4 ms·

Maybe this will cause a number of people in the US to question our culture of "shut up and work, work, work" that encourages people to suppress humanity, vulner

Maybe this will cause a number of people in the US to question our culture of "shut up and work, work, work" that encourages people to suppress humanity, vulnerability, and illness in the name of making their bosses more wealthy. Nah.

pmoriarty 7y ago
There's more to it than that. Poor people, who get poor health care, have poor sanitation, and are malnurished have poor immune systems as a result, and because of that become disease reservoirs. They need to be lifted out of poverty if we are ever going to have a more healthy society as a whole and decrease the likelihood of future epidemics.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I disagree. You don't need to fix unrelated problems somewhere else to start making people's lives better today. It can be read cynically as a stalling tactic for no progress to be made. The phenomenon I describe happens on a good day in the US, with no epidemics. Sick people go to work because their bosses don't tolerate otherwise. Sick kids go to school because their parents can't miss work to take care of them. A lot of people (not me, I am much more fortunate) cannot take any such breaks to take care of ordinary life situations because a lesser paycheck or lost job for completely legal bullshit reasons drowns them, gets them behind on tight living expenses. These issues exist independent of coronavirus, when things are going "well". I haven't even gotten into how these conditions feed back into stress, mental illness, other health conditions like obesity that are not aided by stress, all self re-enforcing. If all parties wanted to fix this, we could, even without lifting those people out of poverty.
  - pmoriarty 7y ago
    It's not unrelated. Poverty is one of the key components of why epidemics like this take hold and spread to the rest of society. Working to eliminate poverty world-wide will go a long way to making us all healthier. That said, I agree that people should get more sick-leave and be allowed to work from home more, if they can do their job from home, and be allowed to go home to take care of their family if they need to. These things and lifting people out of poverty are not mutually exclusive, and improving the one will help improve the other.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      Let me put it this way. In your understanding, why are people who are working constantly and cannot take breaks from work in poverty? They aren't unemployed. They are working themselves to death. Such a situation would be ridiculous in, say, the midcentury postwar boom, where working people were generally ok. Today a lot of people in that category are squeezed, overworked, overstressed, and find themselves in a very destructive cycle. You say we need to fix the "poverty" part of it, but I think perhaps a more accurate telling is that poverty is a symptom of people being exploited, undervalued, and not being paid in proportion to their contribution to the bottom line. Meanwhile executive pay and "shareholder value" metrics are doing well. And by the way, there are plenty of middle class people who are accurately described by my statements, you don't need to be in poverty to get there.

pmoriarty 7y ago

There's more to it than that. Poor people, who get poor health care, have poor sanitation, and are malnurished have poor immune systems as a result, and because of that become disease reservoirs. They need to be lifted out of poverty if we are ever going to have a more healthy society as a whole and decrease the likelihood of future epidemics.

asveikau 7y ago
I disagree. You don't need to fix unrelated problems somewhere else to start making people's lives better today. It can be read cynically as a stalling tactic for no progress to be made. The phenomenon I describe happens on a good day in the US, with no epidemics. Sick people go to work because their bosses don't tolerate otherwise. Sick kids go to school because their parents can't miss work to take care of them. A lot of people (not me, I am much more fortunate) cannot take any such breaks to take care of ordinary life situations because a lesser paycheck or lost job for completely legal bullshit reasons drowns them, gets them behind on tight living expenses. These issues exist independent of coronavirus, when things are going "well". I haven't even gotten into how these conditions feed back into stress, mental illness, other health conditions like obesity that are not aided by stress, all self re-enforcing. If all parties wanted to fix this, we could, even without lifting those people out of poverty.
- pmoriarty 7y ago
  It's not unrelated. Poverty is one of the key components of why epidemics like this take hold and spread to the rest of society. Working to eliminate poverty world-wide will go a long way to making us all healthier. That said, I agree that people should get more sick-leave and be allowed to work from home more, if they can do their job from home, and be allowed to go home to take care of their family if they need to. These things and lifting people out of poverty are not mutually exclusive, and improving the one will help improve the other.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Let me put it this way. In your understanding, why are people who are working constantly and cannot take breaks from work in poverty? They aren't unemployed. They are working themselves to death. Such a situation would be ridiculous in, say, the midcentury postwar boom, where working people were generally ok. Today a lot of people in that category are squeezed, overworked, overstressed, and find themselves in a very destructive cycle. You say we need to fix the "poverty" part of it, but I think perhaps a more accurate telling is that poverty is a symptom of people being exploited, undervalued, and not being paid in proportion to their contribution to the bottom line. Meanwhile executive pay and "shareholder value" metrics are doing well. And by the way, there are plenty of middle class people who are accurately described by my statements, you don't need to be in poverty to get there.