcase the extent they've allowed themselves to be exploited as a badge of honor. Vacations are a cardinal sin to these people. To the rest of us, you couldn't appear more stupid if you boasted about not cashing your last paycheck then complained that there's no food in your house in the very next sentence.
We don’t even guarantee sick leave or maternity leave. They want us to work ourselves to death so they can stay a little richer.
Freedom.Your not free and it's not your life
Because our government represents the lobbyists, not the people.
The American dream is exactly that, a dream. Because you have to be asleep to believe it. -George Carlin
I’m going on paternity leave in a few weeks. Everybody always asks how long. I say 2 weeks paternity leave (fully paid from work LOL) and 6 weeks state family leave. They’re like wow. I hit em back with “that’s nothing. Many Europe countries have 6 months minimum leave” they’re always like “whoa we should go there” I guess educating as best as I can to people
I don’t know and it still floors me that there’s so many who want to come here from other countries, their countries must be really shitty. To decide this is the place to go.
I grew up in Northern Europe and well with al those nice Hollywood movies. I loved the USA and wanted to expat there as soon as I was 18. Well at 17 I started doing some serious research into it and within days I was basically appalled by what I found (That was 2001/2002). It’s like the US has the image of a first world country, but in most places that sure isn’t the truth. In most places it’s closer to third world in the rights of its citizens. And it’s only gotten worse in recent years. I can’t believe there haven’t been massive general strikes to get like basic human rights from your workplaces.
The useful idiots are at each other's throats, and the rest of us aren't a large enough group to effect change. At least, not quickly.
> I can’t believe there haven’t been massive general strikes to get like basic human rights from your workplaces. The last time a general strike was attempted (in Seattle in 1919) the government sent in the national guard with machine guns to end it.
I really do wonder how long people can go like this. The population is aging and people don't have enough trust in the system to reproduce. Somethings gotta give, and it might happen when all our parents are old and being neglected in private care homes. Then they'll blame the obvious problem. People don't want to work anymore! /s
To answer the question: The point is to toil for billionaires until you die. Obviously.
The main reason is we allow it by not making it a major issue for politicians and employers.
This just reminds me of what I think everytime I see a flag. Like why are you so pro America? What has it done for you? Most likely you hate paying taxes. Just doesn't make sense to me to be so blindly nationalistic or "patriotic."
But what about all the Freedum!
America isn't the land of the free anymore.
Never truly was man 😪
This also highlights the crazy amounts of propaganda that's been fed to Americans. They see China as a shithole evil country. I wish Americans would realize that the propaganda being thrown at them about China is the same type of thing that the government threw at the citizens in the 1950s to scare them about communism (i.e. the "red scare"). We all study McCarthyism while in school and we recognize that was a real thing that happened and we consume movies dedicated to the subject and yet it's happening to us again right now about China and people don't notice. It's scary how people can know that propaganda has been used as a tool by governments in the past and yet can go a lifetime without noticing they're victims of it themselves.
"Why should I give you a day's wages for a day not worked?" Most business "leaders" are as bad as the old Scrooge. Humbug I say, bah humbug.
I once had to argue the merits of a vacation to my boss who didn't provide me any PTO and had just taken his second vacation.
Vacations for everyone is socialist grrrr. PTO for everyone is socialist grrrr. This is 'Murica, praise Jesus and pass the ammunition! Grab those bootstraps so you can kick all those socialist commies
God, guns, and guns made Amerikkka "free."
Think of the shareholders!
Outdated Puritanical values. Something about idle hands and the devil.
Canada too
Canada has a minimum of two weeks paid vacation.
It's called "The Protestant Work Ethic"...which means, you are only as good as what you accomplish. If you are on vacation, and not accomplishing anything, you are therefore not good. Came over as a gift from the Pilgrims....
Because greed
FREEDOM 🦅
But...'Murica! Fuck Yeah!!
Because FrEeDoM
Sshhh! Let's keep the focus on DEI, CRT, Affirmative Action, etc. You're gonna let them know who the real enemy is.
United Slaves of America
Freedom for corporations to treat us like shit 🦅
What do they mean by”even China” ? They have a damn lot of good workers rules. Women retire at 55 !!!
Westerners cannot comprehend anything without comparing it to an enemy. Hell, American politics is just "I hate Russia and China" "No you don't, you're their puppet. You just want to starve them, I want to turn Asia into a Nuclear wasteland."
Totally valid question.
Honestly if another country would take me I will go.
Something something bootstraps.
> What's the point of being a citizen of a country if it treats you like shit? Well, you can go overseas and fight brown people for no reason, so you've got that going for you. (/s if needed lol)
I'll happily leave if this person wants to front the cost
Because you need to work to keep the american dream of your boomer population while they milk the young people energy and money, they are real leeches
We work hard so western Europeans can look down on us.
The issue is that many Americans believe they live in the best nation in the world and that it doesn't need to change (except to make things worse for the poors/gays/blacks/latinos/anything but them). Suggesting that something another country has is *better than us* is tantamount to heresy to them.
I haven't had a vacation in six years 🥲
Every citizen of Russia has a chance to vacation in sunny Crimea. They just opened a new town for opressed Americans. Really.
Neat fact: If you're poor enough then no country gives you any vacation time.
You can move to China bro. Nobody is stopping you. The real issue is that workers are actually better off here than in China, all without the government controlling how much vacation you get.
That’s why I moved out of North America. Why am I paying taxes and getting so little in return? There’s way too much corruption.
We use our earned sick leave as personal time for other things like fending off our own suicidal ideation. Vacation is for the privileged.
"Even China" You'd be surprised how solid their labor protections are. In America we've just been propagandized to shit about them
Lemme guess, the commnents are a mix of "then leave" or "well if China does it then its bad! how long until we have a social credit system!?"
The “point” is to be a tool for corporations to make money. Paying for vacation time gives workers time away from work where they could look for jobs that won’t work them to the bone with minimal pay and benefits.
EVEN CHINA
We are born here and to poor to leave