Why do people honestly hate capitalism so much now?

Post Reply New Topic

Yeah I've seen that movie the Matrix, No, logically an AI hive mind would see no purpose for humans once they have the capacity to self-manufacture (after all machines are more efficient than "meat bags").

You named all skilled trades there. There's a rough gauge that a skilled job is one that takes more than a couple of months to master. Being a cook, mechanic, farmer or construction worker or custodian takes years to master.

All jobs can be argued that they're important but clearly someone flipping burgers should never get pay approaching that of an engineer or skilled tradesman. You can get a very accurate guess as to what's skilled and not.

Skilled workers want to feel more important than a burger flipper or shelf stacker because in terms of skill and output, they are more important. Aside from that, what's the point of doing a three of four year apprenticeship or degree when you can walk into Walmart and have a easy time in life?

There's also the debate that paying unskilled workers "fair pay" will just devalue a currency and cause skilled workers to demand more, ending up with the extra few dollars an hour not really adding anything to an unskilled workers life. Unskilled workers can't just be given extra money.

What I said is savage, but it's just hard to say a farmer or electrician is equal to a Walmart cashier. A lot of skilled workers will just see a massive bump in minimum wage as a pay cut for them.

The whole system needs scrapped and reworked. Of course skilled tradespeople deserve fair compensation, but a system where someone who serves me food or who cuts the grass doesn't "deserve" to be able to feed their family or afford to heat their house is broken.

I don't think people should have families if they know they can't afford to feed them but the state is also fairly generous in the UK at least when it comes to low income families.

I feel everybody who works for a living deserves to have a decent place to live.

It’s ridiculous that there are working people who are homeless.

People also deserve to have families if they want to have families.

People working hard don’t deserve to be forced to make the choice between food and heat.

What do you mean by work for a living though? Part time low skilled or 60 hour weeks low skilled? Part time skilled or 60 hour weeks skilled? It's hazy with what's considered working for a living.

I think people who have kids knowing they're going to be brought up in poverty are not good parents. They can have kids if they feel they deserve them, but I'll always look down on them and think of them as lesser people.

Kids provide essential sustenance for some. Not for me. But for some.

Working 60 hours a week doesn’t give one time to be a good parent to a kid.

People have to have kids in order for our species to survive.

“Working hard” means working full-time most of the time.

I think the only people having kids should be those who can afford them. I think very ill of people deciding to have kids knowing they'll be brought up in a poor household.

I think everyone working full time should be able to afford the essentials at a bare minimum.

It's just when you get into the practicalities it gets tougher. Houses for example take about 3000 skilled man hours to make. An unskilled person will have trouble paying that regardless yet alone all the materials simple because they probably have to 6000 hours in work just to pay the tradesmen and thousands more on top for the materials.

Even if minimum wage was 300 an hour, an unskilled worker will still struggle when most other people are making more money and products and services are priced accordingly. Increasing minimum wage with little thought or restraint is the equivalent of printing money. Unskilled workers will quickly find themselves at the bottom of the heap no matter the pay rise.

We have to have moderation.

We can’t have Oliver Twist capitalism; there has to be compassion, too.

Probably, one solution would be training people in the new technology when they are rendered redundant due to new technologies.

The thing is. I like eating out. I don't do it that often, but enjoy having other people cook me food and serve it to me. Especially coffee and cake.

I like having the grass areas around here mowed and the streets cleaned.

Not everyone can be a computer worker. If lockdowns showed anything it's that supermarket workers and such are essential.

And yet we pay them like they are trash.

I do not agree with using services and knowing they are not well compensated. It feels exploitative. I only use Amazon if I really have to for example.

So bearing in mind a lot of us here have issues that preclude us from well paying jobs regardless of our education does that mean we shouldn't have children? Seems harsh.

People have all sorts of circumstances for ending up in menial jobs. Why should their lives be limited further. So unkind.

I don't think their lives are limited intentionally, it's just the way the market is. Everything seems to (for the most part) be priced according to average salary of a country. People below it struggle and people above it have a comfortable life.

Increasing minimum wage will just have a knock on effect and push the average salary up further, leaving lower paid workers no better off. I can guarantee, if it went up to £15 an hour here, all the workers in my place of work would demand a minimum of £25 as soon as they catch wind.

There are plenty of debates to be had about specific business norms when it comes to certain fields of work. Working in a US restaurant depending on tips is one of them, Amazon and their hurried, long days is another but these are more case by case than wide reaching.

As for kids, I think it's cruel to have kids knowing they'll be brought up in a poor household. It's just personal responsibility. Also, someone's kids should never be a burden on the tax payer. As the saying goes "you breed them you feed them".

Shop workers are actually paid pretty decently in the UK provided their full time. Sainsbury's is planning on putting their pay up to £12 an hour from what I read and shops like Aldi and Lidl pay well.

I was on £12 an hour only a few months ago and that was as a semi skilled labourer working in a god awful steel workshop getting burnt and cut with the occasional broken bone. Some supermarkets have tempted me at times. The pay is changing for me shortly as I'm about to become a fabricator in a few months time.

A lot of outdoor jobs are also well paying. If you land a job with the council mowing grass then you're golden.

That really illustrates how broken the system is. As soon as you treat the bottom rung fairly it puts everything off balance. That's not how things should work. That's not a good societal structure.

It's the way its always been though. The middle rung won't tolerate being paid the same as the bottom rung for doing jobs requiring greater skill. It's a system that actually works well.

It's impossible for it to work any other way. If minimum wage started to approach the pay of fabricators and welders in my place of work, tools will be downed immediately and it'll be echoed across the entire country. Within months the minimum wage worker on their new and improved wage will find themselves once again on low pay.

@Nades:

People didn't plan on being so poor for their efforts. Housing costs have risen about 6x in 15-16 years. Tradesmen with "good," incomes have trouble making rent, buying groceries, or keeping heat on. Doctors/lawyers/engineers can't afford to buy homes anywhere near where they live. Many people already had children when the price of housing, and everything else, started spiralling out of control.

It's a really poor attitude to paint all of those people with the same brush and tell them it's somehow their fault for having families that they find themselves in a difficult spot being able to properly afford to pay for all of their needs. People are working their asses off, getting evicted by landlords that sell/renovate/want to increase the rent, being unable to find another place and end up living in a school bus or tent for a while. People are having difficulty with heating and food costs. No on anticipated that life would become so astronomically expensive that the basic monthly costs of living would become extremely difficult to pay for, even with two working parents in most family households. Get off your high horse and maybe have a little empathy for those who are struggling despite their best efforts - especially since times have changed very rapidly.

3000 man hours to build a house? Sounds low. 6000 hours work to pay for material and labour to build a house? You'd have to Net North of $167/hr after tax to be able to pay for the typical build in Vancouver as of ~5 years ago - must be higher now. 5 years ago a one off typical custom house (not a spec house cookie cutter design) in Vancouver cost approx $1M to have built. (Plus land cost.) A bit cheaper in the suburbs for more square footage as the level of finishing isn't typically quite as high. And it's more expensive today than it was 5 years ago.