this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Work Reform

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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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[–] Hikuro93@lemmy.world 34 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (5 children)

Yes. Minimum wage is supposed to cover every basic living necessity at the very least - from rent to food to even a modest amount of leftover money meant for a bit of fun here and there. It's not supposed to allow a lavish lifestyle or allow one to eat at restaurants every day, obviously, but it should allow you to live modestly and support your household regardless of you living with others or alone.

So for these McDonald's overlords who live lavish livestyles thanks to the thankless work these workers put in, then why should they even work at a McDonald's in the first place? With inflation constantly rising and wages staying where they are someday even a McDonald's job won't be worth the hassle for the non-livable pitance of money they receive in return.

Down with overly rich billionaires living off other people's misery. If your business allows for you to live the most lavish and extravagant life while your workers barely have enough to make ends meet, you are not a successful businessperson, but a grifter to society and use your power to keep the status quo as it currently is. Flipping burgers on a McDonald's or working in garbage disposal are still essential jobs to serve society, and people are needed for them.

So they should still be properly valued and compensated as humans trying to live their lives while they supply the vital workforce for those same jobs - those positions have to be filled anyway and are of importance to society at large, so let's not pretend we don't need people for them and treat them like less-than-humans. Plain and simple - there's more than enough for the rich to still be rich and live their lavish lives while regular people maintain a satisfactory level of life, and no need to ghoulishly hoard all the wealth (in many cases through tax loopholes which should not be legal whatsoever) like they were gonna live eternally.

And no, I'm not a minimum wage worker, so with this I'm not advocating for myself, but for what's right for us as a society.

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[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 46 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If you work, you and your family should have their needs met, aka, we should all be able to help our community have all of our basic needs met

This same worker should also have capital F free health care a house or condo he and his family like or she and her family, or their family, yours or mine

This worker should be able to have paid leave, both vacation and sick.

[–] teft@lemmy.world 34 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’ll do you one better. If you exist you and your family should have their needs met. We have the ability to feed, provide medical care, and house everyone on the planet many times over yet we don’t. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why we don’t.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan 14 points 23 hours ago (2 children)

We should put the psychopaths that can't care about others in a reserve, where they can make their own hellscape, away from normal people.

So we can have a normal society without some insane psychopath arguing about healthcare, because he happens to not need it.

We will see who's society is better

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 9 points 22 hours ago (4 children)

We will see who’s society is better

Did you ever read "A libertarian walks into a bear"? It's a non-fiction book about a bunch of libertarians that moved to a small town, and used their new voting bloc to try to bring about their libertarian paradise. It went badly. There were bears.

The author points out how a nearby town that was otherwise very similar. It had prospered during the time libertarians were driving their town into the ground

[–] ToaofTime@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 20 hours ago

I don't read proper books very often but the title of that book got my curiosity, and tried the first three chapters and I don't know if I have a really fucked sense of humor but it really got me laughing at how absurd early US history is in hindsight, not having to live through it. Anyway thanks for that, probably gonna finish it.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan 1 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Funny enough, I hear it worked decently until then.

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[–] MonkeMischief 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

We should put the psychopaths that can't care about others in a reserve, where they can make their own hellscape, away from normal people.

Digitally, we've already done this, and called it LinkdIn!

But somehow we got pulled into having to play their stupid games. :(

[–] Nay@feddit.nl 155 points 1 day ago (3 children)

But if no one has to struggle, how will we know who's beneath us??

[–] zqwzzle@lemmy.ca 77 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Hint: we’re all at the bottom and there’s only another layer

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[–] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 74 points 1 day ago (6 children)

their con man idols tell them that the reason their lives are shitty is because of the mexicans, gays, black people, women, librarians, immigrants....everyone except the people who are literally paying them nothing and laughing at them for it.

and the people are all too happy to believe it

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 50 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think a lot about something i read somewhere - "you hate every piece of capitalism but won't connect the dots to see that's the picture".

[–] SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago

I have this conversation with people all the time.

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[–] kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 18 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's this, and it's also more than this: there has to be a limitation put on profit, a place at which the corporation achieves balance and success- enough to not feel the need to continually chip away at wages and working conditions or increasing enshittification in search of immediate short-term profits.

If enough profit is never enough, it will forever remain a constant battle between corporations and workers, and corporations and the public.

[–] MonkeMischief 5 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

This is even my problem with the system when it comes to "the little guy." Say you make a coffee shop, or release art, or a videogame, or an invention... There's always this looming pressure to scale . No matter how much of a home run, that success is almost designed to "dry up."

Wow, one in a million success! You can chill now right? No, it's gotta be bigger, better, repeated, infinitely! Franchises, chains, out of place sequels nobody asked for! Overly enthusiastic merch destined for the Pacific Garbage Patch!

It feels like the system forces greed upon people as the state religion because they are not naturally greedy themselves if they're otherwise taken care of. Savvy business of the modern age has the mentality of cancer.

Even the wealthy need to be imbued with the pathological fear that all they have might get taken from them, so they must amass more and more. It doesn't even end with their own lives! They must aim for generational private wealth now.

It's feels like it's such an outlier mentality to want to find "just enough success to support my people and do some good."

And you're right about the adversarial relationship between employers and workers. "Honest work" is almost an oxymoron anymore, because it doesn't matter how nice a person sits in the manager's chair. Their win condition to provide for themselves is to screw you as much as possible and get away with it.

[–] lugal@sopuli.xyz 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

People will point out that it makes more sense to punch up than to punch down but the later is significantly easier and better paid.

[–] andros_rex@lemmy.world 9 points 23 hours ago

These is why the alt right pipeline for women is transphobia/TERF shit.

Sexism is real, lots of teenage girls and young women feel frustrated and powerless, but they get easy wins going after trans women. They can’t get Dobbs reversed, but forcing trans people to detransition is an explicit goal of conservative power structures. They get to feel like they “won” with that UK court ruling - that “women’s rights” were won by something that did nothing to actually meaningfully help women.

[–] agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Punching down gives the monkey brain that sweet squirt of dominance when you see the suffering of your subject. Punching up is unrewarding because you don't get results unless everyone else does it, and then you have to share the victory with everyone else.

Focusing your wrath where it belongs doesn't make the million year old monkey brain squirt the reward chemicals.

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