Picking up from where we left off
"Lab Rats: Why Modern Work Makes People Miserable" author Daniel Lyons claimed that there are four main elements to our misery at work.
- Low salaries
- Constant change
- Lack of job security
- The dehumanization
Daniel Lyons says that if you want to discover why employees are miserable, start by looking at their wallets.
Low Salaries
It s true that since 1959, the poverty rate declined from 22% to 14% in 2017, but the middle class status didn't improve but actually declined. From 2000 to 2014 the average income of the middle declined by 4%, and from 2001 to 2013 their wealth - that is their properties minus their debts - declined by 28%. So within 12 years the middle class wealth declined by around a third.
That led to the working class to decrease from 61% in 1971 to 50% of the American society in 2015. According to a Pew Research Center study in 2017, millennials currently make 20% less than their parents at their age. So we have a thriving economy, there are less and less poor people, rich people are getting richer, but still somehow our parents have been making more money at our age than us.
Well, millennials are wasting their money on Starbucks and avocados
As if we didn't eat avocados we would be Mark Zuckerberg by now, we are barely making it through this shithole, my man.
That, as much as it has created job opportunities for a lot of people, encouraged job creators to not give a fuck. Job creators aren't under pressure at all, remember that there is this one thing they can do whenever employment proves too costly for them:
Outsourcing
According to certain investment institutes, the internet is the greatest legal factor in employment inequality. It is the institutes who say that, let's be clear.
You've become such a coward, dude. Are you a chicken?
No, I am not a chicken, I am a Turkey. I decided to outsource there.
Name calling aside, in the old days, a factory or a company owner would be fearful that employees and workers would cause them too much trouble. Nowadays they could simply move their base of operation elsewhere. They simply go like "You know what, American workers? You are costing me too much anyway, I will just move my factory to China where they wouldn't demand any benefits and barely make 1/5 of what you are costing me without half the headache you cost me "
Lowered Salaries
That led to the gab between the working class and the upper class to widen. In 1980 the rate between an American worker and big corporation management was 1:42, so if you were a worker making a thousand dollars, your boss would be making 42 thousand dollars. In 2016, that rate went up to 1:347.
According to billionaire and one of the first investors in Amazon Nick Hanauer, employees are getting robbed of almost 2 trillion dollars a year.
Is that worldwide?
Nope, just in America.
Can you imagine that number, 2 TRILLION dollars. The professor himself didn't dream of stealing 10% of that amount in La Casa de Papel
Image source
And we need to remember, that group was stealing from the central bank itself. And even if we add their current gold robbery, it still wouldn't amount to 10%.
According to the American Bureau of Economic Analysis that 40 years ago, the total of salaries paid were 52% of the total of national income. Nowadays, it is at 46%.
6%? You are making a big deal out of 6%
But since the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, makes around 17 Trillion dollars a year, that 6% is around a trillion dollar.
Where did all that money go?
What? Do you think I took them? Bare in mind that during the same time period profit rose from 6% to 12%, analysis suggest that what was taken from salaries was put in the profits.
Not only that
The employees making less money were 99% of each company would get 92% from the total of salaries 40 years ago. Nowadays, those same 99% are making 78% of the salaries, 14% less than they originally received. While 1% are making 22% of the total salaries. 22% of salaries for just the 1%. The 1% income went up from 8% to 22%.
Well, that increase must have been the result of many years
Nope, just within the last 10 years. We're talking just 10 years ago, so it is recent as only 68 Fast and Furious movies have come out since.
If you add that 14% to the previously mentioned 6% you would find, according to Daniel Lyons, 2 trillion dollars taken from the working class and given to the top 1% whether owners or top level employees. If we take that 2 trillion dollars and distribute them among the workforce in America, each person would make extra 16 thousand dollars. So the average employees income would rise by 33% taking it from 44 thousand dollars a year to 60 thousand dollars a year.
That's why whenever your boss asks you about the report, tell him to fuck off and pay you the money he owes you. Just kidding, your boss might be nice, unless he was a psychopath boss, something I will bring up at a later part.
The reason behind the income inequality
Daniel Lyons sees that this different in income came about in the 70s because of the now economy teacher at Chicago university and Nobel prize winner in economy, the famous professor of economy Milton Friedman, one of the biggest economic influencers in the 20th century.
Milton saw that a company's manager most important role lies in ensuring that investors make the most money without caring about job opportunity, fighting racism and sexism at the workplace, and all that headache. He said that companies managers are free to make donations and help people in their free time. But during work, it is all about making money for the shareholders. In order the profits to increase, salaries, benefits, and insurance rates must decrease.
Friedman's writings were a main reason for the switch from Stakeholder Capitalism, that would be the employees, costumers and local community, to the Shareholder Capitalism.
In Summary
The fact that an economy is thriving and we have more jobs doesn't necessarily means employees are doing better, it simply means they may just be having different places where they would be making the same amount of low money.
Interesting about the 1970s - this is when the social contract in England broke down, followed by neo-liberalism in the eighties which led to the super-rich, the sub-prime mortgage disaster and the global financial crash in 2008. We (the UK) followed that nicely by voting in a Conservative government obsessed with the small state and "big society" (ie help each other and expect nothing from the state, manage as best you can) in 2010, and their wonderful austerity policies in 2011. A cruel government, exemplified now in the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda and still, in spite of resistance from the navy, intent on pushing back small boats with refugees trying to cross the Channel.
There is a term that has developed for discussing what has happened in poorer communities: under-employment. This means that people may have two or three poorly paid precarious jobs but still don't have enough income to cover their living costs and depend on state benefits to top up their earnings (and some employers factor state benefits into their business plans to reduce employment costs further).
Why you're saying is exacerbated by the way capitalism works - precarious jobs and low income is not spread equally across all workers. It is clustered with certain groups of people who experience a whole range of other inequalities, especially health. So great to see a resurgence in trades union activity and strong public support for it. We have barristers striking, for goodness sake.
Awesome my friend thanks for sharing on Listnerds have a successful one
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