So, I reference Kyle Kulinski a lot on here, he's probably one of my favorite commentators on the left these days, and seems to stroke an itch few lefties do for me. I mean, you got a lot of commentators who went in the more neoliberal wing of the party like David Pakman. Sam Seder comes off as a condescending jerk to me. TYT is okay but given they crapped on yang and UBI while circlejerking about how americans want JERBS i kinda got alienated there too. On the other hand, you got crazies on the other side like Jimmy Dore who turned into a rabid psychopath the last few years. And leftists, my god. Vaush is simultaneously too centrist with his simping for Biden and the democratic party, while being a SJW and and an anarcho-communist on the other hand. Yang himself was good, but he kinda changed his tune a lot since relaunching his forward party under a centrist banner.
I mean, let's face it, the left has a jobs problem. Most of them would rather circlejerk about work and how great it is and how we can make work pay better through a mess of band aids and jobs programs and almost none of them want to talk about work itself. Kyle himself has kind of come off as jobist in the past, and I called him on it, but all in all he seems to at least be more open to UBI and Yang than other lefties, and he seems to be generally...better than most lefties. but today he just went full job worshipper.
Basically, Kyle argued that the left should take control of the narrative by going full populist on jobs. Talk about how left wing policies are going to create so many jobs that we won't know what to do with them. Jobs jobs jobs. And how this would win over Americans. And how much Biden should continue talking about jobs jobs jobs.
Now, look, I kinda see where kyle is coming from. he's slightly more normie friendly than I am at times. And I know that the issue of jobs and work is a huge sacred cow in this country that very few people will touch with a ten foot pole. But, I believe, for the sanity of the country, we must challenge this. All politicians talk about jobs. Jobs jobs jobs. There's this one annoying democratic candidate in my area running an ad about how he worked so many jobs and now he's creating jobs, and you know, JERBS! But, I feel like this talk rings hollow. Clinton talked about jobs incessantly and it didn't work out for her. Why not? because people knew she was full of crap. obama talked a ton about creating jobs. jobs jobs jobs. I tuned out after a while. Heck, Obama doing this actually paved the way for me being as anti work as I am. Well, that and recognizing what trickle down economics was during the 2012 election.
When we talk about creating jobs, we're talking about creating "opportunities" for poor people to do work for rich people in exchange for cash. That's what trickle down economics is. That if we only give the rich people more money (often at expense of poor peoples' social programs), we can create more jobs and the wealth will "trickle down".
It is so cringey that liberals buy into the same framing. And it seems so philosophically inconsistent. It's the same system as the right wants. Except the right will claim tax increases and regulations destroy jobs. You can't out"job" the right rhetorically. Because all the econ 101 arguments are on their side. Liberals typically want to regulate jobs, and mandate minimum wages, and worker safety laws, and these are "job killers". And while we can talk about the government creating work itself, the right can claim it's make work that doesn't actually serve a valid purpose. Because despite their fixation on creating jobs, they also recognize that work is ultimately about making things, not giving people paychecks. So government jobs are akin to welfare, bloat, and high government spending, things conservatives hate. They believe in free market work, which is more "efficient."
Quite frankly, the only argument the left can realistically fall back on on jobs is that left wing policies of income inequality can increase aggregate demand, which creates more jobs. It's a fair point from a keynesian perspective, but like most left wing ideas, is more complicated. Lefties can also point to how republicans seem to have a propensity for crashing the economy (see, Bush 1992, Bush 2008, and Trump 2020, it's correlation but not causation, but hey we're talking low IQ takes and cheesy one liners here), but it feels kind of dishonest to me given that's more correlation rather than direct causation to a degree.
The fact is, for the most part, outside of some arguments that the economy seems to do better under "new democrats", there isn't much of an argument to be had from the jobs perspective. And despite it being technically true, the economies did do better under obama and clinton (we don't talk about the carter years though), it's kind of hard to argue this given how conservatives make low IQ talking points and low IQ takes that tend to be easily repeatable and seem intuitive on the surface.
Again, think about what jobs are. Rich people putting poor people to work in exchange for cash. And lefties just cheer this crap on. I cringed at ana kasperian above for her crap take on jobs and how americans want to work and want purpose and blah blah blah. Like is this all we are? "Human capital stock" to use a dystopian wall street term waiting around for rich people to give us an opportunity to serve them in order to survive?
I mean, really, we are literally putting peoples well being into the hands of rich people who want to extract labor from poor people. And we cheer this on. YES, MORE SLAVERY! MORE SERVITUDE, WOO! And then the right screams that the left kills jobs by daring to make working conditions and pay livable, and honestly, I really wonder why we even have this discussion in the first place.
Is the left so inept, so impotent, that no one will challenge the dogma of jobs? It seems so. Liberals circlejerk about work as much as the right does, they just seem implement more band aids. And of course, socialists have as big of a job boner as the conservatives. Their entire argument is based that the workers are the ones who make society run and all "surplus value" belongs to them and rich people are parasites. And while they have a point, when they were put in charge they just made a bunch of government mandated jobs and forced people to do them, threatening to throw them in gulags if they don't. It's BS.
Like...I would argue that the failure of all mainstream ideologies today is related to their obsession with jobs. Conservatives seem to think that the answer to america's problems is just deregulation everything, stop taxing rich people, and we'll have so much opportunity that everyone will succeed with flying colors. And if they don't, we'll, it must be because they don't work hard enough, since as we know from analyzing them, systemic factors don't real.
Liberals seem to want to fix up and improve the american job, while implementing keynesian policies to spur job creation, between socialism, conservatism, and liberalism, liberalism is by far the best, but they still tend to fall short of their goals. Because as I love to keep pointing out, we will never EVER have enough jobs for everyone anyway. It's structurally impossible, and it seems like no one really wants to address that. This is why i respect yang as much as I do in part. He actually is a failed job creator who was like "hey i tried, this crap is screwed, we need a UBI." Like, I respect him for recognizing the deep systemic problems we have and waving that white flag. Heck, I've seen kyle have a glimmer of self awareness on this issue too. He's been saying since inflation's been up, it's almost as if under capitalism there's going to be a segment of the population that's just screwed. You cant give everyone a job because then you have inflation, and unemployment and poverty are just going to happen.
And the kicker is, this isn't know. This has been known about in America since at least 1969. Seriously, I am going to link this book, it is in the public domain. If you have never read this, read it. This book is essentially a report from the presidential commission on poverty under Nixon. it was written in 1969. And it basically looks at the structural issues of the economy and says exactly what I'm saying, that we're screwed, and need a basic income. You will never make enough jobs to solve the problem. Even if you are a jobist.
I admit, I take things a step further. I don't even like the idea of work in the first place. For me, work was always a necessary evil, and considering how it's come to my attention that it isn't even necessary, it's just evil. Seriously, we're celebrating our own enslavement, wtf is wrong with you guys. Every time I see you guys cheering like YAY, MORE JERBS! MORE JERBS! i'm seriously just like, WTF is wrong with you people? I feel like our society is a freaking cult. We're literally cheering on our own enslavement. And questioning this system is so beyond the pale that the opposition to the right's solution is just to join the circlejerk.
And that's why I can't agree with Kyle on this. I know Kyle seems a bit more pro work than me, but I'm serious. Screw work. This should not be our ideal as a society. Our current ideal is LITERALLY that we should get as many poor people doing labor for rich people in order to make them not poor any more. Then we act surprised when...people end up being poor. And I'm not saying government jobs are the solution either. Government can't do away with the problems of the market through job creation, and even if we tried and went full communism....are people under communism really happy and fulfilled with their government jobs? Not really. I'd argue a core reason communism failed was that they literally went all in with work and jobs in their own way and just ended up regressing back to monarchy if we look at the prehistory of private property and analyze the issue through that.
But yeah, again, I don't even think that work should be the ideal. Work is not a good thing. Work sucks. Work is unpleasant. It takes time away from things we otherwise want to do. It takes away autonomy from the individual and puts them in service of others against their will. There is nothing inherently good about work, and the left should not try to romanticize work. We should be calling this crap out.
Seriously, there's a reason I went more toward UBI and indepentarianism as I left Christianity than regular liberalism. Because liberals seem insistent on going all in on this same cult of jobs as the right, and it's weird, creepy, and dystopian. I used to think the left did this in part because it had to due to the political pressures, but it seems clear by now that no, these guys just romanticize this crap. Even Bernie when asked about UBI was like "I have a better idea, let's have more jerbs, jerbs jerbs jerbs!" I mean, really, I'm just so over the left here.
This is why I can't be enthusiastic about Biden. It's why I'm no longer enthusiastic about progressives and even people like Bernie. Because this is not the direction we should be going in. We need to break this cult of work. We need to stop talking about creating jobs, jobs jobs jobs, and start recognizing the american concept of job as what it is, just slavery with extra steps. We need a new left that bases its ideology around liberating people from coercive labor, whether it be under capitalism where you serve the rich, or socialism where you serve the state. We should try to design our societies around minimizing our labor needs, not maximizing employment for its own sake (while simultaneously forcing people into the labor market). I'm just so over this BS society, man. And I'm so over the idea of jobs and work. Screw jobs, and screw work.
And yeah, that's where I disagree on Kyle. I know this was a bit longer than I wanted to write, but this is, IMO, a very necessary article to write. Because this is a necessary discussion to have in our society. We need to own up to the fact that job creation has failed us and will continue to fail us. We need to own up to the fact that maybe these jobs aren't pleasant to begin with.
And to me, no, jobs do not give me purpose. Jobs are like being sentenced to roll rocks up a hill for all eternity like sisyphus. That is what the modern work place is. Work for its own sake, with no end. It doesn't have purpose. The whole idea is absurd to me, and yes I am a subscriber to absurdism as a concept. And I wish people would do away with this protestant work ethic BS of thinking jobs provide purpose. SCREW YOUR PURPOSE! Like really, screw these stupid left wing authoritarians who tell me work is good for me or some crap. No, screw your jobs, shove them up you know where.
And yeah, that's where I'm at with this. The left needs to look hard in a mirror here and come up with a new way forward, because their current way sucks.
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