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Every dollar stolen from you and hoarded by the ultra-rich is time you wouldn’t have had to spend working.
All you can do is stop giving your dollars to the ultra-rich. Don’t buy Teslas. Don’t shop at Amazon. Don’t shop at Walmart. Don’t use Microsoft products. And for all that is good and holy, do not use Facebook.
But also maintain an older car for as long as possible, shop at thrift stores, do your own cooking, garden, save meat for special occasions, collect rainwater, get some older used solar panels, and have a small monthly hobby budget. You’ll find you can live so well on so little. For some reason we’ve all been conditioned to act like we’re wealthy for no reason at all. True wealth is freedom from the grind, not a stupid new toy or status symbol.
Become Hobbit pilled and realize the good life isn’t about isolation and stupid stuff but deep connections with friends and the earth.
Yeah. In a nutshell, refuse to participate in capitalism as much as you can.
But avoiding billionaire companies and their products is a good start.
Thats nice and all, but it screams of “stop buying avocado toast”
Im not broke because i bought the new iphone(i didnt, ugh), im broke because im getting fucked on housing and utilities. And bills which I cant live without, such as my phone and car. I mean i guess i can live without those, so long as living doesnt require a job, and therefore finances. Which it does.
A very rewarding part of getting into 3D printing is that after the initial purchase, I started repairing things left and right like a standing mixer for my grandma or a thread adapter for my partner. I didn’t picture just how many things could be saved and how many purchases would be avoided. I’m always glad to be able to print some niche thing for under a euro worth of material that would otherwise cost 30€ or so and only be available on Amazon. I do realize the irony in having to make a non-insignificant purchase to acquire such a device, but it did open up a whole new world of making things on my own.
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This is one of my sticking points for working from home.
I already sacrifice so much of my time to working and sleeping that I barely have time to live and do what I want to do.
I don’t want that time eroded away in traffic, driving to an office where I’ll be doing work on a computer, remotely helping people as IT support. I don’t see the point in wasting time, gas, and my sanity.
Above and beyond that, I am the king of my domain. When working from home, I can customize my space however I see fit, so that I can do my best work. I already have space reserved in my house for my PC and a keyboard and mouse I’m comfortable with and enjoy using, along with multiple displays. I’m running 5 right now… All of this is mere steps away from my bed, fridge, and sofa.
There is no argument in the world what would convince me that returning to the office is necessary .
For the past 5 years I have been living proof that we do not need to be huddled together in one place to effectively do our jobs. I will die on this hill.
I get to enjoy the space I pay for, the way I want to, and as long as that isn’t negatively impacting my ability to do my job, I will not be convinced that it’s somehow not as efficient or as good as working in an office.
IMO, the only reasons we are being forced into returning to the office is for middle management to feel like they’re doing something by literally looking over your shoulder, and so that business owners can justify spending so much money on the property where their office exists. Either they want to keep leasing the space from their fat cat real estate friends, or they need to somehow justify owning a large piece of land because their company is so big and successful, and they can waive their big building around like a dick to impress all the other CEOs.
It’s pathetic, it’s employee hostile, and I’m fucking tired…
Wait, what was the question again?
For the past 5 years I have been living proof that we do not need to be huddled together in one place to effectively do our jobs. I will die on this hill. Me too, thanks.
I get to enjoy the space I pay for, the way I want to, and as long as that isn’t negatively impacting my ability to do my job, I will not be convinced that it’s somehow not as efficient or as good as working in an office.
don’t forget the flexibility for things like kid drop off etc. If you have to duck out early you can easily make up the time at night or whatever.
IMO, the only reasons we are being forced into returning to the office is for middle management to feel like they’re doing something by literally looking over your shoulder, and so that business owners can justify spending so much money on the property where their office exists. Either they want to keep leasing the space from their fat cat real estate friends, or they need to somehow justify owning a large piece of land because their company is so big and successful, and they can waive their big building around like a dick to impress all the other CEOs.
preach
I agree with everything. I do damn good work, and while they have encouraged/mandated hybrid RTO, I just don’t go. No one calls me out on it other than the occasional ‘hey, it’d be good to see you again here for the next monthly meeting’. I’m happy to go if I NEED to go to the office, to meet a client or what have you, but otherwise, go eat a heaping bag of farts.
It’s nice that my rant came though coherently. I get excited sometimes.
WFH or at least the flexibility to work from home, is something I bet strongly believe in. I know some people who prefer to work from the office and I’m never going to speak poorly about those people or their opinions. For some, they just don’t have the room to do it, others prefer the atmosphere/environment of the office, some have chaotic homes and the office is much quieter and allows them to focus on their work better. Whatever the reason, both should be fine for any job that can be done remotely.
Obviously, you’re not going to be able to work remotely for your local fast food joint, flipping burgers, remotely. As an easy example. Construction also comes to mind. Can’t build something when you’re nowhere near it.
For any job that can, it should be a viable and acceptable option.
Denying it is just going to make workers that want to work from home, resentful of the managers that are mandating it.
As they say, people don’t quit jobs, they quit bad management. Treat your people like adults and they’ll stick around for years to come.
This is what makes me afraid to have children more than almost anything else.
Even if we overcome this wave of fascism, even if we fix global warming, we are still looking at a world where the people we are supposed to care about and raise are systemically separated from us and we aren’t allowed to rest until we are used up and dead.
That’s no world to create new life in.
As a parent, I can say with confidence it doesn’t have to be that bleak. My wife and I work 4 days a week and don’t own a car. Our kid’s school is nearby, so we don’t spend a lot of time travelling, and we both work from home a fair amount. We get to spend plenty of time with each other as a family and we’re certainly not working only for the sake of it.
That said, we are in the Netherlands, so depending on where you live things may be harder or even easier. In general I would say it is good to think about the kind of life you want to live, and the choice where you raise kids is an important one in that.
Where you raise kids isnt a choice for most people around here. Where you live isnt much of a choice. Most people cant afford to move, and if they miss two paychecks they just go homeless. If their paycheck is smaller than normal they go into debt that they can hopefully crawl out of in a month or so of eating as little as possible. Even if we got together enough money to move, that wouldnt help, because afaik i already live in the cheapest area in my entire country. To leave my country absolutely requires a plane ticket, and since I’m a natural born citizen whos parents lost their birth certificate, i have an extremely arduous process ahead of me for getting my passport. With the current regime, trying to prove my citizenship puts me at more risk currently than just lying low, so basically, I’m actually 100% stuck living where I currently am.
In a twisted way, im both better off and worse off than most people i know. Most people i know rely on government welfare(and rail against it), and they normally have a little bit more leeway to make risky ventures as a reault of having stable income not tied to a location. A bit like ubi. Meanwhile I make too much to be on govermental assistance, but my finances are stretched too thin for me to save money and tied to where I live. So to move would be to secure a new job at the same time as a new house, all while guaranteeing my income is 0 during the process, and I have no money to fall back on. In the “stuck” sense, ive got it worse than most around here. But I do make enough to eat without govermental assistance, so I’ll get to eat this month while most of my neighbors actually fucking starve to death in the middle of America because theres no food stamps for november.
Seriously, like, everyone be prepared. The rioting this month is going to be bad. I give it about a week into November when we start seeing people go fucking nuts.
My comment is from the perspective of a US slave
We don’t get much time at all to spend with our children, it’s common for people to not be close with their parents or even resentful from lack of interactions.
If I had a child I would need to get a 2nd job to pay for the $35k extra that it will cost, and the result will be me seeing them less and not getting to really be present in their lives.
When I was in mainland China, my parents used to sometimes leave me at home alone with my (older) brother, and my maternal grandmother would watch us, but sometimes she’d be unavailable, so me and my brother were kinda just left alone at home with no adult supervision. This happened until I was 8, and until my brother was like idk 13? And of course we fought a lot.
Then we came to the US, I was grade-school age, and my parents had to work long hours, so they can’t pick me up from school, and I wasn’t old enough to walk home by myself, and minors aren’t legally allowed to be home alone without adult supervision, so my parents just put me in after school programs run by a Chinese-American non-profit, so I effectively had 7AM to 6PM school days, I had zero friends, go bullied a lot, and it honestly felt like a prison, I was always the last one to get picked up, that was so depressing. The majority of the hours I was awake was at school, I think this experience sort of made me more introverted, you know, the “social battery” never got a break.
Childcare only fullfills basic legal requirements, doesn’t exactly solve the emotional needs of kids.
What I’m saying is: Work hours are too long and that’s a problem, since parents have zero chance to spend time with kids.
I still have problems with my relationship with parents to this day. I don’t think we were ever close. Same problem with my older brother.
I don’t know how people have normal relationships when long work hours tear family apart.
The part I hate the most is that shorter work hours have been proven to actually lead to an increase in productivity. It’s so likely that if you genuinely cared about productivity then the risk/reward of trying it would be the safest thing you’ll ever do in your career.
But we don’t do that, obviously. The only two conclusions are that we are either astronomically stupid or the cruelty is the point. There’s a fun third option which, honestly, is probably the reality and that’s a combination of the first two.
And we just let it all happen.
But but how would the shareholders make a profit if you didn’t?? Think of the ones in need!
Very true, those shares don’t hold themselves
It’s kinda funny. My partner and I literally couldn’t afford to do this and I had to be a stay at home parent for our oldest. He’s autistic and his special needs meant that daycare for him cost more than I could possibly reasonably make. Like this was back in 2016 before she became disabled herself and needed me available 24/7 but I would have needed to make like I think it was $17 an hour full time just to cover daycare and transportation? So since she had a way better work history than me being a few years older and having been a mid-level government employee back in her home state before she moved while I was just a 2 associate degree having IT grad it made much more sense for me to stay home.
I feel this so deeply, I think my bones are getting sore.
To set the scene: I live in the oldest, cheapest neighborhood in my town – among single family homes at least. We’re centrally located within walking distance of the elementary school. The town itself is well located too, and is growing like crazy and considered a fairly affluent area within the region.
Along with the cheap house, we have two cars both 10+ years old, and my wife is able to be a stay at home mom and help our family stay super involved in the community and the school. It is a pretty great setup, but one that I have been consciously working towards and making sacrifices to reach.
Watching other parents, it is both aggravating and heartbreaking to see how often people with their own young children are starting their day by anger-driving their brand new bulbous luxury SUVs through the school parking lot and on the nearby roads that kids use to walk to school.
It’s easy to blame the individuals, and certainly it’s in their best interests to work on their issues and goals and priorities any way they can. But we on Lemmy know that there are systemic financial and cultural forces constantly pushing people into the rat race lifestyle and telling them that earn + consume + daycare is the life that a good american strives for.
Speaking of the systemic issues that force people into the capitalist grinder, here is my unfortunate reality check:
What does it take to live that Homer Simpson existence of the working dad supporting his small family in a below-average home with some old cars that have been paid off for several years, while still having some pets and hobbies and occasional vacation?
I’m a middle-aged tech worker with three college degrees, living in the cheap neighborhood full of elderly people, blue collar working class folks, and rental homes with multiple adults sharing it. My car even has a broken windshield right now, lol.
Was homer simpson really in a ‘below-average home’ though? At least 3 bedrooms (bart, lisa, homer+marge at least had their own rooms, I can’t remember if maggie did), big kitchen, a dining room, living room, and a big back yard tell the story of a pretty decent home. Maybe if there was only one bathroom?
That’s why Frank Grimes called it “a palace”.
A 3 bedroom house in a suburban neighborhood in some random midwest area could be below the national median price for single family homes pretty easily, I bet.
My house is old and small, but it has 4 bedrooms and a level fenced-in back yard and is worth WAY less than the current median that’s up in the $400,000s.
It’s not the cause of all issues but car culture is a decent contributor. Incredibly inefficient, costly, bad for the environment and unsafe. Yet we continue to spread out the suburbs further and further and push walking and bikes into the gutters (literally).
Efficient profitability from a production unit. Economically that’s perfect, extracting the most from the system.
The system doesn’t care you’re human.
Yuo, it’s also entirely unaware of our mortality and wouldn’t care if it did.
It’s function is its purpose. We live in a human labour farm or “the world wide workhouse.”
I like working, I like coding and building systems, I like doing carpentry and building my food forest, I like cooking and making soaps. I like teaching my niece things and listening to her talk about what she’s learned about. I like caring for my family and my girlfriend.
I truly do dream of labor, but it’s not fucking possible to do it all by ourselves, and if one of these things took ALL of my time I’d fucking die, it WAS killing me to work that much tbh. Fuck the consumerist lifestyle brand bullshit. Its designed to leave you empty enough to want more to have you trade every last second for another empty fucking promise. Fuck ads, fuck Walmart, fuck Amazon, fuck gadgets and gizmos, and nic naks, and the “bigger” house, and the new car, fuck “luxury” that is just an empheral bag of hot air.
Every step I’ve taken to be able to just live my life has been worth. Fought for work from home, changed jobs just to keep it, now I can live near my family, and now can do chores and make food through out the day. Adblock, sponsor block, no radio, no magazines, burn junk ads as soon as get them, spam blocker on my phone. No Facebook, Twitter, etc. no any app designed to make you feel anxious to keep you on it, or to make you wish you had something. I’ve gotten my hand soap, body soap, conditionar dish soap, window cleaner, laundry soap, and softener all diyed from almost all stuff I can basically accidentally grow in my yard now. I make it for my friends and family too. I cook big things on the weekends with friends and split the meals up. Its fun and saves a ton of money. I have nearly all of my circle on Signal and Matrix now. I have a little homelab alliance going so far between us too.
Is my life perfect now? Fuck no, but again every step like this has been so much better than “retail therapy” where I work overtime for months on end to just be spiraling everywhere else.
If someone paid for people to stay home I’m sure they would. It’s not like it’s feasible to not have the job and still pay for the house and food.
In Germany we have Elterngeld for this. Mostly helps in the first year but it’s really nice to have it.
People also want food, clothes, electricity, entertainment, hobbies and vacations. Where is all this supposed to come if they don’t work?
those things don’t require a 9-5, 5 days a week for society to have.
How did you calculate that?
Because we produce excess wealth and resources with our current 9-5?
Not to mention all the studies showing how much productivity has increased or how employees are made to do tasks for the sake of looking busy.
Ok, so you’re taking about the 1% hording all the wealth. I guess you’re right. I remember some study listing what every person on earth could have in a sustainable world and it covered all the basic needs and more. For me the original tweet sounded like “people spend all their money on rent so with free housing they wouldn’t have to work” which ignores all the other needs I listed.
George Jetson only worked 2 hours a week, and he could support a family of four plus a robot maid. Today’s families have two people working two jobs with the same hours as 100 years ago, and they can’t afford to buy a house.
No free housing means you can pay for a quarter of your healthcare and maybe some groceries here and there
Because billionaires exist. Literally, that’s it. If you do the math and you distribute that out to everyone as their fair labor value, then yeah. People don’t need to work much at all to make society function.
Think about how much of your society is just advertising for some new bullshit finance scheme that only syphons money from the bottom up to the top? And they pay people to do it. An insane amount of the “work” done by people today does ABSOLUTELY nothing to benefit humanity. It’s busywork to make rich people richer.
Fun fact: our economy is based on the work of John Maynard Keynes, who predicted the high growth would allow us a 15-hour work week by now. Guess where that time is going instead?
It’s a fun fact and not a sad fact because we still got the technology anyways, so we can still get there in a matter of years if society makes better choices.
Uhh, their job?? The social contract was supposed to be that the workers specialize into specific fields, in exchange for these things. If the owners can’t support their end of the bargain, why should the workers give they’re effort away? This IS the peaceful outcome, if the system really can’t work that way what keeps the less-than-peaceful methods off the table?
You’re right, I don’t advocate people do no work at all.
Yes, but many people could downsize but they don’t want it. I see it every day, in Germany. People want second cars and what not and come to the conclusion that they have to work this much.
I’m in NZ, we are 2 working adults with 2 kids in daycare, living in a tiny 2 bedroom place. We cook everything from scratch, rice/beans/lentils/potatoes/etc. We scrape by, but we’re one accident away from destitute. We can’t downsize any more, it’s a lot harder out there for some than many realise
I’m in a situation now. For a decade I got by on “just a little bit more than the bare minimum” - cue a regime change from social to conservative, and I struggle. That’s all it takes.
Yes, you’re not alone, so many people are experiencing this and it’s awful. But there’s also a large chunk of the population in the first world that doesn’t. Absurd amounts of German parents stay in their large houses once the kids move out, only to just not use a couple of rooms. Stuff like that.
This sounds an awful lot like avocado toast
Because it is. Downsizing doesn’t work if your next downsize is living on the streets.
Avocado toast is cheap. What isn’t is how much money my coworkers spend on vacations multiple times per year etc. Like multi thousand euro vacations. Just like with 2 cars, it’s a choice that makes you work so much and mostly makes you more dependent and pliable in your current workplace.
I can confirm from my own family and general observation - poverty for them means “below a certain threshold of wealth”, not being able to maintain a certain status quo. And they fear it like actual hunger.
That’s largely propaganda. Consumerism is rampant.
we are effectively batteries for billionaires
