We should collectively refuse to have kids to prevent that from happening and make the whole thing come crashing down.
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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I think in a other timeline I'd be very happy working in a factory for my career. Building something or maintaining the systems. Putting in a hard days work and going home feeling proud I did a good job.
Supporting my 2 kids, stay at home wife and owning my own home with only my income.
My kids needs were all met. All utilities paid up, school supplies and toys, fridge always fully stocked.
My job was secure. 20+ years at the company with a competative salary. My job is secure and safe with my union protecting me. Might retire in 30 or so years with a solid pension and a cool 50 at the factory.
No need to get a job after I retire. Just enjoy my time with my new grandkids my children are happy to have in a strong economy.
But. We're not in the fucking twilight zone.
The American Dream was taken from the masses and they want us "back on the line" for pennies on the dollar in profits.
"I make a penny while the boss makes a dime. That's why I sit on company time."
No. We now make a penny while the CEOs make thousands and were left hungry, homeless and sick.
Get the fuck out of here with that shit.
Bold of you to assume that I'm having kids. Actually, not having kids is probably the best way to give these assholes the middle finger.
Since the New Deal the goal of the capitalist class has been a slow crawl back to slavery. Couldnt do it too fast. Had to take it slow.
No taxes for the rich and businesses. No rights for workers. And eventually No pay or choice for them either.
That beyond all the other myriad failures of this country is why I hate it so much and why I long to see it fall.
And it's all been fully Bipartisan. Republicans advance the goals of oligarchy by leaps. Democrats are the vanguard that protects the rich and the corrupt. They stop all of us from making things better. Social and cultural issues are ephemeral at best. Ultimately unimportant to the oligarchy beyond their utility as a tool of control and coercion. There is no morality involved. There is just greed and corruption.
The Children Yearn for the Mines!
Seems that they want to repeat the USSR of 70s, just capitalist and without the revolution and industrialization and mass repressions preceding stages, and rather right-wing.
Maybe they want that to avoid the same fate due to avoiding state capitalism and overregulation combined with politics inside the bureaucratic machine. If they are moderately smart.
Or maybe they just want to repeat the same track with modern technologies. Then it'll suck.
I'd say inheritable professions are more pre industrial revolution than Soviet.
Yes, I missed that part, meant more the "working all your life on the same plant" thing.
Tat used to be not so uncommon under capitalism as well.
The big, old fashioned manufacturing companies often had livelong employees.
And that's also what Trump crowd promises their voter base.
The issue is how they are going to achieve that. The Soviet way was very inefficient, led to many unprofitable plants in the system and budget holes being closed with selling fossil resources to "capitalist" countries. And eventually tanked the USSR.
Succeeding in creating such industries in the first place and making them work is more likely with Soviet approaches. But making that a stable, efficient system is just impossible with Soviet approaches.
So they have to spend enormous funds at creating humongous processes and plants and logistics, and then prevent those owning said processes and plants and logistics from creating a bureaucratic-political deadlock which USSR was usually in. Any change would reduce some party's power and increase another's, so most ministries would oppose any change of status quo, and that is why all Soviet attempts at creating, say, a country-wide computer network to increase production and planning efficiency, or at optimizing military industries, or at standardization were killed.
USSR could have personal computers common enough, and not clones of Western successful designs, except clones were the only thing that wouldn't cause such a deadlock. Domestic designs meant some ministry losing to some other.
There was a de-facto college ruling the country, with every party in that college having a veto right. Better than today's Russia, of course.
Same even with fossil fuels export dependency, frankly - big companies today are not so different from USSR in terms of internal structure, yet they are efficient enough. It's just that such a way of getting value would be, again, less likely to cause deadlocks.
The more intelligent (thus requiring standardization and competition, not just controlling land or oil and gas reserves) always lost to the more basic (sell something abroad, or choose a foreign design and clone it).
It's a bit similar to how Byzantine empire killed itself, actually. Inviting foreign power to help in internal affairs became normalized. They didn't even feel, apparently, slow and steady conquest by Turks whose help they'd employ against each other.
Whether you want them or not.
NGL I'm envisioning The Factory as in SCP 001
YOU AND YOUR FAMILY FIRST, ASSHOLE.
This was always the goal. Serfdom in a different package.
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Dey tk 'r jerbs!!!
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Ok, here you go, maga listens to its voters, kicked out all the immigrants and imports and is proud to present: serfdom.
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No, not like that!!
He means while they're still kids btw
Oh, cool. We're going backwards. That's fun.
The (R) next to their name means "reverse", like an automobile's transmission.
The factory jobs that existed in post-war America would be a vast improvement over the current service economy, but those jobs don’t exist anymore. Union jobs with high pay, benefits, retirement after 20 years, etc. Those are not the factory jobs they’re looking to create.
Factories are mostly automated now anyway. Rebuilding US manufacturing will not only take years but it will be done in a way that minimizes the actual jobs created. They’ll also still have to compete with factories all over the world where the currency is worth much less and the global price of the end product reflects that.
Post-war America had a strong domestic market and middle class that could afford to buy all the things American manufacturing built. Americans are now buying groceries on layaway and waiting for the sickness or car trouble or new Trump policy that makes them homeless.
The reality is that the job is kind of irrelevant. We had a manufacturing economy then, and a service based economy now, but the real difference between today and back then were wage strength and social parity. Of course pensions existed too, but still.
Back in the day one man could make enough to support a family on a relatively entry level skill level income. Today one person can hardly afford rent by themselves anywhere in the US for the same skill level of work.
Instead of paying people any more than absolutely necessary, we pay shareholders. No pensions, let alone benefits for a lot of people.
We need taxes on the wealthy and higher wages, if not legally mandatory profit sharing schemes for all businesses
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And those jobs weren't good because they were in a factory, they were good because they were union.
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Ok, so a few points, from a lifelong industrial OEM technician:
First of all, there's nothing wrong with factory jobs IF your employer takes care of its workers, that's a big "if" but one all the world's workers should take care of, since manufacturing is of course one of the biggest areas of employment and it's not going away anytime soon.
My job, working for an equipment manufacturer, can be quite enjoyable and well paid, again depending on the employer, I'd advice any technically inclined individual to look into it. St the same time, I'd never work as a maintenance tech in a factory, that's usually a very stressful job, with emergency work in poor condition, often pushed to work unsafely because of the rush, on old machines often dirty or in poor repair.
Still, I've seen some people make quite a comfortable position in that setting, so it may not be all bad.
As for pay, I think pay should depend mostly on 3 factors: effort, skill and comfort. Those who work harder, are more skilled and are forced into unpleasant settings should be paid more. If you want a more comfortable job you cannot expect to make more than a good, equally skilled worker who's in noisy, dangerous or disgusting environments, and so on.
I don't understand the intergenerational employment point, that sounds sorta dystopic and has no connection to the rest of the argument.
I agree that the work isn't too bad if you're the right type of person. We have pretty good rules from OSHA.
TBH though the intergenerational employment and company towns angle makes it seem like all the rules are going to be discarded so I'm a bit concerned
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ha. see, the thing is... no. make me. i got a bullet for every single fucking one of you that tries to fuck my genuinely good life up. i figured out how to escape this shit life and i'm never going back. i ain't got no kids so i don't have to worry about any of this. yall have all fucked this world up beyond recognition and i will fucking kill you if you try to drag me down into your bullshit.
That’s the thing, they don’t care if you work there, they won’t make you, you’ll just starve to death in the street or die from lack of medical care or some previously preventable problem. You likely would never be forced to work but not working will be essentially choosing slow suicide
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They'll enslave every last person on the planet if you let them. You have to fight back, or that's your future. That's everyone's future.
That’s rich coming from a group of people who haven’t collectively worked a single day in their lives.
Yeah you and your kids and their kids... All slaving away in poor conditions, at the same time.
No retirement for the old. Child labor. Shitty conditions with zero worker protections. Low pay to keep you in poverty. All while the rich sit on their lazy fat asses like the parasites they are...
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