Nobody wants to work anymore

[The Grand Nudger]

The theory was that uncle sam was overpaying benefits and the lazy poors decided to stay home. So, if you removed that assistance..like every good wingnut politician did, and that theory was correct..we'd have seen a surge in employment.

We did not. They were being assholes for no reason beyond it's impact on their polling numbers...the derps in the rank and file just gobbled that fact free shit right up....even though it was always talking about them as a demographic, and they knew better. Nearly a half a million people wee just forcibly removed from the workforce, apparently plenty more would rather die (of covid) than work at a place that insist it;s employees not get covid..so there another expected rush of resignations. It just so happened that the olds were holding alot of the employment (because they could never afford to retire) and now..the survivors know they can make upward moves. No one wants to work at someones covid farm, and no one has to. Every staffing firm is scrambling - and they're dealing with all of these employment issues too.... It's fun to observe from that side of the curtain.

In mere reality, americans have consistently worked more hours and become more productive than their peers and over time with respect to our own past work habits. All while being payed relatively less for that effort, and without the safety nets of just about every other modern nation. This very real set of circumstances feeds into the magats notions of replacement...you know, "economic anxiety". They're right that they're getting shafted, but it isn't by dems or the filthy fucks who make their garbage burger. So we end up with this nuerotic little dance where one poor taker pretends the other poor takers are the problem because their betters..who loathe them, say so.

[zwanzig]

Sorry to bump this but I'm hearing more and more about this and getting won over by an empathy for the working class the more stuff I hear about it. I watched this video by Chapo Trap House on an article by the Federalist condemning the raising worker wages and resulting price hike of products at Chipotle. I think their commentary is pretty spot on, not only with the false impression that service industry jobs are "entry level" (since when? They haven't been that in a long fucking time. What other jobs are adults with families supposed to have then?) But also that the price of products going up right now is the fault of workers needing more pay. There's this whole thing with the shipping containers that everyone got on Buttigieg's case about for his taking time off and all, yet the price of goods going up is because businesses have to pay employees more? Right.

I see a couple sides to this. Workers don't want to sell their life on the cheap any more...and the pandemic brought into clear view what would happen when the 'nobodies' most people don't think twice about while they buy their groceries or pick up their to-go order are fed up.

The other thing is that I think, in some cases, the 'no one wants to work thing' is an excuse for just about everything from 'we are crap to work for' to 'supply chain problems'.

Blame it on the people you prefer to pretend don't exist or who are getting what they deserve - which is the high hard one.

Yes, absolutely. Another thing that the Chapo guys brought up was the framing of this "we won't go back to work for you until you give us better wages" as "bribery" by the author of the piece. They read through it and that's a quote. Not wanting to work for shit pay is bribery, holding your labor for ransom as a nefarious deed. That's what's winning me over to the workers side to be honest. I think in one Fox news segment a few months ago, they framed this as a "hungry dogs" scenario. Like, the workers just aren't starving enough to want it that badly and somehow this is a moral failing on the part of the laborers, their values are wrong.

The theory was that uncle sam was overpaying benefits and the lazy poors decided to stay home. So, if you removed that assistance..like every good wingnut politician did, and that theory was correct..we'd have seen a surge in employment.

We did not. They were being assholes for no reason beyond it's impact on their polling numbers...the derps in the rank and file just gobbled that fact free shit right up....even though it was always talking about them as a demographic, and they knew better. Nearly a half a million people wee just forcibly removed from the workforce, apparently plenty more would rather die (of covid) than work at a place that insist it;s employees not get covid..so there another expected rush of resignations. It just so happened that the olds were holding alot of the employment (because they could never afford to retire) and now..the survivors know they can make upward moves. No one wants to work at someones covid farm, and no one has to. Every staffing firm is scrambling - and they're dealing with all of these employment issues too.... It's fun to observe from that side of the curtain.

In mere reality, americans have consistently worked more hours and become more productive than their peers and over time with respect to our own past work habits. All while being payed relatively less for that effort, and without the safety nets of just about every other modern nation. This very real set of circumstances feeds into the magats notions of replacement...you know, "economic anxiety". They're right that they're getting shafted, but it isn't by dems or the filthy fucks who make their garbage burger. So we end up with this nuerotic little dance where one poor taker pretends the other poor takers are the problem because their betters..who loathe them, say so.

That is very true. It was bad before Covid, the whole "calling out sick" reward-punishment response a lot of businesses have, resulting in not only myself but many coworkers over the years just coming in with an obvious cold, vomiting on breaks, etc. because they either can't afford to call off or they're not deemed sick enough to stay home. And with Covid, it's worse because half the time, whether they make you wear masks, social distance, and wipe down your register between customers, they do the bare minimum and superficially give it credence.

I'm reading the Conquest of Bread right now, so, trying to get educated on this stuff. But yeah, it's starting to click for me, personally, that I've been expendable and just accepted it all this time without realizing it's not actually better for everyone this way.

[The Grand Nudger]

I doubt it's better for anyone this way, not even the oligarchs fleecing us as they bank record profits while simultaneously claiming that the american labor force is lazy and unproductive. Those are the people whose heads get called for when the rabble has had enough, and there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of sympathy left for them in the end. I tend to disagree...entirely , with anarchism and communism - but he made some prescient observations about agriculture.

---

Each time agriculture is spoken of, men imagine a peasant bending over the plough, throwing badly sorted corn haphazard into the ground and waiting anxiously for what the good or bad season will bring forth; or a family working from morn to night and reaping as reward a rude bed, dry bread, and coarse beverage. In a word, they picture "the wild beast" of La Bruyère.

And for this man, thus subjected to misery, the utmost relief society proposes is to reduce his taxes or his rent. But they do not even dare to imagine a cultivator standing erect, taking leisure, and producing by a few hours' work per day sufficient food to nourish, not only his own family, but a hundred men more at the least. In their most glowing dreams of the future Socialists do not go beyond American extensive culture, which, after all, is but the infancy of agricultural art.

The agriculturist has broader ideas to-day--his conceptions are on a far grander scale. He only asks for a fraction of an acre in order to produce sufficient vegetables for a family; and to feed twenty-five horned beasts he needs no more space than he formerly required to feed one; his aim is to make his own soil, to defy seasons and climate, to warm both air and earth around the young plant; to produce, in a word, on one acre what he used to crop on fifty acres, and that without any excessive fatigue--by greatly reducing, on the contrary, the total of former labour. He knows that we will be able to feed everybody by giving to the culture of the fields no more time than what each can give with pleasure and joy.

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The numbers are even better now - and yet....