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 whembly wrote:
Nuggz... that's some bootstrap'n there.

Are inappropriate slavery metaphors an acceptable substitute for Holocaust references in Dakka Bingo?

Don't forget that most minimum wage earners are NOT working 40 hours a week at a single job anyways, as nearly all of them have cut part-time employees to around 30 so they don't have to comply with the ACA.

I've worked extra jobs for extra money. So has my wife. Both while we were employed at good full time positions. Hell, If I wasn't coaching I'd consider working over the holidays at FedEx or Amazon for seasonal work.

 cincydooley wrote:
The point is that many of us think it's a horrible and inappropriate comparison.

We understand plenty what metaphors are.

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery




And I'm sure that for some of you this is not about the term, but a disbelief in the idea it self.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

You have to WILLINGLY IGNORE the fact that the phrase was used to describe late 19th and early 20th century workers.

Comparing them to today's fast food worker is woefully ignorant.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because your employer can't kill you.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because your employer can't kill you.

What? It's not saying it's the same, it's using the word slavery (i.e. forced service) to explain an economic problem. It's not slavery to the employer, but to the economy and your own circumstances. You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

Please, read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because your employer can't kill you.

What? It's not saying it's the same, it's using the word slavery (i.e. forced service) to explain an economic problem. It's not slavery to the employer, but to the economy and your own circumstances. You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

Please, read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Have you even ever worked a minimum wage job in the US? I worked minimum wage jobs from when I was 16 up until I was 27. The pay at those jobs never exceeded $12.50/hr and was as low as $8.50. At no point in time did my life ever remotely resemble that of an slave. Everyone working a minimum wage job in the US has the full rights and protections of a US citizen, every company employing minimum wage earners must comply with EoE hiring practices, child labor laws, OSHAA safety standards, local fire and health codes, state wage minimums, and all other state and federal labor laws.

Employers are not responsible in any way, shape or form for the fact that an applicant has a weak resume, lacks marketable skills and has poor job prospects. The employers didn't create the labor pool of minimum wage job applicants, they're simply offering the wages required to get workers to do the jobs that they need to get done.

People move on from minimum wage jobs all the time and plenty of people voluntarily take minimum wage jobs as part time jobs or seasonal jobs to increase their earnings. Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for their own lives and careers. If you want to work a job that pays better than minimum wage then you actually have to take steps to make yourself qualified to do so during the first few decades of your life.

Thats just stupid. Unless you're independently wealthy everyone has to work.

Let me Mansplain it to you.
BY using the term "Slavery" its just hyperventilating a topic and making the arguer look like an ass. Now go check your privilege you nongyno gifted person!

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because your employer can't kill you.

What? It's not saying it's the same, it's using the word slavery (i.e. forced service) to explain an economic problem. It's not slavery to the employer, but to the economy and your own circumstances. You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

Please, read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Have you even ever worked a minimum wage job in the US? I worked minimum wage jobs from when I was 16 up until I was 27. The pay at those jobs never exceeded $12.50/hr and was as low as $8.50. At no point in time did my life ever remotely resemble that of an slave. Everyone working a minimum wage job in the US has the full rights and protections of a US citizen, every company employing minimum wage earners must comply with EoE hiring practices, child labor laws, OSHAA safety standards, local fire and health codes, state wage minimums, and all other state and federal labor laws.

Employers are not responsible in any way, shape or form for the fact that an applicant has a weak resume, lacks marketable skills and has poor job prospects. The employers didn't create the labor pool of minimum wage job applicants, they're simply offering the wages required to get workers to do the jobs that they need to get done.

People move on from minimum wage jobs all the time and plenty of people voluntarily take minimum wage jobs as part time jobs or seasonal jobs to increase their earnings. Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for their own lives and careers. If you want to work a job that pays better than minimum wage then you actually have to take steps to make yourself qualified to do so during the first few decades of your life.

Nothing you have written had anything to do with economic slavery. Please, read up on what it is.

Everytime you type "economic slavery", you just look like a hipster idiot who has only a vague connection with reality.

 Frazzled wrote:
Everytime you type "economic slavery", you just look like a hipster idiot who has only a vague connection with reality.

No need to be rude.

Also, why hipster? I thought they were just nuts that were obsessed with "antique" stuff.

Hipster is the first that comes to mind as someone out of touch with reality.

I'm being harsh because the comparison its is extremely harsh, designed of course to gender that response.

Not to mention your "wage slavery" article is pretty explicitly in reference to a very particular time frame following the end of the industrial revolution.

Nearly everything in that article has been resolved and remedied, nearly completely, but the numerous worker's rights legislations like FLSA, OSH, FMLA, and the various workers comp acts.

Please, read up on it: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/lawsprog.htm


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

So...working in general, unless you're independently wealthy?

 cincydooley wrote:
Not to mention your "wage slavery" article is pretty explicitly in reference to a very particular time frame following the end of the industrial revolution.

Nearly everything in that article has been resolved and remedied, nearly completely, but the numerous worker's rights legislations like FLSA, OSH, FMLA, and the various workers comp acts.

Please, read up on it: http://www.dol.gov/opa/aboutdol/lawsprog.htm

Umm, that's not what I'm arguing. I agree that it is not really a problem, very few people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, usualy being their own fault such as education, sometimes not. I just think that it is an apt term for what it is discribing.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

Umm, that's not what I'm arguing. I agree that it is not really a problem, very few people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, usualy being their own fault such as education, sometimes not. I just think that it is an apt term for what it is discribing.

Yes, it is an apt term to describe the working conditions in place right after the industrial revolution where large numbers of workers would die due to extreme and unsafe working environments.

It is not, however, an apt term to describe minimum wage workers in a modern western society.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

It's actully a very apt comparison if you look at what wage slavery actually is. It's not just working at fast food. Again, read up a tad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
.

No.

It isn't.

Why not?

Because your employer can't kill you.

What? It's not saying it's the same, it's using the word slavery (i.e. forced service) to explain an economic problem. It's not slavery to the employer, but to the economy and your own circumstances. You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

Please, read up on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

Have you even ever worked a minimum wage job in the US? I worked minimum wage jobs from when I was 16 up until I was 27. The pay at those jobs never exceeded $12.50/hr and was as low as $8.50. At no point in time did my life ever remotely resemble that of an slave. Everyone working a minimum wage job in the US has the full rights and protections of a US citizen, every company employing minimum wage earners must comply with EoE hiring practices, child labor laws, OSHAA safety standards, local fire and health codes, state wage minimums, and all other state and federal labor laws.

Employers are not responsible in any way, shape or form for the fact that an applicant has a weak resume, lacks marketable skills and has poor job prospects. The employers didn't create the labor pool of minimum wage job applicants, they're simply offering the wages required to get workers to do the jobs that they need to get done.

People move on from minimum wage jobs all the time and plenty of people voluntarily take minimum wage jobs as part time jobs or seasonal jobs to increase their earnings. Everyone needs to take personal responsibility for their own lives and careers. If you want to work a job that pays better than minimum wage then you actually have to take steps to make yourself qualified to do so during the first few decades of your life.

Nothing you have written had anything to do with economic slavery. Please, read up on what it is.

I've read the entirety of the wiki link you keep posting and it's nothing but made up gak that uses false equivalences to absolve people of personal responsibilities, declare people victims and castigate commerce and capitalism.

Wage slavery refers to a situation where a worker's livelihood depends on wages, especially when the dependence is total and immediate.[1][2] It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. The term wage slavery has been used to criticize economic exploitation and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops),[3] and the latter as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.[4][5][6] The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their "species character"[7] not only under threat of starvation or poverty, but also of social stigma and status diminution.[8][9][10]

Every single working person is dependent on wages and that dependency is almost always immediate. Only people who are already independently wealthy don't need their paychecks to pay their bills on time. The fact that everyone needs money and therefore needs a job to earn money does not make you a "slave" to your job. You know who can't survive without a job? Virtually everyone in the US, yet we're not slaves, in any way. Earning an income doesn't limit your options it increases them.

We could eliminate money altogether and go back to a barter system and people would still be "forced" to work in order to produce something with which to barter.

The whole concept of "wage slavery" is just empty semantics being used to push a political agenda. Please, mainsplain to me the reasoning behind referring to employment as "renting people." Employers don't "rent people" they offer labor contracts in which employees agree to provide labor to accomplish specified task in exchange for monetary recompense. One simply cannot rent a person today in the US, you can rent objects but you can't rent people.

To the extent that workers are exploited, it is a result of market conditions that are pre-existing at the time the parties agree to a labor contract. Why can employers readily find people willing to take minimum eage jobs? Why is there a large pool of applicants that aren't qualified to get higher paying jobs? If you want to actually solve problem you need to address root causes not waste time trying to change the meanings of words and throw money at problems in a counter productive manner that is overtly designed to achieve political gains.

With all that being said, I'd be willing to enter into some sort of indentured servitude if someone wanted to pay off my student loans

Any takers?

PhantomViper wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

Umm, that's not what I'm arguing. I agree that it is not really a problem, very few people are trapped in a cycle of poverty, usualy being their own fault such as education, sometimes not. I just think that it is an apt term for what it is discribing.

Yes, it is an apt term to describe the working conditions in place right after the industrial revolution where large numbers of workers would die due to extreme and unsafe working environments.

It is not, however, an apt term to describe minimum wage workers in a modern western society.

I agree, it isn't. The only real examples that are actually at all commonplace would be some jobs illegal immigrants do.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

I agree, it isn't. The only real examples that are actually at all commonplace would be some jobs illegal immigrants do.

Okay, so now I'm confused.

Haven't you been arguing that it is.....

I think that Bran Dawri was the one arguing that point.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

I agree, it isn't. The only real examples that are actually at all commonplace would be some jobs illegal immigrants do.

Okay, so now I'm confused.

Haven't you been arguing that it is.....

All I was doing was arguing that the term makes sense for what it is.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

All I was doing was arguing that the term makes sense for what it is.

feth that.

I mean, truth be told, I probably get paid close to minimum wage at my good job when you count all the extra hours I work at home and at night to DO MY JOB WELL. Should I be up in arms about it?

* - Okay, so no, after doing the math, that's not the case, nor is is that close. Apologies for my hyperbole.

Or maybe I should be up in arms about the fact that with coaching, my pay ends up being around $1.70 an hour.

The oppression. The slavery. Uproar!

 cincydooley wrote:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

All I was doing was arguing that the term makes sense for what it is.

feth that.

I mean, truth be told, I probably get paid close to minimum wage at my good job when you count all the extra hours I work at home and at night to DO MY JOB WELL. Should I be up in arms about it?

Or maybe I should be up in arms about the fact that with coaching, my pay ends up being around $1.70 an hour.

The oppression. The slavery. Uproar!

Huh? I thought I just agreed with you that it is about stuff like during the industrial revolution, not anything modern (and legal).

But it DOESN'T make sense. That's what we're saying.

 cincydooley wrote:
But it DOESN'T make sense. That's what we're saying.

What doesn't make sense.

 cincydooley wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

So...working in general, unless you're independently wealthy?

I'd say, "working in a situation where you cannot afford time away to interview or look for a new/better paying job because you make only just enough to have a roof over your head, the clothes you need to work in, and ramen to eat." would fit the arguments being made that "wage slavery" as a term, is a real thing, even in modern day Western Society.

comparing low wages, on voluntary work, to actual slavery,


is like asking people to wear poppies for you because you died once in call of duty,



it reeks of entitlement, and its demeaning to the people actually have had to deal with ACTUAL slavery or war.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 cincydooley wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Co'tor Shas wrote:
You are forced to keep working an unwanted, possibly even unsafe, job because if you don't you will starve, or lose your residence. And you keep working tht job because there are none available other than tht one.

So...working in general, unless you're independently wealthy?

I'd say, "working in a situation where you cannot afford time away to interview or look for a new/better paying job because you make only just enough to have a roof over your head, the clothes you need to work in, and ramen to eat." would fit the arguments being made that "wage slavery" as a term, is a real thing, even in modern day Western Society.

How are they unable to afford time away? If you're working a full time minimum wage job, you're only working 40 hours per week. You have a ton of free time to pursue other sources of income. If you're working 2 jobs part time, say 60 hours per week, you're making almost $25,000 / year, which is not poverty-level.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 easysauce wrote:
comparing low wages, on voluntary work, to actual slavery,


is like asking people to wear poppies for you because you died once in call of duty,



it reeks of entitlement, and its demeaning to the people actually have had to deal with ACTUAL slavery or war.

Well said.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:



I'd say, "working in a situation where you cannot afford time away to interview or look for a new/better paying job because you make only just enough to have a roof over your head, the clothes you need to work in, and ramen to eat." would fit the arguments being made that "wage slavery" as a term, is a real thing, even in modern day Western Society.

So how do we define that roof?

Are you entitled to live on your own?

I need my job to pay my mortgage and my bills. Because I live in a nicer house and have more/different bills does that mean my job isn't "wage slavery" by this horrible, horrible definition?

I think it's nonsense that we're even discussing the notion that this is a "real thing" in modern Western Society. It isn't. Not even remotely.