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Worshiping the Grind is Basic
(lemmy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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What is "enough"?
In many countries, your basic needs are already fully met no matter which job you do.
E.g. in Germany working minimum wage full time gets you way more money than you need.
Minimum wage full time gets you about 2160€ before tax, which will be about 1650€ after tax (and healthcare etc.).
You can easily pay for your basic needs for less than half of that (even when living alone). The rest you can use to buy upgrades, like a new phone etc.
Minimum wage workers in Germany are already wealthy.
But of course, if you'd ask the average German minimum wage worker, they'd claim to be poor.
They claim to be poor because they can not afford modern luxury. They can not afford to pay for expensive brands, they can not afford to eat in expensive restaurants.
They can not afford to be lavish.
Now imagine if every person in Germany could afford twice as much (something that happens multiple times in a lifetime). Would they stop considering themselves poor? No, their entitlement would simply rise accordingly (as we've seen again and again throughout the thousands of years of history).
You can not pay people "enough". People do not care about their individual wealth. They only care about how wealthy they are compared to others.
The majority of people can never be wealthy, because people only consider themselves wealthy if they have someone (or rather many) to look down upon.
As cited above, the GDP per capita in Germany doubles every few years.
How many times more do you think it has to be doubled until you and your friends deem themselves wealthy.
They never will. Because you, too, define wealth as being able to look down on others (in your social environment).
A large part of the world's population would consider themselves extremely wealthy if they had even near the income of a German worker earning minimum wage.
On a global scale, German minimum wage workers are very, very wealthy.
The only reason you'd ever consider German minimum wage to be too little is if you're used to extreme excess, if you've lived in a hyper wealthy environment all your life.
You're so used to extreme wealth, that you deem slightly less extreme wealth to be poverty. You consider it to be poverty, because the people surrounding you are even wealthier. You consider it poverty, because you can not look down on them.
The current system.
I don't have detailed knowledge of the US economy, which is why I keep using Germany as an example.
In Germany you are never one paycheck away from being homeless unless you're actively wasting money. As said before, 800€ is more than enough to live alone in an apartment. And you make more than double that (in the worst case).
I am indeed ignorant about the United States. This may surprise you, but I don't know about every economy around the world. I'm sure you don't either.
But I do know that a capitalist system can work well without UBI, as proven by the German system.
(Yes, I will keep using the German system as an example.)
As long as we haven't fully automated it, people will have to scrub toilets and pick fruits in any econonic system. What you wish for is for them to not be poor. Which they aren't (in Germany).
Are you claiming that people's actual wealth has not gone up in the past 50 years? That we don't eat better regulated food, that we don't own very advanced devices, that we don't eat food shipped from across the world?
Normal people's wealth does keep growing. That is a very obvious fact. You may claim that it doesn't grow fast enough, but it does grow.
Can you please quote where I did that? Because I never made any global claim. I always referred either to "many countries" or "Germany", neither of which explicitly include the USA.
They can get paid more. But they're already dignified and already well paid (in Germany).
Where is "here"? Some country which didn't manage to implement capitalism successfully? I never claimed that calitalism does work everywhere, I claimed that can work everywhere.
Maybe US capitalism is shit. But it can work well without UBI (as proven by, you guessed it, Germany).
I'm sorry, I don't see where I explicitly mentioned the USA in those quotes.
Was it "A large part of the world's population"? (Note that it doesn't say "the entire world's population".)
okay
sure
Again, I never claimed that capitalism is well implemented everywhere. I only claimed that
I'm not sure whether you believe to be arguing without moving goalposts. Do you want me to tell you about some goalposts you moved? (E.g. asking me to apply my statements regarding Germany to all countries, including the USA.)
Oh, the people in Germany (whom I was talking about all along) are living just fine.
Perhaps. Good thing I never claimed the status quo to be successful in all countries.
can you two just fuck already