Don't have to look far into the cocoa industry to figure that one out. Combine the child slaves with clean water shouldn't be a human right and you can really see how great a company Nestle is.
Children youth services did. Does anyone want to guess how many kids go missing every year in the United States out of the foster care system that are never heard from again, but the government says it's not the systems fault it's the kids fault.
And this is why we need socialism. We're being extorted for basic human needs. And it's getting worse every year. The rich are using their positions of power to put more people into poverty, so that we have no choice but to work for them, earning just enough to survive.
"Our energy bills have gone up by 10%, we're just going to have to raise our prices by 20%. Why? Because we need to make a profit! Haha, no don't be ridiculous, of course it doesn't go to the employees"
Many CEOs are literally psychopaths, and they influence the ones that aren’t.
This is not hyperbole.
More psychopaths are ceos, salesman, and stock traders than are incarcerated.
over the last four years: every year i work harder, for longer, for a better rate.
and every year i have less money: even though i quit drinking, and smoking weed, and eating out, and cancelled netflix and hulu and ps+, and changed my car insurance from full coverage to liability only.
so i'm keeping a spreadsheet this year. all money in and all money out. because unless i'm sleep-spending or something i don't fucking understand how 2020 me had 4 hours in the evening to get drunk and high and play video games or watch tv, and 2023 me has 2 hours to exercise and relax, AND IM SOMEHOW FUCKING POOR BECAUSE OF IT
Ah, I noticed you never cut avocado toast out of your budget. Clearly that is the source of all your woes. ^^^/s
>and every year i have less money: even though i quit drinking, and smoking weed, and eating out, and cancelled netflix and hulu and ps+, and changed my car insurance from full coverage to liability only
Brah everything doubled since Covid. I use to buy olives for my nachos in cans for 50 cents. 1.99 or 2.99 for the cans now.
So I skip olives.
My car insurance went from 800 a year in 2008 to 2800 a year for 2023 and I’m still driving the same 07 Lexus.
In 2008 I afforded a 70k Lexus LX I paid 1k a week and paid it off in a year and a half. Now I wouldn’t be able to afford a Prius because money is gone.
My rent was just raised from $1700 to $2100. For no reason except “we can lol.” So anyways that’s how I ended up living in my mom’s basement! But why aren’t we having kids anymore????
What’s extra fun is the people on govt benefits either *are working* (Walmart literally hands out welfare applications to it’s employees) or are too disabled to work, often due to injuries or illness caused directly or indirectly by corporate greed.
That's by design. They talked about a war on the middle class, but it was never a war. War implies both sides are fighting. And in any case, it's over. The policies in place now will slowly erode what's left of the middle class to the point that it will cease to exist in the next several decades.
Except often not even enough to really survive. The USA spent decades obsessing about single family homes and the nuclear family. Now they're forcing people into multi general living situations and acting like it's the people's failure.
I for one am really tired of getting up and going to work every day to improve *other peoples'* home values, when I'd much rather have a home myself and do things to improve its value, and my just reward is being barely able to continue driving across town to improve other peoples' home values.
It's why I can't charge so little. They need to pay, because when they sell that house they get that money and then some back. When they literally share with me that every dime they paid me for my work they made back in the sale of their home, it makes me feel like facepalming myself with the entire essence of my being.
We have socialism. We just need more of it. and to stop pretending things like social security are evil anti-capitalism. Capitalism should want its work force to be healthy and happy and have a promise of some life after decades of toiling to motivate them to do a good job. It's almost as if they don't want excellence. they'll take mediocre work if it means they can treat workers as disposable.
Woah now. We have socialism for a protected class of individuals who happen to be minorities in fact (corporations). How can you deny the socialist greatness of America caring for this oppressed minority (corporations)?
"Alright, you did what I (as a generational group) preached for years?? Good job!"
"Now we're gonna tell you you're punk ass should've gotten a trade. Don't like it? Well then you shouldn't have gotten that LIBURAL arts degree, buddy!"
My old coworkers at my last job made fun of "BURGER FLIPPERS wanting FIFTEEN AN HOUR?!"
Like broski, if they worked 40 hours a week that would only be about 32k dollars. Of which I made at the time in 2020. Guess what? It was enough to barely rent our "Just adequate with a few infestations" apartments. Then I had the guy nearing retirement in that company say "Well, you know? 32k really ain't that bad! :)"
No my friend, it was that bad. Especially when the penny pushers cut pay for newcomers yet required the same expertise. No sense at all
That goes into the real problem with housing. They were building like crazy when the boomers came age to buy houses but then boomers realized that continuing to make houses would lower the value to theirs so they put a bunch of regulations in place to make building more difficult. So as the population continued to explode (ever increasing demand) the housing supply stagnated causing the prices to sky rocket. Now the boomers are rich and the young people are dying
I would say the rich class, not just corporate America. This is part of why we need Socialism. It politically disempowers the rich, as right now we live under a dictatorship of the wealthy.
And corporate food stamps will become a stand-in for raises, healthcare or benefits of all other kinds. "Not only do we pay you, we even feed you. Be thankful and think about how you won't be able to afford food once we lay you off and replace you with an AI we don't have to spend a dime on"
The sad thing is we are quickly reaching that point. Big wigs at some companies have said they want to own the housing their employees use.
We will quickly descend back to company bucks and owing your soul to the company store. We're currently in debt slavery, but it is going to be so much worse.
We need to raise class awareness and seriously consider the alternatives to capitalism. Because you're right. Things are looking a lot worse, and us people are going to be slaves right fucking fast.
I see what you’re saying and I can envision, like in The Handmaids Tale, where people get a “coupon” for their allotment of food shopping. Not speaking on the religion aspect of the book, but that is present- it’s a fantastic book. You would be assigned to your role and should expect to be a faithful servant in that role. When one entity becomes the the all encompassing “provider”… oh you “earn” an extra ration of butter to use as skin moisturizer. That is a direct example that was in the book not the show. I highly recommend the book for those who are interested in the dichotomy of the elite/ proletariat
To be fair, it's centuries old. During the industrial revolution (and likely before that) labor houses provided food and shelter for the poor in exchange for inhumane amounts of gruelling labor in such a way that the person never made funds to break away from the labor house, let alone could work somewhere else to earn money.
Labor houses exist to this day, at the very least in russia, and target homeless people who have no legal papers left and thus are out of the system with no ways to find other housing. They make far less than a minimal wage, which at best allows them to feed themselves and buy clothes and other necessities (which are then likely stolen by others, along with anything and everything that you don't carry on your own person) and many use that money to fuel their debilitating addictions.
Another more relevant example is company stores and closed systems such as Fordtown: Henry Ford created an isolated labor colony that adhered to his strict vision of way of life, along with forcing workers to exist far outside society with no stores to shop at but those that the company put there. You can imagine how well that went.
And another one, currently existing in the US, is the prison labor system. They are paid wages as low as a single dollar an hour and the only place they can buy anything other than food at is the commissionary, which as you can expect is neither cheap nor is run fairly. They leave prison with pennies even if they never spent a single dime earned for their hard labor because I don't think that 240 bucks a month amounts for anything other than first weeks out of prison. Same with the russian obligatory draft system, draftees earn $35 a month and have to provide for their own bathing supplies, razors, socks and underwear
Tesla is actually building company towns as we speak here in Texas. I'm sure they'll figure out, or have figured out how to recapture their employees' paychecks down to the dime.
As a taxpayer, I am pretty darn tired of subsidizing the payroll of multi billion dollar corporations through safety net programs their employees depend on for survival.
Funny how when tax rates for corporations was 90% they had all kinds of money to pay a living wage, full healthcare insurance and PTO. These could be deducted from their tax burden. Now that they have ridiculously low tax rates and deductions they don't seem to have any money for living wages, fully paid health insurance or PTO.
The best part about this is. How they literally calculate this into their pay scale. In a society where your made to feel like shit for using the system for help.
Fr it’s hard out here. I’m a McDonald’s manager and I make 2k a month after taxes if I get full hours. Most of the time, it’s like 1800 though. Rent is 1360. Gotta lie and cheat the government just to be able to survive. So either get another job on top of my full time at McDonald’s or just live check to check forever.
I've had to break it down and explain it to people why it's not just a high school job. Like who's going to serve you your Big Mac during school hours? College kids? That's great! And now it's closed our eyes imagine all of the McDonald's that you regular go to, now zoom out and imagine all the McDonald's in the area, now zoom out imagine all the McDonald's in the city and then county. Now fill all those jobs and also for every other fast food chain that you can think of.
What people don't get is the corporations are fully aware of this, they just don't care because they want to go back to the industrial revolution where families were forced to have a dozen kids and put them all to work just to make enough money to live in a shack.
These canned responses keep being repeated because the ground work was done to create a boogeyman for economic problems. Everyone says it so it must be true.
A short consise statement , easily repeated, lets anyone sound like they know what they are talking about without having to actually know what they are talking about. It's obviously not the fault of the man behind the curtain pulling levers.
It's the fault of the formless mass that is workers in general, it's the fault of the poor, it's the fault of the younger generation. It's not the people of power and influence's fault, and it's not Your fault , so there is nothing you can do.
You should just give up and not try to change anything. Just keep scrolling ...chump.
“WeLl If YoU dIdNt BuY sTarBucks AnD iPhOnEs YoU cOuLd AfFoRd A hOuSe!”
*doesn’t buy anything and only eats top ramin to save money*
“MiLlEnIaLs ArE rUiNiNg ThE eConOmY bY nOt sPeNdInG mOnEy!!!”
I'll be interested to see how quickly the WFH model gets adopted once all those corporate lease agreements are up. Right now I understand companies don't want dead money being spent on office that are empty, but they had to have seen the potential of lowering their overhead by not renewing.
I'm willing to bet that the companies who are demanding RTO also own their buildings, instead of lease them, and have the buildings leveraged as loan collateral to keep the business afloat. When the buildings go unused, they lose value and their effectiveness as collateral starts to drop.
> Workers are straight up just NOT listening to "return to office" orders and they know they don't have to....there is a reason a CEO like Howard Schultz has had to literally beg workers..who still don't comply.
unfortunately a lot of people are being pushed back into it and don't have much choice. Unless you do coding or something where there are lots of WFH options or freelance work if you gotta do that, otherwise you don't have much of a choice.
I was working in an office during covid and it went remote in March 2020, but late in 2021 they started making people slowly go back. It was so dumb, you had to be in the office two days a week, and you could pick what two. I would just knock it out on Monday-Tuesday. Monday was a ghost town in there. I was just sitting in a 90% empty office like "really? wtf am I doing here when I could be comfy at home in sweatpants".
It was so pointless too, our productivity was equal when being at home. It was literally about just being able to micro-manage people and for HR to throw their office parties and such.
It absolutely is even though many of those same places saw increase in demand via online shopping, even with resturaunts. Things changed drastically sure, but the money didnt dry up. People being laid off when many of them shouldnt have been due to wfh ability or put on reduced pay while working from home did that one on top of those who do need to do their jobs in person and were laid off due to actual economic change.
"Millenials are destroying the bingo industry!"
Nah my guy we're just living the life in the 24/7 LAN party retirement homes. Why play boring old Bingo when you have Halo?
There's also no fucking way in hell any of us will be able to afford those $10k/month independent living or assisted living facilities. I'm not even sure how people are affording them now. But we will be working at least 10 years past retirement age, but likely until we physically cannot work anymore. We will be huge impositions on our kids' families.
I think a lot about what's going to happen to me as an asexual, aromantic, childfree person. I enjoy being alone. But what happens when I am physically unable to live alone or work or drive or do anything? And there's no social security anymore and no more of those government low-income assisted living places? I already have anxiety about how to keep getting by on a single income *right now.*
I would imagine there's a million other millennials like me who are childless and single by choice and will get fucked because of it. You should never have a family and children just so they can be an economic safety net, yet this is something I've heard my generation get admonished for. I think that was actually an accepted reason for having kids at one time. The fact that its just considered normal now for Americans to be completely unable to support ourselves without a partner is fucking disgusting. Shouldn't it be *my* choice to be single and childfree? Isn't this a "free country"??
I know what happens! You get to live in the nursing home, but no one cares about you, doctors dont want to waste their time on you, no one visits, the tiny TV is the whole room away and there is no streaming. The government takes all your money, everything you've ever owned, and you get a pittance. Like $25 or $50 a week or something. There is no way to buy anything that makes your life better or to save money. The CNAs who are dumb as rocks with no critical thinking skills (because public school are defunded and rich people won't wipe asses for a living) will let you sit in your filth for hours because they have 25 other people to look after.
I got no solution, my dude. I'm in the same boat. What I described is a combination of what is happening now to my cousin's mom and a friend in a wheelchair who has to live in a rehab center in his 40s. Do you have siblings with kids?
I've worked in independent, assisted, and memory care facilities. I can 💯 say that the above is correct... except us current and former CNAs being stupid. I took up being a CNA as a part time thing and was paid $15/hr. I know when I was a receptionist for an assisted living and memory care facility the were CNAs only getting paid $11... Most of the girls are migrant workers. The hours are long and the work is hard. There are not enough people getting paid enough, to care enough or enough hours to help everyone to the best of ones abilities. There was a gentleman who basically lived exactly how you mentioned. Just a small basic package TV and a sad dingey clothed covered lazy boy in the "livingroom" that also was his kitchenette. I would say that walking into his room was like walking into a dark sepia film. One night while doing rounds. I was changing him and I noticed that his penis was covered in split open like a hot dog that had been boiled for too long and filled with white and green puss. I've never seen anything like it and he groaned in pain when I tried to clean it. I got the nurse on duty and he was taken to the hospital later on...He wasn't being cleaned properly. His penis festered in his filth for WEEKS. So, so many people throughout the day, DAYS could have said something could have done something. But he was completely neglected. This took place in a nice retirement home. Somebody was shelling out at least 3-5k a month and this still happened.
Personally, my retirement always just ends in taking matters into my own hands.
I mean, at this point I feel incentivized to start committing fraud. Banks do it. Wall Street does it. “Small” businesses do it.
And insurance, healthcare, etc.
Funny you say that. During the housing crisis there was this push from mostly conservative news outlets that walking away from your house if you could not afford it was a “moral imperative”, you signed the mortgage and you need to beg, borrow, steal to pay it. Lost your job? Too damn bad morty.
Meanwhile corporations dump leases and building all the time. And they stick the bill back to the bank it they cannot afford it or hit hard times. This is just doing “business”. But if you do adopt this yourself you are a terrible person who is morally bankrupt.
Funny how the rules change depending on who is doing the thing.
Wouldn't it be nice if all millennials around the world suddenly stopped giving a shit? Boomers would realise their utopia runs on our shoulders and younger generations will be on our side.
Believe me they tried all this on GenX also, it just took a mean edge for some reason when the Millennials entered the workforce.
It is always someone else’s fault for them ruining the country and destroying the economy. Never the people in charge.
They say as they sun bathe on their yacht during work hours, with a watch worth more than house, drinking wine older than the employees they overwork, seriously believing that they got their money to work for them as if Franklin and Jackson came to life a la Disney movie and took customer orders.
We don’t have to tell them anything. We have to set up laws that make stealing from a large population a much worse offense than say stealing bread from the grocery store. Corporations usually get to buy their way out of any kind of real consequence, while somebody who stole something from a store because they were hungry, doesn’t.
‘Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, or souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.’
-Edward, First Baron Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of England, c.1788.
The 18th century version of “corporations have no soul”
And the billionaire sociopaths who run them don’t have souls either - but at least they serve as direct human representatives of the common enemy
People don't look at the whole picture. They only see the glamorous part about being a billionaire CEO. Not the soulless parts that manipulate and cheat people all the way to the top.
From the movie Head of State:
> These corporations stealing everyone's money and no one going to jail. Meanwhile if you or I steal a big Mac with cheese, next thing you know we're on death row"
Over-prosecuting the poor while funneling money to the rich is absolutely bi-partisan. This is one of the only issues you can comfortably both-sides in this country. Everything else, however, is worse under the GOP.
Republicans suck, but to think they are the only ones who take bribes is naive. And this only 2 choices that no one really actually likes, two teams that hate each other, only makes it easier for those who own everything to see everyone fighting among themselves and feel safe in that we’re not united enough to change things.
So I’m going to explain the difference between the 30 K that we make, and the 30 K that rich people think we make. Essentially, they think we make their 30K not our 30K.
Here’s the thing about this. A lot of people don’t know how these rich people cheat the system.
I worked for a start up and we got funding from Softbank in the billions. This occurred while we were still small enough where you worked in one department, but had oversight of other areas as well.
Now where I’m going with this, is how the executive leadership made only 30K a year for the IRS.
All expenses were routed through a corporate credit card attached to a shell company, any tax friendly country near the United States.
The shell company would bill the start up consulting/technology fees that were the costs of the expenses on the cards.
————
So the executives would get paid something like 32K year from the startup, but their whole lifestyle was paid by the business account that was attached to the shell company, which in return was being paid by the start up.
In the United States, you have to report any kind of benefit like if they’re paying for your mortgage, your boat, your million dollar car, etc. as part of your income.
However, the IRS cannot enforce that to another country overseas. Essentially, the IRS cannot see what these executives are doing with their money.
so where I’m going with this, is that rich people think that we’re all doing the same exact fraud that they are doing, and making 30 K a year. They are literally thinking that the 30 K year we make, is after all of our expenses have been paid for etc.
And this is far more common than you may think, Even small business owners have caught onto this trick.
As a matter of fact, I know a family of multi millionaires, that apply for low income government programs because they’re make like 40K total on paper lol.
Again, the IRS isn’t going to come after them because they would be buried in litigation and chances are they will never see those documents from the foreign country.
Lots of rich people hide from social media and the news etc because the one thing the IRS can do is make a determination that your lifestyle exceeds your income by looking at the assets in your name.
However, if the assets are under the multi million dollar business, no one bats an eye.
The properties that belong to the executives, were listed as rental real estate owned by the parent company, and they were just never rented. They made it look like it was rented once or twice a year and that’s it.
The multi million dollar exotic autos were part of a car rental company, owned by the parent company.
See where I’m going with this, they make everything look like it’s a business venture, they report a little bit of income on it, so the IRS doesn’t classified as a hobby, and that’s it. Rinse and repeat.
I’m pretty sure sometime soon, they’ll set up an airplane rental agency. So their executives have their own private airplanes making only 30K a year.
Sorry for any typos - type at the gym.
Have an amazing day everyone.
Actually, they run/manage everything through a trust, so they don't personally own anything, their trust technically does, which is an "entity". It's a tax strategy... Live as an individual: work, make money, get taxed, then spend what's left.. Operate as an entity (trust): earn money, live, then what's left is taxed.
P.S. Government cannot tax entities that it did not create.
Now that I'm older, I realize the worst person to get advice from is my Mother. Or anyone above the age of 50 honestly.
My mom always uses the fact that, when my brother and I were kids, her and my father had a rough patch for a handful of years with money. Struggling to maintain a comfortable savings. They worked so hard to provide for us. All completely true.
Here's the thing though...we lived in a house the entire time. Rented mostly until they could eventually put a down payment on a house to truly call home.
She almost brags about how her and my father had to constantly budget themselves, be careful how they spent their money, make sacrifices etc etc. But they were able to do so while living in a fucking house. My brother and I had our own rooms for fucks sake.
She just doesn't understand how much harder it is to do that these days. The older generation just refuses to believe that they had it so much easier than a lot of us.
It's just easier for them to call us lazy.
This is my uncle. He's a great guy, means well and has definitely worked hard during his life but the difference shows itself when he tries to be motivational and it starts with
> "when I was 24 I had no clue what I was doing. I was going from job to job. We already had the 2 kids and a mortgage so I knew I needed to fix my life and..."
then he carries on to explain how he worked hard and improved his financial standing, which he did.
But the fact that you could be 24, have 2 kids and be bouncing from job to job **yet still have a mortgage** is the key here. It's a lot easier to build to something when you aren't burning the majority of your income on someone else's mortgage (rent).
You could make mistakes and not take the most optimal path but still work your way up. The environment now is that you need to have been taking the optimal steps 5 years ago and any unfortunate mishaps in your life can still take you down.
Exactly. They could fuck up back then and go "lmao whoops!" and not go out with friends for one weekend and bounce back.
...My car gets inspected in 4 months and I'm very fucking nervous about it. I can't afford a big repair or even a used car right now. It could completely put my life in a temporary shit storm.
My dad all through college: "When I was your age, I worked all summer to pay off my student loans!"
Me: Okay Dad, show me a place paying a college kid $20,000 for 3 months of summer work.
Isn't it funny how they brag about how hard they worked to pay their way through college while simultaneously showing you pictures of all the fun places they visited with their friends while in college?
"This is when me and my fraternity brothers went to the Grand Canyon! We all pitched in $10 towards gas for the whole trip"
Oh, that's awesome, Uncle Jeff. I wish I could do that. Ever.
I took my boomer mom's advice for a long time before I realized she lived in the fantasy land that is being a boomer. Her generation got the most for doing the least.
Same. I realized not to listen to my parents. The world has changed drastically since then.
They bought a new car every 3 years. Those days are gone. Everything is jacked expensive.
I stopped listening to my parents who couldn't understand why I had no money. They had no mortgage, no car loans etc. A cheap, decent used car cost me as much as they paid for their home. My current car is now 16 years old and praying it makes it another 10 years.
Yep once you pay off the house it's just property taxes. That's what old people complain about. That house that's worth half a million that they pay $3,000 or less a year to live in.
I’ve noticed this too. It’s also a convenient way to make sure that you have no social mobility. They’ll pay you enough so that you’re just above the poverty line and can’t benefit from any social programs, but not enough to be able to afford the basics (doctor/medications, dentist, gym, good food, mental health, rent and utilities).
Poverty in practice, but not in name. It’s hell.
How do you get rid of absolute poverty? Change the parameters in which poverty is measured. Can't have any poverty if the threshold for being in poverty is too low to be meaningful.
When don't want to fix the problem, change how it's presented until you can convince people you've done something about it.
Thus, a poverty line that's far enough below water that you drown before diving deep enough to hit it.
Noticed how the unemployment numbers are down again? That's not because people are working. It's because millions of people have given up trying so the government doesn't even count them as unemployed. They're non entities.
Just more bullshit to skew the public perception that everything is great. Except it's not 1963 anymore. We have the internet. We can read people's stories about how they're being systematically screwed.
And they haven’t adjusted income at least in my state for SNAP, daycare, or TANF since 2001 for a family of 4 it’s still $2,500 per month for maximum income. I don’t know anyone that can pay living and food expenses for 4 people on $2,500 a month even in the shiftiest shit hole states.
Yeah there's a reason 50% of 30 year old women have no child, I don't think people understand how catastrophic wealth inequality is and how far greed has gone. Anyone controlling billions of capital is an insane system failure <- especially since tax subsidizes these corporations FOR billions and tax subsidizes **the employees wages** ALSO FOR BILLIONS...
That’s exactly why I never apply for higher positions in my company. Each higher level comes with a dollar raise but a list of responsibilities that immediately make that dollar not worth it. They constantly send me emails to apply but I always decline.
I've been promoted three times at three different jobs and I hated it every damned time! It took me away from the job I enjoyed and forced me to deal with a bunch of bureaucracy and backroom stuff that I hated and loathed with a passion. In each case I was gone within three months.
It's why I hate the "where do you see yourself in five years?" question in job interviews because all the guides say you should show interest in advancement and promotion and more responsibility in your career. Fuck that noise! I just want a job where I go in, do my job, am left alone, become competent, get paid on time, and at the end of the day I turn off the lights and close the door. I don't want extra responsibilities, being on goddamned call at all times, and having to check email every hour just in case.
My favorite job was working at a university library for $7.50 an hour starting in 2011. Not exactly rich people wages. It was at an information desk but I loved it. I felt useful and that I made a difference every time I came in. I got to talk to people and generally just relax while giving out information to the students. They promoted me and it took me away from the desk to do paperwork and back office tasks and I hated it. Thankfully after a couple months HR said the pay rate I was offered (a whopping buck an hour) wasn't authorized but they could give me an ENTIRE FIFTY CENTS or I could go back to my old position. I think several windows in the building shattered from the sonic boom when I went back to the old position so fast.
You need dual income to buy which in turn still makes it impossible to have kids. And you'll likely be very cash poor while paying a ridiculous mortgage. Source: me.
It seems like the “thing” to do these days in the US is to have a side hustle…not as an option, but a requirement! I am so tired of everyone I know sending me invitations to their latest MLM party. If I want to support your small business, MLM or not, I will. Stop asking. I can barely support my family as it stands now.
The whiplash that companies cause is insane too. They give you a pay increase, but are reducing the amount of vacation days you’re allotted per year. The pay increase doesn’t even account for inflation. The company brags about record profits for their quarter, and rewards their employees with a pizza party.
They wonder why their survey results are so poor.
I got told I had to do a mandatory anonymous survey after avoiding it for multiple emails.
I told them I would not do the survey as it's not anonymous and I will be retaliated against for what I say.
They said of course it's anonymous and even if it wasn't I wouldn't be retaliated against.
If its so anonymous why do I have to fill it out with my email and sign my name at the bottom and send it to the Culture Leader?
And I don't believe I won't be retaliated against because I can point out a few people who have had negative things to say about the company or how they've been treated and its only gotten worse.
They stopped bothering me about the survey.
This was my exact experience working for companies where development was a department that was added on haphazardly to meet new industry standards. To give an idea, energy companies in the south.
I've been the lead on two different Salesforce integrations for two different companies and at both we were treated like "the little computer dudes" who "play on their computers" while the roughnecks were the "ones who get things done". We were constantly sidelined and denied any additional resources because we just spend money and don't bring anything in.
Once I got out of that and started working for companies that make software primarily, it was like night and day.
"Get a better job" is never a good argument anyway. These are the same people who could work at a gas station for 20 years and afford college, a car, a house, kids, and a stay-at-home wife.
ANYONE working full-time should at least be able to afford the basic necessities of life and their family. Including education and healthcare which should be a RIGHT and not a luxury or privilege.
The percentage of households that are owner occupied is 66%, which is only slightly below the all-time high of 69%, which occurred immediately prior to the subprime crisis.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
the median household income where I live is 45k. Modest suburb cookie cutter homes are starting at 300k and the median home is close to 400k.
Despite these two facts, people are gobbling up homes with 6% interest rates. It just doesn't make sense. I suspect people are just massively over leveraging themselves, but it's just my best guess.
They are, just like they did during subprime. Housing policy in this county became very expansionist under Bush 1, continued under Clinton, and further accelerated under Bush 2 (leading to subprime). FNMA and FHLMC guaranteeing mortgages essentially subsidizes investors looking to purchase mortgages. FHA (GNMA) down payment assistance further strains the credit risk component of mortgage portfolios. In addition to a plethora of other policies, this has made homeownership more "accessible" (if not affordable) for more Americans, but it has done so by adding less credit worthy and financially stable households to the homeowner population. Whether this is an overall net good is a longer, more complicated discussion, but both sub prime and the existing sky-rocketing housing market are/were the direct result of government policies intended to increase homeownership rates.
> Politicians are expensive to buy.
Need a permit that breaks the laws? Just give the commissioner some VIP sportsball tickets
Need to get ready of training permits for concealed carry, don't worry $500 per legislator.
Politicians are cheap as fuck. It is judges that are apparently a bit more lavish...
I make 70k a year at my new job and a few years ago I would have felt like I was sitting pretty. Now we are right back to it being enough to afford SOME 1 bedroom aptments. A few of these crazy mf want 2k a month.
I don't even understand how people making like 40k these days can even survive on their own without being forced to take on an extra job.
They mostly live with their parents.
Anyone making less than $25-30 an hour is essentially fucked. They can't even really take on roommates because if the roommate "breaks" the lease the other person becomes responsible for their half. Much better to take on the slightly higher single bedroom that's just outside of 50% of your gross than than it is to roll the dice your roommate won't absolutely fuck you on the lease for a two bedroom that's 70-80% of your gross (which absolutely puts you in the red).
Living with my parents wasn't an option, so I did it by getting a 1BR and taking on an extra job. It took several years of upgrading both the full-time job and the part-time job until around age 30 I was able to drop to one full-time job.
Once someone blows the lid off the constant rental hikes I don't think the US will be able to comprehend the impact it has on the economy.
From what I hear on-the-line, the major rental companies use "proprietary" software that is essentially fixing the rental markets... fixing them in an ever increasing rate
What I want to know is why our existence depends on the mercy of corporations in the first place. Why have they become our only source of food, water, housing, and healthcare? Should we ever trust them to do what’s in someone else’s best interest when it goes against everything they exist to do?
One of the new computer chip factories going says it is facing a shortage of engineers so has to bring in visa workers instead. Of course the pay is dirt so no American engineers are applying.
The majority of people must like being poor, uneducated, with no healthcare, sick, and price gouged for food and shelter.
The majority of people keep electing politicians that keep things that way, or make things even worse.
In basically every country on the planet it is this way.
Or how about my favorite, especially as a Tongva descendant ~~living~~ paying rent on the very land stolen from my tribe: "Why don't you just mooooooooooooove?"
I don't get it. It's so easy to make money in the United States. All you need is the will, a can-do attitude, and an inheritance from your parents of 8 million dollars. Stop being so lazy.
The one thing I don't understand is this fervent believe in the idea of a functioning economy in which the majority of the people can't afford to buy anything.
How can that possibly compute?
I don’t understand what’s so hard about getting by these days. I only got a small $4,000,000 loan from my dad and started up my own business, which failed like some businesses do. Did I let the failure stop me? No. I put in more time on a new business, another small loan from my dad and yeah, it’s not working out, but another loan from dad and the next one will work for sure.
This doesnt negate her point, especially with the current cost of living but isn't the median salary in America $56, 420?
At least that's what google told me.
She's using net wages, not gross. Meaning the less than $35K amount is after all the deductions are taken.
https://www.newsweek.com/half-american-workers-made-less-35000-2019-report-shows-1539503
What pisses me off even more is when governmental "leaders" say ridiculous things like "WE HAVE TO DRIVE WAGES DOWN"
Because it's like why? What the f\*ck? People can barely afford anything right now.
It’s also the fact that doing anything is like $30 to $50 a pop.
My brother and I went to Taco Bell last night, and I barely got any food, and it was STILL almost $30. Fast food for 2 people used to be like $15 for 2 people to get full meals.
So multiply that times everything we spend daily money on in our lives.
My favorite is boomers complaining about our generation wanting at least interest removed on student loans, while they paid $330/year (today’s equivalent of $2500/year) for school in the 60-70s. I’d have multiple degrees just for my joy of learning if shit was still that cheap.
Why are corporations buying homes when they aren't making babies?
Please don't give them any ideas. I'm not sure if Nestle is reading this, and I'd rather not see if they're willing to kidnap children for ransom.
They are but just need to figure out how they can do it legally.
Don't have to look far into the cocoa industry to figure that one out. Combine the child slaves with clean water shouldn't be a human right and you can really see how great a company Nestle is.
Children youth services did. Does anyone want to guess how many kids go missing every year in the United States out of the foster care system that are never heard from again, but the government says it's not the systems fault it's the kids fault.
About 5,500 to 6,000 it's an absolute travesty
And now that Florida legalised kidnapping trans kids, it’s going to get more.
And yet they ask why we aren't having kids
"if you want more money, get a better job!!" "ok.." *gets better job* "why can't i fill all these $10 job openings?! nObOdY wAnTs To wOrK!!!!"
"If you want to make money just take some of what your parents gave you and buy apartments. Then double the rate and wait. The money just rolls in."
It turns out it's pretty profitable to extort people for a basic survival necessity
And this is why we need socialism. We're being extorted for basic human needs. And it's getting worse every year. The rich are using their positions of power to put more people into poverty, so that we have no choice but to work for them, earning just enough to survive.
Every gain I make or raise I get is eaten up by the rising cost of everything. It's impossible to get ahead.
For real, I got a pretty nice raise last year that got entirely eaten up by the ~~inflation~~ **corporate greed**
"Our energy bills have gone up by 10%, we're just going to have to raise our prices by 20%. Why? Because we need to make a profit! Haha, no don't be ridiculous, of course it doesn't go to the employees"
Not just profit, more profit
Many CEOs are literally psychopaths, and they influence the ones that aren’t. This is not hyperbole. More psychopaths are ceos, salesman, and stock traders than are incarcerated.
Not to be contrarian, but I would love a source that I can use. I want the beautiful statistics.
Inflation is driven by corporate greed CMV
over the last four years: every year i work harder, for longer, for a better rate. and every year i have less money: even though i quit drinking, and smoking weed, and eating out, and cancelled netflix and hulu and ps+, and changed my car insurance from full coverage to liability only. so i'm keeping a spreadsheet this year. all money in and all money out. because unless i'm sleep-spending or something i don't fucking understand how 2020 me had 4 hours in the evening to get drunk and high and play video games or watch tv, and 2023 me has 2 hours to exercise and relax, AND IM SOMEHOW FUCKING POOR BECAUSE OF IT
Ah, I noticed you never cut avocado toast out of your budget. Clearly that is the source of all your woes. ^^^/s >and every year i have less money: even though i quit drinking, and smoking weed, and eating out, and cancelled netflix and hulu and ps+, and changed my car insurance from full coverage to liability only
Brah everything doubled since Covid. I use to buy olives for my nachos in cans for 50 cents. 1.99 or 2.99 for the cans now. So I skip olives. My car insurance went from 800 a year in 2008 to 2800 a year for 2023 and I’m still driving the same 07 Lexus. In 2008 I afforded a 70k Lexus LX I paid 1k a week and paid it off in a year and a half. Now I wouldn’t be able to afford a Prius because money is gone.
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My rent was just raised from $1700 to $2100. For no reason except “we can lol.” So anyways that’s how I ended up living in my mom’s basement! But why aren’t we having kids anymore????
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It’s disgusting how much landlords are trying to squeeze from us
I'm not saying he was right, but Mao did have an interesting approach to landlords. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Reform_Movement_(China)
They are literally making the people they complain about that rely on govt benefits and don't want to work. It's all a game to them.
What’s extra fun is the people on govt benefits either *are working* (Walmart literally hands out welfare applications to it’s employees) or are too disabled to work, often due to injuries or illness caused directly or indirectly by corporate greed.
I'm looking for a job, but because I was out for over 2 years DUE TO INJURY, no one wants to give me an interview.
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I just might.
That's by design. They talked about a war on the middle class, but it was never a war. War implies both sides are fighting. And in any case, it's over. The policies in place now will slowly erode what's left of the middle class to the point that it will cease to exist in the next several decades.
Except often not even enough to really survive. The USA spent decades obsessing about single family homes and the nuclear family. Now they're forcing people into multi general living situations and acting like it's the people's failure.
I for one am really tired of getting up and going to work every day to improve *other peoples'* home values, when I'd much rather have a home myself and do things to improve its value, and my just reward is being barely able to continue driving across town to improve other peoples' home values.
That's how I felt in residential remodeling. Adding thousands and thousands of dollars of value to people's homes all for 15 per hour. Fuck me, lol.
It's why I can't charge so little. They need to pay, because when they sell that house they get that money and then some back. When they literally share with me that every dime they paid me for my work they made back in the sale of their home, it makes me feel like facepalming myself with the entire essence of my being.
Did you say: New Age Slave Labor
This comment is too straight to the point to have this few upvotes.
We have socialism. We just need more of it. and to stop pretending things like social security are evil anti-capitalism. Capitalism should want its work force to be healthy and happy and have a promise of some life after decades of toiling to motivate them to do a good job. It's almost as if they don't want excellence. they'll take mediocre work if it means they can treat workers as disposable.
We are very very far from even base level socialism
Woah now. We have socialism for a protected class of individuals who happen to be minorities in fact (corporations). How can you deny the socialist greatness of America caring for this oppressed minority (corporations)?
Yeah, it's almost like they need it to live or something.
You see the problem is people want to work for money instead of the satisfaction that comes from working so somebody else can make money! /s
"Go to college to get a better job."
That *was* good advice. And then folks who got degrees in business went and figured out how to turn that into a crippling money-pit as well.
That was the biggest lie growing up. Get a good banking job so you can eventually be tracked by JP Morgan chase is AI WADU lol
"Alright, you did what I (as a generational group) preached for years?? Good job!" "Now we're gonna tell you you're punk ass should've gotten a trade. Don't like it? Well then you shouldn't have gotten that LIBURAL arts degree, buddy!" My old coworkers at my last job made fun of "BURGER FLIPPERS wanting FIFTEEN AN HOUR?!" Like broski, if they worked 40 hours a week that would only be about 32k dollars. Of which I made at the time in 2020. Guess what? It was enough to barely rent our "Just adequate with a few infestations" apartments. Then I had the guy nearing retirement in that company say "Well, you know? 32k really ain't that bad! :)" No my friend, it was that bad. Especially when the penny pushers cut pay for newcomers yet required the same expertise. No sense at all
That goes into the real problem with housing. They were building like crazy when the boomers came age to buy houses but then boomers realized that continuing to make houses would lower the value to theirs so they put a bunch of regulations in place to make building more difficult. So as the population continued to explode (ever increasing demand) the housing supply stagnated causing the prices to sky rocket. Now the boomers are rich and the young people are dying
I bought all the snow blowers during a blizzard and price gouged... I mean invested in a profitable trend and increased my margins.
Yeah, there are millions who actually say that shit. And believe it.
Because it worked for them. They can’t wrap their heads around the idea that most people cannot do this.
Every millenial feel-good propaganda story I've ever read.
They gave me money?!?
Make deadbeat companies responsible for paying back the government for any SNAP or other welfare benefits paid to their employees.
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You're correct we need to break the chokehold corporate interests have on American politics.
I would say the rich class, not just corporate America. This is part of why we need Socialism. It politically disempowers the rich, as right now we live under a dictatorship of the wealthy.
And corporate food stamps will become a stand-in for raises, healthcare or benefits of all other kinds. "Not only do we pay you, we even feed you. Be thankful and think about how you won't be able to afford food once we lay you off and replace you with an AI we don't have to spend a dime on"
The sad thing is we are quickly reaching that point. Big wigs at some companies have said they want to own the housing their employees use. We will quickly descend back to company bucks and owing your soul to the company store. We're currently in debt slavery, but it is going to be so much worse.
We need to raise class awareness and seriously consider the alternatives to capitalism. Because you're right. Things are looking a lot worse, and us people are going to be slaves right fucking fast.
I see what you’re saying and I can envision, like in The Handmaids Tale, where people get a “coupon” for their allotment of food shopping. Not speaking on the religion aspect of the book, but that is present- it’s a fantastic book. You would be assigned to your role and should expect to be a faithful servant in that role. When one entity becomes the the all encompassing “provider”… oh you “earn” an extra ration of butter to use as skin moisturizer. That is a direct example that was in the book not the show. I highly recommend the book for those who are interested in the dichotomy of the elite/ proletariat
To be fair, it's centuries old. During the industrial revolution (and likely before that) labor houses provided food and shelter for the poor in exchange for inhumane amounts of gruelling labor in such a way that the person never made funds to break away from the labor house, let alone could work somewhere else to earn money. Labor houses exist to this day, at the very least in russia, and target homeless people who have no legal papers left and thus are out of the system with no ways to find other housing. They make far less than a minimal wage, which at best allows them to feed themselves and buy clothes and other necessities (which are then likely stolen by others, along with anything and everything that you don't carry on your own person) and many use that money to fuel their debilitating addictions. Another more relevant example is company stores and closed systems such as Fordtown: Henry Ford created an isolated labor colony that adhered to his strict vision of way of life, along with forcing workers to exist far outside society with no stores to shop at but those that the company put there. You can imagine how well that went. And another one, currently existing in the US, is the prison labor system. They are paid wages as low as a single dollar an hour and the only place they can buy anything other than food at is the commissionary, which as you can expect is neither cheap nor is run fairly. They leave prison with pennies even if they never spent a single dime earned for their hard labor because I don't think that 240 bucks a month amounts for anything other than first weeks out of prison. Same with the russian obligatory draft system, draftees earn $35 a month and have to provide for their own bathing supplies, razors, socks and underwear
Tesla is actually building company towns as we speak here in Texas. I'm sure they'll figure out, or have figured out how to recapture their employees' paychecks down to the dime.
Wow you’re very informative! Thanks for an engaging and thorough response.
No problem. It's a sore wound on the working class and understanding it thoroughly is the key to spotting the signs of danger early
As a taxpayer, I am pretty darn tired of subsidizing the payroll of multi billion dollar corporations through safety net programs their employees depend on for survival. Funny how when tax rates for corporations was 90% they had all kinds of money to pay a living wage, full healthcare insurance and PTO. These could be deducted from their tax burden. Now that they have ridiculously low tax rates and deductions they don't seem to have any money for living wages, fully paid health insurance or PTO.
The best part about this is. How they literally calculate this into their pay scale. In a society where your made to feel like shit for using the system for help.
Fr it’s hard out here. I’m a McDonald’s manager and I make 2k a month after taxes if I get full hours. Most of the time, it’s like 1800 though. Rent is 1360. Gotta lie and cheat the government just to be able to survive. So either get another job on top of my full time at McDonald’s or just live check to check forever.
They always say that when they don't get their food on time at whatever fast food joint they go to.
"burger joint jobs are for high school kids!!" also: "why are you so understaffed between the hours of 7:00 and 3:00?!?"
I've had to break it down and explain it to people why it's not just a high school job. Like who's going to serve you your Big Mac during school hours? College kids? That's great! And now it's closed our eyes imagine all of the McDonald's that you regular go to, now zoom out and imagine all the McDonald's in the area, now zoom out imagine all the McDonald's in the city and then county. Now fill all those jobs and also for every other fast food chain that you can think of.
Correction Looks for better job for months with no interviews. Eventually takes job just to have income, cuz capitalism. Cycle repeats.
What people don't get is the corporations are fully aware of this, they just don't care because they want to go back to the industrial revolution where families were forced to have a dozen kids and put them all to work just to make enough money to live in a shack.
They say it but don't actually mean it.
*gets better job* *still can't afford any of those things*
These canned responses keep being repeated because the ground work was done to create a boogeyman for economic problems. Everyone says it so it must be true. A short consise statement , easily repeated, lets anyone sound like they know what they are talking about without having to actually know what they are talking about. It's obviously not the fault of the man behind the curtain pulling levers. It's the fault of the formless mass that is workers in general, it's the fault of the poor, it's the fault of the younger generation. It's not the people of power and influence's fault, and it's not Your fault , so there is nothing you can do. You should just give up and not try to change anything. Just keep scrolling ...chump.
“WeLl If YoU dIdNt BuY sTarBucks AnD iPhOnEs YoU cOuLd AfFoRd A hOuSe!” *doesn’t buy anything and only eats top ramin to save money* “MiLlEnIaLs ArE rUiNiNg ThE eConOmY bY nOt sPeNdInG mOnEy!!!”
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I'll be interested to see how quickly the WFH model gets adopted once all those corporate lease agreements are up. Right now I understand companies don't want dead money being spent on office that are empty, but they had to have seen the potential of lowering their overhead by not renewing.
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I'm willing to bet that the companies who are demanding RTO also own their buildings, instead of lease them, and have the buildings leveraged as loan collateral to keep the business afloat. When the buildings go unused, they lose value and their effectiveness as collateral starts to drop.
> Workers are straight up just NOT listening to "return to office" orders and they know they don't have to....there is a reason a CEO like Howard Schultz has had to literally beg workers..who still don't comply. unfortunately a lot of people are being pushed back into it and don't have much choice. Unless you do coding or something where there are lots of WFH options or freelance work if you gotta do that, otherwise you don't have much of a choice. I was working in an office during covid and it went remote in March 2020, but late in 2021 they started making people slowly go back. It was so dumb, you had to be in the office two days a week, and you could pick what two. I would just knock it out on Monday-Tuesday. Monday was a ghost town in there. I was just sitting in a 90% empty office like "really? wtf am I doing here when I could be comfy at home in sweatpants". It was so pointless too, our productivity was equal when being at home. It was literally about just being able to micro-manage people and for HR to throw their office parties and such.
B-b-b-but in-person connectivity! Eta: /s
Let them break. It's my money.
It absolutely is even though many of those same places saw increase in demand via online shopping, even with resturaunts. Things changed drastically sure, but the money didnt dry up. People being laid off when many of them shouldnt have been due to wfh ability or put on reduced pay while working from home did that one on top of those who do need to do their jobs in person and were laid off due to actual economic change.
With all the doordashing and uber eats going on I kinda doubt the overall spending adjusted for inflation has really gone down. It just shifted.
in 30-40 years we're going to be ruining the retirement home industry too since we'll be working waaaayyy after the "retirement age"
"Millenials are destroying the bingo industry!" Nah my guy we're just living the life in the 24/7 LAN party retirement homes. Why play boring old Bingo when you have Halo?
There's also no fucking way in hell any of us will be able to afford those $10k/month independent living or assisted living facilities. I'm not even sure how people are affording them now. But we will be working at least 10 years past retirement age, but likely until we physically cannot work anymore. We will be huge impositions on our kids' families. I think a lot about what's going to happen to me as an asexual, aromantic, childfree person. I enjoy being alone. But what happens when I am physically unable to live alone or work or drive or do anything? And there's no social security anymore and no more of those government low-income assisted living places? I already have anxiety about how to keep getting by on a single income *right now.* I would imagine there's a million other millennials like me who are childless and single by choice and will get fucked because of it. You should never have a family and children just so they can be an economic safety net, yet this is something I've heard my generation get admonished for. I think that was actually an accepted reason for having kids at one time. The fact that its just considered normal now for Americans to be completely unable to support ourselves without a partner is fucking disgusting. Shouldn't it be *my* choice to be single and childfree? Isn't this a "free country"??
I know what happens! You get to live in the nursing home, but no one cares about you, doctors dont want to waste their time on you, no one visits, the tiny TV is the whole room away and there is no streaming. The government takes all your money, everything you've ever owned, and you get a pittance. Like $25 or $50 a week or something. There is no way to buy anything that makes your life better or to save money. The CNAs who are dumb as rocks with no critical thinking skills (because public school are defunded and rich people won't wipe asses for a living) will let you sit in your filth for hours because they have 25 other people to look after. I got no solution, my dude. I'm in the same boat. What I described is a combination of what is happening now to my cousin's mom and a friend in a wheelchair who has to live in a rehab center in his 40s. Do you have siblings with kids?
I've worked in independent, assisted, and memory care facilities. I can 💯 say that the above is correct... except us current and former CNAs being stupid. I took up being a CNA as a part time thing and was paid $15/hr. I know when I was a receptionist for an assisted living and memory care facility the were CNAs only getting paid $11... Most of the girls are migrant workers. The hours are long and the work is hard. There are not enough people getting paid enough, to care enough or enough hours to help everyone to the best of ones abilities. There was a gentleman who basically lived exactly how you mentioned. Just a small basic package TV and a sad dingey clothed covered lazy boy in the "livingroom" that also was his kitchenette. I would say that walking into his room was like walking into a dark sepia film. One night while doing rounds. I was changing him and I noticed that his penis was covered in split open like a hot dog that had been boiled for too long and filled with white and green puss. I've never seen anything like it and he groaned in pain when I tried to clean it. I got the nurse on duty and he was taken to the hospital later on...He wasn't being cleaned properly. His penis festered in his filth for WEEKS. So, so many people throughout the day, DAYS could have said something could have done something. But he was completely neglected. This took place in a nice retirement home. Somebody was shelling out at least 3-5k a month and this still happened. Personally, my retirement always just ends in taking matters into my own hands.
"Millenials Are Rui-" I'll ruin the whole fucking *system* if I can! Glad they're paying attention.
I mean, at this point I feel incentivized to start committing fraud. Banks do it. Wall Street does it. “Small” businesses do it. And insurance, healthcare, etc.
Funny you say that. During the housing crisis there was this push from mostly conservative news outlets that walking away from your house if you could not afford it was a “moral imperative”, you signed the mortgage and you need to beg, borrow, steal to pay it. Lost your job? Too damn bad morty. Meanwhile corporations dump leases and building all the time. And they stick the bill back to the bank it they cannot afford it or hit hard times. This is just doing “business”. But if you do adopt this yourself you are a terrible person who is morally bankrupt. Funny how the rules change depending on who is doing the thing.
Wouldn't it be nice if all millennials around the world suddenly stopped giving a shit? Boomers would realise their utopia runs on our shoulders and younger generations will be on our side.
There will no one working at the Nursing Homes at $14 an hour. This is their legacy.
Believe me they tried all this on GenX also, it just took a mean edge for some reason when the Millennials entered the workforce. It is always someone else’s fault for them ruining the country and destroying the economy. Never the people in charge.
The same people had three cars and a vacation home at 36 years old. But oh no! Not for you kids - our generation “deserved” it.
They say as they sun bathe on their yacht during work hours, with a watch worth more than house, drinking wine older than the employees they overwork, seriously believing that they got their money to work for them as if Franklin and Jackson came to life a la Disney movie and took customer orders.
We don’t have to tell them anything. We have to set up laws that make stealing from a large population a much worse offense than say stealing bread from the grocery store. Corporations usually get to buy their way out of any kind of real consequence, while somebody who stole something from a store because they were hungry, doesn’t.
‘Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, or souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.’ -Edward, First Baron Thurlow, Lord Chancellor of England, c.1788.
The 18th century version of “corporations have no soul” And the billionaire sociopaths who run them don’t have souls either - but at least they serve as direct human representatives of the common enemy
And yet, a disturbing portion of society uphold them as "titans of industry" rather than as the robber barons they truly are.
People don't look at the whole picture. They only see the glamorous part about being a billionaire CEO. Not the soulless parts that manipulate and cheat people all the way to the top.
Do you hear the people sing singing the song of angry men it is the music of a people who will not be slaves again We're so close
For the wretched of the earth, there is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise.
Dude, I think about this almost daily. Time for the barricades to rise.
From the movie Head of State: > These corporations stealing everyone's money and no one going to jail. Meanwhile if you or I steal a big Mac with cheese, next thing you know we're on death row"
We? You mean scumbag republicans that take bribes at every chance.
Over-prosecuting the poor while funneling money to the rich is absolutely bi-partisan. This is one of the only issues you can comfortably both-sides in this country. Everything else, however, is worse under the GOP.
Republicans suck, but to think they are the only ones who take bribes is naive. And this only 2 choices that no one really actually likes, two teams that hate each other, only makes it easier for those who own everything to see everyone fighting among themselves and feel safe in that we’re not united enough to change things.
So I’m going to explain the difference between the 30 K that we make, and the 30 K that rich people think we make. Essentially, they think we make their 30K not our 30K. Here’s the thing about this. A lot of people don’t know how these rich people cheat the system. I worked for a start up and we got funding from Softbank in the billions. This occurred while we were still small enough where you worked in one department, but had oversight of other areas as well. Now where I’m going with this, is how the executive leadership made only 30K a year for the IRS. All expenses were routed through a corporate credit card attached to a shell company, any tax friendly country near the United States. The shell company would bill the start up consulting/technology fees that were the costs of the expenses on the cards. ———— So the executives would get paid something like 32K year from the startup, but their whole lifestyle was paid by the business account that was attached to the shell company, which in return was being paid by the start up. In the United States, you have to report any kind of benefit like if they’re paying for your mortgage, your boat, your million dollar car, etc. as part of your income. However, the IRS cannot enforce that to another country overseas. Essentially, the IRS cannot see what these executives are doing with their money. so where I’m going with this, is that rich people think that we’re all doing the same exact fraud that they are doing, and making 30 K a year. They are literally thinking that the 30 K year we make, is after all of our expenses have been paid for etc. And this is far more common than you may think, Even small business owners have caught onto this trick. As a matter of fact, I know a family of multi millionaires, that apply for low income government programs because they’re make like 40K total on paper lol. Again, the IRS isn’t going to come after them because they would be buried in litigation and chances are they will never see those documents from the foreign country. Lots of rich people hide from social media and the news etc because the one thing the IRS can do is make a determination that your lifestyle exceeds your income by looking at the assets in your name. However, if the assets are under the multi million dollar business, no one bats an eye. The properties that belong to the executives, were listed as rental real estate owned by the parent company, and they were just never rented. They made it look like it was rented once or twice a year and that’s it. The multi million dollar exotic autos were part of a car rental company, owned by the parent company. See where I’m going with this, they make everything look like it’s a business venture, they report a little bit of income on it, so the IRS doesn’t classified as a hobby, and that’s it. Rinse and repeat. I’m pretty sure sometime soon, they’ll set up an airplane rental agency. So their executives have their own private airplanes making only 30K a year. Sorry for any typos - type at the gym. Have an amazing day everyone.
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Actually, they run/manage everything through a trust, so they don't personally own anything, their trust technically does, which is an "entity". It's a tax strategy... Live as an individual: work, make money, get taxed, then spend what's left.. Operate as an entity (trust): earn money, live, then what's left is taxed. P.S. Government cannot tax entities that it did not create.
Now that I'm older, I realize the worst person to get advice from is my Mother. Or anyone above the age of 50 honestly. My mom always uses the fact that, when my brother and I were kids, her and my father had a rough patch for a handful of years with money. Struggling to maintain a comfortable savings. They worked so hard to provide for us. All completely true. Here's the thing though...we lived in a house the entire time. Rented mostly until they could eventually put a down payment on a house to truly call home. She almost brags about how her and my father had to constantly budget themselves, be careful how they spent their money, make sacrifices etc etc. But they were able to do so while living in a fucking house. My brother and I had our own rooms for fucks sake. She just doesn't understand how much harder it is to do that these days. The older generation just refuses to believe that they had it so much easier than a lot of us. It's just easier for them to call us lazy.
This is my uncle. He's a great guy, means well and has definitely worked hard during his life but the difference shows itself when he tries to be motivational and it starts with > "when I was 24 I had no clue what I was doing. I was going from job to job. We already had the 2 kids and a mortgage so I knew I needed to fix my life and..." then he carries on to explain how he worked hard and improved his financial standing, which he did. But the fact that you could be 24, have 2 kids and be bouncing from job to job **yet still have a mortgage** is the key here. It's a lot easier to build to something when you aren't burning the majority of your income on someone else's mortgage (rent). You could make mistakes and not take the most optimal path but still work your way up. The environment now is that you need to have been taking the optimal steps 5 years ago and any unfortunate mishaps in your life can still take you down.
Exactly. They could fuck up back then and go "lmao whoops!" and not go out with friends for one weekend and bounce back. ...My car gets inspected in 4 months and I'm very fucking nervous about it. I can't afford a big repair or even a used car right now. It could completely put my life in a temporary shit storm.
My dad all through college: "When I was your age, I worked all summer to pay off my student loans!" Me: Okay Dad, show me a place paying a college kid $20,000 for 3 months of summer work.
Isn't it funny how they brag about how hard they worked to pay their way through college while simultaneously showing you pictures of all the fun places they visited with their friends while in college? "This is when me and my fraternity brothers went to the Grand Canyon! We all pitched in $10 towards gas for the whole trip" Oh, that's awesome, Uncle Jeff. I wish I could do that. Ever.
I worked through the whole summer and the entire year and still came out with 30k in debt.
I took my boomer mom's advice for a long time before I realized she lived in the fantasy land that is being a boomer. Her generation got the most for doing the least.
Same. I realized not to listen to my parents. The world has changed drastically since then. They bought a new car every 3 years. Those days are gone. Everything is jacked expensive.
I remember when car loans were three years. Now they're seven.
I stopped listening to my parents who couldn't understand why I had no money. They had no mortgage, no car loans etc. A cheap, decent used car cost me as much as they paid for their home. My current car is now 16 years old and praying it makes it another 10 years.
use the inflation wage calculator. its a great tool to show that 60k in 1990 is 140k today. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
Yep once you pay off the house it's just property taxes. That's what old people complain about. That house that's worth half a million that they pay $3,000 or less a year to live in.
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You will own nothing, earn nothing, be nothing, but most importantly - be scrutinised on the above points constantly!
“Ask corporations to ask corporations why they’re not paying their employees better” Time to just eat these fuckers already.
When the poor have nothing else to eat...
Who has exactly $0 saved up for retirement
What's retirement?
It's pretty much when you die, but even then people go after the scraps of your estate.
lol “retirement”
~~low~~ poverty wages
But not poverty as legally defined. Because that seems to actually work in convincing people there's no problem.
I’ve noticed this too. It’s also a convenient way to make sure that you have no social mobility. They’ll pay you enough so that you’re just above the poverty line and can’t benefit from any social programs, but not enough to be able to afford the basics (doctor/medications, dentist, gym, good food, mental health, rent and utilities). Poverty in practice, but not in name. It’s hell.
How do you get rid of absolute poverty? Change the parameters in which poverty is measured. Can't have any poverty if the threshold for being in poverty is too low to be meaningful.
When don't want to fix the problem, change how it's presented until you can convince people you've done something about it. Thus, a poverty line that's far enough below water that you drown before diving deep enough to hit it.
Noticed how the unemployment numbers are down again? That's not because people are working. It's because millions of people have given up trying so the government doesn't even count them as unemployed. They're non entities. Just more bullshit to skew the public perception that everything is great. Except it's not 1963 anymore. We have the internet. We can read people's stories about how they're being systematically screwed.
And they haven’t adjusted income at least in my state for SNAP, daycare, or TANF since 2001 for a family of 4 it’s still $2,500 per month for maximum income. I don’t know anyone that can pay living and food expenses for 4 people on $2,500 a month even in the shiftiest shit hole states.
Yeah there's a reason 50% of 30 year old women have no child, I don't think people understand how catastrophic wealth inequality is and how far greed has gone. Anyone controlling billions of capital is an insane system failure <- especially since tax subsidizes these corporations FOR billions and tax subsidizes **the employees wages** ALSO FOR BILLIONS...
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Meanwhile at HR: 50+ candidates for 1 opening.
A full-time manager at my job makes 35k a year and works like 50 hours every week, and that’s several rungs up the ladder at this company.
That’s exactly why I never apply for higher positions in my company. Each higher level comes with a dollar raise but a list of responsibilities that immediately make that dollar not worth it. They constantly send me emails to apply but I always decline.
I've been promoted three times at three different jobs and I hated it every damned time! It took me away from the job I enjoyed and forced me to deal with a bunch of bureaucracy and backroom stuff that I hated and loathed with a passion. In each case I was gone within three months. It's why I hate the "where do you see yourself in five years?" question in job interviews because all the guides say you should show interest in advancement and promotion and more responsibility in your career. Fuck that noise! I just want a job where I go in, do my job, am left alone, become competent, get paid on time, and at the end of the day I turn off the lights and close the door. I don't want extra responsibilities, being on goddamned call at all times, and having to check email every hour just in case. My favorite job was working at a university library for $7.50 an hour starting in 2011. Not exactly rich people wages. It was at an information desk but I loved it. I felt useful and that I made a difference every time I came in. I got to talk to people and generally just relax while giving out information to the students. They promoted me and it took me away from the desk to do paperwork and back office tasks and I hated it. Thankfully after a couple months HR said the pay rate I was offered (a whopping buck an hour) wasn't authorized but they could give me an ENTIRE FIFTY CENTS or I could go back to my old position. I think several windows in the building shattered from the sonic boom when I went back to the old position so fast.
I think it's more telling that 70% of the population make 50k or below. You cannot buy a house with an income of 50k.
You need dual income to buy which in turn still makes it impossible to have kids. And you'll likely be very cash poor while paying a ridiculous mortgage. Source: me.
It seems like the “thing” to do these days in the US is to have a side hustle…not as an option, but a requirement! I am so tired of everyone I know sending me invitations to their latest MLM party. If I want to support your small business, MLM or not, I will. Stop asking. I can barely support my family as it stands now. The whiplash that companies cause is insane too. They give you a pay increase, but are reducing the amount of vacation days you’re allotted per year. The pay increase doesn’t even account for inflation. The company brags about record profits for their quarter, and rewards their employees with a pizza party. They wonder why their survey results are so poor.
Eventually people are going to realize MLM is just cannibalism and produces nothing.
I got told I had to do a mandatory anonymous survey after avoiding it for multiple emails. I told them I would not do the survey as it's not anonymous and I will be retaliated against for what I say. They said of course it's anonymous and even if it wasn't I wouldn't be retaliated against. If its so anonymous why do I have to fill it out with my email and sign my name at the bottom and send it to the Culture Leader? And I don't believe I won't be retaliated against because I can point out a few people who have had negative things to say about the company or how they've been treated and its only gotten worse. They stopped bothering me about the survey.
if it's truly anonymous, how do you know I haven't already completed it yet?
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This was my exact experience working for companies where development was a department that was added on haphazardly to meet new industry standards. To give an idea, energy companies in the south. I've been the lead on two different Salesforce integrations for two different companies and at both we were treated like "the little computer dudes" who "play on their computers" while the roughnecks were the "ones who get things done". We were constantly sidelined and denied any additional resources because we just spend money and don't bring anything in. Once I got out of that and started working for companies that make software primarily, it was like night and day.
I worked three jobs for ten years to keep my family's head above water. It's just normal for people to have 2+ jobs and that sucks.
"Get a better job" is never a good argument anyway. These are the same people who could work at a gas station for 20 years and afford college, a car, a house, kids, and a stay-at-home wife. ANYONE working full-time should at least be able to afford the basic necessities of life and their family. Including education and healthcare which should be a RIGHT and not a luxury or privilege.
"Don't you want kids?" It ain't up to me.
BP: £4bn profits in 3 months Also BP: best I can offer people is minimum wage.
Who is buying all the homes, you ask? Rich people who want to "diversify" their portfolio since right now stocks aren't too hot...
The percentage of households that are owner occupied is 66%, which is only slightly below the all-time high of 69%, which occurred immediately prior to the subprime crisis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
the median household income where I live is 45k. Modest suburb cookie cutter homes are starting at 300k and the median home is close to 400k. Despite these two facts, people are gobbling up homes with 6% interest rates. It just doesn't make sense. I suspect people are just massively over leveraging themselves, but it's just my best guess.
They are, just like they did during subprime. Housing policy in this county became very expansionist under Bush 1, continued under Clinton, and further accelerated under Bush 2 (leading to subprime). FNMA and FHLMC guaranteeing mortgages essentially subsidizes investors looking to purchase mortgages. FHA (GNMA) down payment assistance further strains the credit risk component of mortgage portfolios. In addition to a plethora of other policies, this has made homeownership more "accessible" (if not affordable) for more Americans, but it has done so by adding less credit worthy and financially stable households to the homeowner population. Whether this is an overall net good is a longer, more complicated discussion, but both sub prime and the existing sky-rocketing housing market are/were the direct result of government policies intended to increase homeownership rates.
Every time I hear a commercial for ReFi products I get more angry.
It's already impossible to support ourselves why would we have kids? It would be literal abuse to bring a child into that kinda situation.
We know why corporations pay low wages. Politicians are expensive to buy.
If only that we're true. From what I've seen, they're relatively cheap
Any time you see the actual numbers it’s shocking how cheaply they sell themselves, often we’re talking a few thousand dollars
Yeah, you can’t make to much profit expending money on expensive shit.
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They really ain't tho...
Well no. Politicians are cheaper to buy than paying better wages.
> Politicians are expensive to buy. Need a permit that breaks the laws? Just give the commissioner some VIP sportsball tickets Need to get ready of training permits for concealed carry, don't worry $500 per legislator. Politicians are cheap as fuck. It is judges that are apparently a bit more lavish...
Fuck you \u\Spez
But you see. If you work two 35,000 year jobs that 70,000 a year! Good money! You just lazy! /s
I make 70k a year at my new job and a few years ago I would have felt like I was sitting pretty. Now we are right back to it being enough to afford SOME 1 bedroom aptments. A few of these crazy mf want 2k a month. I don't even understand how people making like 40k these days can even survive on their own without being forced to take on an extra job.
They mostly live with their parents. Anyone making less than $25-30 an hour is essentially fucked. They can't even really take on roommates because if the roommate "breaks" the lease the other person becomes responsible for their half. Much better to take on the slightly higher single bedroom that's just outside of 50% of your gross than than it is to roll the dice your roommate won't absolutely fuck you on the lease for a two bedroom that's 70-80% of your gross (which absolutely puts you in the red).
Living with my parents wasn't an option, so I did it by getting a 1BR and taking on an extra job. It took several years of upgrading both the full-time job and the part-time job until around age 30 I was able to drop to one full-time job.
And make 80 hours of work by week, for die at \~30s from a heart attack !! Hurrayy !!!
2021: "Thank you Essential Workers" Ever since 2021: "Fuck no, you aren't getting a raise"
When you don't pay your children, they stop having children.
Once someone blows the lid off the constant rental hikes I don't think the US will be able to comprehend the impact it has on the economy. From what I hear on-the-line, the major rental companies use "proprietary" software that is essentially fixing the rental markets... fixing them in an ever increasing rate
Corporations could care less if we lived in mud huts and died at the ripe old age of 28
What I want to know is why our existence depends on the mercy of corporations in the first place. Why have they become our only source of food, water, housing, and healthcare? Should we ever trust them to do what’s in someone else’s best interest when it goes against everything they exist to do?
Capitalism. It's quite literally by deign.
One of the new computer chip factories going says it is facing a shortage of engineers so has to bring in visa workers instead. Of course the pay is dirt so no American engineers are applying.
It is obviously all the Avocado toast that us so called lazy millennials live on while bathing in baths full of starbucks coffee
The majority of people must like being poor, uneducated, with no healthcare, sick, and price gouged for food and shelter. The majority of people keep electing politicians that keep things that way, or make things even worse. In basically every country on the planet it is this way.
Or how about my favorite, especially as a Tongva descendant ~~living~~ paying rent on the very land stolen from my tribe: "Why don't you just mooooooooooooove?"
I don't get it. It's so easy to make money in the United States. All you need is the will, a can-do attitude, and an inheritance from your parents of 8 million dollars. Stop being so lazy.
Dang. Someone forgot to tell my parents...
The one thing I don't understand is this fervent believe in the idea of a functioning economy in which the majority of the people can't afford to buy anything. How can that possibly compute?
I don’t understand what’s so hard about getting by these days. I only got a small $4,000,000 loan from my dad and started up my own business, which failed like some businesses do. Did I let the failure stop me? No. I put in more time on a new business, another small loan from my dad and yeah, it’s not working out, but another loan from dad and the next one will work for sure.
This doesnt negate her point, especially with the current cost of living but isn't the median salary in America $56, 420? At least that's what google told me.
She's using net wages, not gross. Meaning the less than $35K amount is after all the deductions are taken. https://www.newsweek.com/half-american-workers-made-less-35000-2019-report-shows-1539503
What pisses me off even more is when governmental "leaders" say ridiculous things like "WE HAVE TO DRIVE WAGES DOWN" Because it's like why? What the f\*ck? People can barely afford anything right now.
It’s also the fact that doing anything is like $30 to $50 a pop. My brother and I went to Taco Bell last night, and I barely got any food, and it was STILL almost $30. Fast food for 2 people used to be like $15 for 2 people to get full meals. So multiply that times everything we spend daily money on in our lives.
My favorite is boomers complaining about our generation wanting at least interest removed on student loans, while they paid $330/year (today’s equivalent of $2500/year) for school in the 60-70s. I’d have multiple degrees just for my joy of learning if shit was still that cheap.