But instead, we decided to make a very small number of people extremely rich.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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Damn, that's interesting!
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Bernie is pushing for 32/week.
If he was president we might have gotten it, but Biden sure as shit isn't even going to mention it.
American workers are more productive than at any point in history, it's just all the wealth goes into a very small number of pockets, and instead of having to pay taxes, they pay a small percent to politicians in both parties to ensure workers don't get any
I wouldn't say we'd have gotten it. Being president doesn't mean you control Congress.
We nothing. Hold the people who voted for Reagan responsible.
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Here's the thing. We could have that right now, today, we're there, they're right. Computers and just useful software (fuck AI) alone have increased productivity so much that one guy with fancy Excel can do the work of what used to take 98 people (7 banks x 14 person abacus teams). And that's just one regional bank. Before email, corporations had internal mailing departments, now there's dirt cheap and super convenient email. There are untold numbers of shell scripts out there quietly replacing whole ass departments of people. Soft automation alone, no robots needed, has increased human productivity to an absolutely bonkers degree since these statements were written. Thanks to the Friedman doctrine and Reagan and Thatcher and their ilk, all the benefits of that productivity got turned into a benefits for the asset holding class, while the middle and lower classes got lectures on the morality of hard work.
Flawless .
People talk about the age of abundance - we’ve been living it for decades. Money is created out thin air, automation and industrial have done the rest.
Marx called it 100 years ago. Thomas Piketty nailed it down a few years ago : Surplus goes to assets owners - the more assets you own, the more surplus you accumulate and it’s effective are compound over the time. Until you have a handful of people people who own all the asset, which is where we are now.
People used to physically carry boxes of paper checks out to planes to be shipped between banks.
As a kid, my dad used to tell me stuff like that. He believed it too. He worked 2 jobs 6 days a week all his life to die in relative poverty.
People make wealth issues generational. It's not. It's a narrative to divide and conquer.
It's the rich vs the poor. It's always been.
My dad still works in his 70s and fights vehemently against any talk of making life easier for the younger generation. People are weird man.
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damn this sounds like a lovely world where republicans ceased to exist since 1967
By the year 2040, you'll eat bugs on your way into your 16 hour job making 13 Bezos bucks an hour and you'll love it because the serotonin patches and nightly dream implants (implant so that you dot wake up while your frontal cortex is being used to mine doge coin).
The best part is, for every 10 commercials you watch in your sleep, you get up to 1 dream back free at the end of the month!
The "up to" makes this particularly depressing. And realistic.
Well, naturally they have to deduct for uninsurable dream content like trees and sunshine. That kind of dangerous content needs to be distilled before it reaches you by choosing a secure dream provider. We're trying to protect children here.
I hope you don't mind, I just went to your profile and clicked "favorite"
😄
Interesting predictions from the 60s.
It turns out that in the early 70s, “we” decided to give everything to corporations and those already wealthy instead. Productivity did indeed continue to skyrocket, but wages have stagnated since then. For 50+ years we’ve been getting robbed.
Billionaires and bastard corporations: Yoink
Greed? No no, these are just our record profits! Invest. Now.
They're right.
We could do this.
We just don't.
And it would even be better for the planet
This would have happened if Reagan hadn't sunk that ship. Now realistically, if it hadn't been him it would've been someone else. Politicians are cheap.
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The timeline where Reagan didn't fucking gut the unions.
To be fair, these were good predictions. All of this is actually possible. It's just capitalism being the problem it usually is..
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The late 60's is when George Welch became the head of the GE plastics division, in 71' he also became the head of the GE metallurgy division. Throughout the 60 he developed and popularized "rank and yank", basically firing 10% of your lowest performing employees on a regular basis.
The idea of corporate having loyalty to their consumers and workers died at the hands of George Welch. The obsession with quarterly profits, paper profits, and maximizing short term gains are all basically the invention of this one little man.
He was made a titan of industry for parting out one of the most iconic and profitable businesses in US history. Pretty much every CEO has walked in his image since, despite the fact that he ran He into the ground.
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This is so uniquely depressing. They were accurate on my annual wage in 2024 yet they assumed I’d be working less than 40 hours 😭
I think you misread that, because $40,000 in 1966 is roughly $385,000 in today's dollars.
Edit: conversely, $40,000 in today's dollars would be $4,176.25 in 1966.
Pretty sure that's the joke
That was the joke. I make $40k today.
I got that wage, but not accounting for inflation...
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Hey they were close! We make 30-40k in (2024 Dollars)
The sheer amount of jobs that post that range as the expected salary is insanely depressing and disgusting...
I don't think people truly understand just how much of our economy operates with those pay scales. I'm uneducated so I don't have a specific industry to get tunnel vision with, I see a broad range of jobs and holy shit it is gross what is being "offered."
On a side note, my friend in computer science just mentioned a coworker who makes over 150k is quitting because he has too much down time at work. Just kill me already, I've had enough torture...
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This is what it was like when the people of the country worked together to make the future better for everyone. Not self improvement, not local; it was understood across the country that people should plant trees without expecting to sit in its shade. Plan for the future and give the next generation the best chance.
Those articles were written in the 60s. At the very least each author was born 18 years prior, part of the silent generation. The future they hoped, expected, and built was for boomers.
A generation of greed has killed almost all hope for future generations. It only took one to fuck it up for everyone else.
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"HAHAHA...no"
– Capitalists
For reference, $30,000.00 in 1966 would equate to over ~$285,000.00 in 2024's USD.
I'd say in a given week I do maybe fifteen minutes of real, actual work - Peter Gibbons
If only this picture had the next paragraph...
"There are some who gloomily expect a society run by a small elected elite, presiding over a mindless multitude kept happy by drugs and circuses, much as in Huxley's Brave New World. But most futurists believe that work will still be the only way to gain responsibility and power."
:(
I would encourage almost any American to get a remote job (or three) and move abroad to a country that has a visa for remote workers and good healthcare. It might be the only way some workers will be able to save and retire some day.
Not incorrect, Jeff Bezos is working fewer than 4 days a week and fewer than 8 hours on a workday.
Man it's amazing how they didn't understand capitalism at all. Of course I don't think many people do now that I think about it.
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The naivete is hilarious.
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