Comment by mystified5016
11 days ago
I think it's worth specifying even further: wealthy business owners don't want to pay what a US employee costs.
Most jobs are wholly unsustainable. You have to job hop every couple of years to keep up with inflation because God knows you're not getting a raise that keeps you comfortable.
This has led to churn and brain drain and the slow collapse of US domestic business.
It's not that people don't want to work, it's that wages have fallen so far behind the cost of living that it's financial suicide to stay in any one job. Even with all the traps like employer sponsored healthcare, most people just can't afford to be paid the pittance most businesses are willing to pay.
This is a deep societal illness in the US. We've glorified and deified the concept of greed to the point where even talking about income inequality and the unimaginable concentration of wealth is just anathema. It's seeped into the everyday consciousness in the form of "I'm the only one that matters, fuck absolutely everyone else"
I genuinely believe that America will never, ever recover until we address this. We will always be this sick and broken country until the state entirely collapses or we get our shit together and address income inequality.
I have some real serious doubts that we'll ever get there, but it's easy to be pessimistic.
The USA is number 1 in median disposable income at purchasing price parity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
This makes me think that it at least as much to do with high (unrealistic?) employee expectations as business stinginess.
There's always someone to quote some dry statistic that refutes the lived experience of... pretty much anyone. I wonder, what's the deal with people like this? Is the point to convince yourselves it's not that bad?
Yes, indeed, in the US even a poor person is relatively wealthier than someone in a war-torn African country. But humans are social creatures. We compare ourselves not with "the poor kids in Africa", but with the business owner in the adjacent zip code.
As for "unrealistic" expectations: why do business owners expect to take an unrealistic percentage off the top of everyone's labor? What made them worthy of such a huge amount?
You’re coping hard. The USA is (well, was before tariffs and related) so far ahead and richer than the rest of the “first world” that “europoor” is a correct term for those unfortunate souls who weren’t born there.
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