Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1847-1849

These days, we’re told that the American economy is strong. Unemployment is down, the Dow Jones industrial average is north of 25,000 and millions of jobs are going unfilled. But for people like Vanessa, the question is not, Can I land a job? (The answer is almost certainly, Yes, you can.) Instead the question is, What kinds of jobs are available to people without much education? By and large, the answer is: jobs that do not pay enough to live on.
In recent decades, the nation’s tremendous economic growth has not led to broad social uplift. Economists call it the “productivity-pay gap” — the fact that over the last 40 years, the economy has expanded and corporate profits have risen, but real wages have remained flat for workers without a college education. Since 1973, American productivity has increased by 77 percent, while hourly pay has grown by only 12 percent. If the federal minimum wage tracked productivity, it would be more than $20 an hour…
Americans Want to Believe Jobs Are the Solution to Poverty. They’re Not.
By Matthew Desmond
New York Times Magazine
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Meanwhile, the intellectuals who spend years in graduate school go on to do well, put together their theses and their presentations, get their professorships (sometimes at prestigious universities!) and still fail to accrue much wealth. Even worse, outside of their small intellectual fiefdoms, they fail to accrue influence. Save the occasional Peter Singer or Jordan Peterson, few academics acquire influence outside of the academy.

When you spend so many years growing up in a system that tells you that you will be at the top of the dominance hierarchy and then you’re not, your expectations are violated. This violation of expectations manifests itself as resentment. You followed the rules, you did things as you were supposed to, and some guy who runs a construction company or built an app gets more influence and respect than you.

Many Intellectuals Can't Stand Jordan Peterson. Why?

Zak Slayback 

FEE

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In 1983, however, the group in question thought the name “Labor Day” rather obsolete. Although the Dutch government had never accepted the validity of the day — mainly due to its overlap with the earlier Queen’s Day (April 27) – it remained a landmark for left-wing parties, with large demonstrations and fairs held in Dutch cities. The group proposed rebaptizing May 1 as the “Day Against the Work Ethic” (Dag tegen het arbeidsethos), celebrating the advent of a world in which humanity would be exempt from the “duty to labor” altogether. Earlier that year, members had gathered in the Amsterdam cinema Rialto to found a consortium representing the “conscientiously unemployed” (bewust werklozen) under the name “Dutch Council Against the Work Ethic” (Nederlandse Bond Tegen het Arbeidsethos). Soon, journalists showed interest, while “angry” members of the Dutch Labor Party (the PvdA) and trade unions voiced their discontent. Although the organization was officially a union of the “jobless,” figures within the mainstream labor movement expressed disagreement with the group’s intention to halt the re-integration of the Dutch army of unemployed into the labor market. Work was to remain central, the laborites claimed, and the Council was playing a dangerous game.
Why “Post-Work” Doesn’t Work
Anton Jäger
Jacobin
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Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1844-1846

Most leftists are uncritically statist, merely complaining that the government is controlled by the wrong people and doesn't do enough of the right things. And though the left of course wants to redistribute corporate profits to workers, it shows little interest in attacking the authoritarian structure of the workplace or the puritanical assumptions of the work ethic.

Their Libertarianism and Ours
by Ellen Willis

Over the last two decades, suicide has slowly and then very suddenly announced itself as a full-blown national emergency. Its victims accompany factory closings and the cutting of government assistance. They haunt post-9/11 military bases and hollow the promise of Silicon Valley high schools. Just about everywhere, psychiatric units and crisis hotlines are maxed out. According to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are now more than twice as many suicides in the U.S. (45,000) as homicides; they are the 10th leading cause of death. You have to go all the way back to the dawn of the Great Depression to find a similar increase in the suicide rate.
The Best Way To Save People From Suicide
by
Jason Cherkis
Highlin

Basic income allowed me a chance to recover my future. UBI gave me hope to provide a secure and better future for my baby girl. It gave me the confidence to “keep” my baby, rather than being forced to give her up for adoption. My family felt relieved to know my daughter and I would have a fighting chance, as a single mother. UBI significantly reduced my depression, anxiety, and OCD, which allowed a secure attachment to flourish between me and my baby girl. I was able to be a better, more attentive mom; I focused on my baby’s needs rather than ruminate about my own unmet needs. As a result, my baby is a well adjusted, healthy, happy girl.
Jessie Golemquoted inThree Sacred Beliefs Undermining Universal Basic Income

Boundless

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1841-1843

In actual fact the work ethic has become obsolete. It is no longer true that producing more means working more, or that producing more will lead to a better way of life.
The connection between more and better has been broken; our needs for many products and services are already more than adequately met, and many of our as-yet- unsatisfied needs will be met not by producing more, but by producing differently, producing other things, or even producing less. This is especially true as regards our needs for air, water, space, silence, beauty, time and human contact.
Andre Gorz

Why should workers agree to be slaves in a basically authoritarian structure?
Noam Chomsky 

The Greek word ponos, or "toil" was a term used by Hippocrates, that father of medicine, to describe the fight of the body in disease.
Marshall McLuhan