I think this has far more to do with changes in technology than it does with changes in society. I’ll never win a “strongest man” competition, but as a reasonably bright guy I feel lucky to be alive in an age where knowledge workers face attractive job prospects and can make a good living. If I was born 100 years ago, I’d surely still be a part of the lower middle class (or perhaps poor) that I was born into.
Yet said employees leave for somewhere at the end of their shifts, and find their way back to work on time the next day, seemingly having slept and showered somewhere. I demand an investigation of this conundrum!
Okay, everybody. This OP really needs to be seen in the context of Yakuza’s other recent threads, over in IMHO, and from the above remarks, I’m guessing that some of you haven’t seen all those. For example, he is definitely NOT a “textbook rich Westerner whining” as nudgenudge suspects. Dissonance, just above, clearly hasn’t read Yakuza’s life story. We’ve been asking him where he sleeps, showers, and shaves. We know that he slept (until recently) at some 24-hour store. He hasn’t answered the other questions.
In this thread he tells us that he earns about $800/mo and spends about $300-$400 of that on “escorts” – the bulk of the thread being to defend his choice to do that, even at the cost of being homeless. IIRC, he also mentions that he went to college but did poorly and didn’t last long there.
In this thread he discusses in more detail his choice to be homeless, and why he is happy and comfortable with that. (To clarify, by “wilderness” he means “urban wilderness”, i.e., he’s homeless.) He mentions in a few places that he’s been sleeping at some 24-hour convenience store where they’ve been willing to put up with that. This seems inconsistent with his complaint in the OP above.
BUT… In this thread, started later on the same day as the current thread, he tells us that the 24-hour store has invited him to find other accomodations. So, it’s back to sleeping in the park for Mr. Yakuza. That would seem to explain why he’s suddenly not so comfortable with his financial situation. Unfortunately, moderator Idle Thoughts quickly shut down that thread, so I guess we won’t get to hear much more about it.
Just thought I’d point that out, because it really does seem to give some important context here.
Buck Godot sez: "A first step would be to teach the childrn 2 spell the word “to”. "
Mosier sez: “I knew you were a troll with the numbers thing! Now that the curtain’s been pulled back, cut it out, dope!”
Marley23 sez: “Yakuza, I’m giving you an official instruction here. If you’re going to post in Great Debates, make the effort to spell out the word “to” correctly.”
FinnAgain sez: “I’m glad 4 that ruling.”
As for his txt-spel… Hey, cut him some slack, he’s getting better! Why, in his OP here, note that at least he’s spelling out the word “for” now! [del] 9 [/del] nine times in the OP, by my count! Little by little, he’s getting into the swing of things.
ETA: I’m in a hurry to post this, before they shut down this thread too!
In a free market society, income is distributed among the owners of skilled and unskilled labor, land and capital. If the wealth contained in land and capital exceeds the wealth represented by labor, then, in a free market, total rents will exceed total wages. Capital, of course, takes many forms: the Copyright on Winnie-the-Pooh is even a form of capital wealth.
If the value of a skilled laborer is ten times the value of an unskilled laborer, then we should expect, in a free market, that the former will earn ten times the wage of the latter.
The preceding two paragraphs may seem too obvious to mention, yet their consequences are consistently overlooked today. Many centuries ago, most labor was unskilled and one of the larger forms of capital wealth were the tools of a skilled workman, or the horse and armor of a knight. The knights and skilled workers led much better lives than unskilled laborers, yet still enough of the economy’s wealth was represented by unskilled labor that there was general subsistence.
But today, so much of society’s wealth takes the forms of land, capital, and special skills, that unskilled labor simply doesn’t pay well. Left-wingers try to compensate with minimum wage laws, etc. Right-wingers rejoice in the destruction of the “uneconomic.” To expect charity or “morality” to bridge the gap is over-optimistic.
Are you sirius? No, siriusly!!
Might I point out that if you are a US citizen, have a GED or high school diploma, and a reasonably clean police record and are in good health and essentially under 30, you an enlist in the military. You get paid, room, board and a uniform allowance. You never have to worry about what you will be wearing to work, nor what you will be doing as your command structure will inform you. If you put away $100 a month your entire career and deposit into the education fund you will have a nest egg, and money for college when you get out, and you can take college courses while in for pretty much the cost of the books. Unless you fuck up really badly you can not be fired, and you have full medical, dental and optical while you are in. If you stick it for the full 20 years, you get half your final base pay as retirement pay, plus other possible benefits depending on your enlistment contract. I will also point out that only a fairly small percent of the entire population of the military ends up in a war zone [unless it is something like WW2… even in Vietnam era, less than a quarter of the military ended up at the pointy end of the stick. YMMV - but I will point out that there are certain MOS that pretty much never get to a war zone.]
Addressing income inequality is ‘supposedly’ becoming a more important issue globally. Nations in Asia, latin america and north america are seeing the negative effects of intense income inequality. Not just between the super rich and the poor but also between the professional class and the poor.
I don’t know what their method is to deal with it though. I assume progressive taxes and new regulations that give more power and wealth to the lower class (unions, consumer protections, social safety nets, etc).
Some manufacturing employees in China may make $300 a month and they save $200 of it. But they probably don’t have health care, and they have crowded housing, and they don’t have cars, and they eat a lot of basic staple foods. Plus their jobs tend to offer shelter and a lot of their food. But people save money even on those incomes (which globally, $300 a month is about the entry level of the global middle class which is an income of 5-25k a year).
The struggle for financial comfort will stop when the last dog dies. “In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread” is in the Bible, and there are more than enough powerful people and institutions willing to impose that upon the rest of us as reality.