The Coronavirus

[beechnut79]

(07-20-2021, 06:15 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I already see a huge difference in the economy: Big Business seems to be seeking industrial labor again, offering pay much higher than I recently remember. Super-cheap labor, a pattern of the neoliberal era, may be at an end.

If anyone thinks that people get treated better because they are overworked and underpaid -- think again. Economic exploitation entrenches itself with the exploiters finding ways to make it sting all the more and make it harder to escape. The workers recruited are, I presume, young ones. Maybe we will see some of America's best and brightest do this before matriculating in college.  Someone who has done real work before attending college may think differently about the proletariat if he has ever been part of it. Those who have never done such work might see proles as expendable people whose happiness is never a legitimate objective in life and may see anyone who has ever endured hardship to be flawed for such.. and untrustworthy.

The exploitation you mention has made it difficult for many folks just to carve out some time to play. Spending time with friends, engaging in meaningful hobbies. Celebration, love, joy--it all takes a back seat because the need to constantly be working leaves little or no time to bask in it. Have pointed out many times that the need for so many to work two or even three jobs just to get by made liars out of so many futurists who once heralded the coming of a leisure oriented world. In one piece I read it was said that there is a holding pattern in these folks' lives that make their only hope of escape a huge stroke of luck, such as a big lottery win. In the story they were referred to as Generation LIMBO. In caps because I was able to create the perfect acronym for the situation: Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.