Is there anything you'd be willing to fight a war for?

[pbrower2a]

(11-06-2022, 03:35 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(11-04-2022, 10:03 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-03-2022, 10:08 PM)JasonBlack Wrote: I am a retail worker, live alone and pay all my own bills, so I am about as close to your definition of a "slave" as you can get. Let's take a look at what this "slave" salary can get me

- I eat a relatively healthy diet
- I drink a variety of high quality teas every day
- I have enough money for occasional car maintenance/repairs as needed
- I visit state and national parks up in the mountains 1-4 times a month
- I have a gym membership
- I have a fairly large TV, a netflix account and several video game systems
- I buy (audio) books like it's going out of style
- I have consistent food and shelter
- I don't have to deal with particularly abusive people

...and with all this, I can still save about $200 a month without having to be insanely frugal. Point is: if you compare me to about 90% of the world's population, I have a very good life. I am not, never have been, and never will be a fucking "slave". There are plenty of people in the US who are poorer than me and have far harder lives than I do. I even support a good number of policies that would improve working conditions for several occupations and have mixed opinions on things like socialized healthcare. My point is that job and income alone are not a good indicator of if someone is a "slave", and that in spite of my on-paper "low status", I have nothing to be resentful for.

PS: I actually have two jobs. My second is as a professional prop trader, but as I'm reinvesting all my profits and have yet to pay myself, it's actually costing me more than it's making me at present, so, if anything, it only furthers my point.

Retail work is generally the lowest-paying work available. It is unskilled, and not intellectually demanding. If anything, I have observed (I did such work upon graduation from college) that the stupider that one is, the happier one can be if one does it. People who don't fit the pattern of the "Dullard at Dillard's" (a horrid employer that insisted that its retail clerks do cut-throat compete with each other for small privileges) in which people do that work as an alternative to factory work, domestic service, or clerking in an office. People who said things like :I don't want to be a secretary" did exactly that within six months of working at Dillard's. Or if they said that of factory work -- such is what they ended up doing.  Such was more demanding intellectually or physically, and that horrid company ended up with lots of "Sad Sack" types.  Dillard's hasn't changed much since I was there forty years ago, and it got recognition as one of the Ten Worst Companies to Work For several years ago. Ferocious competition is what one expects in pure selling; sales at a certain level pays more than any other activity for the same level of intellectual competence and work ethic for anyone without an extreme specialization such as a skilled trade, creative activity, or such professions as law, engineering, and medicine. The only good thing about working there was that I got to learn old-fashioned salesmanship, something not taught in college. I found that highly useful as a substitute teacher (I had the wrong college degree, and I love working on children's minds to a desirable end), and more often more useful than anything that I learned while in college classes.

If it is a choice between some illicit activity, hunger, or homelessness (you can share a slum apartment or a run-down trailer with others), then a company like Dillard's isn't all bad. But know that management sees every one of its workers as a lazy moocher who would steal if the opportunity arose. You will be expected to dress like an executive, which is good practice for a responsible position that pays more and does not have an ethos in which all the rules seem to begin with "Suffer for!" 

I see a pattern in at least one  retailer. It seems a dreary place to work, and I see its workers going out for smoking breaks. Smoking is a costly waste of meager income and personal health, but it is one good way that one does not end up a destitute old person because one will die before any mandatory age of retirement. Heck, if I were making a million dollars a year I would consider smoking a pointless waste of money and health. If such is one's sole joy in life, then one is in trouble. 

OK, one can live sort-of-OK (sharing an awful apartment or trailer if one isn't living with parents). It is a good idea to

1. avoid junk food altogether. I am on disability and get food aid, and I can have a reasonably-good and varied diet if I stay away from chips, cookies, pastries, candies, fake fruit drinks, and sodas. All of those offer little nutritive value, but the sugar-and-saturated fats "high" is relatively low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs.  They all contribute to obesity. Alcoholic beverages do not qualify for food aid, and I rarely get those. I'm not a scratch cook, so I don't make my own lasagna. 

I have my suggestion for SNAP: disqualify chips, cookies, pastries, candies, fake fruit drinks, and sodas as eligible items but instead offer eligibility for toilet paper, soap, and detergents that are just as necessary. Issue a cookbook, and require anyone getting food aid to participate in community-college courses in cooking and nutrition. Learn to make your own lasagna; this can be a matter of pride. 

2. Better teas than sodas. They are actually cheaper than sodas. 

3. Encourage the use of dial-a-ride services for local travel, as to general merchandisers in box stores or to the gym. 

4. If you live in a hick town you will need a car. If you live in a ghetto-like slum and need to commute to the suburbs for the fast-food and retail jobs that the local kids abandon once they get something else, you will need a car to do shift work. Ideally one is paid well enough to do this. 

One morning I was in greater Detroit to drop someone off at an airport. I figured that the drive back would be the opposite direction of commute traffic of white suburbanites headed to the few well-paying jobs downtown. I saw myself in heavy traffic going the opposite direction, and most of the people traveling in my direction were black. They were in an opposite flow almost as heavy as the expected suburban-to-core city flow long stereotyped in America. I had no cause to believe that blacks dominated late-shift work in factories. The service and retailing jobs are in the suburbs.  Such work still has poverty as an employee perquisite, but it is more remunerative than welfare and easier to get. 

5. I know places to go. I live in a farming area, and except for weather at its rawest, little could be more unnatural than farmland. New York City has Central Park; Boston has Boston Commons; Chicago has its lakeshore; all three cities need those or they would be unlivable. "Scary, Indiana" seems to have been built without them, and it shows. The South Side of Chicago seems to lack this, and it shows. I avoid both. 

A trip to a zoo, a museum of almost any kind (art, natural science, technology, history, ethnic heritage), or a symphony concert or opera is often a lasting experience. I'll pass on casinos which offer banks of slot machines that offer a mysterious return from what seem like gussied-up soft-drink machines. It's the memories that matter. 

I have been to Yosemite National Park, Isle Royale National Park, Petrified Forest National Park, Mammoth Cave National Park, Indiana Dunes National Park, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. All memorable. I can make plugs for Tahquamenon State Park and Pictured Rocks in Michigan, and quite a few state parks in California (redwoods and seashore). All are memorable. I have been to the main art museums in Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, and Toledo. 

I have yet to hear the Chicago Symphony, Detroit Symphony, or Cleveland Orchestra live, but I have heard the San Francisco and Dallas Symphonies.  

6. The senior center near me has exercise machines. I am too old to do running (I have always gotten winded easily) but I can certainly work out on an exercise bike. 

7. A "small" television that one does not use simply as a computer monitor has about a 32" diagonal screen, and one of those is available for about $150 at "Wally World", and it has built-in access to Roku, Netflix, YouTube, and other such services. Do you know anyone who still watches a 19" TV with a CRT screen?   

8. Recorded books are for the blind (I do not use the PC equivalent) or for use while taking a long drive. Otherwise -- just borrow books from the library.  

9. People should not be priced into destitution. If you do honest work, then any work should afford some privacy without gnawing boredom. 

10. Consider yourself lucky. Some work environments are themselves abusive (think of retailing). If you have trustworthy family members and can avoid dealings with sociopathic relatives (I know two certifiable sociopaths and avoid them. One did a huge embezzlement of his employer. Another schmoozes people in the public sector to buy overpriced stuff or services by losing consistently at golf). 

Poverty seems to concentrate bad people due to poor work habits or overall dishonesty too dangerous for paid work. It also exposes one to the reality of an economic hierarchy that supposedly creates prosperity in the presence of gross deprivation. We have people living like sultans and people living as if they were in Hell-holes of the Third World. A city like Chicago is part Dubai and part Caracas. Poverty of experiences is a mark of a lack of education and imagination. Give up the bad habits (if you have them), and you can get some good experiences as alternatives. 

I would prefer that we were more like Copenhagen as a whole (and this is clearly not an ethnic swipe).

Part Dubai and part Caracas. That sounds like it sums up most large American cities. A central business/historic district where one would have to be a millionaire to live in with its tree-lined streets, loads of tourist attractions, new architecture, clean streets, waterways, an engaged/joyful populace, etc, vs residential neighbourhoods with housing that is falling apart, shootings every day, few trees & parks, and people who are sad/angry/bored a lot.

I have my suggestion on education. It would frustrate the ends of people who seek to profiteer off human suffering. I'm not going to say "F-- 'em"... they enjoy plenty of sex, if highly exploitative use of others for sexual gratification. Just think of Donald Trump. Tough! We can have a sustainable society or one damned to disintegrate in war or revolution, if not to bring about the destruction of civilization (if not Humanity itself) in some apocalyptic war.  

For dealing with the sophisticated liars and cheats (including PR types selling Hard Right ideology in the service of an order in which the super-rich alone have commanding power over everyone else to the extent of the power to decide life and death) we need more education, the sort of liberal arts education that used to define the "educated Man" (OK, woman as well). I can suggest a syllabus that includes Freshman composition (so that people can do coherent reports and create coherent material of dissidence if necessary), economics (how the economy works on both the small and large scale), philosophy (ethics and formal logic), psychology (to avoid getting manipulated), comparative political systems (if it acts like fascism then it probably is), and statistics and probability. We also need to know how better to use our time and money, so I suggest appreciation of music, art, and cinema. You might think of other essential material, but it is unlikely that you can reject what I suggest. You are welcome to add. Heck, I am convinced that being a good cook is one way in which to improve the quality of life. 

 Will this ensure middle-class lives for the graduates? No -- but it would make better shop stewards in factories.  Most importantly we would be more capable of rejecting Donald Trump and figures likely to adopt much of his agenda which I see as the destruction of liberal democracy in behalf of a nightmare of hierarchy, repression, and inequality -- a vile trinity if there ever was one.