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Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

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Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#151

Post by AussieWog93 »

strken wrote: post #146
qaq wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you? Do you really think you can magically turn raw materials + work needed to build a super yacht into something of global consequence ? Or a Pollock painting will magically turn into a 1000 homes? Or that 1% consumes significantly more food? Most ultra-rich sh*t is immaterial to struggles of regular people. Even if 1%ers consumes extra 300 square meters of real eastate if you divide it across the 99% you will ge…

You're right when you say that the discretionary spending of the ultra-rich doesn't matter, but there are consequences to increasing or decreasing the percentage of capital they control. If you e.g. diluted the S&P 500 by 20% and spread the new shares equally across the global population, it would definitely cause "something of global consequence" to happen, although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or…

>although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or a utopia

I suspect it would look more like the current economic craziness. The vast majority of the newly-wealthy would spend all of their new-found money on stupid shit and within 2 years a new upper-class will have formed.

Maybe the members of the hierarchy gets shuffled around a bit, but the system itself will find a way back.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#153

Post by Kaze404 »

seoulmetro wrote: post #112
watwut wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not found parasite to be exploitative, dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royalle movie? It was cross between comedy and something serious, but the rich family did not stricken me as all that horribly exploiting them.

That's because it wasn't about rich and poor and their roles in society. It was about rich and poor and how each one differs significantly. So many people read the wrong way into that movie and it's disappointing. It has absolutely nothing to do with "class clashing or class struggling against each other" no matter how much the media wants to make you think that.

"Something I was struck by in the movie is that there's a huge lack of class solidarity between the various working class people. What inspired you to write the relationships that way?

You point out something very important. You know, in Mother, you see the have nots and the needy clawing at each other and hurting one another. On the other hand, in The Host, you see the solidarity between them, they save each other and they gather their strengths together. And you could say Parasite is closer to Mother, where the weak and have nots are fighting one another. And that's sad, but it's also realistic. And from those moments, you get this element of sadness, but also the comedy, as well"

A direct quote from Bong Joon Ho himself.

https://www.gq.com/story/parasite-director-bong-joon-ho-inte...

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#154

Post by Markoff »

mopsy77 wrote: post #14

Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect? Its like all these dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale movies and shows are just expressing the never ending exploitaion and helplessness around people.

sure, general strike where it's participating 1.8% economically active population /facepalm

and in the end it was 16K instead 500K, I can't even count that low - 0.06% of active population ??

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#155

Post by burnished »

qaq wrote: post #99
burnished wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any idea then number of people and the volume of resources that go to servicing the wealthy? Yes, I think we'd be doing better if there were fewer extraordinarily wealthy people. They aren't necessary to work together to achieve economies of scale, but they sure are fucking expensive.

Do you? Do you really think you can magically turn raw materials + work needed to build a super yacht into something of global consequence ? Or a Pollock painting will magically turn into a 1000 homes? Or that 1% consumes significantly more food? Most ultra-rich sh*t is immaterial to struggles of regular people. Even if 1%ers consumes extra 300 square meters of real eastate if you divide it across the 99% you will ge…

I do! But I'm more thinking about the catering companies. And the parties. You know, stuff like that. The way that hundreds or thousands of hours of human lives swirl about their whims.

Also, do you really think so little of boat-builders that you don't think they'd turn their hand to something else than building yatchs, that would be good and profitable for all involved?

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#156

Post by sumtechguy »

paxys wrote: post #35
mopsy77 wrote: post #14

Maybe all these snowpiercer, squid games, parasite narratives are having an effect? Its like all these dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale movies and shows are just expressing the never ending exploitaion and helplessness around people.

I’d wager it’s the other way around. Income inequality and worker discontent has been growing worldwide for many years. New movies and shows being produced reflect that social sentiment and get popular because people can relate.

There is that. But for SK movies/tv it has for many years 'dude check this crazy thing out', and movie makers tend to follow trends...

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#157

Post by Xylakant »

qaq wrote: post #111
v-erne wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen this sentiment and on the surface its looks right. But I feel that we are missing here some real studies that should be done into impact of life style of the rich on the whole economy. I know few rich people (some of them ungodly rich). And seeing glimpses of their life style I cannot simply ignore cohorts of supporting jobs that make it all possibile (just to mentions few : private guards, house keeps, g…

And yet account for all of that and divide it across remaining population and it will come out to nothing. The majority of their wealth is super inflated assets that would not change anyones life if divided across the population.

According to Wikipedia, in 2016 the Top 500 richest Germans, owned a combined wealth of 692 Mrd. €. That's around 8500 EUR per German citizen (infants and kids included) in 2016 - more today. For some people that is an amount that substantially affects their life.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_500_reichsten_Deutsc...

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#158

Post by jkestner »

m0zg wrote: post #143
Cederfjard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think healthcare providers could get away with such crazy prices if they had to negotiate with the government, instead of some insurance giant which in turn is bilking some corporation?

If anything, I'd say prices would get even crazier. Pfizer alone has almost a hundred lobbyists on payroll in DC.

And they sure are fighting hard against having to negotiate with the government.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#159

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

yodsanklai wrote: post #131
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is „Parasite“ supposed to be left-wing? I honestly fail to see how it can be interpreted that way.

Think about who are the actual parasites in the movie...

They literally behave like parasites, thus the title. Reminder that this is the plot:

The Kims - mother and father Chung-sook and Ki-taek, and their young adult offspring, son Ki-woo and daughter Ki-jung - are a poor family living in a shabby and cramped half basement apartment in a busy lower working class commercial district of Seoul. Without even knowing it, they, especially Mr. and Mrs. Kim, literally smell of poverty. Often as a collective, they perpetrate minor scams to get by, and even when they have jobs, they do the minimum work required. Ki-woo is the one who has dreams of getting out of poverty by one day going to university. Despite not having that university education, Ki-woo is chosen by his university student friend Min, who is leaving to go to school, to take over his tutoring job to Park Da-hye, who Min plans to date once he returns to Seoul and she herself is in university. The Parks are a wealthy family who for four years have lived in their modernistic house designed by and the former residence of famed architect Namgoong. While Mr. and Mrs. Park are all about status, Mrs. Park has a flighty, simpleminded mentality and temperament, which Min tells Ki-woo to feel comfortable in lying to her about his education to get the job. In getting the job, Ki-woo further learns that Mrs. Park is looking for an art therapist for the Parks' adolescent son, Da-song, Ki-woo quickly recommending his professional art therapist friend "Jessica", really Ki-jung who he knows can pull off the scam in being the easiest liar of the four Kims. In Ki-woo also falling for Da-hye, he begins to envision himself in that house, and thus the Kims as a collective start a plan for all the Kims, like Ki-jung using assumed names, to replace existing servants in the Parks' employ in orchestrating reasons for them to be fired. The most difficult to get rid of may be Moon-gwang, the Parks' housekeeper who literally came with the house - she Namgoong's housekeeper when he lived there - and thus knows all the little nooks and crannies of it better than the Parks themselves. The question then becomes how far the Kims can take this scam in their quest to become their version of the Parks.

Re: Half a million South Korean workers walk off jobs in general strike

#160

Post by strken »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #151
strken wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right when you say that the discretionary spending of the ultra-rich doesn't matter, but there are consequences to increasing or decreasing the percentage of capital they control. If you e.g. diluted the S&P 500 by 20% and spread the new shares equally across the global population, it would definitely cause "something of global consequence" to happen, although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or…

>although I have no idea whether it would be world war 3 or a utopia I suspect it would look more like the current economic craziness. The vast majority of the newly-wealthy would spend all of their new-found money on stupid shit and within 2 years a new upper-class will have formed. Maybe the members of the hierarchy gets shuffled around a bit, but the system itself will find a way back.

You sure about that? It's giving roughly $1000USD worth of shares to people in countries like Somalia, with a GNI per capita of $310USD, e.g. probably about 3x the average yearly wage over there. It's also only a 20% dilution, so it's not like the existing upper class would go anywhere.
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