January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.
Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and…
- If you work hard, you should be paid hard.
- If you believe the USA is GREAT, you shouldn’t be “proud” of disproportionate struggling just to survive.
- We have created more wealth through capitalism than any other developed country.
- That wealth, created by OUR WORK, has ALREADY BEEN REDISTRIBUTED upwards towards 1% of the people. YOUR money has ALREADY been taken FROM you.
- We used to be able to have a great standard of living on ONE income. They’ve eroded that away. Now we’re “proud” to work multiple jobs because it means we’re not “lazy”. Were your grandparents lazy?
- You should not be grateful to your boss for your paycheck. Your boss should be grateful to you for his/hers.
- We’ve lowered our own quality of life standards because the 1% has successfully conditioned us that our own “laziness” keeps us struggling. It is the WORKING class which hold down 2+ jobs and barely make it. That is the opposite of lazy.
- Slavery (or “lowered labor costs”) is a result of unchecked capitalism. Except our chains are now invisible, in the form of DEBT, which we are encouraged to incur at every step of our lives, from our education (as an “investment”) to shopping (as a “patriotic duty”.)
- Check the stats: WE WORK HARDER and LONGER than any other population in any other developed country with the WORST benefits and have among the WORST standard of living and most income inequality, because we’ve bought the narrative that having it any other way is SOCIALISM.
- In the entire history of capitalism, it has only ever been 1% who have controlled the vast majority of wealth. The greatest trick they’ve ever pulled is convincing us that we can one day be a part of it too. Except that it’s never happened. Not even in the “great” country of “opportunity”, America.
- If YOU don’t like living in a society where yes, even stupid, lazy, ugly, fat, poor, non-white, non-christian people get healthcare, help when they’re down, protection against predatory capitalism, then YOU leave America and leave it for the 99% to FIX.
- As for me? Healthy, unemployed, no health insurance, worked since I was 15, have a graduate degree from an excellent university in Washington, DC, virtually no credit card debt, $95k debt for school, my immigrant parents are retired, my brother’s in law school. And I’m sure we’ll be fine as long as no one gets sick or has an accident. I have plenty of family living in Europe. Don’t tell me they prefer our system or that they’re “lazier” than we are. They just value life in a way we’re told not to.
- I am a proud (and lucky) 99%er. And so is everyone I know.
- You deserve better. We all deserve better.
To the 1%: Winter may slow these protests, but Spring will soon come. You didn’t think you would last forever, did you?
AMEN!
My wife and I both worked hard in school and went on to earn graduate degrees. Now together we earn over $100K. We own our house and we are raising two wonderful children. We are proud of the success we have earned.
BUT, we recognize that those below us on the income ladder are also working hard or are seeking work.
We recognize that the society we live in needs people who will stock store shelves, clean the floors, drive delivery trucks, operate cash registers, and do many other low paying tasks.
Since these jobs need doing, we recognize that the workers who do them deserve to be able to live lives of dignity – that is, lives that are not blighted by poverty or crippling financial insecurity or lack of health care.
So WE THE PEOPLE must provide a safety net for each other. It is simple decency, not to mention justice.
Bravo, well said!
When I was 17, I chose to attend an affordable state school in a village close to home even though I had been accepted to 2 “Ivy’s” and many of my friend were attending prestigious Universities around the country. My parents, who worked blue collar jobs, could not provide much support for my education so I chose state school knowing that I would have to pay the debt in full. I worked two jobs through college to make ends meet and networked constantly my junior and senior year to try to find work after school. The Monday after graduating with my “useless” communications degree, I started as an intern in IT at a local college, making minimum wage doing work that was not related to major, but work nonetheless. After a year of showing up on time and doing my job, they hired me full time and I was awarded affordable health benefits and a retirement fund. Two years and no raises later, they offered to pay for my MBA through their program at the business school. In 2010, I bought my first car, a new toyota corolla with money that I’d saved for almost 5 years. In 2011, I bought my first house on my own after living on my own since college in a shared apartment — a $72K, 1 bedroom condo with mortgage payments that were affordable, even with my low income. Shortly after, I finished my MBA and I was promoted into a higher paying job that allowed me to make larger payments against my debt while continuing to live a modest life. I do not live with a great deal of luxury, but my life is the result of constant forethought and planning to secure comfortable means to live by. I do not not now, nor have I ever relied on anyone else to pay my way through life.
You have completely missed the point of all the people posting here who also behaved responsibly and lost everything they built anyway. A libertarian is just a progressive who has not yet learned that forces outside your control can completely derail your life.
