Originally Posted by NHartphotog
We are in the same position. The super-lucky people in society, like teachers and other government employees, deny we even exist. On another thread someone wanted to know which industry required workers to work 80 hours a week while only paying for 40, and I told him about the industry we work in. It is not the only one, to be sure. I'm sure they think I'm making it up, or at least grossly exaggerating, and others like you will probably be accused of the same thing.
Do you work extra hours without pay simply because it is "expected," even though your job offers very little satisfaction and morale is extremely negative? Do you sacrifice your personal life even though you get nothing in return? Are you really happy putting in 50 to 80 hour weeks at work? Would you do your same job if you didn't need to earn money to survive? Would you work the same hours? Do you get ANY extra compensation for the extra time you spend?
Given how catastrophically our nation has been mismanaged, even after you "wake up" from brainwashing, you cannot get off the treadmill since cost of living is insane. Property taxes here in southern NH now exceed many people's entire gross earnings. It is no longer possible to be smart and choose a demanding field of work that will ensure you a good living and let you save enough to retire (unless of course you work for government). Many decades of wage stagnation, devaluation of the dollar, "Zero interest rates" due to massive government borrowing, and the federal government' outright theft of the Social Security "Trust Fund" has left an entire generation on the verge of bankruptcy. No more can you save and buy a business that will ensure financial security, since only Big Business has the monopolies on high-profit activities. All other investments stand a large risk of losing principal. Your home, which was probably bought at a high price, has been losing value for about 5 years and the future looks even worse.
At the same time that as a nation we are forced to choose between Social Security and an insanely overgrown federal Defense/Offense budget, no elected official will allowing the citizens to actually make that choice--since waging senseless wars around the world is the obvious no-cost solution to our budget problems.
Think of it this way: if America suddenly stopped spending money on waging wars everywhere around the world, would a single American notice (except for the need in trillions less taxes, of course). Terrorists would hardly be MORE inclined to kill us if we suddenly started minding our own business. Where would the world be without America injecting trillions in the "economies" of foreign desert nations, so these nations can then undertake mass murder instead of devoting their energies to feeding themselves? Remember that it was America that armed Afghanistan so that the rebels could fight the Russians--and now that nation's US-funded arms continues to kill America soldiers in the longest-running war yet.
It is truly sad that salaried workers are now the "new slaves." When our plant is in outage, all the highest paid people on the the site are union workers doing a basic job (of course, the corporate Robber-Barons never actually visit a productive site, staying instead in their high-security ivory tower where the helicopter drops them once a month as they "earn" their billions (actually, cost the company billions). They get time and a half for every hour over 40, and double time for holidays. The people who carry all the responsibility, and years of trouble-shooting experience, are worked to death.
As bad as it will be, when this generation of early-brainwashed workaholics dies, business will be forced to change. Younger generations simply will NOT work even 40 hours a week (forget 80), and the industry knows that there will be major changes when our "slave" class dies out. We basically will see a doubling of the jobs overnight every time a group of workaholics dies--since it takes 2 full-time workers (actually 3, since one 55 year old workaholic is actually as productive as 3 young workers).
Unfortunately, corporate Robber-Barons will ensure that every last drop of blood will be drained from the slave class before ANYTHING changes, and in fact said Robber-Barons do not think that 80 hours a week is the maximum. They fully expect to be getting at least 100 hours a week--and will then appropriate 100% of the profit of this extra productivity. At the same time they'll make the employee pay for even more of exploding health care costs.
Given the situation, the very best thing we can do for ourselves and for society is to "Go Galt" now, and stop the insanity. We wlll never have retirement or financial security, with both Big Government and Big Business conspiring to decimate ALL stores of value. It will be MUCH worse if we simply work until we die, since then there will be nobody left to call for short-term consulting jobs to get the plants running again.
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