Last Thursday there was a strike across one hundred cities in the US. Workers are fighting for a decent living wage. I wish I had the balls to join them, but just like those workers, I am inundated with frivolous things like car payments, insurance premiums, and the need to eat. So unlike my sisters and brothers fighting the good fight, I will not forego my few shitty hours of work on Thursday. This really pisses me off, because it is an awful reflection of how weak willed I am as a person. The money I'll make on this Thursday's shift of slinging cheeseburgers, beer, and sadness will not even cover my car insurance payment. So what do I have to lose? Unfortunately, I am in the majority of Americans who have been conditioned to keep their head down and go to work, and be happy there is work available. I'm scared that if I walk out of my job, I'll lose it. I'm such a big pussy, that I am even afraid to call in sick, and at least go show support for the humans who possess the power of bravery and fortitude. People like me are the problem.
Once upon a time in this country a person could work forty hours at a job and make enough money to get on with a reasonable margin of comfort. We called those folks the middle class. The not so epic tale of how that class was destroyed is pretty common, whether people want to believe it or not. As much as we can learn from history however, there first must be a change in the status quo before we can apply those lessons.
To do this, the under-paid proletariat in America MUST UNITE! So why are there so many chicken shits like me running around? I think I know.
The problem with wages, in a nutshell, is that they have not risen in correlation to profits (I suspect workers may be paid in nutshells soon enough). Not because businesses would go under, or productivity would decline, but rather because of a thirty year brainwashing campaign.
This has been a three pronged attack. We are a third world country in the sense that not only do most Americans skim the poverty line, but also in that three illusion worlds have been created by the modern bourgeoisie to frighten us into servitude. The first meme is such:
YOU HAVE AN EASY JOB!
Since America has made the shift to a service economy, most jobs available in this country can be done with little to no training or experience. Basically anyone with a pulse and a moderate knowledge of the English language can negotiate their way through a day of ringing up goods, slopping hormone laced meat in front of a customer, or sell cable scripts in a broken mono-tone voice over the phone. The evil geniuses behind this shift have done a great job equating simple with easy. By establishing this modality in the brain meat of all Americans, corporate totalitarianism is made simple. We are the single best weapon against ourselves.
Like any good sociopath, the wealth owners play on our insecurities. Not only do they make the idea of paying living wages to a Wal-Mart employee sound unreasonable, they make the worker feel ashamed to even entertain such a thought. When in reality, companies like Wal-Mart make enough profits to pay decent wages without raising prices and still collect record profits. So why do we go along with this?
Like any abusive husband, the modern bourgeoisie reminds us day in and day out that we are lucky to have them in our lives. Like the great Randian Atlas, they can shrug and take their party to a private island at any time. The only reason they even bother anymore is that we still have a pretty nice rack, and cook a competent meat loaf.
Why should the Walton family pay someone $15/hr to basically stand around all day?
I would answer that hypothetical, but often asked question, with one of my own;
"What is the longest amount of time you have ever spent on your feet?"
If you are a Walton, or any other family of dynastic wealth, I bet the amount is staggeringly low. Perhaps a few outliers like not being able to blow a load after a coke fueled night of sex clubbing in Bankok with under-age prostitutes may skew the mean some. But that pre-supposes that our subject was standing for their service.
All in all, I bet our job creator over-lords spend very little time on their feet. It's not as easy as it looks! If it were, the hemroid pillow business would cease to exist.
Also remember, many of these service jobs are simplistic in operation, but physically grueling in execution. Often times, employees are asked to do way more than the job parameters would suggest. I've spent many working hours scrubbing toilets, grime, and filth from crevasses in the structures I was employed at, and my job title more times than not was server (waiter for you old folks).
Another huge factor over looked by those who scoff at the idea that customer service is challenging is THE HUMAN CONDITION.
The toughest thing about being a servant (because that is what we are), is the natural tendency for people to treat us like we are lower on the food chain. In this society, the disparity between the strata of the "class" system, so called class system based on wealth accumulation, is so vast. People will cling to any opportunity to jump up a level, even if only for that moment when whistling at the server like a dog, condescending to the cashier, or out right berating the poor soul who made a small mistake in processing their egg-muffin order. The ironic thing (I guess) is the perpetrators of this cruelty tend to be made up mostly of those who work in the same industry.
In this inverted corporate totalitarianism known as the service industry, we the workers are our own worst enemy in the perpetuation of this "expendable/lower class" meme.
2. YOU TOO CAN BE AN OWNER: The perversion of the American Dream
What is the American dream? The answer is very objective. However, in this day and age, it seems that the answer is rather objectivist. Ayn Rand, the serial killer worshiping, pool boy fucking, goddess of sociopathic individualism, is really starting to peak three decades after her death. Her philosophy lives on, and is considered by many as a viable system to which a society should function. Followers of Rand would have you believe that her philosophy, objectivism, is a complex system of values based on total freedom. Really it's just a bullshit excuse to be selfish. It's aristocracy veiled in anarchy. Basically, Rand believes that it is immoral for and institution, government, or person to hinder individual growth. Here is the problem, in order for there to be freedom of commerce and unfettered ownership, there first must be the ability to amass the wealth needed to do so.
If one works seventy hours a week in multiple occupations, how can that person find time to start a business? How can one become the wealth owner/business owner when a handful of families own everything?
The simple truth is this; all industries in this country are monopolized, and most of us, no matter how hard we work and try will never be the "job creator" (although I posit that workers are the real job creators). That said, this myth that everyone has the opportunity to live the so called American dream is a fallacy.
Education is far too expensive, and for those not born into wealth, more of a hindrance than a commodity after graduation due to immense amount of debt.
Also, college isn't for everyone. That doesn't mean that an individual who is willing to work hard should be a slave to a seventy hour work week and merely scrape by.
What good is the American dream if it stifles most Americans?
It might be time to rehabilitate what we as a populace see as the true American dream. Perhaps a life, liberty, pursuit of happiness type thing. It seems the definition of happiness has been narrowed to the accumulation of wealth, money, and power. How about the good life? One to which hard work affords us the ability to support our loved ones, prepare for our waning years, and have some time to enjoy all the wonders this Earth has to offer....other than slinging wings and cheap lead riddled goods.
Again, we are our own worst enemy. We have been brainwashed into thinking that if we diminish the wealth of the dynastic families that run this country, we too will lose that dangling carrot of wealth one day too. We are standing guard in front of a mansion we will never own, and we have better things to do with our time.
3. Raising wages, Taxing, and Regulating "Job Creators" Will Hurt Working Class Americans
Marx wrote about three wars in his critique on capitalism. The first between the ownership class (competition), the second between workers and owners, and third the war within the working class amongst themselves. The first, not nearly as harmful to owners, as the third is to the workers. Owners have tossed this bullshit piece of red meat into the working class fray, and it is; "Living wages will only hurt the general populace of working class citizens. It will destroy jobs, and prices will go up." But the more and more the disparity of wealth widens between owners and workers, the more we see that the aforementioned meme is a load of crap. There is absolutely no reason wages should have remained stagnant over the last three decades, and the very debate we are having now is why they do.
You know who else "created jobs"? Slave owners. Now I don't liken working at Wal-Mart to slavery...there is not as much prestige.
All in all, I think it's fair to say that we have been brainwashed by the modern bourgeoisie into buying into THEIR DREAM. We perpetuate it every time our little peckers shrink up at the threat of them packing up shop, a threat they would never make good on. What would they do without us? Eat each other?
It's time to stop believing this over hyped, pseudo libertarian, so called free market bullshit they shove down our throats.
I'm I against wealth redistribution? Only if it is so one sided that the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck. So let's stop this thirty year redistribution, and claim our deserved ownership of the country we built.
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