I think a perspective shift is necessary.
"Destroy the economy" is about sabotage.
"Work for each other and against wealthy investors" would result in a smaller economy, but the focus is on the positive thing built, instead of just sabotage.
"Smaller" if you're a billionaire. When they say "the economy" just insert "rich people's wealth". It wouldn't be a smaller economy in reality, because what drives a healthy economy is people spending money. Rich people don't spend money, regular people do. Regular people getting paid more and having a larger piece of the pie, counterintuitively means there's more pie.
Thank you.
The problem is wealth concentrating in too few hands. And those hands are greedily reaching for more and more wealth.
We simply need systems to redirect the wealth from the 0.1%.
would result in a smaller economy
Only to the extent that withheld labor during a strike affects it. Once the strike(s) are over, an economy that puts more spending money in more pockets will be a bigger one
It turns out that the size of the economy is related to how well-distributed the wealth in it is. If most of the money goes into wealthy pockets and everybody else lives in a sort of poverty-imposed austerity, that depresses a lot of that economy's potential.
What the UAW are after is not a smaller economy, but a more-robust (likely larger) one that includes more people in it.
We're destroying the world through overproduction and over consumption.
I see a future where people can work less, instead of an attempt to keep people working full time.
That would be smaller, with less waste at the top.
I like where you're going with that!
I think the problems (of high inequality, of unsustainable resource use) are distinct, but related and can probably be gone after by targeting the same things: price gouging and suppressing wages.
If capital can't do those things, labor will have the choice to work less if it doesn't need the money to survive. We've long-since passed the point Keynes predicted (at which, productivity would be high enough to support people at a high standard of living without them working full time) in terms of production, the obstacle to that happening is that capital gets to allocate those surpluses and it keeps most of them
I've spent my career in the tech industry, specifically around open source software.
Corporate powers helped fund the work of individuals for their own purposes, but I can ways we can use them to rebuild local economies instead.
We just need to change how we're using the tools. This can be done by existing skilled workers who are willing to make new choices around who to work for, or by motivated new engineers who have access to the free tools and free training material.
Where do I sign up
At your local union hall!
If you aren't rich, you have already signed up
That... is a very...VERY BAD IDEA.
Billionaires have enough money to survive an economic crash without batting an eyelid. Do you?
Most billionaires aren't billionaires in cash. If the market crashes, so do they. Now they might be reduced to "only" a hundred million or so but that can be catastrophic when your personal finances depend on billions in stock backing up a series of long term rotating loans.
They wanted to use the market to exploit the people. But that makes them vulnerable in a way rich people didn't used to be vulnerable.
Yeah if we keep basing everything on money! We need to go back to bartering
Only problem with this is that this doesn’t even hurt the ultra rich - every catastrophe is just a new investment opportunity for them. E.g. after Brexit they just moved their money and businesses out of the UK, leaving the poor schlebs who live there to deal with it.
Okay, let's do nothing then... /s
What the UAW is doing here is fighting for all workers. This sets precedents that ripple across all industries. What formed the UAW back in 1937 took some balls, and so does this.
It's not communism to fight for dignity and a living wage. We're practically fighting for some more table scraps, but the rich are acting like we're threatening social fabric.
Go and get it Shawn, this is exactly what we all need right now. Support the UAW.
In the last 20 years, we've seen the most rapid rise in productivity since the industrial revolution, and just like in the wake of the industrial revolution, there was massive worker exploitation that led to reforms and eventually unionization that ushered in a golden age of labor in America where workers were fairly compensated for the work they provided, so much so that it was easy for a salaryman to support a nuclear family on his single paycheck.
Since then, the business owner class has been working hard to dismantle unions while refusing to pay their fair share of the massive profit windfalls to the bottom rung workers. We are long overdue for sweeping multi-industry unionization effort. Only then will we start seeing something more than just table scraps.
Don't be shocked when the billionaires get bailouts to the tune of 10X what they lost and we get fucked whenever you decide to do that.
I vote for wrecking the rich's yachts. There's even a great capitalist reason to do it: the companies that build them might make new sales! Win-win!
Holy based, I didn't know there were any unions with a backbone left in America
That is something I wonder about. Inflation makes the poor poorer but when asked, economists are like "trust us, inflation is good".
Inflation reduces the value of money at the bank: the money saved as well as the money borrowed.
In an ideal world, wages are indexed on inflation (way of calculating inflation in this context can be discussed), and inflation is kept above present targets levels (central banks try to keep it at 2% these days).
That makes your debts easier to reimburse, and limits returns on savings. Have you ever noticed that people who keep talking about the "value of work" actually push for low wages and no or low taxes on capital gains, so actually wants the capital to make more money than work?
A low inflation allows big money to hoard more and more. Higher inflation means money that's not actively contributing to the economy will lose its value over time, and that's exactly what you, at the bottom of the ladder, want (and considering top of the ladder is hundreds of billions of $, ever 6 figures employees are bottom of the ladder).
Too high inflation leads to an uncontrolled spiral. Deflation is also very bad (no investment will ever happen if your money just appreciate by doing nothing). But the 2% target is not to protect you. It's made for money to make more money.
But about the link between wages and inflation: what we have today is a situation where we let cost of life dramatically outpace wage growth. So where did the inflation come from? Profits! That needs to be rebalanced.
From 1945 to the early 80's (before the €), France and some other countries minmum wages were indexed on inflation. If doing so would instantly crash an economy, we would have noticed...
A small amount is good. Deflation makes it so not spending money is more beneficial. The longer you wait to spend the more the money is worth. This causes fewer products and services to be purchased, which pays for wages. Inflation makes the opposite true. The longer you wait to spend your money the less it's worth. It encourages spending, not saving. Inflation that outstrips increases to pay is obviously very bad though.
Way to go. Bring them down on their knees. Force them to share. They've proven they will never share the wealth with the workers unless forced to.
MOD NOTE: BE NICE.
It's ok to disagree, it's not ok to insult or threaten other posters with violence.
That's red hot commie stuff right there. I like it :)
Isn't that what they want you to think? Throwing around words like communist and making it seem like a bad thing to share wealth?
Exactly. Unions exist in Liberal and Social Democracies, too. They want to keep us on this Neoliberal path, because it's so very exploitable. Unions are just a drop of democracy, but for your workplace, or sometimes renting and transit systems.
Even China knows this. Give the hard working people a better job than mom and dad had and they won't rebel.
The people who are rolling in their next billion have forgotten what happens when you take that away.
Billionaires the original welfare queens.
Controversial: how can illegal immigrants send money home but regular workers live paycheck to paycheck?
Rent would be cheaper if renters would unionize and wouldn't spend above an agreed on limit.
It's so hard to coordinate that only some workers can ask billionaires for better deals. Why? Why is not everybody ashamed that they cannot coordinate with their neighbors?
Roman's walked out of town once a year to remind the elite of their value. The west models itself after the Roman Republic but tries to skip on the hard parts.
how can illegal immigrants send money home but regular workers live paycheck to paycheck?
They live six to a room.
They live six to a room.
And they're not sending that much back home.
Can confirm. I once had an apartment in NC. I was the only white guy in the complex. Everyone else was Latino. I had a one bedroom apartment. I was the ONLY single occupant in my building. The apartment below me was occupied by a guy, his wife, his infant child, his mother and at least one cousin. They were still the most gracious people I'd ever lived amongst. When his daughter was born they had a bigass cookout and invited everyone in our complex. That was the day that I learned I was the only white guy, and it was an amazing experience. I ended up letting some of the guys crash in my apartment while I was on the road, and I always came back to a clean house and a fridge full of leftovers.
Unfortunately I had to move back to OH after a year, but I'd go back to NC in a heartbeat if the situation allowed.
Given the shit-sandwich choice between OH and NC, I'd choose NC as well. It's almost civilized, if you can ignore the lock on the state legislature that the GOP has, fire ants, Aedes Egypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitos that don't give a fuck the sun is up, Lone Star ticks that make you allergic to consuming mammal, and an oppressively hot summer. Though I'd rather live in the mid-Atlantic or West Coast where the GOP hasn't gained as much traction.
how can illegal immigrants send money home but regular workers live paycheck to paycheck?
They live six to a room.
...and the rest of their family spends those dollars on a 3rd world cost of living.
The west models itself after the Roman Republic but tries to skip on the hard parts.
I don't know about "the West" -- literally most any western developed country besides the US understands what the "Bread" part of Bread & Circuses means. Labor laws, universal healthcare, paid vacation, paid parental leave, election laws designed to encourage voting and discourage election manipulation -- all of these things are, in some form or another, part of nearly every western developed country besides the USA.
How does the working class not realise that the wealthy are the sodden bitch in a bog handing out the sword? Jeeebus
A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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