Yeah it’s weird when people typically assume you would resent people getting something you don’t have, or getting it with less effort than it took you - because they would resent this and they assume your mind must work the same way theirs does.
Having more than your neighbors is a huge drive to human happiness. House size has no impact on happiness. Having the biggest house on the block is a huge happiness boost. Above the level needed for minimum sustainable food and shelter, wages have no impact on happiness. Making more money than your friends is a huge happiness boost.
It’s something about how we are wired as humans. Many of us have other drivers that are stronger than the drive to have more than others in our community, but to get social support any strategy for raising the living standard floor needs to acknowledge the issue of this hard-wired drive.
Oddly, though, they’re all massive bootlickers and will try to find any reason why billionaires are totally fair and good hardworkers. TheyMre just pathetic.
Oddly not tho. Surprisingly I also see this very clear assumption coming from people who are very anti-billionaire.
It’s more about the owner class than anything. If you deny support to politicians seeking to raise the minimum wage and/or vote for politicians who talk about how the minimum wage concept is evil then you almost certainly are not taking any actions which are anti-billionaire/anti-owner class.
They think rich people are really smart and deserve what they “worked very hard for”. They genuinely believe that the rich “assume the risk so deserve the money” despite them never facing consequences while having incredibly basic ideas. They hate that someone “beneath” them would make money and can’t think hard enough to understand that that would mean they’d get to demand more pay, too. There are even people who think that owners can do whatever they want as long as its legal and they deliberately ignore any nuance regarding what legality is and they jump straight over the concept of baseline morality to tell you that it’s your fault for not changing jobs, as if that’s something you can just do easily(and is if there are better bosses readily available).
All of those examples are what you get when you listen to centrist and conservative media that’s shilling for aggressive capitalism(with state-funded safety nets for corporations, of course). If you say “I don’t think billionaires should be allowed, but all the systems which lead to them are fine” then you’re a complete moron.
Genuinely I think building power lines sounds like an easier job. A lot less stressful at least. Assuming that both have the exact same hours and wage, I know which one I’d choose. If anything the burger flipper should earn more.
I don’t care, go live in your fancy gold mansions, just let me have a decent, low-maintenance room with AC and air filtration. I will sleep my ass off, then go volunteer for something.
Too much to ask for, sadly.
I make waaaaaay too much money for the value I provide to society, especially compared to e.g. a teacher.
It’s something I am struggling with so much right now. A huge part of me (like almost every fiber of my being) wants to walk away and dedicate my entire life to something more meaningful, but I have 4 other people counting on me right now. In truth, I could probably still provide for them, but I wrestle with forcing them to drastically reduce their standard of living just because I am ready to.
It’s not like I’m rich or even comfortably wealthy. But in this society, in this economy, I am certainly uncomfortably wealthy.
And I wouldn’t bother being power line engineer if I could just flip burgers for the same wage
I actually think that might be a good thing. I’d still chose to be an engineer in that scenario. Something that’s bothered me for a while are people in professions because they pay well not because they are good at them or enjoy them. I don’t blame the person, they are just trying to support themselves and their family in this one life they have to live. I’m bothered by the system that forces them to make that decision.
What if you don’t have enough engineers to do crucial work? What people want to do in general doesn’t have to be aligned with what is needed. Financial incentives are there to reward people for picking career path that is needed. If every wage is the same you have no incentives and you’ll get misalignment.
The downvotes lol. You have to play along with the anarchist fantasy of “actually people would do 24 hour storm response shifts in one of the deadliest professions purely for love of the game, they definitely don’t tolerate the danger and [uncontrollable weather related] working conditions because of the compensation”
The downvotes lol.
Leftists/commies have no argument here so they can only resort to angry downvotes and maybe false reports.
If the rising floor makes things cramped, it is time to raise the roof not break the floor.
Or probably my favorite political quote ever for its combination of both ideology, practicality, AND brevity:
We all do well when we ALL do well
(Paul Wellstone, emphasis mine)
A rising tide lifts all boats.
I don’t want more or less than what the fare share of the economy Boomers had back in 60’ and 70’.
White boomers*
if they started making what I make, I’d see if they were hiring!!!
Honestly dude. If food service paid well and had good working conditions I’d love to be a cook over an office worker.
It’s kind of sad that people are so motivated by jealousy. Like why would I care if other people have it better?
I think jealousy gets a bad rap. It tells you what you want, and what you personally or society could work toward.
Everyone loves Nietche but no one is actually living Nietche. Sure it’s a useful tool if you stop, analyze this emotion and built from it but how many people are actually capable of this in practice? Instead people just get captured by the emotion and never progress.
I don’t think pop culture will ever view jealousy as a positive emotion until we collectively learn emotions.
You gotta start somewhere.
Seeing what someone else has and taking that as information to then decide what you want is not jealousy. Jealousy is seeing what someone else has and hating them for it. It deserves a bad rap.
You’re talking about ambition, or something else.
Jealousy and envy are not the same thing, although the nuance is subtle. What you’re talking about is closer to envy. You can be envious of something or someone without the hostility that turns it into jealousy.
I disagree. I believe that you choose for it to be envy or jealousy by your definition.
It’s not my definition. That is the subtle difference between the two words. But, most people use both words for the same thing, and most people only use the word jealousy for both things.
Merriam Webster has an interesting paragraph on the page for jealousy about it: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jealousy
You can also check the definitions of jealous and envious yourself, you’ll see that one is defined through hostility of some sort.
The nuance is usually clear through context no matter which word you use, though. But I think that when you use it in a generic manner like you did, using the right word is best.
Again, both words are responses to the emotion and a choice.
No, they stem from different emotions.
Don’t blow their mind by pointing out how emotions take objects and how that scuttles their position.
What my friend was conveying is that envy is the want for something–usually that another has–and jealousy is the fear of losing something that one already has.
The interchangeable usage, e.g. by teenagers, based on a vague understanding is just that (for adults it crystalizes into something normative though they’re probably unaware of it, ego defense mechanisms lol).
kids are indoctrinated from school to seek out “high skill” jobs and look down on anyone making less
I don’t think it is fair for a person dedicating years of life towards higher education and becoming a professional to earn the same as someone who doesn’t. Its not jealousy, its just unfair. If earnings are flat, what motivates someone from getting educated and growing as a person?
The US was build on the “fuck you I got mine” mentality.
Crabs in a bucket
The crab will legit only escape and live if it gets enough other crabs under it to reach the rim of the bucket. I guess you’re saying people act like that even when they don’t need to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
The metaphor is derived from anecdotal claims about the behavior of crabs contained in an open bucket: if a crab starts to climb out,[3] it will be pulled back in by the others, ensuring the group’s collective demise.[4][5][6]
Ohhhhhh
Capitalism pretends to be positive sum, but it trains us all to act as if society is a zero sum game.
And the union would have more justification for negotiating a new even higher wage then they currently have.
Solidarity!
rAmen, comrade! ✊🏼
Intentional or not, packed ramen is great whatever your wealth level
My thing is I don’t want to be on top. I want to live in a society where I can be on the bottom and have a good life.
Same dude same. I wanna be a maillady who pets kitties and does fart walks daily to deliver mail. And afford the basics.
Why is it too much to ask?!
These kinds of walks are unfamiliar to me. Please tell me more.
I, too, wish I could be society’s bottom…
But do you want to main bottom, or off bottom? Like, are you an aggro build, or a damage build?
well I said can be at the bottom. Its polite to take turns.
Vers society.
Mom said it’s my turn to be the society’s bottom next!
cum now. You know its daddy who makes those decisions.
I don’t mind being society’s bottom as long as there’s a safe word.
The health benefits and insurance can be sig ificant portion of pay. The min wage burger flippers likely dont get that, even with laws increasing min wage.
Employees like this are kept under the minimum hours to qualify for benefits on purpose.
Yeah in decent countries the min wage and being able to afford a broken leg (or similar accident) aren’t as closely related. Mean maybe only got so many sick / vacation days but the actual cost of treatment isn’t what you’re worried about. At worse you’d be out the money you’d make during non working days, not much of an actual cost (okay in Canada I had to pay for the crutches when I twisted my knee one close to Xmas time slipping on ice, unfortunately didn’t realize it just needed a good knock in to get right till that happened)
There are worse situations but that’s probably the worst case scenario (well outlying cases exist) that most people come into for the most part is all. Of course some worst cases exist but expecting someone to pay 5 plus digits (okay I know that’s even low) of expenses for medical is insane.
In some countries there is workers compensation to cover accidents that happen on the job like breaking a leg. Then the cost of treatment is covered by the healthcare system a person has already paid into their whole life through taxes.
If a bunch of burger flippers started making what I make I would demand a raise. If my raise was denied I’d go get a job as a burger flipper and probably be a lot less stressed out than I am currently.
Fast food work is pretty stressful, IMO.
It can be but it’s a different kind than what I’m dealing with though. It’s repetitive busy work and stupid scheduling bullshit vs. big projects that go on for months with deadlines and coordination between vendors and half a dozen internal teams where nobody wants to take ownership of anything. Fast food work never kept me up at night.
Get a union job, and you won’t have to take your work home either
We take our work home because we’re thinking about the problems and how to solve them all the time, some of my best solutions came to me in the shower.
I have a home lab and I often carry what I learn from my lab to work, I’m not working my job when I’m working on my lab, but there mental overlap is there.
I can’t imagine I’ll be solving many burger flipping problems in the shower.
Fair enough, if that works for you.
I enjoy the work/life balance too much, and love being able to leave my work at work. And being in a union makes that a reality for me.
I don’t know how being in a union would stop my brain from thinking about a problem I haven’t solved in my work day… It’s not my employer dictating it, it’s my brain.
No unions in my field as far as I’m aware.
This. Having homework is stressful. Being responsible for the uptime of systems and the inevitability of getting calls in the middle of the night is stressful. Having stuff follow you home is a different kind of added stress.
If fast-food workers began earning wages comparable to electricians, I wouldn’t necessarily expect electricians to become poorer. I’d expect employers who depend on skilled labor to increase compensation to remain competitive. The question then becomes whether those higher labor costs come from reduced profits, increased prices, greater productivity, or some combination of all three.
Anyway, it is better for all workers.
what you’d actually see is increased unemployment, because that’s the most effective regulator of salaries. the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
the system requires a mass of people without jobs in order to balance itself.
I don’t know where you got this idea, it seems more like the system requires desperate people and lack of jobs does help in causing that. However, fuck the system
it’s pretty simple; given offers of two identical jobs with different benefits, you’d pick the better one. if there isn’t enough people to fill all open positions, employers need to compete by raising benefits. in short, price follows demand. the more people that are looking for jobs, the lower employers can push salaries and still hire someone.
when neolibs campaign on how “everyone should have a job” and use that as an excuse to cut unemployment benefits, that’s them trying to distract from the fact that unemployment is necessary for the system they built to function. as unemployment approaches zero, salaries approach infinity.
so yeah, fuck that system.
A few percent of job seekers as structural unemployment supports a healthy economy where people change jobs and careers to match changes in labor needs.
That doesn’t mean an increase in minimum wage increases unemployment. There are hundreds of academic studies investigating that question, and it seems the increased economic activity of low-income people having more money generates enough new jobs to at least balance whatever job cuts happen due to the higher labor costs (low-income people tend to spend all their money, so they are more effective agents of short term economic stimulus than higher-income households that tend to save some of it).
i was more thinking the other way round, that an increase in unemployment decreases wages.
Increased unemployment can lead to decreased wages, depending on other factors. I had read your post above as claiming a multipart chain of higher minimum wage -> increased unemployment -> decreased wages, and my post was intended to address the first link (higher minimum wage -> increased unemployment), not the second.
If the floor were higher for everyone, I wouldn’t see a problem with some jobs earning more necessarily. What you’re describing will probably always be with us: some work is just harder or less pleasant.
Yes, to be clear I’m saying the floor being raised would be a benefit to me and others like me as well. Either I make more money or I can go to a less stressful job without losing income. Regardless of if it benefits me or not everyone should make a living wage for a full days work.
I’m retired from a union IT job with a college. And now that I’ve got mine, I will go to the wall to help Gen Z and Alpha get theirs too.
THIS is why the right is so afraid of union culture
Anybody that’s offended by burger flippers making as much as them should be pointing that anger in the right direction. Towards their employer.
“To succeed is not enough - others must fail.”
(Variously attributed to Gore Vidal and François de La Rochefoucauld)
