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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