I’m shocked more people don’t realize this. There is absolutely nothing broken with the system. It’s working exactly as intended. The suffering of the lower classes is the desired outcome. If we’re too tired, desperate for enough resources to survive, and too afraid, we won’t be able to stand up for ourselves and demand something better.
And unfortunately it’s working spectacularly.
also keeping your population complacent, they wont riot or protest in any unified manner. thats why tiktok, enough wages/jobs, youtube, streamers. also to add in a little cultural wars as distraction in case the other doesnt work usually does the trick. it is the reason why the tech ceos, own children are kept away from social media, they dont want thier own children to be brainrotted.
There aren’t enough workers per retiree anymore. That’s why publicly traded companies have to do nasty things to keep their stock prices growing for said retirees. Remember, retirement funds are usually based on stock indexes, not bonds which are super slow growth.
We’ve been living in a system predicated on infinite growth. The old can retire because there are so many young people working. Now people live longer than ever (on average; not individually) and are having fewer kids than ever. Naturally the workers need to be exploited if the old people want to retire.
Migrants would actually be beneficial because they make the economy grow again.
And when people do stand up to ask for EVERYONE to receive what they should be given for their work, fare wages, affordable healthcare, half the nation screams at them, threatens to run them over, and says they must not have jobs because they can protest on a Saturday. They’re doing the work for the wealthy for free, busting up worker rights movements as a hobby, just to keep themselves poor and sick.
“Don’t criticize my scab labour importation policy, that’s just like racism” this is bait
You seem to miss the overall point of the picture.
It is bosses, not immigrants, who drive down wages. And boy they have plenty to spare a lot of the time.
They’d just rather have you focused on immigrants instead of the actual people who exploit desperation of migrants and remove any of their worker protections to make this possible
I feel like the law is the problem if a system allows for the exploitation of the desperation of migrants and remove any of their worker protections to make this possible.
People are trying to maximize currency because this is how we measure success nowadays (the same metric which says Pablo Escober nr1, good job.) What’s should a small business owner do? Not hire the cheapest LEGAL avaible worker?
Or are we blaming the “bosses” who has enough money to lobby only? Or are we blaming the system (too abstract to act on)?
The law is, first and foremost, a way to keep shitty people at bay. It’s still people who are the problem, but since we can’t just agree to all be kind to each other, we have to invent ways to either sanction or use violence (note: that includes police) against those who make things worse for everyone else. We need laws, but they are incomplete solutions, not source of the problem. And sometimes they can be weaponized exactly by the individuals we’d rather put the law against.
The blame here is on all bosses who can afford to pay their workers decent wages, but don’t. And - personal opinion incoming - if your small business can’t employ people for decent wages, it’s already financially unsustainable, you just put it on the shoulder of your workers and add insult to injury by trying to also take something for yourself. Should the state do more to support small businesses, to make sure they can pay good wages and be sustainable at the same time? Yes. Is being a small business an excuse to abuse workers? No.
That’s why there are things like minimum wages. Businesses must respond to their workers.
I capitalized LEGAL in my comment because if it’s legal, it’s legal (I’m not condoning it since slavery was legal once).
Culture wants profits. You are a sucker if you don’t it. You are evil if you do it. I have a problem with this spreading culture and its laws about work. I’m from a developing country (not residing there though) and all the “free help, sharing is caring etc” stuff is gone now. It’s all money.
Are we living in the same reality where we (society) teach 18 years old students how to distill people into numbers so you can apply data science to it (i.e. business school)? It’s paid by public tax, completely seen as prestigious? Culture demands returns!
And interested people drive the culture in this direction. They separate us, shove us algorithms and influence public opinion to make this insanity look normal.
It is culture, sure. The culture manufactured to serve the interest of the few. But us talking here is culture, too. And that’s why we share opinions in the first place. We can drive the culture against those who use it to exploit us.
Bruh, it’s never the scabs who are the real problem.
Marx to Kugelmann, 1870:
The average English worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers wages and the standard of life. […] He regards him practically in the same way the poor whites in the southern states of North America regard the black slaves. This antagonism between the proletarians in England is artificially nourished and kept alive by the bourgeoisie. It knows that this split is the true secret of maintaining its power. […] Finally, England today is seeing a repetition of what happened on a gigantic scale in ancient Rome. A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.
A nation that enslaves another forges its own chains.
The reason why Americans don’t do anything. The United States is the modern English empire.
Time is a flat circle. History repeats and rhymes because the constant is humanity.
The constant is imperialism and class. We have technically been without both for most of the time modern homo sapiens have been around.
Often times it’s your boss’ boss’ boss.
This isn’t quite how it works. Generally in medium to large businesses - meaning at least a billion a year in annual revenue - oftentimes how it works is a given business unit (BU) will be given a budget. This is usually based on analysis and projections based on the previous fiscal years as well as projections on growth goals.
The VP of that BU will need to spread that budget across their unit as best they can. This will include everything from promotions to new hires. Keep in mind that it could cost a business $160 an hour to hire one full time employee who only makes $50 an hour, all things depending. In many roles, it can take a year or more to get a new hire up to speed in their new role. At $160 an hour, that’s $332,800 against your budget and that first year will not recoup 100% of the potential output of that new hire who will likely not be putting out their fullest until around a year or more, so you’re looking at what more or less accounts to over a quarter of a million just to train a new employee for one year so they can start putting out the same level of work as someone of their level should be.
Then consider if you’re an international company. The business I work for for example is in 60 different countries. All of those countries have different regulatory practices that require a lot out of the HR business unit(s). Some countries have regulatory requirements that force the business to utilize software that can account for those regulations that cost millions annually and aren’t even very good, but there isn’t a good alternative, so it’s either pay that or fall out of compliance, which is not really a viable strategy.
If you have 100 employees in your unit and you want to give them all a 3% annual raise but you’re not given a larger budget unless you grow that side of the business (in other words, you self fund), then where are you getting that revenue stream from?
In many cases you have to set up projects yourself from the top-down, such as requesting from your directors that they begin brainstorming ways to generate revenue. This could be through efficiencies, for example. If you were a director in HR for example, maybe you want to take a look at your team’s processes and see what could be automated. That project alone requires expertise, and those kinds of analysts aren’t cheap. Then you need engineers to perform the automation, which are also not cheap, and you need a surefire return on investment there because the end goal might be to free up 25% of your team’s labor through automation of their current processes, but you may not see a return on investment for 2 years, then by the third year the return isn’t even enough to hire an additional 3 people, let alone give an entire team of 100 a 3% raise.
So you might argue then, “well why can’t the business just give that BU a larger budget?” And there are a few answers. I won’t list them all here, but some examples would be is there something your team could be doing to increase their value to warrant taking budget from elsewhere to funnel into your team? Or every year is it just expected that 3% of the budget go into the employees without an ounce of those employees providing any additional value? To seriously simplify, if the business makes $100 and they pay $50 to their employees and $30 to their shareholders and $20 is reinvested in the company, why should the business pay the employees 60%? HOW do they pay them 60%? They have to take it from the shareholders or the reinvestment, and take too much from the reinvestment and your competition will put you out of business, and take too much from the shareholders and they will invest with your competitors - see the problem?
Many employees don’t understand that they have to increase their perceived value to warrant more, and few do.
I have worked as an exec in a division of a multi billion dollar business, and in many a startup.
Often times it’s your boss’ boss’ boss.
I read all of this. Thanks for writing it all up from your experience.
That said…geeze if it’s so awfully expensive to take such a huge risk on employees…can I just get affordable and adequate education so I can do my own thing instead of being part of a “business unit” forever trying to increase my Sisyphian “perceived value” to infinite heights until I expire?
That’d be cool. Because the business unit “starved rats eating each other in a cage for budget money thing” sounds pretty awful.
I’ve never been paid $50 an hour for anything though. (I know, not with that attitude, right? Lol) Maybe it starts to feel worth it at that point?
Maybe I’m just naive and behind though. I still can’t understand why people accept “salary” to basically be owned by their boss/corpo, especially in the U.S.
Can be called in any time and never get overtime? That very idea sounds like a way to sidestep labor rights to me.
I’ve heard of fabled lands far away where the relationship is far less antagonistic and employers value and take care of their employees who, in turn, genuinely enjoy striving for their workplace’s success. . .but here? Ha. Maybe in those fun days where joining a tech giant made you 250k a year or something.
I’ve actually fought my entire life against the “game” of business. I don’t like the lingo, I don’t like the corporate nonsense, and I don’t like how business in general is conducted. I mostly work by myself. I’ve simply learned some skills that let me produce value for businesses so they want to give me a paycheck, but even then it’s always an ongoing challenge because anyone can be removed from a role at any time and for any reason.
Oh cry me a river. Large companies are profitable enough, and it does not take one year to get an employee up to speed. The fact that the BU unit’s budget is so limited is because the money is flowing to the investors, that’s all. And that’s your boss’ boss’ boss.
I work high up in large business, so I know how it works.
Let’s say you’re correct, so what? Let’s say I have $10,000 to invest. I notice that the electronics sector is a good place to invest based upon recent trends, so I want to invest there. I do some research and conclude I will either invest in Apple, or Samsung.
If I choose Apple and they give me a 5% return on investment but Samsung gives me 8%, I will invest with Samsung. My money isn’t a charity, it’s an investment.
I am relying on the company to do the best job that they can to provide me with a return on my investment because I would actually LOSE money on my investment, and if I keep losing money, that would be quite irrational of me to keep investing, wouldn’t it?
And if Samsung ends up getting 70% of the investment and Apple only 30%, Apple is going to go out of business, and it should. This would fundamentally mean that Samsung is the superior business in that sector and Apple is doing so poorly that it should not exist.
Investors by the way do not obtain a fixed percentage of profit from a company’s income statement. What they receive depends on a myriad of things like earnings through dividends, equity appreciation, interest rates, type of investments, etc.
Publicly traded companies have benefits over private. They for instance, can produce large amounts of money through selling stock or bond issuing, and shareholders being able to easily buy/sell shares gives good data on company value. Private businesses on the other hand often have more limit on raising funds, so it can make it very challenging, if not impossible, for private companies in some sectors to compete with publicly traded ones. Keep in mind it’s also more complicated than that.
I can give you an example from my business life as well. About 5 years ago a mid-market business (let’s just say around 5 billion in annual revenue) was bought by a private equity firm. The reason was the business was failing. If not for private equity, the business likely would have died.
Through private equity and their investor base, the business is still afloat and doing even better. Private equity was able to invest in the business to make it more profitable, but they don’t want to do that with nothing to gain. The goal in that investment is they make enough of a return in the future that they made a profit off the endeavor. It’s a risk - the firm could have invested billions only to see nothing but a loss. Do that too often and the entire firm would fail and thus, close.
A lot of terminations were done too, but new people were also brought in and a lot of changes were made.
But without giving to that investment, the business would have failed and 100% of its employees would have been without a job. This business currently employs over 10,000 people, mind you.
I could never understand why people blamed the immigrants and not the places that hire them. This backwards ass logic is what gets you a fascist with over half a voter base supporting his Nazi ass.
This is the logic of fascism. It happened in colonialist empires everywhere.
There are examples in the US, South Africa, and Rhodesia where white workers unions organized to prevent black slave labor from taking their jobs.
This is also where a lot of the anti-Chinese racism came from because Chinese immigrants were replacing higher paying white rail-worker jobs. It was a point of conflict between the American white working class and the American bourgeoisie who would rather employ Chinese worker they could pay inhumanely low wages to (although the reason why they were so exploitable was because of racism).
It’s revisionist to say that this was entirely imposed upon workers from above. White workers were given the easier choice to improve conditions somewhat for themselves without risking much by punching down on colonized workers. In every scenario where this has happened in history, the majority of the racially privileged working class have always sided with colonialism against the colonized working class (it is a statistical law) because it was the safest and easiest way to guarantee some economic security.
Led to the Chinese exclusion acts. Those are a fun (not fun) tidbit of U.S. history.
Right, just like everyone kept buying more expensive tools and supplies at Mom & Pop brick and mortar shops when Amazon et al showed up, right?
Oh those evil bosses.
Yes, and Mom & Pop are also exploiting their own children for unpaid child labor.
Want higher wages? Support legislation to enact a global minimum wage and/or legalize unionization. Blaming individual bosses is futile.
IWW is the greatest. I have their sticker in my front door window.
I love the idea of them, but do they actually wield much power anymore? I’ve heard of people trying to contact chapters and barely getting any responses, that kinda thing.
The state of unions is saddening. Would be cool if IWW is coming back, or has already come back in force.
Every worker should be a part of a union. It is worth it to have some one on your side in negotiations.
As I have explained before, I don’t care if an immigrant tries to take my job. For starters, it’s not like bosses are throwing out good employees to make room for immigrants. Next, all those immigrants are going to need housing, utilities, cars, food, education, places to go for recreation, and all the other things. That is growing the economy and increasing the velocity of money. If they bring the whole family, then one of the cousins will open a restaurant with grandma cooking, and those places are peak. (If ICE starts harassing the Honduras restaurant I will have to start shooting fools. Also I really need someone to open a Nepalese restaurant in this town.) Growth and velocity of money. A couple immigrants will do more for the local economy than anything that dribbles down from some billionaire. I think the number I heard was that immigrants create 1.6 jobs per person. The billionaires around here mostly cause the utilities and land prices to go up by getting freebies and buying everything to offset taxes.
What if you’re going on strike, and your boss hires some scabs to replace you, and for a second there you’re really mad at the government and the policies that allow your boss to hire those scabs, and you’re a little mad at the scabs too, except hold on there partner, those scabs were imported from another country. They’re immigrants. What are you, some kind of anti-immigrant?
This is capitalist bait.
Try to get the scabs to join the union too. If a boss is hiring immigrants as scabs, they’re being super exploitative and really need to be taken down a few notches. It’s also a stupid move because now they are going to catch flak from every direction. In fact the local union is going to negotiations now to rase wages for the lower pay jobs, many of which are staffed by immigrants.
Your capitalist bait is not very good.
Your expectation of reality does not align with reality, when half the laborers on jobsites are Indians (specificly Indians, not a lot of other foreigners were around) instead of regular young people (this includes second gen Indians raised here) like it used to be and often take the entry level position, it’s clear what happened, it’s why a lot of social programs here in Canada are clearing up and why my younger brother and sister were able to finally get job this year. You can cry racism all you want but it’s obvious that when you import half a million in labor a year, shits gonna brake.
I cry racism? Sir, I think thee protests too much.
I’m refering more to the general leftists that can’t interpret nuance, not you specificly, but yah I guess I didn’t really specify that.
True!
evidenced plainly by the fact that they’d invest 1.5+ trillion in the magical “I don’t need workers anymore” word guessing machine and keep doubling and tripling down upon it at the potential peril of the global economy
It’s both, but boss is the biggest contributor of the two by far. I’ve worked for few owners, they hate payroll. It’s their biggest expense and that infuriates many of them. They despise paying anybody anything.
So, of course a huge amount pay the lowest wages possible, and a lot of them would own you as a slave if it was legal, no doubt. And they’d grumble about the cost of the gruel.
Government’s fundamental job is keeping the general population from being enslaved by these people. It’s what government is for.
To see why immigration is not a factor, see https://lemmy.world/post/53479187/26477182
It’s their biggest expense
I kinda doubt this is true for most businesses to be honest. It’s just the expense that most pisses them off.
It’s kinda like if you ever get into an argument with someone about US government spending. Many people believe military personnel is the biggest ticket item for the pentagon when it is not even close.
Many companies spend more on marketing (in house or more often outsourced) than they do on labor. But for some reason, labor is always what pisses them off.
We’ve been working for different types of companies then, because I’m going to have to agree with the other guy on payroll usually being the biggest. Definitely so for office type work, probably less so for industrial work where you need to buy a bunch of input goods.
Yep, no idea which is which. Maybe everyone’s software scammers at this point, couldn’t tell you. Seemed a little me-centric to assume that was the case, but could be. 🤷
Most produced products seem like production labor is very low cost (they outsource to somewhere to have “very grateful” five year olds do it) and the majority of the “in-house” labor is things like sales and marketing (which aren’t even usually in-house which is why I put it in scare-quotes). But all of this is admittedly anecdata.
No there the job creaters you moran!! [sic]
- people who simp for the billionaires
In my experience, no, it’s not your boss at all, it’s the C-Suite. In the overwhelming majority of companies, the people who are 2-3 levels of management above frontline staff have little to nothing to do with setting wages
They absolutely are pushing down wages, especially when they come from poor desperate countries, because they’re in a much more precarious financial position, they’re easier to exploit, less likely to join a union, and most importantly, more likely to work for lower wages.
Separating that, from the notion of racism or people getting mad at the immigrants, and not the elected officials creating the policies that allow your boss to import and exploit people from overseas, is important to working class success.
How did we get so easily baited into falling for this?
The point is, your boss could pay everyone, including them, as much as he always did, and more.
He specifically chooses to exploit this desperation and pay less, because the difference adds to his bottom line.
The anti-immigrant talks shift the blame from those who intentionally pay less to those who has to choose between a bad deal and starvation.
Elected officials won’t do anything about it until you force them to. And immigrants are your allies in this - they too are a workforce who needs better wages. Your interests are aligned.
You’re just straight up factually wrong. Immigration has either little effect, or in fact increases wages for native citizens.
Instead of making statements based on your feelings and how you think that things work, you should do a bare minimum amount of research beforehand.
https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/revisiting-immigrations-effect-us-wages-and-employment
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118767/documents/HHRG-119-JU01-20251217-SD001-U1.pdf
https://abic.us/facts-immigrants-arent-stealing-your-jobs-or-lowering-wages/
https://www.nber.org/papers/w32389
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/immigrants-make-the-labor-market-great/
Thanks
Assuming there can only be a fixed number of jobs, you’re right. However, that’s like solving for spherical chickens in vacuum.
The answer is propaganda, which is seen in your first sentence. It is very persuasive and it even worked on you. Everything else you said is spot on.
