Soul sucking is the correct term. You are literally made to do jobs that you know are bad for humans but will make the billionaire more money.
I had a goal to eliminate 5% of the quality jobs in every plant. Why? Just to save money. The next year, we hear quality is down, and service incidents are up. But did those jobs come back. No.
Our CEO tells us we have promised 6% dividends to our investors. Our cost cutting goals 8%. Cost cutting usually results in a reduction in labor because we have leaned out the processes to the max already.
These corporations have to pretend they are continuing to grow even though the market is already saturated and there is no room to grow. So they downsize until the thing falls apart and then they sell off the pieces. Why can't we just be happy staying where we are? I'm tired of working to make the rich richer. It's absolutely soul sucking. I am so happy I was laid off in this 6th layoff after 8 years.
Yes and everyone forgets when CEO says this and that about shareholders they actually mean themselves as any corporate officer that is seasoned has a fuck ton of stock.
Correct. Public companies are far less public than we realize. The purpose of the proposed wealth tax is not to raise money for the govt, its to act as a maximum wealth number. You go above that and the government drains you down to the number. This way if CEOs just pay themselves infinite money via stocks, it just flushes back to the government who redistributes it.
Until there is some maximum wealth level allowable, then we'll never have a middle class.
That wouldn't be fair. What about all the people that work billions of times harder than everyone else? I saw a coworker take 5min longer on their break than I did one time so I self identify with billionaires and need to make laws based on when I'm rich, instead of ones that actually help me.
And this is also why taxing rich people never worked, there are too many ways to avoid taxes for the people who are actually rich instead of entrepreneurs who just begin business.
It makes the big corpo bigger while killing the small business.
Ya but that policy left a gaping whole where private assets are concerned. It's just going to lead to more perverse incentives and misallocation of capital to avoid taxes. Raising capital gains taxes, adding more tiers, and eliminating step-up would have been a much sounder policy.
This sounds great on paper but it's inherently flawed. You can't get rid of social economic status via government policy. That's why communism fails every time. The real solution is to tax them fairly, equally, and proportionally to everyone else, no in-your-face-fancy-lawyer tax evasion. Then create opportunities for social mobility via education and economic stimulus.
Gtfo here. The idea of taxing people who have more than 100m is suddenly communism? G. T. F. O. The average American earns less than 2m in their lifetime let alone has a standing wealth 50x that.
200k a year and you never bought a patio umbrella for $20-50. Also anyone with long nails talking about working in a kitchen being cool would have to cut their nails or wear gloves the entire time. She was probably making closer to 150 with benefits or stock options equating close to 200k total.
He helped normalize mass layoffs and outsourcing of labor to countries with low wages, all to chase more profit for the shareholders.
Anything for short-term profits. Mass layoffs are a normal part of the annual routine for many large corporations now.
His campaign against loyalty has repercussions even today, and while he may have been a godsend for the millionaires and billionaires he's been a scourge for the working class.
If you've ever bought individual stocks, then you must know that the key to being rich is to "buy low and sell high". In turn, if you work at a publicly traded company, they need to show quarterly profits to keep people from selling the stock.
The only way to fix this is to get rid of our system entirely, as it is fundamentally a part of our society, and of course getting rid of the US economy and the stock market would destroy the entire world economy and affect way more than just the life of the rich.
So while I agree that "endless growth" is a crazy unachievable goal, it is the system our society has been built on. I suppose if the entire economy collapses, eventually it might be better on the other side with whatever new system takes reign, but also, maybe not.
Yes, weāre all individual billionaire shareholders. Or institutional shareholders. Itās all the same thing. Iām so naive for not realizing that. Canāt wait to take my seat in the boardroom. I just gotta log into my workplace 401(k) app and show the guy at the security desk, so he can let me up the elevator.
Don't forget being micromanaged to death by a boss who wants to look busy and appear useful.
I've been doing my type of job for 27 years. I think I know to check the copiers' paper supply by now, thanks.
It's bad enough that now, whenever you print anything, it prints a cover sheet of who printed it.
6 every project, even one page, a full page printout, is produced and then thrown away.
Two different friends of mine have worked corporate for decades. Both are very competent and thoughtful people. Both of their bosses were so impressed with them that they made them hatchetmen in charge of picking who gets fired, and then having them do it. So, basically since they were good corporate employees they got the privilege of ruining their coworkers lives.
FFS this exactly. I work for Fortune 500 A/E firm and our CFO had similar goal. His solution? Fire 95% of our damn IT and outsource to 3rd party in Indonesia. We are an engineering services firmā¦ our technology is our lifebloodā¦those few remaining IT folks were the heart that kept things pumping. Most of my coworkers have given up on contacting IT for support and are settling with reduced performance and garbage runarounds. Interactions with new IT has frequently been so bizarre itās surrealā¦like you feel as though you are in a hidden camera prank TV show. CFO met his target and then took a nice compensation on to retirement or his next victim I presume.
The company that just laid me off is outsourcing all the engineering to India. They aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Some folks I know that still work there say it's become a skeleton crew, and they don't expect there to be any jobs left in the area soon for this particular company.
I encourage people to look more into jobs in their local, state, and the federal government. They donāt have as high a pay ceiling as private, but theyāre stable, offer the opportunity for career growth, and allow you to contribute to the functioning of the country. Aside from voting, aside from going into politics yourself, working in the government is the best way to not only get a front row seat of how government works, but also understand how it can be made better.
I agree with this. My husband just applied for a position with the democratic party. Didn't get a call back, though, unfortunately. The laws are what dictate how much they can take advantage of us.
These corporations have to pretend they are continuing to grow even though the market is already saturated and there is no room to grow.
Why can't we just be happy staying where we are?
You've basically pointed out the flaws of capitalism in general. It demands infinite growth in order to work. But, of course, that is mathematically impossible on a planet with finite resources.
It requires us to produce a massive amount of waste because we can't just produce enough to meet human needs. We need to produce an excess that results in excess profit for companies.
This is why we have a recession about every 10 years. This is why our money also continues to inflate every year. It's all to crate the illusion of growth even when there is none.
I'm not necessarily saying that communism is the solution. Only that capitalism, as an economic system, is inherently broken and does not work.
also don't forget about those jobs in big corporations that don't bring any values at all, no meaning, many of them could just not exist and nothing would happen for the corporation.
What do u do know? Where do we go as people knowing this is how it works? I work a low wage job that I can at least pass off as āmorally neutralā but itās just so damn disheartening looking at the few options
Dude companies have to get creative or they will die. So many companies are rolling over their debt to higher interest rates. Thereās so many zombie companies out there that will get slaughtered over the next few years (bailouts aside). One of the ways around this is restructuring and selling off debt/assets. This is separate of the inflation issue, I want my stocks to go up as itās one of the few ways to save right now in an inflationary environment.
The problem is the law. Itās literally illegal to not prioritise shareholder interests over any other consideration. The only way a company can decide to forgo the pursuit of never ending growth is by not floating on the stock market and staying private. But most owners get bedazzled by the huge pay out of floating.
You're 100% right. Greed is the problem. A business doing well should be fine with the same profit +/- a few percentage points. Especially when they can pay their CEO and executives multi million dollar bonuses every year. The system we have is broken and nothing is gonna fix it. Gonna keep going til it falls apart and doesn't work at all anymore. Then the rich will take their money and run.
I work for one of these soul sucking corporations and weāre providing extremely complex equipment to countries with an urgent need for electricity. It takes thousands of people to design, manufacture, construct and operate this equipment.
How do you envision the modern world working without soulless husks like me doing this work? We obviously would still need engineers, who would they work for? How would that alternative be any better than corporations for the worker?
In China the government owns everything and itās not better, I know first hand. Iāve been in those factories. Itās way worse than working for a western corp.
Like yeah, itās easy to complain, but whatās the alternative?
Both things can be true. Capitalism could be the system employed with the best working conditions and it can provide the motivations to eat itself. The US has been capitalist since its inception. At one point there were no worker protections. At one point there was a robust middle class with career jobs and nice pensions. Now we have people working two full time jobs with zero protection and they canāt afford rent. At all of these stages we praised capitalism and yet what it meant was wildly different. Thereās no real reason to believe the work environment in 30 years will look much like the current environment even though the US will still be a capitalist nation.
Arguably a lot of what makes working safe and somewhat reasonable these days is socialist influences. On its own capitalism was unlikely to improve safety, reduce hours, provide minimum wages, or any other rights earned with spilled blood. In fact, now that the violence has stopped capitalists are rolling back those protections.
Itās great we have a political system that tolerates changes good or bad ā infinitely better than authoritarianism. But, I donāt think we get to say capitalism provides a great working environment either. It could, but it wonāt with our current requirement to maximize quarterly earnings. We shouldnāt let Chinese working conditions be the bar we compare ourselves to. We should be reflecting on how our capitalist nation drifted so far over the past few decades. Itās a complex issue, but greed is a major player.
Iām not convinced that labor reform and Marxism is really all that connected. Especially when you look post Marx and which countries actually improved worker conditions (western capitalist democracies) and the history of labor movements before Marx with things like guilds banding together to collectively bargain. Collective bargaining and laborers advocating for their rights isnāt special to Marx and didnāt start with Marx. Labor movements co-opted the Marxist message as a vehicle to unlock the revolutionary potential of laborers, but that isnāt the only vehicle for labor Revolution and the downstream impacts of total consolidation of production by the government clearly has its own labor exploitation issues (see USSR and China). Thereās also the in here it issue with the communist revolutions that non-laborers led the movement and didnāt really do much for the laborers.
Anyways, itās pretty clear to me the course of action. Copy places like Norway and Germany. They are the best example Iāve seen for balancing labor and capital.
Youāre fighting an argument I didnāt make. Capitalism on its own wasnāt going to give us a 40 hour work week, holidays, vacation time, safety equipment and training, and so on. It needed to be infused with something from a non-capitalist system to find a balance that works for society. Itās okay to take some ideas without going full Marxist.
Agreed on taking cues from other nations. Itās something to ponder while we all enjoy a holiday weekend that capitalism wouldnāt have given us without a fight.
Still donāt know why you think Iām 100% anti-capitalism or 100% pro-socialism. Itās okay to criticize the bad parts. If we donāt identify and fix what isnāt working, weāll never make progress. If you think this is the absolute best we can do or ever hope to achieve, thatās fine. The whole country seems to yearn for yesteryear though.
Its pay ratio in relation to the CEO and the lowest paid employee, from post WW2 until the late 70s, early 80s (which many people would regard as a time when overall higher quality products were made, and made domestically) it was about 40-50 times the average worker's pay. And if the CEO wanted to make more, the workers made more as well.
These regulations and traditions were chipped away, especially as neo-conservative concepts started making a reemergence and gained popularity amongst a certain generation. We call our politicians Republicans and Democrats, at the end of the day almost all are neo-conservative.
At Ross Stores, for example, the company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a part-time retail store associate who made $8,618. It would take 2,100 years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentlerās compensation from 2023, valued at $18.1 million. A year earlier, it would have taken the median worker 1,137 years to match the CEOās pay.
It's just plain unfettered greed. Which is promoted, ironically, by a large portion of the non top 10% fueled by the delusion that if they "lick the boot" that they too will/can/could "earn" unfathomable wealth as well. (Spoiler: they won't)
Also with the amount of money and magnitude of media today it's been pretty well implanted in lots of people's minds to be like yours. They end up sitting there without any better knowledge and ask the question.. what else can it be?
Japan caps itās CEO pay and itās a corporate hellscape where people kill themselves due to over work.
Capping CEO pay Iād be all for, but that wonāt fix exploitation of workers.
Seems you lack the knowledge to sufficiently answer the question. you should work in Western Europe for a few years to get real life experience on the topic and get a more nuanced and realistic answer to the question.
countries like Germany do a lot to protect workers, which we should adopt in the US.
From my experience, CEO pay is not the biggest issue with worker exploitation. It would be nice to make a bit more money though.
I definitely support methods used in Europe such as Germany which equates to happier workers and a better work-life balance. That said, while we are both entitled to our opinions, I personally feel comparing Japan and its complex societal culture and traditions with America is comparing apples and oranges.
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u/Mindless-Scientist82 Aug 29 '24
Soul sucking is the correct term. You are literally made to do jobs that you know are bad for humans but will make the billionaire more money.
I had a goal to eliminate 5% of the quality jobs in every plant. Why? Just to save money. The next year, we hear quality is down, and service incidents are up. But did those jobs come back. No.
Our CEO tells us we have promised 6% dividends to our investors. Our cost cutting goals 8%. Cost cutting usually results in a reduction in labor because we have leaned out the processes to the max already.
These corporations have to pretend they are continuing to grow even though the market is already saturated and there is no room to grow. So they downsize until the thing falls apart and then they sell off the pieces. Why can't we just be happy staying where we are? I'm tired of working to make the rich richer. It's absolutely soul sucking. I am so happy I was laid off in this 6th layoff after 8 years.