Funkstain wrote:Just to address the point about pay https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/30/we-have-to-fight-for-these-conditions-why-danish-meat-plant-workers-are-europes-best-paid Unions and workers securing good pay for hard, undesirable jobs. These jobs need to be done, but should be well paid. Is that so tough to do?
davyK wrote:We want too much stuff. The idea of having stuff equalling fulfillment is perhaps the greatest con ever pulled. Even our billionaires, those who run it, are slaves to it. They are the hollowest of us all. You can never have enough of what you don't need.
Just to pick up on one thing, I think the whole concept of 'contributing to society' is worth unpicking here.RedDave2 wrote:Further to Funks points about why should someone born lazy suffer compared to someone who works hard. I'm not sure if I'm reading this right but if the concept is that Society should carry those who just dont want to than I dont agree. I dont think its healthy for society or the individual. I think you can allow not everyone to work as hard, but everyone should be made to contribute to a society for it to function. If we take away the current model of jobs and everyone still had reasonable resources, I would still argue the point that allowing someone to think it ok to just stagnate and use up resources is a broken concept.
RedDave2 wrote:I appreciate when it comes to work, I'm a glass half full person. Some are a glass half empty. Others maybe rightly realise the glass is distracting us from the real issue. Anyway, I've worked shit pay jobs, overtime, 7 days a week etc. I always (and still do) view this type of work as working towards my goals and not work as is. When I needed to put together a deposit for my first apartment I worked 3 jobs because I really wanted that apartment. I viewed it as sacrifice to get to my goal. This is how I view all work in general.
I'd completely agree with the above Jon - contribution to society does not and should not equal monetary value all the time - be it a consumer spend leading to VAT or income tax etc. I was just making the point that even if we take away the concept of "working for a living" I still would argue against some being allowed to be lazy and contribute nothing. That something can be any variety of things.JonB wrote:Just to pick up on one thing, I think the whole concept of 'contributing to society' is worth unpicking here. It often feels like social contribution, and our sense of value as individuals, is reduced to how much income tax we pay. But other than income tax, what do a lot of jobs actually contribute? Many of them cause pollution and use up limited environmental resources to offer superficial services or luxury goods. Plenty of people are miserable in part because they feel their jobs are actually pointless. Other jobs, e.g. in finance, exist purely to make certain people wealthier at the expense of others. How do any of those jobs compare to, say, someone who's unemployed but volunteers to do some sort of community or charity work? Who is contributing more? Now, imagine if the economy could change to free more people from pointless work, and imagine that we were encouraged to help out with local projects more instead. Or what if the unemployed were asked to participate in regeneration projects rather than spend their days on soul-sapping hunts for meaningless jobs? Is society carrying the people not doing paid work? Or is society carrying the people doing unnecessary work that causes pollution and inequality? I suppose my whole point at the start was that we need to break this ideological connection we have between (hard) paid work and the idea of contributing to or being a valuable member of society. That's what any progressive political party should be doing, more so in this century, given the incredible inequality we have these days, the environmental issues linked to overproduction (too much work), and the gradual shift towards automation.RedDave2 wrote:Further to Funks points about why should someone born lazy suffer compared to someone who works hard. I'm not sure if I'm reading this right but if the concept is that Society should carry those who just dont want to than I dont agree. I dont think its healthy for society or the individual. I think you can allow not everyone to work as hard, but everyone should be made to contribute to a society for it to function. If we take away the current model of jobs and everyone still had reasonable resources, I would still argue the point that allowing someone to think it ok to just stagnate and use up resources is a broken concept.
b0r1s wrote:While I appreciate this viewpoint, I too have done a load of "shit" jobs, whatever that means (for me it's stuff I didn't want to do, working rather than a career), for 10 years after I left school. And now I have a great job/career. Was it due to hard work? Well, I took a chance, I quit my last job as team leader in a factory and risked savings on a web design course. I worked hard to pass the course quickly and then started applying for web design jobs. But here's the kicker... I got lucky. I had applied for loads of web design jobs, no experience, nearly 30 years old and I got lucky because the IT Director employed me for whatever reason (my portfolio at the time was made up of tiny website projects) and the marketing manager was on annual leave. She came back and months later told me if she wouldn't have even interviewed me. Working hard, as hard as you possibly can to achieve your goals, doesn't correlate with ending up doing what you dream of doing. You're either born into it or you get lucky imo.RedDave2 wrote:I appreciate when it comes to work, I'm a glass half full person. Some are a glass half empty. Others maybe rightly realise the glass is distracting us from the real issue. Anyway, I've worked shit pay jobs, overtime, 7 days a week etc. I always (and still do) view this type of work as working towards my goals and not work as is. When I needed to put together a deposit for my first apartment I worked 3 jobs because I really wanted that apartment. I viewed it as sacrifice to get to my goal. This is how I view all work in general.
Yossarian wrote:That’s true, but many people lack that ability to be proactive for whatever reason, potentially owing to current circumstances, or potentially due to being wired differently to you. Expecting them to be proactive is like expecting someone without legs to become a high jumper. There’s also a danger in branding that those who don’t contribute to society lazy in some way. Many will never be able to contribute to society owing to their personal situations, sometimes this will even occur in people who might outwardly seem like they aren’t struggling.
None of this is simple so I'm only making one narrow point here. But it sounds like you rolled the dice a load of times and eventually got the six you needed. You may have been 'unlucky' on previous attempts. You still rolled the dice loads until you got the breakthrough. And if it hadn't been then, it would have been later as, I imagine, you'd have kept at it until you got there. Or taken something else and kept at it out of work. I don't know.b0r1s wrote:I got lucky. I had applied for loads of web design jobs
I think you maybe misunderstood me. I'm not saying everyones job will lead to their dream job - I'm saying it can be seen as getting to your next goal. Its absolutely true that there are only so many Top spots and this is a problem both in terms of the limited number and maybe more importantly the amount those top spots suck up in terms of the total wage bill. The overpaid American CEO is possibly the best example of this. So the issue we come back to is that the "shit jobs" under pay. This is trickier to get by but maybe this is where the top lot get taxed more and the bottom pay rate gets subsidised (as stated, not every company can afford to match the output of an Amzon or Tesco so paying a high minimum wage isnt doing any good). But the next issue is how many of us would work a cleaners job if it paid more per hour than what you are currently getting? Lets say 20% more - how many of you would take the trade?DrewMerson wrote:While it may be true that any individual person has the potential to make it to (and in) their dream job, it’s not even remotely true to suggest that everyone who wants to can. There’s only room for a limited number of chefs, videogame journalists, architects, or whatever and, barring very occasional, time-limited exceptions, there are more people who want them than can ever make it. While it may be admirable for some to say that they just viewed the shit jobs as stepping stones, it’s not possible for that to be everyone’s view. The world needs too many cleaners, check-out assistants and bar staff for them to be done exclusively by people who are passing through to better things.
equinox_code wrote:I don’t even need to ‘succeed’, but getting by shouldn’t be this hard. When I think about how much of other people’s labour I consume I’m quite sure the amount is exceptionally low. Even when I was employed I very seldom bought stuff. I drink a handful of mass produced drinks every now and then on a night out, and I’d be surprised if the food I ate was particularly labour intensive, so I don’t see any reason for such a lifestyle should require a 40 hour working week. This level of comfort could surely be afforded on half a day of work. But even if success was the goal, with so many skills either behind a paywall or contingent upon having plenty of free time/spare hours, dedicating one’s life to rolling dice with an indeterminate number of faces over and over and over isn’t all that appealing, not least when so many others seem to just be flipping coins.
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