A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
Our Philosophies:
Our Goals
I'm a skilled worker at a tiny business that would collapse without me and I hate it here. I make $30/hr, full time, and the company refuses to give me health insurance.
In the event (extremely unlikely, let's face it, this country is hell) such a bill passed, I would leave this hole THAT DAY with joy in my heart and absolutely NO notice.
Alternative for you, stay on keep coming in but stop working, actually spend that time at work applying to new jobs. Do this until you are confronted. Then tell them you need your pay doubled to continue working. They will probably fire you but you will get paid time for all of your job applications and a chance to fuck with the owner. 🤷
I don't know if I'll do that, but knowing someone thinks I'm worth something is appreciated. Hope you have a fantastic weekend.
Thanks Comrade! regardless of what you do, I hope your work situation improves for you. Enjoy your weekend🙂
Damn if Satan was anticapitalist it would be you
Me suggesting someone take advantage of a business that's taken advantage of them for years lol
What does that shirt say?
ASK ME
APE OUT
SEXUALISM
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Living wage, tied to gdp and inflation, otherwise quit wasting everyone's time. We all know an employer will pay the least legally possible if they can get away with it.
"Bill introduced in Senate that will definitely fail, but makes people feel good" is classic election bait.
introduced by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) on Thursday, in a bid to enthuse the working-class voters who have abandoned the Democratic Party.
Admittedly, this is the Bezos Home Journal running these stories, so it's going to be the worst spin you can imagine. Also, it's $25/hr by 2039 (+$5/hr the first year and +$1/hr after that), which is probably better than linking it to GDP/Inflation in an economy that's on the brink of an ugly recession but only marginally so.
We all know an employer will pay the least legally possible if they can get away with it.
There's already something of a soft wage floor in the US that's been created by the high cost of living. You can't find people who will work for $7/hr, because where would they even live? How would they feed themselves? That's sub-poverty wages.
The issue with labor right now isn't legal allotment but availability and talent. Boomers are exiting the labor pool, immigrants are shut out of the labor market, and the Millennials/GenAs aren't sufficient to close the gap. Tariffs are closing off the possibility of cheap imports and rising energy prices make bulk transportation increasingly expensive. AI continues to be a pipe dream.
Employers are being backed into a corner. Which means the only path out is... prison labor. Not coincidentally, the US is investing extensively in detention camps and police batallions.
The issue with labor right now isn’t legal allotment but availability and talent. Boomers are exiting the labor pool, immigrants are shut out of the labor market, and the Millennials/GenAs aren’t sufficient to close the gap.
What is this pro-corporate drivel?
If companies need talent they need to train people.
Sure. And they've outsourced that process very successfully through the privatized college system.
But college isn't the bottleneck. We have plenty of diploma mills and overflowing lecture halls.
What we lack, more often than not, is low income service sector workers. Janitors, retail employees, bus boys and line cooks. We're in short supply of agriculture hands, which is why prison labor is becoming incredibly popular.
Buddy is simping for corporations your hobby?
low income service sector workers
This is you saying there's a "shortage" of people willing to work for unlivable wages and then explaining that's what makes "prison labor" AKA slave labor incredibly popular.
We get it bud. Corporations love human slaves. This comes as a surprise to nobody. You talking about it like this is a problem with workers instead of the horrifying reality of corporate greed is just gross.
There is no shortage of people willing to do any kind of work for good wages. What we have way too much of are greedy billionaires and corporations.
“Bill introduced in Senate that will definitely fail, but makes people feel good” is classic election bait.
Maybe, but it's not a bad thing to make people go on record about these things.
That and I feel like it should also have some tie to each business. Like the top salary+benefits in your company can only be 10x the lowest or some ratio. 1,000,000,000 : 1 is WILD that we all just keep going along with that and it's like, well yeah, the CEO works harder than you so he earns more.
He works a MILLION times harder than me? He works a BILLION times harder than me? Are you sure about that!? By what metrics?
For 401k there’s some sort of requirement preventing them from being too biased toward the most well off. I don’t know the details but it seems like a great place to start: apply similar to all forms of compensation and benefits
Would that be the $ cap of what you can contribute each year? I think it is like $5k per year now maybe? Something like that. I think it went up recently. 7k?
I'm curious as to how or why that would actually help though, because I think you can open multiple 401ks, right? So you could just open 10 of them.
But yes, any MATH that makes it so you can't just exploit the hell out of the system by virtue of just having lots of money already.
The big issue is that there are tons of loopholes and exploitable things in all our systems (many are intentionally put in for the rich to use). Whatever laws or regulations or systems you don't has to be fair and all that.
One glaring issue is that the billionaire class is so wealthy they aren't even playing the same game as us anymore. They don't pay taxes because they can stop "earning income" in the traditional sense and it's all sorts of leveraged forecast market value stock and asset bullshit. I mean, "money" is made up too, but they are outside "money" and deal with "theoretical money" and thus escape all forms of taxes and fair share stuff.
I've always wondered if the answer is doing away with "income tax" entirely (it's a racket anyway) and having a much higher "sales tax" on everything.
Let them have billions, but they pay the tax when they buy something like the rest of us do.
I dunno. I'm tired of overthinking it. Maybe the better option is to eat them.
I’ve always wondered if the answer is doing away with “income tax” entirely (it’s a racket anyway) and having a much higher “sales tax” on everything.
Counterexample is Elon musk. He’s the biggest example of wealth inequity, yet he’s not ostentatious. His sales tax would be small
The real answer is treating other forms of wealth and income the same as we do salary income. Why do they get to call some of their income as “not income” and pay less. If we have to pay a property tax on the assessed value of our house even when we haven’t”realized” any gains, why are they not paying any tax on stock or company’s, their “property”
That part. Exactly. We pay for estimated value, they should.
1 trillion net worth (even if all made up) should pay the taxes on that full amount just like we do.
If I earn 100k dollars, half that goes to taxes. How come Peelon can earn 100billion and gets all the benefits thereof and doesn't pay half in taxes?
In theory 50k from my taxes should be in the tax bank and 50 billion from his. Instead I payed 50k and he paid maybe 5k.
The limit on 401k contributions is quite a bit higher than that, and it’s an overall limit enforced by the IRs. Each employer can provide plans, but can balance rules on vesting and matching contributions. There are tests and audits to ensure it doesn’t primarily benefit higher paid individuals, and fines on them if it does.
For example, matching contributions are a good tool to encourage more lower paid employees,
But yeah, this is irrelevant to the actual wealthy
Any minimum wage bill not pegged to inflation is a stop gap at best.
Yaaaay a bill that'll go nowhere and die on the floor, just so the dems can claim they're trying to help to proles.
Write the bills ahead of time, so that when a favourable Congress is formed you don't have to spend more time putting it together from scratch.
Min wage should also be attached to inflation. Also, "bills going nowhere" didn't stop Project 2025, Heritage Foundation fascists and Republican abortion ban projects from persistently marching forward.
Who is "you"? I don't think the democrats are here. They don't give a shit.
Congress, campaigns, non-profits and advocacy organizations.
Because Democrats are on the same team as Republicans, and it's not ours. And we're just as ineffective, consumed by inertia.
So we should be sad and do nothing and shame anyone who tries something doomed to fail anyway.
No we should be organizing on a much grander scale.
Less minimum wage should be tied to inflation, more minimum wage should be tied to congressional salary. (Some multiplier, because they do need to live in two places)
The minimum wage and congressional salary should be the same thing.
I'd prefer tying the salary (including bonuses, assets, and everything) to the lowest paid wages in the nation. The greater the difference, the lower the public salary; the smaller the difference, the higher.
Or ditch the minimum wage and implement a Universal Basic Income (UBI) at the Federal level (or State level!!). If there’s UBI, the minimum wage doesn’t have to be there which technically could make labor more competitive in general, plus you don’t have to rely on your job to get your basic needs met.
Well, I'd prefer they do something just to say they're trying than the usual tactic of not even trying because they've already decided they don't have enough votes.
PR to get votes.
We need a maximum wage.
And a maximum wealth, in a way that prevents breaking it up yet still being accessible to a single person
This! No one should make more than 10x the companies lowest paid employee.
Also trying to claim "they're not employees if US. They're contractors" should mean you forfeit all your wealth and get banned from leadership positions for life.
It could maybe be written so it counts employees, part time and full, salary and hourly, contractors and even the contract itself, so you can't just fire the employees, make them contractors. And even clauses where you can't just give your buddy a no-bid contract for 14.7million (random number completely out of the air) for a shitty half-assed job nowhere near that price. (I don't know for sure, I don't do contract work for theoretical contracts like in my completely made up example.)
Same with shareholders and dividends and bonuses and stock and bonds and crypto and any other such bs. Any and every way a company could pay someone for any product or service. Whatever that max and min are. Or the average or something. Use that to cap the max or the max to force the min, whatever.
Good luck