07-08-2019, 02:05 PM
(07-08-2019, 08:16 AM)beechnut79 Wrote:(03-27-2019, 07:50 PM)sbarrera Wrote: I'm a contractor with no benefits, therefore in the "gig" economy. I try to save money and take vacations when I can, though it might be tough this year. I'm not sure how "traditional" a job with benefits is - did they have them 100 years ago? I thought that kind of job was a temporary phenomenon that benefited a few generations only - the GIs, the Silents, and early-wave Boomers.
I thought that kind of job was a temporary phenomenon that benefited a few generations only - the GIs, the Silents, and early-wave Boomers.
Obviously true, but this is still being held up as the gold standard for what an economy should be, and probably will continue to do so as long as there are folks alive who remember this model, even if only children at the time who didn't need to worry whether Daddy would come home one day and no longer have a job. I am sure there were some folks who felt that this is what Trump meant when he campaigned on the theme of "Make America Great Again". I have chosen to withhold judgment as to whether or not this is what he meant.
Paradoxically the gig economy would create plenty of opportunity for enriching vacations -- if the gigs paid well. The gigs are now for ill-paid labor, and people who do such work never get enough funds for enjoying a predictable break. So the time between jobs is a grim struggle to get the next one before one's resources run out.
So let us suppose that one4 does some well-paying work (even if it is certifiably miserable) as a means for getting a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Maybe construction work or farm labor is nastier than glorified clerical work. Maybe it should be better rewarded.
OK, real power in vile social orders comes not from doing good for people but instead in enforcing fear, pain and suffering -- including poverty. Now knowing poverty, I hate life and unless things change I have nothing to look forward to but either reincarnation or an afterlife. One sign of nastiness in a society is that for any semblance of happiness unless one is not part of the economic elite is that one must be stupid or ignorant. If Ronald Reagan took us in baby steps in that direction, Donald Trump takes us in giant leaps.
"Male America Great Again" -- sure... it is all a monstrous fraud.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.