So, in addition with the NLRB union changes the other day, now Biden is trying to bring back the Obama era proposal of giving salaried workers under $55000 overtime pay. I mention obama because this is nothing new. Obama pushed this in 2015-2016ish with a $46k cap, and it was a pretty good proposal then too. The problem was it didnt pass in part because trump got in like a year later and killed it.
You can read my reaction to Obama's version of the idea here, and you can see more edgy snarky younger me really sticking it to employers over this one. My opinions haven't changed, by the way, I've just been changing my rhetoric to be less populist given the actual populists are going insane.
But yeah. Basically, working in America is like this. Say you work in retail, or food service, or some sort of blue collar job that often pays close to minimum wage. Working conditions suck already. But imagine you're so successful you're promoted to manager....yay?
Well...maybe you get paid a bit more, I mean instead of making like $20000 a year you make $36000 (just over the cutoff, back in 2016 it was $23000), but now you're expected to work like 70 hour weeks, and you don't even get the privilege of overtime. That's messed up. Because salary is such where it doesn't matter how many hours you work, you get paid the same. For some this makes sense, say, teachers, who may not teach come summer, or some sort of tech support job where some weeks you barely have anything to do and sit around playing starcraft 2 and other weeks you're going nuts when something major breaks down and you spend all week trying to fix it and put in like 80 hours, or something like that. Generally, I would assume salary is a negative and I would likely not be inclined to take a salaried job unless it's some cushy well paid "BS" job like david graeber talks about where I'm just inclined to look busy but otherwise I spend most of my time on reddit. And here's why it's negative for me. Because generally employers abuse the fact that some workers are salaried to work them to the bone going 60+ hour weeks for months on end. The video game industry is infamous for this, for instance, with "crunch time" being a real thing.
But honestly, no one got the shaft worse from this but service employees in managerial positions. I mean, these jobs suck to begin with. Maybe going up to management you can get healthcare, and you're paid a little better, but you gotta work like 60-80 hour weeks, every week. And this is your life...until you quit. It sounds literally like hell. And you aren't even paid well.
I admit, Biden's proposal here is kinda quaint compared to my views on the economy and work, but it is a very helpful band aid. It would effectively raise the cap that such workers deal with that hell up to $55000 a year, from around $35500. I guess it's to ensure that salaried designation is only used for its original purpose, and not to abuse otherwise hourly type employees being screwed over.
Now, this is just...a band aid. It doesn't stop this hell from existing, but it does ensure if you go through hell, you get paid well. That's kind of the issue with liberalism and leftism. it doesn't mean you don't suffer immensely, it means that you get paid well for your suffering. It's better than being paid poorly for our suffering, but then you have to ask, why suffer at all?
I mean, just think about the idea of putting in 70 hours a week in a job. Imagine having to get up at 5 AM, get to work by say, 6:30, and then you work all the day to 6:30 PM. And then you come home, you get like an hour or two to yourself, and then you have to get up and do it all again the next day. Well, unless you engage in "revenge bedtime procrastination" where you literally deprive yourself of sleep to extend your free time, but that's not healthy at all. But that's how I would describe our society: not healthy at all. And imagine doing this 6 days a week, with only one day off. And even on that day off, you use it to run errands because you literally have no time to do anything else because you worked all week.
This is hell. But it's a hell we subject millions of workers to. We literally are living the myth of sisyphus in reality, where punishment from the gods is turned into 9-5, or in reality, something akin to china's 996 system for managerial workers. I have to applaud Biden for ensuring those who suffer like this are paid better, but this is the bare minimum, and we have to do better.
I have to ask, and this is the crux of my iteration of human centered capitalism, do we work to live, or do we live to work? Put another way, does the economy exist for us, or do we exist for the economy? When you are forced to, under the threat of poverty, work like this, then we basically live to work, we exist for the economy, and we are basically slaves. We can do all kinds of philosophical weasel wording around this like most ideologies try to do, but that's the reality as I see it. If we can't reasonably say no without being sanctioned to the point we can't even afford to live, well...again, that's basically just slavery with extra steps.
Honestly, it baffles me that the issue of work isn't more important in our politics. For me, this is among the top issues. Heck, it's the crux of my own ideology. As a libertarian, I have to prioritize liberty. But that isn't just the freedom to smoke pot, or the freedom to have abortions, or get gay married, no, a big aspect of freedom is being able to do what you want when you wanna do it. But if large swaths of life is tied down to JOBS, then that's not freedom. That's just being a slave. Socialists are right in that the modern workplace is a dictatorship. I just think they lack vision in only stopping there and thinking if only this forced servitude was more democratic that everything would be sunshine and rainbows.
Maybe it really is ideological indoctrination, as well as the powers that be creating "tower of babel" moments when workers are on the verge of realizing how screwed they are and keeping us distracted with social issues (like they did in 2016). But it really does seem like society wants to talk about anything but work. And I have to respect biden for at least offering some relief for some workers, but still, we do need to have a much larger discussion about work and the role and nature of work in our society. Instead of the whole "WORK IS GOOD, WORK IS AMERICAN, WE SHOULD SPEND ALL OUR TIME WORKING" narrative needs to die already. Like when some mother told George W. Bush she worked three jobs, all he said was that was "uniquely American". Like what the actual fudge? That's horrible, that life has come to that. That that's what people have to do just to survive. Really, i hate this aspect of our society. I really wish we could be more like Europe where we have more labor rights and work life balance.
Although let's not act like Europe is great either. Many of the critics of Phillipe Van Parijs and his "real libertarian" over the years have come from social democrats fixated on the reciprocity principle and I know once some Italian politicians were going on about how they were a "work based republic" or some crap. It's ridiculous. Like, admittedly Europeans and social democrats are a little saner than Americans, but in the overall grand scheme of things, they just reflexively can't see past work as a concept either.
I honestly think work is one of the great evils in the world, akin to disease, and that we should be striving to minimize it as much as possible. We should be trying to get as close to a world without work in general. I know a lot of busy bodies will act like work gives us purpose and what will we do all day, but I feel like this is ideological indoctrination. Our ancestors were basically forced to work by the governments of their time in recent millennia. I mean, heck, modern capitalism started in europe with the enclosure movement closing off the commons in Europe and forcing people into cities where they had to take on factory work. Our society was literally engineered to enslave us. And we're just so brainwashed by this we're like OMG WORK GOOD. No, work not good. Work a necessary evil to some extent, but still an evil. Work BAD. Work takes up all our time and stops us from doing other things. It stops us from being free and whole people who pursue what we want.
In the past, we had a class of lazy layabouts in the royalty and the like. And maybe their leisure came at the expense of others' work, but honestly, rather than trying to make everyone a worker, like a lot of bitter regressives (including leftists) seem to wanna do, we should be trying to make everyone live like that. We should ALL be royalty, ALL be shareholders, ALL benefit from the fruits of society. We should automate as much work as possible and then distribute the rewards as equitably as possible. I think UBI is the start of this, and compatible with a world still revolving around work, but long term we might wanna move to another system, maybe even some form of socialism, once we have outgrown the need for work and capitalism. I admit it ain't gonna happen fully overnight, but we should start this process NOW. We should try to work less now, free people from having to work now, and then let all the busy body types who like working keep working jobs during the transition period. And over time, we just let the market adapt to the conditions. If people still pursue work, then we keep capitalism going as it does, just with the reforms i propose. If people want something more, then we can talk about reforming the system further in the future. Of course, I don't think this will happen until long after we're gone.
In the grand scheme of things, this leaves Biden's proposal looking awfully...quaint. Like, gee, maybe we can pay our slaves properly for all the work they put in? But that's where society is at. And it sickens me. And this is why I think the way I do politically. Too many people are focused on superficial nonsense that in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter a ton to me. As Bob Black once said, they'll argue and squabble over anything, except work itself. And I admit anti work philosophy has always been a minority of thought, but for hundreds of years, this stuff has been relevant, and those critiques have always been a thing, even if most kinda ignored them.
Kinda makes me sad how the actual "anti work" movement isn't even about abolishing wage slavery any more, but about loyalty to leftism....seriously. I get so mad when I think about that. Like her or not, Doreen was the real deal, and with her gone the movement on reddit just became a leftist circlejerk with no vision who apparently bans anyone who doesn't follow the circlejerk entirely. It's really sad, given the origins and philosophical traditions that started that community...but I digress.
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