Jack Saturday

Monday, July 30, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1801-1803

Greenfield shows us the investment banker who cannot recall the number of homes he owns as he eyes his next yacht; the Orlando time-share mogul who builds a 90,000-square-foot mansion on credit, hoping to outrival the Palace of Versailles; the etiquette coach in Beijing who charges $16,000 to teach proper pronunciation of Western designer labels; the wife of a Russian oligarch who proudly labels herself “a luxury.”

In addition to the mega-rich, Greenfield also shows us the poor — primarily white American women, as she’s chosen to represent them — who are equally caught up in this frantic, often narcissistic, struggle for excess: the school bus driver who puts herself in debt and loses her child and home after traveling to Brazil for plastic surgery (“It was time to focus on me”); the small-town 15-year-old girl who wants to become a porn star because she is determined to “make something of [her]self”; the six-year-old beauty queen who chants through pouty, painted lips, “money, money, money!” while dressed like a Vegas showgirl.
Plenty
By Anne Anlin Cheng

LARB


  For a number of years now, I have been conducting research on forms of employment seen as utterly pointless by those who perform them. The proportion of these jobs is startlingly high. Surveys in Britain and Holland reveal that 37 to 40 percent of all workers there are convinced that their jobs make no meaningful contribution to the world. And there seems every reason to believe that numbers in other wealthy countries are much the same. There would appear to be whole industries — telemarketing, corporate law, financial or management consulting, lobbying — in which almost everyone involved finds the enterprise a waste of time, and believes that if their jobs disappeared it would either make no difference or make the world a better place.
Are You in a BS Job? In Academe, You’re Hardly Alone
By David Graeber
The Chronicle Of Higher Education

May 06, 2018

[emphasis JS]






Uwe Mauch has called Vienna “home” for more than 30 years. The 52-year-old Austrian journalist and writer lives in a subsidized apartment in the north of the European city, in one of the many low-cost housing complexes built around leafy courtyards by the municipal government.

Mauch pays 300 euros, or the equivalent of $350, a month in rent for his one-bedroom apartment ― only 10 percent of his income.

“It’s great ― I’m really happy living here,” he says. “I like all the green space right outside my window. When people from other countries visit, they can’t believe it’s so nice and also so cheap.”

With its affordable and attractive places to live, the Austrian capital is fast becoming the international gold standard when it comes to public housing, or what Europeans call “social housing” ― in Vienna’s case, government-subsidized housing rented out by the municipality or nonprofit housing associations. Unlike America’s public housing projects, which remain unloved and underfunded, the city’s schemes are generally held to be at the forefront not only of progressive planning policy but also of sustainable design.
...
Social housing in Vienna has been widespread since the 1920s when the post-war municipality, led by the Social Democrats, began building high-density estates all over the city ― typically six- to eight-story apartment blocks with communal green spaces. Today, anyone earning up to $53,225 a year after taxes is eligible to apply for a subsidized apartment in Vienna in a country where the median gross annual income is about $31,500.

According to the municipality, 62 percent of Vienna’s citizens currently live in social housing.
Vienna’s Affordable Housing Paradise
Adam Forrest
HuffPost

[emphasis JS]










Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1798-1800

Another way of putting it is that the badness of work is the result of a collective action problem, whereby the individually rational behaviour of workers and employers is resulting in a social arrangement that is bad for most workers, most of the time. 
The Case Against Work
John Danaher





 With Canada's job market booming but paycheques remaining stagnant, an overwhelming majority of employees say they are fed up with their pay.

The survey found 83 per cent of Canadians are dissatisfied with the pay they're receiving, slightly higher than the 81 per cent of Americans who said the same in a poll carried out for Indeed U.S.

But what it comes down to, Kasten suggested, is the rising cost of living. Canadians saw food prices climb over the past year, and they've been hearing plenty of talk about rising interest rates and the hit to household budgets that they cause.

83% Of Canadians Are Fed Up With Their Pay, And This May Be The Year They Do Something About It
By Daniel Tencer
Huffpost


DG:  They’re miserable! Two or three people said they kind of like their bullshit jobs, but the overwhelming majority, they’re sick all the time. They talk about depression, they talk about complex illnesses, psychological and physical and immune problems that all clearly have to do with tension and anxiety and depression.

And also they’re mean to each other. They scream at each other. The more meaningless the work, the more people suffer doing it and the worse they treat each other.
Thursday, May 10, 2018

Is Your Job Bullshit? David Graeber on Capitalism’s Endless Busywork
by Dayton Martindale
In These Times 


 

Monday, July 16, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1795-1797

Four days a week she works at a dental office, Fridays she nannies, weekends she babysits. And still she couldn’t keep up with her rent, car lease and student loans. Earlier this year she had to borrow money to file for bankruptcy. I heard the same walls-closing-in anxiety from millennials around the country and across the income scale, from cashiers in Detroit to nurses in Seattle.
Why millennials are facing the scariest financial future
of any generation since the Great Depression.

By Michael Hobbes
Huffington Post


Blue-collar jobs now make up less than 14 percent of total employment, down from 31 percent in 1970.
Are More and More People Working Meaningless Jobs?

By Alana Semuels
June 26, 2018 

NYT

 
Real freedom, that is the real possibility — not just the formal right — to do whatever one might want to do with one’s life, is a matter of degree. And there are many ways in which the institutions of a society impact the real freedom of its members, for example by providing free or highly subsidized quality education and health care, or by promoting not just sustainable mobility but also enjoyable immobility in the public spaces of our cities. But an unconditional cash income at the highest sustainable level is an obvious instrument in the pursuit of social justice as I understand it, that is as the greatest possible real freedom for those with least of it.







Monday, July 09, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1792-1794

What’s there to do? It’s just a perversity of capitalism that not only is our labor a commodity to be bought as dearly as possible but on top of it all we are expected to sell it ourselves. It’s an exercise in insincerity as we try to embellish and fluff our way into the favor of a bored HR rep just so we can keep the lights on at home. That’s our lot.

There’s something of the court jester to the routine — dancing for the amusement of aloof and capricious kings. A differential in power suffuses every syllable. We have to differentiate ourselves from a crowd of the equally desperate, paupers clutching at the cloaks of nobles as they pass us by.
...
What would a world look like in which we stopped selling ourselves? What would a world look like in which work is a dirty necessity, best left to machines? We’ll achieve that technological point within the lifetimes of people alive today. Can we reach it socially? The future of our species may well depend on it.
Don’t Sell Yourself
Peter Breslauer
Medium

 [emphasis JS]


 One solution to income inequality is giving out free cash, according to the British billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson.

“A basic income should be introduced in Europe and in America,” Branson told David Gelles of The New York Times.

Branson was responding to the question, “What do you think those in positions of power should do to address social problems like income inequality?”

In a report published in January, the global charity Oxfam found that 82 percent of the growth in global wealth in the previous year went to the top 1 percent of individuals ranked by riches. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent had no increase in their wealth, the report says.

“It’s a disgrace to see people sleeping on the streets with this material wealth all around them,” Branson said.

Billionaire Richard Branson: America should give out free cash to fix income inequality
Catherine Clifford   
CNBC

[emphasis JS]


Perhaps most importantly, it would offer people real freedom, to choose their own destinies and build their own futures. A low-wage, full time job would change from panicked subsistence to a more-or-less comfortable living with a little money in the bank for retirement. A part-time job would be enough to fund higher education or artistic pursuits. With no EI premiums, no minimum wage, and basic income as a fallback, the entrepreneurial spirit would flourish and small businesses would pop up all over, and with less overhead be in general more likely to succeed. And folks who still wanted to work hard, excel in business, and make their fortune, could still do so, and would still be able to enjoy the fruits of their labours just as much.
Rob MacLeod
comment section
B.C. to explore how basic income could work in the province
The Canadian Press


Tuesday, July 03, 2018

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1789-1791

In truth, the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is largely socialized, especially upstream in the drug development process, when basic research cuts the first pathways to medical breakthroughs. Of the 210 medicines approved for market by the FDA between 2010 and 2016, every one originated in research conducted in government laboratories or in university labs funded in large part by the National Institutes of Health. Since 1938, the government has spent more than $1 trillion on biomedical research, and at least since the 1980s, a growing proportion of the primary beneficiaries have been industry executives and major shareholders. Between 2006 and 2015, these two groups received 99 percent of the profits, totaling more than $500 billion, generated by 18 of the largest drug companies. This is not a “business” functioning in some imaginary free market. It’s a system built by and for Wall Street, resting on a foundation of $33 billion in annual taxpayer-funded research.
How Big Pharma Was Captured by the One Percent
By Alexander Zaitchik
The New Republic

[emphasis JS]



 In recent years, policymakers have paid increasing attention to the many ways in which factors beyond school influence a child’s educational outcomes. Indeed, recent research finds that the “poverty” achievement gap – that is, the difference in academic achievement between poor and non-poor children – has grown faster than the racial achievement gap.
...
On average, approximately 18 percent of third grade students has been subject to at least one formal investigation for child maltreatment. In some schools, more than fifty percent of third graders have experienced an investigation for maltreatment. These estimates indicate that child abuse and neglect cannot simply be treated like a secondary issue, but must be a central concern of school personnel.

How Life Outside of School Affects Student Performance in School
By Brian A. Jacob and Joseph Ryan
EducationNext

[emphasis JS]



 With bullshit jobs, there is the idea that if you’re not working hard at something you don’t enjoy, then you’re a bad person and don’t deserve public relief. Those deeply rooted beliefs are the strongest weapons capitalism has.
Thursday, May 10, 2018

Is Your Job Bullshit?
David Graeber on Capitalism’s Endless Busywork
by Dayton Martindale
In These Times