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America's looming housing crisis
Danielle and kristen sills are the perfect first time home buyers they've upped their budget and widened their search of the boston area but the last house they bid on had 29 offers it sold for about 70 or 80 thousand over what the asking price was and it was a 1200 square foot home finding an affordable apartment was hard enough before the pandemic right but now things are even worse some are calling it a crisis the shortage is now critical affordable so-called class c apartments are 96 percent occupied nationally when they go shopping the inventory the active listings they can choose from are down about 30 percent from this time last year that's just a staggering shortage of homes on the market right now he compares this with what happened during the subprime mortgage crisis a decade ago millions of homeowners defaulted on their mortgages and investors came in to buy the properties and convert them into rental housing so you're going to see a lot more of this soon [Music] as you watch this video you're probably sitting somewhere with a roof over your head for many of you it's probably your home either that or you're watching it work in which case i applaud you for stealing back some of your extracted value shelter is one of the most critical needs of almost every species on earth including humans it's integral to the american dream a modest home with a white picket fence two and a half kids and so on homelessness is rightly seen as something society needs to address as most decent people feel that no one should go without shelter in our modern era and yet despite the importance of housing and the significance we place on having somewhere to call home it seems that the us is on a collision course with another housing crisis it may not take exactly the same form as the housing crash of the great recession but it is coming and it's not looking good in this episode we'll explore the state of housing in the u.s and consider what factors are feeding this growing problem before we get into the causes of this looming housing crisis let's take a look at a few statistics if you look at the housing market today you'll notice a few things first there aren't many single-family houses to be had people just aren't selling the houses that do go up for sale are snapped up incredibly quickly typically within a week or even a couple of days having to offer tens of thousands of dollars over the listing price has become the norm if you want to actually have a chance of having the winning bid if you owned a home and you put it up for sale today odds are you'd have at least a handful of offers by the end of the day and many of them would be well over the asking price month-over-month price increases are now exceeding even the absurd levels we saw in 2006 and we all know what happened shortly after that what's going on here a big part of the problem is that the housing market is incredibly short on supply pace of housing production has slowed dramatically contributing to an already serious lack of housing this is partly due to a shortage of construction materials and partly just a continuation of the trend of producing fewer and fewer homes per year as of 2021 the us faces a shortage of roughly 7 million homes that's a lot of demand but a housing shortage isn't the only problem here the big picture is this young people are trying to buy affordable homes but the prices for even the most modest quote starter homes are out of reach these prices have been driven up by institutional money pouring into the housing market to snatch up homes as investment properties including the homes of those recently evicted during the pandemic to make matters worse some large investment firms are lobbying to end eviction protections so that they can acquire even more houses adding to the housing demand and homelessness problems at the same time with single family homes out of reach for the average working american the media has begun trying to frame perpetual renting as a good thing something that benefits young people the problem there is that even renting is becoming prohibitively expensive there are now officially zero counties in the entire country where a worker earning the federal minimum wage can afford a one-bedroom apartment even for those making significantly more than minimum wage things are looking pretty grim there's a common joke that goes something like the bank said i couldn't afford an 1800 a month mortgage so now i pay 3 000 a month in rent the cherry on top is the true unemployment rate if we take the lysep definition for unemployment someone who is looking for a full-time job that pays a living wage but cannot find one then the true rate of unemployment in the u.s currently sits at a staggering 23.7 percent so even if quote affordable housing were available it likely wouldn't be affordable because nearly a full quarter of americans can't find a job that pays a living wage with that context out of the way let's look at how these problems combine to form the perfect storm for economic meltdown we'll start with everyone's favorite bad guys the billionaires it should come as no surprise that the people putting in bids at 60 80 100 000 over asking price are not your average person they're typically the ultra wealthy usually through investment firms or other real estate poaching groups let's take charles coke as an example one of the billionaire koch brothers charles has donated millions of dollars to three conservative organizations spearheading the push to eliminate covet eviction protections this alone would be reprehensible but since the beginning of the pandemic he's also been heavily investing in real estate snatching up homes left and right to add to his massive portfolio of assets among them the homes of the evicted and desperate in april 2020 he dumped 200 million dollars into amherst holdings a company which brags that has acquired over 30 000 homes since 2012. koch real estate investments was also among the investment groups that recently bought an ownership stake in smart rent a landlord technology company charles koch is not alone in this scheme billionaires investment firms and giant corporations are buying up as many homes as they possibly can which is driving prices way beyond the reach of the average american and they're also betting big on the lucrative future of the rental market it should be clear that very few normal people are going to be able to afford to make offers on homes that exceed the asking price by tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars but some media outlets would have you believe that giant real estate firms aren't the bad guys here for example vox put out an article saying things like everybody wants to blame blackrock and wall street isn't to blame for the chaotic housing market to give them the benefit of the doubt yes obviously everything has multiple variables which influence material reality but it's a little on the nose to say blackrock is good actually when the ceo of vox investor general atlantic is on the board of directors at blackrock and even if that weren't the case the vox article makes some strange assertions claiming for example that institutional investors just aren't that interested in single-family homes this is demonstrably false as firms like blackrock have bought up hundreds of thousands of single-family homes since the great recession and they continue to hold them hostage on the rental market then there's airbnb if you go on vacation odds are you'll find dozens of cute freshly renovated two-bedroom units to choose from entire neighborhoods empty except for out-of-state license plates there's no such thing as an affordable home anymore they've all been bought up whether by institutional investors or wannabe real estate moguls and turned into airbnbs or rentals and very few new ones are being built in fact there's a new trend of building suburban neighborhoods not with the intention of selling the homes but of selling the entire development to investment firms who then rent out the houses vox isn't the only instance of media trying to manufacture consent for endless renting the wall street journal says it's generational preferences that are pushing young people to rent instead of buying a home but it's not preference at all most young people would love to have the stability of owning a home especially when mortgages are now typically much lower than rent prices in the same area but they've been priced out of home ownership and now it's looking like they're going to be priced out of renting too companies that have a stake in people renting are pushing for an end to home ownership bloomberg says things like rising real estate prices are stoking fears that homeownership long considered a core component of the american dream is slipping out of reach for low and moderate income americans that may be so but a nation of renters is not something to fear in fact it's the opposite they end their article with this country was always more about new frontiers than comfortable settlements anyway which translates as you will suffer and never be able to afford a home and that's good because it's the american way so we have entire generations of americans no longer being able to afford single-family homes we have rapidly increasing rent prices to the point where an eviction crisis is very likely large corporations are buying up all the available housing and actively trying to get more people evicted so they can snatch up their homes too new communities are being developed not to be used for affordable housing but explicitly for the purpose of making a new suburban renter class that is held hostage by landlords and faceless investment firms and the media is telling us that actually this is what we want and that stability and building equity is bad this all adds up to one serious economic crisis looming on the horizon it's always hard to predict exactly what form the fallout will take but it's usually a safe assumption that the brunt of the suffering will fall upon those who have little say in the matter lower income people who are just trying to get by the major players who are manipulating the market and causing these problems will suffer no consequences and if the great recession is anything to go by they will actually dramatically increase their wealth at the expense of the rest of the population well this all sounds pretty bad what's the solution here how can we avoid another massive economic collapse historically speaking we can't capitalism is built on the maintenance of cycles of boom and bust and they're fairly predictable in their timing these crises are becoming more frequent and more damaging to the average person but also more lucrative for the ruling class and if we know anything about capitalism it's that when the ruling class is benefiting from something it will not change without a massive drawn-out struggle if you're a young person or a person of any age really if you're looking for a home i don't think it would be wise to try to buy one now i know it's easy to say save more money but do what you can to squirrel away a few bucks here and there rent will continue to go up but the chaos surrounding single-family homes can't last forever it's unsustainable even in the fairly short term i think a crash of some sort is likely and hopefully if we can ride out the storm housing prices might come down somewhat afterwards the giant real estate firms will have added many new properties to their portfolio but it's very unlikely that they will have bought them all once supply chains recover from the pandemic construction materials become more available and the home buying frenzy dies down a little bit hopefully there will be some homes available for first-time buyers in the meantime we have some actions we need to take first we need to push back against the media talking points about generational preferences and the benefits of renting they support a predatory exploitative status quo that we should not accept if they want us to rent we need to demand affordable apartment housing with rates that only increase with inflation not at the whims of parasitic landlords we also need to remember that once upon a time owning a home was within reach for just about every american back in the 50s a suburban home only cost two or three times the average salary which meant that not only could people easily afford them they could pay them off in a matter of a few years rather than over the course of three decades like almost everything else under modern capitalism housing has shifted from being seen as a basic necessity to a valuable commodity from which the wealthy can extract massive profits the best thing we can do right now is continue to fight evictions organize tenants unions to build bargaining power against the landlords fight for higher wages across the country and support our neighbors however we can you are an individual but you're also a member of one of two classes either the working class or the capitalist class if you do not own the means by which capital is produced a factory an office building a block of apartments a large company you are a member of the working class and that means your fight is the same as the people at risk of eviction or who make 7.25 an hour or who can't afford their medical bills only by acting in solidarity with your class can you make a significant impact if you do own the means of production if you have wealth at your disposal we need you too we wouldn't have had marks without angles donate to mutual aid funds buy and distribute copies of socialist books use your free time to help in whatever ways you can everyone has a role to play and in the housing crisis or any other fight organizing is key to victory
By Christian Banza3 years ago in Education
Should the US be considered a democracy?
For well over half a century the United States has enjoyed its status as the world's strongest superpower and awarded itself the title of defender of global democracy many Americans see their country as the world's moral arbiter the shining city on a hill the standard by which all other nations should judge themselves the reasoning for this superiority complex mostly boils down to the notion that US citizens enjoy the purest most untainted Democratic experience the world has to offer free and fair elections equal representation universal rights and countless other indicators of a healthy and thriving democracy for an action is often seen as a threat to our democracy manipulated news is considered extremely dangerous to our democracy and elections are steeped in the language of democracy versus tyranny the u.s. is obsessed with the idea of democracy but if you dig a little deeper you'll find some worrying trends in this episode we're going to discuss what it means to be a democratic nation and take a look at some data that suggests the u.s. is not living up to the standards it sets for the rest of the world before we begin we need to get one thing out of the way there are plenty of people who will say well actually the u.s. is a republic not a democracy and then everyone starts yelling and suddenly no one remembers what we were talking about in the first place I'll try to make this quick the definition of democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state typically through elected representatives the definition of Republic is a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch you can see why people can get a bit confused to make a long story short Americans have been arguing about whether the country is a republic or a democracy since the very founding of the nation and that probably won't change anytime soon the best consensus we can reach is that the United States can be classified as a democratic republic for a representative democracy our system of governance has characteristics of both Republic and democracy people who claim otherwise are generally just out to derail the conversation in this video we'll be discussing the aspect of American life which are supposed to be democratic things like voting and elections the main goal here is not to determine whether the u.s. is a democracy in the Republic vs. democracy sense but whether the nation lives up to the standards it supposedly represents and by which we judge the rest of the world let's start with a brief look at the nation as a whole what is it what does it represent the u.s. is the richest nation in human history home to some of the very wealthiest people on the planet it's also a nation of crushing inequality the richest three people own more wealth than the bottom 160 million Americans and Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon and the richest man on earth makes more money in one minute than the average American household earns in almost two years the u.s. is home to the world's most powerful military by far we spend more money on our military than the next ten highest spenders combined in theory this massive force is purely for national defense but the country has proven that it's more than happy to use military action to establish regimes more amenable to US interests for example we've instigated or supported no fewer than 56 coos in Latin America since the 1950s not to mention the Middle East often toppling democratically elected governments this is in stark contrast to our nation's preferred image as the defender of global democracy geographically the u.s. is prime real estate as Otto von Bismarck once put it the Americans are a lucky people they're bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors and to the east and west by FISH this geographical luxury has allowed the nation to flourish unbothered by the goings-on of other countries and able to spend its money not rebuilding after the world wars like european nations but in other areas strengthening its military to become the sole world superpower and establishing massive international corporations and yet with all this wealth and superb geopolitical positioning the u.s. still fails in several key metrics some 40 million of its people live in poverty with another 10 million right on the brink American health care is consistently rated the worst in the developed world with thousands dying or going bankrupt every year thanks to the extraordinarily expensive system in 2018 America was added to the list of most dangerous nations in which to be a journalist and that was before the targeting of journalists by police in the wake of the murder of George Floyd these should all be red flags on their own but if we're talking specifically about democracy we need to look at more testable areas of civic life for the rest of this video I'll be drawing some data from a report titled testing theories of American politics elites interest groups and average citizens which was published in 2014 in the journal perspectives on politics you can find a link to the study in the description in this report the off set out to test for theories of American political power essentially trying to measure who's voice matters in American politics these four theories are majoritarian electoral democracy economic elite domination and two types of interest group pluralism majoritarian pluralism and biased pluralism to put it in slightly easier language the groups are average citizens the wealthy and powerful and large organized groups either popular or business oriented in the ideal vision of the country many Americans would want the balance to be skewed towards average citizens and popular mass movements as domination by the economic elites or business interests would indicate less of a democracy and more of a plutocracy or oligarchy that is ruled by a minority of wealthy players if you polled a sample of Americans about what they think the ideal form of democracy would be odds are the vast majority would say one-person one-vote everyone's interests are given the same weight a large portion of the American population believes that we already experienced this ideal form of democracy the authors of the report come to a very different conclusion over the course of their testing by pitting the four dominant theories of American political power against one another using a data set consisting of nearly 2000 policy issues they reached the exact opposite conclusion they state we have been able to produce some striking findings one is the nearly total failure of median voter and other majoritarian electoral democracy theories when the Preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for the Preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule near zero statistically non significant impact on public policy they go on to say interest groups do have substantial independent impacts on policy and a few groups particularly labor unions represent average citizens views reasonably well but the interest group system as a whole does not overall net interest group alignments are not significantly related to the Preferences of average citizens the net alignments of the most influential business oriented groups are negatively related to the average citizens wishes so not only our business interest not in alignment with the will of the voting majority they are directly opposed to it this should not come as a surprise when extremely wealthy individuals and corporations are allowed to dump as much money as they want into politics it would stand to reason that their desires hold more weight to those receiving the contributions these graphs from the study sum up the findings pretty well regardless of average voter desire for legislation on any given issue the odds of Representatives delivering the desired result is the same contrary to this we see a strong correlation between economic elite and special interest desires and legislative action this should be alarming because if our votes are meaningless then we don't actually have any say in how the country is run that would mean our system is not democratic okay but if our votes are meaningless why do politicians try so hard to convince people to vote for them well think of the optics without a significant number of votes from the population the country would not be considered Democratic at all the illusion of the shining city on a hill would be shattered and the decidedly undemocratic oligarchy laid bare for the rest of the world to see so those votes from average citizens are crucial but by actively seeking votes and encouraging voting politicians open themselves up to the undesirable possibility of being voted out if only there were some way to ensure that vote totals from states would always deliver the desired outcome enter gerrymandering has a quick crash course on state level politics each state is divided up into voting districts of similar population sizes to facilitate the process of voting and establish a number of seats to be filled by representatives make sense but what doesn't make a whole lot of sense from a Democratic standpoint is how these districts are drawn in America much to the bafflement of foreign politicians those currently in elected positions get to draw their own district maps think about that for a second in a democracy the citizens should be able to vote for the representative of their choice what we have is the opposite representatives get to choose their voters they can draw maps that exclude certain populations or pack in as many of a certain type of voter as possible that's part of the reason district maps often look so strange they've been carefully crafted to deliver the desired result think what you will of John Oliver he's got a pretty good episode on gerrymandering here's a useful explainer from the show The Washington Post showed how this can work look at this hypothetical state it's 60% blue voters 40% red and it needs to be carved up into five districts now proportionally you would want three blue and two red districts but if you draw the lines like this you can get three red majorities and two blues and if you draw it like this you can get five blue majorities and no red and if you draw lines like this it looks like a dick which is and before you go calling me a partisan hack I'm opposed to gerrymandering from both parties and you should be too both Democrats and Republicans do it and while it's technically not illegal it should be it gives politicians tremendous control over the outcome of elections and that should not be acceptable in a healthy democracy but perhaps even more egregious than gerrymandering is outright voter suppression there is no right more fundamental to democracy than the right to vote it's always been in the interest of some politicians to dissuade certain voting blocks from casting their ballots or to make it more difficult for them to do so but in recent years voter suppression has reached levels that would cast doubt on the legitimacy of our elections if they were to take place in any other country repressive voter ID laws voter roll purges gerrymandering is also a form of voter suppression but at least those responsible for questionable district maps can hide behind the technical legality of their actions what we're seeing out on the voting trail is much more alarming instead of going to all the effort of trying to convince people not to vote those in power have taken to simply closing polling locations so voters don't even have the opportunity this has been a widespread problem in recent years and it's finally starting to get the attention it deserves take the Kentucky primary on June 23rd in a normal election year Kentucky would have over 3700 polling stations available this time around they slashed that number to under 200 nearly half of Kentucky's black voters live in a single County Jefferson County had just one polling station one polling station for over three quarters of a million residents this will lead to multi-hour wait times that most voters simply won't be able to manage people have to work and if the wait is eight hours long which is becoming more and more common the majority of voters won't be able to cast their ballot the practice of closing polling locations is particularly insidious because those doing the closing can say look everyone had the opportunity to vote there was a polling station open but in reality if you can't afford to wait in line for an entire day you do not have the opportunity to vote what those in power are doing is making it impossible for the people to make their voices heard they are denying Americans their most fundamental democratic rights at what point do we have to admit that our elections are illegitimate and undemocratic we're not shy about stepping in when other countries conduct fraudulent elections so why should we get a free pass to return to the study we discussed earlier in their conclusion the author's state what do our findings say about democracy in America they certainly constitute troubling news for advocates of populistic democracy who want their governments to respond primarily or exclusively to the policy preferences of their citizens in the United States our findings indicate the majority does not rule at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes when a majority of citizens disagrees with the economic elites or with organized interests they generally lose moreover because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change they generally do not get it they end by saying we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened and they're absolutely right in fact I'd go even further and say that the United States is no longer a democracy if our districts are gerrymander to all but ensure a certain outcome if our polling stations are closed making it impossible for us to vote if the desires of average voters are disregarded even with an overwhelming majority if corporations and the ultra wealthy can simply buy their desired legislation we're not living in a democracy we're living under an oligarchy the thing we need to realize is that this is not some unfortunate and unforeseeable outcome this is the system functioning as intended at least as intended since the 1980s crippling precarity for the many to build the ever-growing affluence of the few with no way to challenge the status quo by electoral means crumbling infrastructure juxtaposed with glistening new corporate campuses and headquarters tens of millions of Americans laid off during a global pandemic while the richest handful of people become even richer and the stock market hums along nicely we need to come to grips with the fact that there has been a consensus in American politics for decades now the Democrats and Republicans represent two wings of the same party dedicated to maintaining corporate dominance ask yourself whose voice matters in American politics whose desires are taken into consideration our tax laws benefit the rich our environmental laws benefit corporations you ian's have been gutted and all but destroyed to remove workers bargaining power our news networks are owned by the rich and politically-connected our health care system is a massive for-profit industry that turns human suffering into giant checks for politicians and all the while the two major parties put on a bit of political theater slandering each other as the ultimate evil when their economic interest aligned on just about every issue they trade places every few years voters feel vindicated and disappointed then vindicated again as their preferred party goes through the motions with one hand behind their back reaching for corporate donations in a true representative democracy the will of the people would matter our votes would matter you don't have to look very hard to see that isn't the case the United States should not be considered a representative democracy
By Christian Banza3 years ago in Education
America's overworked obsession
The less you go to the theater the dance hall the public house the less you think love theorize sing paint fence etc the more you save the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour your capital the less you are the less you express your own life the more you have i.e the greater is your alienated life the greater is the store of your estranged being everything which the political economist takes from you in life and in humanity he replaces for you in money and in wealth all passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice the worker may only have enough for him to want to live and may only want to live in order to have that these words penned by karl marx in 1844 are no less true today than they were 170 years ago and nowhere on earth do they ring more true than in the united states as the wealthiest nation on earth the u.s enjoys the privilege of looking down on the rest of the world as quote less successful our people basking in the light of glorious american exceptionalism what we fail to realize is that our concept of success is not only narrow and short-sighted but also fundamentally opposed to human flourishing our population as a whole may enjoy more wealth than some of our peer nations but at what cost our waking hours are consumed by work our life expectancy is on the decline we rate poorly in metrics like happiness and job satisfaction and those of us in the workforce today will never achieve the financial stability of our parents generation in this episode we're going to attempt to divorce the notion of success from the dogged pursuit of the accumulation of capital let's start with the core belief that animates many american workers the idea of the american dream a sort of national ethos the philosophy of the american dream can be summed up something like this everyone has the opportunity for prosperity and success regardless of their background and based solely upon their ability or achievement it's very much a pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality a phrase which is also very common in american life the idea that one should be able to succeed without any external help solely through one's own force of will and hard work this notion is of course absurd and is made even more ridiculous by the fact that the phrase has been adopted by so many in a manner completely opposite to its original meaning to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps is obviously impossible and that was the original meaning of the phrase to attempt something that is completely absurd of course in america nothing is impossible so we refitted the expression to better suit our dogmatic obsession with self-reliance america is an interesting case study because unlike many other countries when settlers first arrived here there seemed to be an endless expanse of land to explore and claim this frontier lifestyle gave birth to the restless nature of the american dream one governor noted in 1774 that the americans forever imagine the lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled he added that if they attained paradise they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west this sums up the american relationship to work pretty well what we have is never enough we need to accumulate more and more wealth never satisfied ever striving over the last couple centuries the american dream has evolved into what we see today work hard save money send your kids to college so they can live a better life than you did retire to florida in a lot of ways this is a noble goal the desire for your children to live a better life than you did is what we should expect of ourselves but more recently over the past 50 years or so the benefits of hard work have been stripped away and the things older generations took for granted have all but disappeared jobs are harder to find and pay far less money than our parents were paid for comparable positions pension plans and retirement benefits are rarely offered these days we have some of the worst vacation and parental leave options in the world much of the economy has shifted to gig work which doesn't have to provide health insurance or any other benefits and domestic and global perception of the us is on a decidedly downward trajectory but don't just take my word for it let's look at a few statistics back in the 1960s only 20 percent of american mothers worked this was partly due to the perceived role of the mother as the primary homemaker and caretaker but it was also largely because most households only needed one source of income to provide a financially stable and upwardly mobile life today 70 percent of american children live in households where both parents are employed most families simply can't get by on a single source of income at least 134 countries have laws that cap the maximum length of the work week the u.s does not in the united states almost 86 of men and over 66 percent of women work more than 40 hours per week you've probably heard that japanese workers are some of the most overworked in the world the average american works 137 more hours per year than the average japanese worker we work 260 more hours than the british we work 499 more hours than the french according to the bureau of labor statistics productivity of the average american worker has increased by 400 since 1950. if we're producing value at four times the previous rate that would mean we could earn a comparable living to our grandparents in one quarter of the work hours right obviously that's not the case we're working longer hours at a drastically increased rate of productivity but we don't benefit from that labor well at least we're rewarded with generous vacation and parental leave oh wait no we have the worst rankings in the developed world and worse rankings than many third world countries among 41 studied nations the u.s ranks dead last in terms of paid parental leave we are the only nation out of those 41 that does not mandate some amount of paid parental leave for comparison the smallest amount of paid leave required by the remaining 40 nations in the study is about 2 months 2 months of paid leave in the u.s is unfathomable in 34 of the 41 countries some of the leave is allocated for new fathers there's a reason we only ever hear the phrase maternity leave in the u.s and that's because new fathers are never eligible for leave in order to spend time with their child some countries that rank higher than the u.s include mexico greece croatia even our fellow workaholic japan estonia offers 86 weeks of paid parental leave again the united states offers nothing there are zero industrialized nations on earth that don't have a mandatory option for paid parental leave except the us vacation and sick time is a similar story we don't have a federal law requiring paid sick days nor do we have a law mandating paid annual leave once again making us the only industrialized nation not to do so take a look at this graph you might notice there's a bar missing that would be the united states not mandating any paid leave whatsoever it's especially depressing when you realize that a mcdonald's employee in norway gets more vacation time than just about any american worker regardless of field or salary meanwhile in the united states we abuse our low paid workers and lambast them for being lazy and not finding a better job it's no wonder that our citizens consistently rank poorly for happiness and job satisfaction they're being worked to death are not offered any benefits get no time off and on top of that are abused for trying to earn a living what's perhaps more disappointing than wealthy older people deriding low-paid workers is other workers in precarious positions doing the same for example take gig economy workers while some of them are fully aware that their occupation is based on their own exploitation there's a disappointing subset of people who buy into the notion of quote hustle culture you'll see these people make inspirational instagram posts posting images of jeff bezos using hashtags like rise and grind and going on about how the key to success is to work all day every day until it pays off here's the thing for these people it will never pay off deifying rich people who accumulated their wealth by exploiting others or inheriting vast sums of money doesn't make you smart it means you've bought their propaganda if you drive 15 hours a day for uber you might make a bit more money but you don't have any opportunity for advancement you're not suddenly going to get health insurance or vacation time because you're working hard you're a piece of equipment to them you drive the car you make them money that's all you're worth to uber but this toxic idea that we need to give up hours days years of our lives as a sort of sacrifice to appease the gods of success is not only misguided it's actively throwing away your life hustle culture destroys your work-life balance and those who engage in it see themselves as morally superior to people working traditional jobs for a wage these sorts of false divisions among the working class are exactly what the ruling class wants the same is true of the false division between the working class and the so-called middle class it's a meaningless distinction designed solely to make more comfortable workers feel superior to their lower paid counterparts and therefore at odds with their own best interests if you feel superior to others or see yourself more like the billionaires than your fellow workers you'll never organize against your oppressors because you believe you might one day become part of this upper echelon if you just work a few more hours per week surely you'll be rewarded and gain entrance into their elite club america's cult of overwork destroys our collective imagination it removes every possible motivation beyond the desire for the accumulation of more wealth to many americans there is nothing but work and the possibility of eventual reward work is the only thing that matters but there is so much more to life than what capitalism has conditioned us to pursue if we worked fewer hours we could take time to spend with family and friends we could learn that hobby we've been putting off for years we could write novels produce art create things that enrich the lives of others on a fundamental human level we could take time to just exist when was the last time you just took a day to relax and you didn't feel guilty about it we are so conditioned to believe that we should always be working that even when we're not working it's all we can think about the american dream the obsession that anyone can quote make it if they work hard enough is thoroughly tangled up with the notion of american exceptionalism we think it's because we work so hard that we are exceptional and you know what we are exceptional we're the most overworked population on the planet our standard of living is going down our life expectancy is going down we don't get vacation days sick days or time to spend with our newborn children we're increasingly unhappy our economy is teetering on the brink of the worst financial crisis in modern history we can't protect ourselves from a pandemic that everyone else handled because we're so conditioned to believe that we always need to be working and somehow we still believe that the american dream is a reality so yes we are exceptional but we are exceptional in all the wrong ways if we don't dismantle the oppressive structures that enable this culture of overwork this is the only form of american exceptionalism that will ever exist
By Christian Banza3 years ago in Education
Is this the beginning of a new labor mouvement
there is a shortage of skilled trades people throughout the u.s economy the department of labor reported only 266 000 jobs were added in april and the unemployment rate for the last month ticked up to 6.1 percent 12 states have cut unemployment aid about three months before federal benefits expire in september at the very moment that unemployment is rising fewer people are working american businesses say they can't find employees and it's obvious they can't go to the nearest strip mall and count the help wanted signs on the doors they're everywhere if you've turned on the news within the last couple months you've probably seen all sorts of dramatic coverage and special panels on the supposed labor shortage that has cropped up in the wake of the pandemic thanks to the covet relief checks tiny and inadequate as they were for the first time in decades many americans found themselves with the tiniest bit of bargaining power against their boss suddenly they could afford to stay home from their low-wage jobs at least for a little while and many took the opportunity to do so and look for better employment this led to a wave of posters and signs outside places like mcdonald's saying that no one wants to work anymore as if it were some kind of moral failing that people were choosing not to slave away over a griddle 10 hours a day for poverty wages but this new bit of tension between workers and employers is just the tip of the iceberg in this episode we're going to explore the possibility that the united states is witnessing the birth of a new labor movement okay time for a pop quiz i'm going to give you a quote and you try to guess who said it here it is labor is prior to and independent of capital capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration who do you think made this assessment of labor and capital if you've seen my other videos you might assume this is a quote by karl marx but you'd be wrong this quote is actually by none other than president abraham lincoln from his 1861 state of the union address lincoln was a contemporary of marx and there is some evidence to suggest that the two may have even corresponded at some point but regardless the fact that a president of the united states a place we today consider the bastion of free market capitalism would make a statement so supportive of labor over capital is probably shocking to many of you believe it or not the united states did not always have the exploitative soul-crushing labor landscape we see today there was a time many years ago now when workers had actual bargaining power where they could come together and say to their boss hey we've got some demands and the boss would have to work with them today that kind of relationship is nearly unthinkable the barest hint of unionization in the workplace is often grounds for termination benefits our grandparents took for granted have been stripped away pensions vacation time paid sick days maternity leave a company car a fair wage all relics of a bygone era consumed by the all-devouring ideology of cost cutting and maximizing profit of course executives never feel the sting of these measures in fact their compensation has only continued to grow to the point where wealth inequality is now just as bad as its peak during the gilded age these days many workers never even meet their boss they're not even considered employees the gig economy has drastically changed the way we look at work and as of the latest available data 36 percent of american workers have turned to gig work to make ends meet combine the lack of livable wages increasing rates of depression lower life expectancy and rock bottom job satisfaction rates with a global pandemic and you've got the perfect storm for a renaissance of class consciousness and labor activity while it may not seem like much to the untrained eye over the past year we have seen workers taking the very first steps towards fighting for better conditions one of the most important developments has been the resurgence of the labor strike in various industries as a tool for forcing change for example in 2020 during the pandemic we saw strikes among nurses teachers flight attendants and auto workers to name just a few in each of these instances the workers typically unionized ones formulated demands that would provide them with better safety measures and wage protection for the duration of the pandemic nurses unions picketed for adequate ppe and better staffing to handle the massive influx of coronavirus patients teachers demanded that schools remained closed until reasonable safety precautions could be implemented to protect themselves and their students from contracting the disease and taking it home to their families auto workers forced the shutdown of plants over social distancing concerns flight attendants negotiated for paycheck protection to be a part of the industry bailout ensuring their economic security through the turbulent pandemic in a time when millions of americans were being laid off from work many from jobs that would not survive the pandemic union workers enjoyed a certain level of protection thanks to their bargaining power and as such they were laid off at a lower rate and often with job or paycheck guarantees this hasn't gone unnoticed after decades of decline in union membership thanks to vicious union busting campaigns and expansion of corporate power in 2020 membership began to tick up again 2019 marked an all-time low for union membership with an abysmal 10.3 percent of workers being represented by a union in the wake of the pandemic that number has climbed just a bit to 10.8 percent while this may not seem significant it represents the sharpest increase in 40 years and the fact that it's increasing at all after four decades of steep decline is very promising this increase in membership corresponds with polling that indicates a majority of americans see the decline of unions as a bad thing for workers and it coincides with the proliferation of labor voices on social media but we'll get to that in a minute one important union action that's currently ongoing as of writing the script at least is the impressive strike by alabama miners who along with miners from several other states traveled all the way to new york city as a group to protest their unfair treatment outside the blackrock headquarters blackrock is the primary shareholder of warrior met coal which operates out of brookwood alabama warrior met miners have been on strike for over four months now demanding a fair contract after saving the company from bankruptcy back in 2016 when warrior met was in danger of going under miners accepted a six dollar per hour pay cut to keep it afloat since that time the company has extracted record profits from their operation netting 309 million dollars in 2019 while the ceo continues to pocket his 4 million salary all of this is on the backs of the people who actually do the incredibly hazardous back-breaking unenviable work down in the mines of course this well-deserved strike has garnered very little mainstream media attention one thing that's very important to note is that class consciousness and solidarity the practice of standing with your fellow workers does not necessarily follow a cut and dry political divide i'm sure there are plenty of fancy business people in new york looking down on the miners as a bunch of rednecks not only their class enemy but opposed to their preferred political team as well while it may be true that many of these alabama miners espouse right-wing politics in general if you listen to their own words about the strike you'll notice there's nothing even the most centrist republican would support the united mine workers association president said we're in new york city because we're simply following the money and demanding that those who created that wealth the miners get their fair share of it while abraham lincoln would certainly have agreed with that sentiment modern politicians are opposed to it in every way both democrats and republicans have fought tooth and nail to destroy unions and make sure workers don't have any bargaining power in order to keep their corporate donors happy and cutting them nice campaign checks the only group in america that supports the striking workers in just about any instance regardless of industry is the socialists what many people have historically seen as a left-right divide is understood by socialists as a capital labor divide the working class of the us is made up of people from all political backgrounds and their class interests are the same regardless of those political beliefs it's no coincidence that membership in socialist groups like the dsa has been increasing in tandem with union membership flowery words from politicians don't mean much to striking workers but actual material support from other workers does and the socialists are always the first to lend a hand specifically because of their understanding of class struggle the dsa is the largest organized socialist group in the u.s currently sitting just shy of a hundred thousand dues-paying members and since the pandemic that number has jumped from 66 000 to its current 92 000. that is a massive increase in a very short period of time it just goes to show that when all politicians have to offer is empty promises and an increasingly miserable capitalist status quo building an economic alternative starts to sound pretty appealing it's no wonder that polling continues to show a decline in favorability for capitalism and an increase for socialism politicians and the ultra wealthy seem to be doing their very best to turn the rest of us against them for example amazon has been at the center of worker rights discourse for a while now and instead of laying low jeff bezos decides to go on a little joyride to space while his workers literally die on the job public perception has turned decidedly against the ultra wealthy and for good reason the only way they're able to amass their vast fortunes is through the exploitation of their workers and the problem continues to get worse right now there's still very little awareness of the nature of class struggle the battle between capital and labor among the american people those in power understand it that's why unions have been all but destroyed since the reagan years the accumulation of ever greater profits requires greater and greater extraction from the laboring masses without a banner to organize behind the american working class lacks the cohesion it needs to make effective changes on a national scale in the past it was socialist labor leaders like eugene debs who offered a path forward and thanks to the bold actions of workers back then we have many things we take for granted today child labor laws the weekend the eight hour workday and 40-hour workweek workplace safety laws and so much more all of these were socialist initiatives supported by millions of hard-working americans with an understanding of class struggle the most critical thing we can do right now is work towards rebuilding that lost class consciousness it will be a challenge but we have more tools at our disposal than ever before social media has proven an effective tool for raising awareness and coordinating labor actions and as the younger generations who grew up with the internet become more politically active we'll likely see social media play an even larger role in organizing and agitating for positive change the dsa isn't perfect but it is a good first step for getting involved and learning how to organize within your community see if there's a local chapter or if there's not reach out to the national branch and start one yourself if you've done the reading if you have a good understanding of the mechanics of class struggle talk to your friends about it each one teach one as the expression goes every little bit helps and we need all the help we can get a new labor movement one that can really force concessions from the ruling class would drastically improve the lives of average americans it could afford us financial security it could give us time to spend with our friends and loved ones and maybe if we're lucky it could even make america the country it claims to be a country that works for everyone not just those with money and power the labor market is constantly changing finding new ways to extract value from human energy if we can organize for better conditions now the future of work might not be as terrible as the present
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