Well, fellow procrastin8rs, they did it. They went and freaking did it.Those corporate greedy bastards pulled some real shit, yet again. Of course, do we really expect anything less than tyranny from them at this point?
Anyway, over 8 million Americans had every single cent of their unemployment benefits pulled right from under their noses and an additional 2.7 million Americans got a cut to their benefits. That’s nearly 11 million people, who are struggling to put food on the table and secure a house over their head getting screwed in the ass by their government overlords, saying “ NO MORE FREELOADERS!” It’s sad when the accepted definition of “freeloading” has come to mean trying to receive enough money just to survive and have basic needs met. And this all happened on no other day than Labor Day. Ah, the holiday celebrating the efforts of the working class. What better day for the government to put up a middle finger to the laborers than the single day of the year honoring them. Of course, if you look at the history of Labor Day, it wasn’t such a celebratory event after all. In fact, President Grover Clevland sent over 12,000 federal troops to stop railroad protestors. And “stop” here doesn’t mean they showed up just to give a big wag of the finger and say “no, don’t do that”. What Clevland did to “stop” the protestors was have the workers completely slaughtered. That’ll teach em, eh? They won’t dare protest now against capitalist rulers, being dead and all. He claimed that their protests were a federal crime. So much for no cruel and unusual punishment. I’d say ordering troops to place bullets in the skulls of thousands of worker protestors is more than cruel and unusual. And even if you’re, god forbid, actually in favor of the death penalty. Are we really going to justify capital punishment for vandilism? I mean sure, protestors were ripping up railroads and burning them, and I suppose if one wanted to argue they were in fact “damaging property”, but not a single person was harmed, yet alone killed, until Grover sent his troops. He literally ordered immediate capital punishment on thousands of people. No trial. No justice. Just pure cold hard blood shed. The corporate structure has valued property over human life since the very beginning. They were so concerned about the the destruction of property that they literally murdered workers by the thousand in attempts to protect said property from being destroyed. Lives can be destroyed no problem. Just collateral damage, cap. But property. Oh shit! The precious (and profitable) property can’t be touched! We must protect it at all cost! A poor, sick, dying person tho? Nah, fam. Fuck ‘em. No healthcare. No unemployment. None of that. Oh they want to be able to live without a struggle? They’re just a freeloading bitch! Now to clarify, I’m not condoning vandalism at all. Igniting rails on fire is not acceptable, no matter how shitty the working conditions were (and we’re talking 12 hour shifts with literal pennies as pay at the time). Plus, it’s not the procrastin8r way to be violent in any way. We barely want to get out of bed, yet alone beat up property with whatever tool we can find. That’s a lot of heavy lifting. However, I am saying that vandalism does NOT justify murder. While the methods used to protest by these railroad workers were inherently wrong, it doesn’t mean they deserved to be killed on spot. It’s real fucked up. What’s more is the schools don’t teach you about the violence. The education system conveniently leaves out the bloodshed involved with the Labor Movement. They make it out to be this happy happy joy joy story about how good the country is (as most history is taught in American history lessons are) for having such brave workers. Brave, yeah, sure. But they leave out the entire part where the laborers literally DIED to stand up for better working conditions. They leave out the part where the president literally ordered troops to kill quote on quote “lazy” people to get them to stfu. So where does Labor Day come into play within all of this? Well, see, Labor Day was nothing but a small bribe. It was a pathetic apology letter in attempts to avoid bad press.The government used Labor Day as a sort of “cover up” to distract people from their horrendous act of mass murder. You see, Labor Day was originally proposed by Matthew Macguire in 1882 and it wasn’t until 1894, over a decade later that it became an official holiday. It was no coincidence either that the day after the mass murder just mentioned, literally within 24 hours, Cleveland announced that Labor Day would become a national holiday. Make no mistake. He didn’t care about the workers or granting them what they wanted (if he did, he never would have made the executive decision to kill thousands of them). He only cared about protecting his own reputation and winning votes in the next election. He did this for political purposes -- to try and appease the workers and get their approval on the ballot. Fortunately, the workers didn’t buy into his bullshit and he wasn’t elected for a second presidential term. It was basically like “Oh hey we killed your fathers, uncles, neighbors, and cousins, but hey, here’s a holiday!” Yeah, no, shovel your shit somewhere else. What I’m getting at here though is that this entire system, throughout history, has been designed to screw over and exploit the working class. They give us just enough to keep our mouths shut and schlep on back to work. They give a little holiday after killing us, both literally and figuratively speaking. They have us break our backs and minds then feed us the scraps on the table, telling us that we’re such a good boy. But we don’t behave (and do enough work) then they’ll take our scraps away. I mean taking away the benefits of those relying on government money to support themselves and their family on the day that’s supposed to be about appreciating those people (Labor Day) is a real smack in the face. It sends the message: Look, we helped you through the pandemic. Now back to work! As you may recall, following the initial outbreak, there were tons of layoffs, company shutdowns, and mass filings for unemployment. But here’s the thing folks... The pandemic isn’t over! As a matter of fact, the case numbers and death tolls are at an all time high right now. This little microscopic bastard is not still around, but growing an overwhelming presence at this point. But they don’t care. They just want us back to work.So what if you or a family member gets sick? So what if you’re overstressed and emotionally exhausted? Work and work hard. NOW! And they’re attempting to lay down a forceful hand to get you to go to work by taking away your sit at home income, aka unemployment check. They’re giving you seemingly no choice but to get a shitty job for measly pay - to just shut up and buck up. They want us working these shit jobs for shit wages., to just bend over and take it up the ass. They made it clear, they ain’t helping you no more. Thing is, people kind of knew the wages at this job were utter shit prior to this whole pandemic, quite frankly. But being on unemployment made the unfairness of low wages more apparent than ever because they realized “well fuck, I’m getting paid MORE to sit at home on my ass than I am schlepping 9 to 5 for five days a week for a bastard of a boss.” As months passed, businesses began opening up new positions; the people that worked them before didn’t want them back and businesses became increasingly more and more desperate to fill those positions, offering free meals at interviews and even small monetary sign up incentives (like a couple hundred dollars or so). . Of course, they didn’t try the one thing that would have actually attracted employees: increasing wages. Needless to say, people chose to stay on unemployment. It was the most sensible thing to do. It just wasn’t worth it to get a job, no matter what sort of “bribe” these companies offered (unless that bribe was a decent goddamn wage, but that wasn’t the case). I mean you figure you can either sacrifice your sanity, emotional well-being, and physical energy for a check that’s worth less than what you’re getting for sittin’ around on the couch, relaxing stress-free, all day at home. What ya gonna take? Of course you’re gonna take the unemployment check over the check from a low wage job! It’s the most practical choice. And that’s the thing, people aren’t being lazy in the sense that they are completely unwilling to work. They’re being practical in the sense that they want their work to be worth the effort. Now if minimizing effort and maximizing results makes me lazy, so be it! If being practical about my time and resources of time and mental and emotional energy makes me lazy, so be it. I’d rather be labeled as lazy and uphold my dignity than be a mindless slave that bows down to corporate owners. You see, it’s simple... The labor shortage is a myth. There’s this false narrative in the media, who are nothing but messengers for corporate propaganda, that “no one wants to work any more]” There’s this large struggle for corporations to find employees because everyone’s “too damn lazy” to work. They just want their hand outs of welfare and employment checks. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Truth is, you have a plethora of people who are willing and able to work. They’re willing to spend their time in a typical 9 to 5 grind. Mark my words, folks: There are plenty of employees who *want* to work, who want a job. What they don’t want is shit wages. It’s that simple. People want to be fairly compensated for the work they put it, and fact of the matter is, companies just aren’t paying enough for labor. It’s not that people are too lazy and are refusing to work and provide labor. It’s that companies are too greedy and are refusing to pay the price for said labor. Let’s put it this way: If you go into a store and want to buy a bag of chips, the cashier rings it up for $1.50 and you tell them “I only want to paya dollar.” What is the cashier gonna tell you to do? Pay the full price or put the chips back. Now imagine if you were to cry “There’s a chip shortage! This is ridiculous!” No bucko, there’s no shortage of chips. The store has plenty of supply. You’re just refusing to pay what the chips actually cost. The same goes for labor. There’s plenty of labor out there available “in stock”. There’s no “shortage” of it. It’s just that companies are refusing to pay that price. People think they’re labor is worth more, a lot more, than they’re being offered. And they’re right -- it is worth more. You shouldn’t have to work so hard just to be able to live in poverty and barely, if at all, be able to cover the basics. Short changing the price of something doesn’t mean there’s a shortage. It just means you’re being stingy. And stingy they are. Stingy are these corporate owners, hoarding the billions of wealth to themselves. They’re literally building rockets and taking mini-vacations to space as a fun little side hobby. That’s a level of wealth beyond. Beyond what? Just beyond. It’s straight up beyond. It’s funny too how the narrative is geared towards making the people trying to earn enough to get by look like the ones “milking the system” and not the people who are exploiting the hard work of *others*while sitting on their yachts and literal spaceships. It goes without saying that in any good functioning society, people have to work. Not everybody can sit their ass at home. It’s a necessary part of society for people to show up and work at a job. But those that work, should be compensated fairly. They shouldn’t be struggling just to put food on the table or worry “how tf am I gonna pay for this?” if they get sick. Man, human beings have value, a lot more value than these corporate owners are paying right now. But I predict that’s soon going to change. People have had enough already. We’re done working our asses off for shit wages. We’re just done with it. Not mad. Not upset. Just done. Full and completely done. You know, kind of like your ex. Done with that shit. Taking away benefits isn’t going to stop people from refusing to work The whole purpose behind stifling the unemployment benefits is to encourage people to go get a job and get back to work. But that’s not happening. At least not until those jobs offer fair compensation for the workload (and not to mention mental and emotional load) involved. People can’t live if they spend all their time just trying to be able to afford to survive. And we want to live. Now I don’t mean we have to be rich, but at the very least have enough money to do a little more than focus every ounce of energy we have on survival. I mean how common is it to work all day, come home, spend all your money just to cover bills, then wake up the next day just to start the cycle over. Well, 54% of Americans say they live paycheck to pay check and 21% say they struggle to pay the bills. Fact of the matter is, most of us are earning enough money just to survive and some are even barely making it. There’s no wealth building happening. We work simply as a means of survival. And that is the very definition of slavery. Work in exchange for survival. The whole corporate system was designed as an extension of slavery. They want you to work to the point of physical and mental exhaustion and settle for just enough wages to keep yourself alive. Like I said though. We’re done. We ain’t working for shit wages any more. You want us to work? Then pay us fairly! Give us enough money to live comfortably. And by the way, while we’re on topic here. I’m not just saying “let’s increase wages”. I’m saying “let’s redistribute wealth”. This isn’t a discussion over increasing low wage jobs. This is a discussion over redistributing the billions of dollars these corporate owners have into the hands of the common people. After all, the “cost to live” gets higher and higher every year. That’s called inflation. We not only have to increase wages but *tie it to inflation*. Otherwise, we’ll be having this same old debate about increasing wages every few years. And you may think, in regards to billionaire corporate owners, “Oh well they earned it.” And look, I don’t mean to be rude but how fucking brainwashed do you have to be to believe billionaires “earned” their wealth? Like it was some sort of noble achievement. Straight up, becoming a billionaire, accumulating literally billions of dollars worth of wealth, takes a lot of immoral choices to get there. You have to backstab others, exploit the hard labor of poor people. You have to choose profit for shareholders over providing your employees decent healthcare. You have to choose to expand your franchise instead of expanding the amount of vacation days your employees get. Most people on unemployment on welfare are on those programs because they're getting screwed over by a corporate owner who refuses to pay them a decent goddamn wage. Yet, they cleverly have people up in arms about how unemployment and welfare recipients are “nothing but a buncha freeloaders.” In reality, the ones freeloading are these billionaires who sit around, have their employees schlep all the hard work, collect all the profits, and then pay none of the taxes in return. And you may think that you NEED to work at a job in order to survive. But oh no, that’s where you’re wrong. You see, the corporate owners NEED YOU.Without workers, they don’t have any products, no service. The line of production is cut thin and dry when people refuse to work. The power is in the hands of the people. And people are beginning to wake up and realize this. There were even cases at fast food restaurant workers straight up walking out mid-shift. Know your worth. That’s really the takeaway from all of this here. Know. Your. Worth. Don’t settle for the benefits or compensation, monetary or otherwise, just because that’s what someone offers you. Be willing to walk away. Be willing to be lazy. Value your own time and resources of physical, mental, and emotional energy. Don’t give those things to anyone that doesn’t reciprocate back to you fairly in return. This principle applies to your personal relationships as well. If you find yourself putting in more effort into something or someone than the benefits you receive are worth, then go back to bed and don’t tolerate that shit. You shouldn’t ever feel like life is a constant struggle to survive. You must aim to have Leisure in your life, to be able to relax and kick on back once in a while. Don’t let anyone undervalue you. You deserve to live and not just exist.You’re here to be a person, not just a cog in the machine.
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