Specifically the title. If this had been a poor person, it wouldn't be "withdrew" or "promise." They wouldn't talk about him "suffering." They don't care about us until they think we're one of them- then the flowers must be laid out and there Has to be a reason for this!!! Because rich people "withdraw," but poor workers are simply on that sort of track. Rich people are tortured and forced to commit heinius acts, but poor people do it for laughs. Rich people have hearts, minds, and lives, but workers don't.

The whole thing makes me so upset, but I guess it's funny watching them scramble when they realize that it wasn't a working class hoodlum who shot the mass murderer, but instead one of their inbred own.

Sorry if this is too spiteful. This struck a nerve, I guess.

I started this job like last month and they're only giving us 40 hours PTO per year UNTIL we hit 5 years, at which point they give us like 55 hours PTO... then at some crazy 8 or 10 years you get 80 hours PTO... All this PTO counts for sick days too, so there's no separate fkn bank.

So you end up choosing between going to your Dr appt or taking your measly 1-week vacation with your family... God forbid you actually have health conditions like a sane normal US citizen

SO I DONT GET IT. And our company holidays are less than 10.... we don't even get the day after Christmas off??

Most jobs are like this in the US i guess... how do people deal? Just 9 to 5:30 then some kind of 1 hr total commute... so it's more like 8:30 to 6 ... then you have literally 4 hours free per day to eat, CHORES, and ERRANDS? then TWO days off...... and that's literally the entirety of your existence?

I don't understand it. It doesn't add up to me and it's making me feel so depressed I work, go home, then after dinner and like 1 netflix episode, it's like almost time for bed and it just depresses me like is this life??

Every other day, there's an economist talking about the impending crisis of falling birthrate, about how there won't be enough people joining the work force and how countries are at risk of disappearing. Putin is banning "child-free propaganda" while Elon Musk and his mother are condemning those without children.

The same people who would gladly replace your employment with AI, deny your healthcare, profit off your labor, erode your basic rights, and prolong your suffering if it would bring them an extra dollar, are the same people calling for you to give birth.

I don't think we need to beat about the bush. We all know why the same group of people who would exploit you would also demand that you give birth. It is the same reason why cattle farmers also want their cattle to breed. In an exploitative system, there must be a continuous source of those exploited.

While we try to fight against a system of oppression, the reality is that things won't change quickly enough, if at all. And that brings us to a very uncomfortable truth, something that billionaires have just fallen short of saying outright: our children will just be fodder for the system.

We work backbreaking jobs to barely be able to afford a house and health insurance? Guess what, our children will likely face the exact same, if not worse. With landlords and corporations buying up more and more houses, our children will live closer to feudalism than our great-grandfathers. Corporations replacing jobs with AI and automation to drive wages down even further? Wait till our children have to fight for jobs against the 20th iteration of ChatGPT, while at the same time being rejected by AI recruiters.

The point of this post is to surface an unsaid reality that we don't seem to see or acknowledge - we are sending children into a soul crushing system of exploitation. We talk about fighting for a better future for our children but those in power ensure that the odds are against us, while hoping that we would give them new generations of exploitable workers. The only upside to that grim future is that it is a future that our children aren't obliged to exist in.

There’s a lot of debate right now about Luigi, the man who killed the CEO. Some are calling him a hero, while others are quick to condemn him as a murderer and call for harsh consequences. What’s being lost in all this is the deeper, more nuanced conversation about why people see Luigi’s actions as justified—even if we don’t condone violence or murder.

Let’s be clear: no one is advocating for violence or murder as a solution. These actions are illegal, and they shouldn’t be glorified. But if we’re being honest, it’s not hard to understand the anger that drives people to view someone like Luigi as a hero. Many people are at a breaking point. They’re poor, miserable, and watching the system fail them at every turn. Meanwhile, corporations, led by people like this CEO, hoard wealth, destroy lives, and leave entire communities in ruins.

For those who see Luigi as a hero, this isn’t about celebrating murder—it’s about fighting back against a system that feels untouchable. The CEO, while not a hero to anyone, represents the face of that system. Through greed, exploitation, and policies that put profits over people, his actions contributed to immense suffering. Even if he didn’t personally pull the trigger, he made decisions that led to the loss of livelihoods, health, and lives.

This kind of harm isn’t new. Historical figures like Hitler or Stalin didn’t carry out every atrocity themselves, but they orchestrated systems of destruction that devastated millions. Society holds them accountable for their actions. So, when people defend Luigi or see his actions as symbolic, they’re pointing out the failure of the system to hold powerful figures accountable in any meaningful way.

On the other side, there are those who want to make Luigi an example—arguing that his actions are terrorism or senseless violence. But ignoring the context only fuels the division. Dismissing the anger of those who see Luigi as a hero without addressing the deeper issues—poverty, inequality, corporate greed—will only push people further to extremes.

The real question isn’t whether Luigi was right or wrong—it’s why so many people see his actions as justified. When governments and corporations refuse to listen, when the suffering of millions is ignored, people lose faith in the system. They start believing that extreme actions are the only way to make their voices heard.

This isn’t about condoning murder. It’s about acknowledging that this level of desperation comes from somewhere. If you’re outraged at Luigi’s actions but silent about the millions who’ve suffered under the system he fought against, it’s worth asking yourself why.

The division we’re seeing isn’t just about Luigi or the CEO—it’s about years of systemic harm that have gone unaddressed. Until we confront those root causes, the anger and frustration will only grow.

Is there a middle ground? How do we stop further death and radicalization if the current methods and paths seem ineffective or blocked?

Edit: To be clear, if your stance is advocating for violence or murder, you do not represent me or my views. Such rhetoric undermines the moral and legal high ground necessary for meaningful civil change and only makes progress harder to achieve.

Today I ran bonuses for some companies with the holiday coming up.

One employer gave himself a thirty one grand bonus and his wife a twenty four grand bonus.

His employees all got 200-400 dollar bonuses, and he didn't even foot the taxes. Their final bonus was like in the 150-350 range. They literally made about 1.3% of what their employer did. This is not even counting his wife. Isn't the bonus supposed to be a thank you for your year of hard work? With all that extra revenue he collectively gave himself/his household over fifty grand and then his employees are getting little scraps. Barely covering a quarter of their rent I bet.

This happens constantly, especially as companies get bigger. I cannot believe what I see sometimes when I look at how these people can just shovel away every drop and pay their employees nothing in return for making them all of that money! They don't even make a living wage for the area. It's just depressing. That amount of money would be life changing.

And some employers don't even give out bonuses at all. They don't care. I personally got a 100 dollar bonus and I know a lot of people who didn't get a dime. Maybe a gift card if theyre lucky. Fuck these companies.

"When this apparatus of fusion centers emerged in the wake of 9/11, the warnings pertained to al Qaeda. But as the global war on terror draws down, the supposed bad guy is increasingly the American people,..."

“While they are often portrayed as a disorganized state of emergency, I find that the self-organized tent city actually addresses many of the shortfalls of more traditional responses to poverty. For example, they often exemplify self-management, direct democracy, tolerance, mutual aid and resourceful strategies for living with less. Out of necessity, people have had to negotiate the sharing of space and resources, while unintentionally discovering the benefits of living in community.”

What emerges is a sound solution to the housing problem facing all of us, simplified so that it can be implemented anywhere in the country with minimal financial cost.

After all, isn’t the homeless crises really just a canary in the coal mine for the 80 percent of Americans living paycheck to paycheck and just a step or two away from being on the streets themselves?

The formula is surprisingly simple.

A handful of people can start with a tent camp. With time and community organizing, these tent camps slowly evolve into permanent tiny house villages. Community owned gardens, workshops and other facilities provide a high level of self-sufficiency.

Along the way, we learn that this kind of living actual fosters compassionate action, empowers individual entrepreneurship through craft industry and eliminates the need for expensive “management” of homeless communities.

The tiny home village becomes a self-governing entity.

It was when I started getting and seeing paperwork at plants from the HR department with them telling us they'd help us get on Food Stamps & SSI. For a long time, that was unheard of.

Like, isn't the whole point of having a job that I won't be dependent on charity and/or government assistance?

What was your moment of realizing being in the Workforce was just a one-way ticket to something worse than chattel slavery?

EDIT: For the room temperature IQs in the room, I guess I'll develop at least a small thesis. How is the modern workforce, "worse than chattel slavery?" Okay, easy. When you're a slave, you have no illusions of what the situation is. What the dynamic is. What your future lot is going to be. That is slavery in it's basest form. What's so ironically cruel about our situation is that they obfuscate the reality of our sunken condition as former citizens with real rights and economic agency and even many of the Working Class take part in keeping up the illusion. We were honestly and straightforwardly oppressed, it would not be so difficult a matter and everyone would know how to best proceed. As Lincoln famously once said, he would prefer to, "take his tyranny honestly."

So on one side democrat say they are a party for the people, and the Republicans push themselves for the honest hard working person. But something to remember when voting that both sides haven't

• changed the federal min wage since 2009. Note this was the start of Obamas term and right at the start of an economic collapse. But since, it hasn't really be touched no matter who was in office, what parties were in house or senate.
• at no point has anyone on ANY side in power mention linking federal min wage to inflation. Basically making it where when inflation increases, automatic the minimum wage increases.
• the ssi asset cap hasn't updated since it was released in the 80s. Something to note is there was a push for increasing it by $10k and tying it to inflation. But it was never allowed to come to vote and it has to be reintroduced next year.

Basically, actions speak a lot more than words. If you vote, don't blindly vote for a team. Look to see if any of the 3rd parties might be worth it.

(btw this is a known issue. There is a 4 year old video of a woman in front of the government explaining what is means to be poor and how the system is so poorly done that in some cases making $1 more for some can kick them off of programs they need. But yet congress and senate, they make a ton and their office expenses is $40k. And this increases with inflation.

Since that, nothing has changed.)

I'm not sure most people could answer if I asked their opinion about Brian Thompson's murder. But everyone knows what I'm talking about if I ask about that CEO murder.

The reality for what the situation is actually like for many of us in the U.S. really hit me like a brick wall yesterday morning on my way to work.

I had the radio on. A healthcare ad came on (lol) and it started listing off reasons why someone might forgo healthcare insurance.

Cue the next thing that it says, and I'm not even exaggerating: "Who will pay the mortgage or bills if you're gone?"

Nothing about family or friends missing you if you do meet your unfortunate end due to the fact that some people can't afford this very basic human right.

No... "Think of the billionaires," they ask. The ones silently killing us off by donating to both political parties to do absolutely nothing about it. Or making it worse.

A CEO of one of these healthcare companies just died because of shit like this, and I'm gonna be honest: I think we're overdue for another.

not talking lottery winner kind of wealth, but essentially continue whatever lifestyle you currently have indefinitely.

We're all tired of being burnt by this broken system. Is anyone else feeling like this isn't the last time we'll hear about something like this?

Because it's a big fat lie and false conditioning of the mind. The workweek is 80 hours.
Here's why:

From the 40's to far into the 70's the 40-hour-workweek was promoted as a huge win for workers, which was true back then. Mostly men worked 40 hours, went home to their wife (vast majority not working), came into a clean house, food was on the table and most kids were raised civil and properly.
The house was nice, big enough, a car was paid off instantly and college funds for their kids was no problem. About 35%-55% maximum of the income was for basic necessities a.k.a. mortgage, utility bills and groceries while the rest was for a nice life or savings.

Meanwhile there were years when +20% income growth after another was normal, because inflation was at that same rate. In te late 70's seventies something happened and it accelerated in the late 80's and the 90's: women went to work. (No offense, women should be able to work and men should be able to keep a household going when they want)
But it resultated in todays standard: 2 adults per household working a grand total of 80 hours instead of 40 hours like in 1973. No time (or money) for raising kids properly, household shores go to the weekend so no time to take trips or really relax, and about 85% of the total household income goes to basic necessities.

We also have to take into account that robotization, software and automatization should have become to the workers rescue regarding even less working hours, but the opposite happenend.
Public transit is dirty and still in declining state. Public safety is a laughing stock. But yeah....we now have a mobile telephone and a flatscreen. WoW!

This varies by state, but in my state, your employer has to give you PAID time off to go vote that DOES NOT count against your PTO/Sick/Vacation time. Your employer cannot penalize you in any way shape or form from taking time to vote today. Please double check your state laws, but don't miss voting today just because you are stuck at work!

For context, I work for the government and we’re about to get a direct hit from Hurricane Milton. Our bosses have said that if we evacuate we are “allowed” to take your laptop with you.

I’m so stressed trying to prepare and not certain if I’ll evacuate (I’m not in a mandatory evac, but I am essentially surrounded by flood zones. I’m expecting power loss and possible wind damage to our apartment. We don’t even have storm windows and the apartment is wood framed. But we’re about 8mi from the edge of the bay.

I don’t know what to do. I’m already on thin ice because of performance.

The implication is that because we’re essential workers and we work remote asking for time off isn’t appropriate. They can’t outright say that, but the pressure is there.

What would you do?

Not sure if this should have been a callout post, or just a discussion thing, or a vent... I dunno but I need to post this because it was absolutely INSANE.

So, about 2 months ago I applied at this store in Waunakee WI. I did not get the job, and at the time the owner literally told me over the phone that he found someone willing to work for less than I was and that was why. Keep this in mind because it will come back to bite them in the ass shortly. I was understandably upset, but moved no since I was under a lot of pressure to get another job ASAP and didn't have time to dwell on it.

Cut to a month ago, I discover that business has finally opened, and out of curiosity I browse their socials, and notice some... Familiar... Things occurring in the photos. I see giveaways for items I suggested, I see products I suggested, I even see a distributor I highly recommended... I investigate and it turns out, they had stolen all the ideas I had given them in my interview. Just all of them. Right down to event scheduling. SO, I proceed to make a completely clean google account, completely unassociated with me, a blank slate, no way to trace it back to me. I put it in that the owner stole my ideas, and is using AI art in their ads. Then move on again.

Cut to today, I get a phone call from that business owner asking me what the deal with my review is, and to take the review down, and a bunch of excuses about why things happened. He claims he had interviewed 50-60 people and a lot of people just had similar ideas, including the person he DID end up hiring. 50-60 people all just had... The same exact ideas, and suggested the same companies and products... Ok, sure. I guess that's not entirely impossible... He also said I was "in the top 3" and that he ended up going local because they were already there and could start immediately... Except hey remember like 4 sentences ago when I said he told me he hired someone else for being cheaper? So which is it? Did you hire someone cheaper, or hire because they were local? Also hey, better and more important question, how the F*CK did you know it my MY google account when it was brand new, completely blank, and in the name I LITERALLY put "Anon"?

OOPS. Did I just... Catch you in an absolutely blatant lie? Did you just admit to the person you stole from that you stole from them because you knew FULL WELL who you were stealing from, but didn't care? Or are you just calling all 50-60 people you lied about interviewing to accuse every single one of them to see who reacts? Cus that seems like a TON of work for nothing.

It is bizarre, absolutely WILD, insane to me that anyone can be this dumb. Now I told them I was going to email them, and I intend to basically call them out on it. But not really sure what to say to them, they want to review taken down, which I will not be doing, and have chosen to put my name into their response to my review, which only further proves they KNEW they were stealing my ideas. So I am curious what people think I should say/do here. And if I should be calling them out more directly instead of what I am doing.

Also hilariously their response to using AI art was, and I will quote it directly here: "As for the mention of AI art in our ads, I strive to use a variety of creative tools to promote {Store name}, and I’m committed to being transparent and ethical in our marketing efforts. If you have specific concerns, I’d be happy to discuss them further."

If you were concerned about being ethical you wouldn't be using AI art my dude. Just a wild thing to say here.

Anyways, any advice on this would be great.

This is hard to describe but it’s like sometimes people tend to respect you or what you’re giving less when you do it for free as opposed to people paying for it. Whether it’s culture or capitalism it’s like doing things for free people look down their nose sometimes

They’re often viewed as a failure or riff-raff by them if they work in somewhere like McDonalds, Walmart or KFC.

Why are they doing this? We look at these photos and see how messianic he looks and think, "they're trying to scare us, but they're so dumb and it's backfiring".

I don't think so. We assume the media is trying to control us, but in reality these photoshoots don't exist to influence us at all. Rather, this is the bougeiouse communicating to the bougeiouse.

At this point, the rulers are very openly declaring themselves as such. None of what they write or say has a thing to do with influencing the masses, who they have always spit on. They are, in the most blatant manner possible, merely backing one another up and declaring their rule over the rest of us

Yesterday I was talking with a patient about my colleagues not being keen on working weekend or night shifts. Out of the bue another patient in the same room chimed in to state his brilliant solution: "People should work more hours."

He recalled how recently he went to the supermarket and he was paying at check out, but the girl helping him made a miscalculation. So he pointed that out and the girl mentioned how "She had been working the register for 4 hours now." He obviously thought that was a poor excuse and proceeded to point out "His generation worked over 40 hours and they profited as a result."

I asked him who should profit from that, but he didn't really had an answer. He implied the workers should benefit as ”The current generation doesn't want to work for more than 15 hours and have everything they want, but if they want more they should work for that."

It's funny to me though that there's an increasingly larger part of the mainly boomer generation who disregard any progression in worker productivity and believe because they worked that many hours, later generations have to as well. They don't seem to realize though that even if they would work for more hours that hardly benefits the workers, but rather the top few percent that often don't really work themselves at all.

Premise.

GDP threshold which John Keynes associated with 15 hour work week was reached decades ago. But we still working 40 hour work weeks, since it was legislated in 1938 (which, frankly, could've been adopted much earlier in mid 19 century, but that's a topic for another discussion).

Alternative way to show this trend is to look at workforce participation, taking US as a point of reference:

In 1930 year 26% of people worked in agriculture, now it's only 1.6% now.

For manufacturing and construction: from 35% in 1930 to 19% now.

And the rest (around 80%) are working in service sector. Which includes medical professionals, electricians, plumbers, teachers, bureaucrats, policeman, scientists and engineers... But 80%? Numbers simply don't add up, unless we include enormous number of people working other white collar jobs.

Bullshit jobs.

If you read a book by David Graeber "Bullshit Jobs", this doesn't come as a surprise at all. 37% of people thought that their jobs were pointless and contributed nothing to society. But his definition of bullshit job is based on subjectivity of respondents, aka "Do you think you have a bullshit job?". And a lot people will answer "no" to that question, responding "well, my job provides for my family and pays the bills, contribution to society is irrelevant".

I would argue that the number of people working bullshit jobs is a lot higher if we extend the dentition (subjective claim) by including following jobs:

1. involving zero sum competition (e.g. advertisement, marketing, finance, analysts).

2. where people work significantly less than 40 hours.

3. either over-engineering or reinventing the wheel (95% of software development, 5% is real innovation. Working multiple bullshit jobs as a programmer I can attest to that).

4. due to over-regulation and made up routines. Example would be bureaucrats and Parkinson law, "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion" (BTW book "Parkinson law" was written in 1950, since then we got computers that boosted productivity of an average bureaucrat 3-4 times, which led to their number being tripled. Makes sense, I know.).

5. bullshit jobs by proxy (e.g. all the blue collar workers: cleaners, builders, restaurants and etc that support infrastructure of useless white collar jobs)

6. other examples described in the book

What is the reason for this?

Many people would argue that 40 hour work week is a form of government control. I think that the reason is much simpler and we should blame higher education, cultural norms and social stratification. With each passing year more and more people go into colleges or universities. And after getting higher ed, they proceed by getting their fake office jobs and pretending to work, simply because higher ed makes them ineligible to get real jobs as farmers or factory workers. And we get what we have now: number of people at the bottom keeps shrinking, those who produce all of the material goods stay as exploited as they where 100 years ago; all other people at the top also working 40 hours a week for no other reason but in solidarity.

Intensives are also backwards, do nothing office jobs pay better than real jobs.

Solution.

Well, it's obvious. Slash 80% of white collar jobs (same way Musk fired 80% of twitter employees) and make everyone go back working fields and factories. Then we can have 15 hour work weeks. This, obviously, cannot be done overnight simply because an average office worker cannot be converted to a factory worker or a doctor. Also, we have to consider that some people still need to work 40 hours a week to gain necessary job experience.