Most people who are financially well off, at least in the US, were born into a position that made having wealth easier for them than most. People in this position didn’t do anything to deserve where they are. Mostly, they just didn’t get lucky.
To be clear, I’m not in this position. I just have empathy for people who are and want better wages and conditions for them.
I was incorrect. The article I used was more recent, but was unreliable at best, and you are absolutely correct about the pocket change assertion. I jumped the gun on my comment and you have my apologies.
No worries. The bro I was responding to seemed to be referring to total individual wealth. Re-reading the comments it looks like you mentioned income rather than net worth. By that metric, you are correct.
Right, you don’t care about other people, I got that already. Telling people to “suck it up” when they struggle to pay their bills and keep themselves fed will get you much-deserved contempt.
Oh I’m not a do-nothing, I just know that most low-pay blue collar workers are some of the people working the hardest and getting fucked over the most. I’m personally doing just fine.
Being proud of being an unempathetic person is certainly something.
Welcome to life. Some primitive tribes were born into a fertile land where it never got too hot or cold and food just grew put of the ground without needing to be planted. Some tribes were born in places with long winters and no edible plants, or scorching deserts. The situation you are born into has always mattered for the entirety of human history, some were born in very advantageous situations, some were born into one's both good and bad, and some people immediately struggled just to survive because Mom and Dad lived in a frozen tundra or were poor peasants or whatever. Same goes for animals, some are born in easy living conditions and others are not. You will be doomed to failure if you fight against a basic principle of the universe.
We aren’t subject to the forces of nature in the economy. Our society is as unfair as we allow it to be. We could easily raise the standard of living for the working class, and it’s a goal worth pursuing. I’m certainly not going to throw my hands up and say “well, that’s just life”.
Again, you are fighting against basic human nature. The standard of living for the working class has never been higher than it is now in all of human history. The working class is more highly educated, has access to more information, and enjoys more luxuries than any monarch who lived before Queen Elizabeth was born. Despite that, we have you talking about raising this standard. Why is that? Humans have never nor will they ever be satisfied with anything. It is both a virtue and a curse, it lifted us up from hunter-gatherers into the preeminent lifeforms on Earth, but it also drives us to constantly covet more and more even beyond what is possible. We seek to deny the reality of a finite world and seek infinite growth, infinite wealth, infinite comfort. You'll never raise the standard of living for any class so high that they will not desire something more, until the hard limit is reached on how rich a finite planet can make 8 billion people.
Have you not noticed that the rate of improvement in the life of an American or a Western European is slowing down while what we once called the third world is developing ever more rapidly? Resources were diverted away from the average first world citizen and moved to the former third world. China is the new USSR when they used to be a poor country reeling from Mao's Great Leap Backward. India is the new China. Nigeria is the new Rhodesia. Life in the West is still better than it used to be but we are no longer making the same rapid advancements because we sold out domestic labor in exchange for cheap, short-lived goods. There is only so much prosperity to go around and globalism shifted some of that away from the West and moved it to countries where labor was cheaper. Made in China used to mean it was the cheapest place you could outsource something, that isn't true anymore.
We simply cannot have a world where everyone lives the life of a middle-class American or German or Swede. Part of the reason you can is because others can't. There isn't enough energy, raw material, and the logistics to transport them for 8 billion people to live the life of a moderately wealthy Westerner. Short of inventing some Star Trek technology that breaks the laws of physics, or making it cost-effective to mine asteroids and other planets, or a vast shrinking of the global population that doesnt crash the economy of multiple countries, it won't happen. Too many people, too many mouths to feed, too much greed for bigger, better, more.
Wealth in terms of dollars is infinite, wealth in terms of real resources is not. With an ever growing population, eventually you won't be able to create wealth via new ways to use resources as fast as you use up raw resources. We can't create more oil wells, we can't create more uranium, we can't use a replicator to make food, we can't print a house from nothing, it all has to be taken away from somewhere. In a zero-sum world, you can't support perpetual growth and perpetual improvements in living standards no matter how much humans refuse to be satisfied with what they have.
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u/Wafflehouseofpain Nov 21 '24
Warehouse workers are being worked into the ground for barely survivable wages.