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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

#161
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.

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

It is because major media described it as sorta analogy to class conflict. And I think it is such analogy. But then, people who did not seen movie and assume class war means "good poor people against cartoon bad rich" started to talk about movie and use movie as example.

The movie is not "dystopic, zombie, monster, battle royale". It is not about how poor are angelic. It is not about how rich are evil. It is not about how poor are lazy and deserve to be poor either. And that confuses people.

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

#162
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…

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?

> 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

do you think so little of boat-builders that you want to tell them what they should do with their lives? I imagine if they're building boats it's because they like building boats, and are more than happy that there are obscenely rich people there to pay them a livelihood designing and building beautiful yachts.

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

#163
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

that includes real estate in Monaco priced at 100K per square meter, works of arts jewels, stocks trading at 100+ PE etc. e.g. sh#t not convertible into shelter, food and other things people need. It's not that elastic on a gloabl scale.

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

#164
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

>You sure about that?

I was just making a pithy and cynical statement about how wealth distribution in general will just "shuffle the cards" and not change the fact that there are an entire class of people who refuse to acquire genuine wealth.

>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.

Yeah, that could start a war. According to Google the average cost of an AK over there is about US$100.

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

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you from personal experience that pretty much every Kdrama show I can think of, has the same narrative of the "Elite" being corrupt and abusing it's power and influence to do what they want vs the middle and poorer classes. Maybe not always as the focus of the story, but it's a common element. And it's not just the popular shows that make it big internationally. I guess it's ingrained into their culture. I…

sky castle - how even the most privileged people need to cheat to get admittance to elite universities (which are assumed to determine the life of a person).

Misaeng - how mega corporations won’t give you a chance even if you only want to do a good job for said corporation in the first place.

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

#166
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…

It creates real jobs and wealth. A friend of mine has 200 people employed in his family office.

What wealth does a yacht crew member create? A private guard? Or a private chef? These are all luxuries wholly consumed by the individual rich person, and whatever "wealth" may have been created vanishes the next day under the spin of the hedonic treadmill.

The labor of these employees could have instead been directed towards build infrastructure, nursing, childcare, or any other number of jobs which generate real and persistent wealth which compounds across generations.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never trust media on counts. Went to some boat rallies that had many thousands of people and hundreds of boat. Highly impressive turnout. Media reports made it out that barely anyone showed up.

Wanted to comment with a snide "QED", then got really sad, because jumping from poor reporting on boat rallies to "never trust the media" feels way too real right now.

More like jumping from "any time I am familiar with something and see an article on it, the article is super inaccurate" to "never trust the media"

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

#168
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

that includes real estate in Monaco priced at 100K per square meter, works of arts jewels, stocks trading at 100+ PE etc. e.g. sh#t not convertible into shelter, food and other things people need. It's not that elastic on a gloabl scale.

The majority of this is ownership, for example the Quandt family owns nearly 50% of BMW. Stefan Quandt alone owns 25% of BMW. It's pretty elastic - and that wealth share of 700 billion is owned by 500 out of 80 Million people or 0.000625% of the population.

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

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wanted to comment with a snide "QED", then got really sad, because jumping from poor reporting on boat rallies to "never trust the media" feels way too real right now.

Why on earth would anyone “trust” the media or any other group. That’s like believing Facebook has your best interest in mind. Figure out what a group wants to understand how they are spinning story.

It is more about having a slightly more sophisticated and realistic view of the world than a binary "they are good/bad". Everyone has biases, everyone is frequently imprecise in "something", and everything is political, but that does not mean you should distrust everyone and assume they are malicious/incompetent.

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

#170
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions are known for their thuggish ways.

They frequently resort to violence, harassment and coerce all those that stand in their agenda.

within last year, they harassed a manager of delivery logistics company to commit suicide (specified and detailed harassment he faced on his will), cut off fuel valve of a delivery truck for not participating in their strike, and beat up a strike breaker.

The young worker demographic aren't keen to their ways, as exemplified by recent strike & protest of starbucks workers refusing help from KCTU when they volunteered to 'unite' in protest efforts.

https://news.v.daum.net/v/20210923195947254

https://www.edunctn.com/mobile/article.html?no=16927

https://www.chosun.com/national/labor/2021/09/17/ORHL7BDIABD...

https://m.khan.co.kr/national/national-general/article/20211...

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