4 ms·
I get so tired of these narratives that paint anyone who isn't wealthy as just lazy, and I especially get tired of millennials like myself being derided as just
by FussyZeus 9y ago
I get so tired of these narratives that paint anyone who isn't wealthy as just lazy, and I especially get tired of millennials like myself being derided as just not willing to give up enough in order to succeed.
You know what, it's true. If you took a robot and gave it a ground floor job, that robot could work that job 7 days a week, 9 hour shifts, without missing a beat. It would never get sick, it would never need time off, it would just keep working. And it could eat really cheaply, just electricity really, but even if it needed food it could make and eat it's own meals, cutting spending down to pennies per. And it could do this for YEARS and have no problem at all doing so, and buy a million dollar house after doing it for a few decades.
BUT, and say it with me: PEOPLE. AREN'T. ROBOTS. No people are, regardless of which generation they're from. We get sick. We get diseases. We have car accidents. We date. We sometimes have children unexpectedly. We occasionally even, yes, get drunk. We want to go out and party, because you know, we're social animals, and doing nothing but going to work, coming home, and cooking and eating alone is fucking SOUL CRUSHING, and was never ever expected from any other generation to not be.
We're messy, emotional, unstable little things. We make bad decisions. We'll stress about our bills and then go do drugs with friends because it's the only way we can scrape ourselves together to go do it for another day.
The fact that so many politicians and so many pundits just "don't want to deal" with the messy emotional side of being a working student, or just a low-achiever, DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE MESSY EMOTIONAL SIDE IS NOT RELEVANT. To deny any of these things, to deny they exist, to deny they are absolutely warranted, and to deny that they should be allowed because again we are all people, messy little people, is to deny what makes us human, and therefore is to de-humanize the working poor.
- peacetreefrog 9y agoThe thing is, most humans are not doing those types of jobs for YEARS like robots. Humans can learn on the job and acquire skills and impress their boss and get raises and maybe become the boss and apply to other jobs or find something like better. That's why it's called "ground floor", because you can move up, and most people eventually do. The % of people making minimum wage at any given time is a snapshot, and it covers people at all stages of their lives. Are there some people working their ass off and not making it a la an Upton Sinclaire book? Sure. But that's not most people. In fact, most people (1) making minimum wage are between the ages of 16-24 and aren't going to be making that forever. And even among those who aren't, most are well above the poverty line. [1] https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/who-earns-the-minimum-wage-suburban-teenagers-not-single-parents https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/report/who-earns-the...
- FussyZeus 9y agoIf an employer expects you to be available at any time for any shift, regardless of the job, then you should be paid enough to live off of that paycheck. Full stop. Whether you’re feeding cats, flipping burgers, tending wounds, or just answering a phone, we have entire lines of work now where despite the fact that you’re expected to always be available and never turn down a shift, you get paid bare minimum wage, and never get enough hours for benefits. It’s disgusting and immoral.