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/r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

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Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#381

Post by BobbyJo »

JSavageOne wrote: post #370
BobbyJo wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me anti-work is the recognition that forced wage labor is not acceptable, and that technological advancement and automation should enable greater freedom for individuals to spend their time how they choose. We could already have this reality today if we just implemented a universal basic income, but until the boomers retire from office that's just not happening. It's not acceptable, but it is necessary. People a…

> There are tons of jobs no one wants to do, but everyone needs done. If these jobs truly are necessary, then wages would rise to the point where people would be attracted to do them. If truck driving paid as much as FAANG software engineering, I assure you there'd be no shortage of truck drivers (even if it required grinding a trucker Leetcode). Higher wages further incentivize automation, or alternative means of co…

> If these jobs truly are necessary, then wages would rise to the point where people would be attracted to do them. If truck driving paid as much as FAANG software engineering, I assure you there'd be no shortage of truck drivers (even if it required grinding a trucker Leetcode).

This is exactly the problem though. The costs for all of those basic necessities that aren't fun go up relative to everything else. Most of the things poor people rely on fall into this category.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#382

Post by pessimizer »

zqfm wrote: post #99
mandmandam wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're assigning blame for nihilism and Iraq, let's not forget that WaPo, NYT, CNN, ABC, FOX and the rest of the pro-war media bear orders of magnitude more responsibility than fucking 4chan.

Oh I fully agree, that's what I mean by that attitude becoming more mainstream. Just growing up I saw that expressed more fully on 4chan before I saw it being adopted elsewhere.

4chan didn't even exist when we invaded Iraq. And the justification for invading Iraq was anything but nihilism, it was a bunch of patriotism and xenophobia wrapped in religious crusade. By the time we invaded we had killed (and acknowledged killing) a million children due to sanctions.

I can't make the connection you make. When people were protesting against the Iraq War, they were told that they didn't believe in anything. I don't understand personal tragedy as an argument against 4chan; everybody you know is going to die eventually, and virtually everybody you're speaking to has known two people who died prematurely and preventably. I, in particular, don't understand people who traveled to kill instead being killed as an argument against humor.

The idea that a 4chan that didn't exist created Judith Miller is bizarre.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#383

Post by scotty79 »

piaste wrote: post #345
adamrezich wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

imagine a world where we could tune in to neutrally-moderated longform debate on policy instead of points-scoring five-minute sandwiched-by-advertising talking heads talking through a scripted (at least by the host, if not both parties) sequence of talking points and slogans. instead this is the world we get, the world we're told to accept, the world where people like my dad can watch a night's worth of "news" from e…

> imagine a world where we could tune in to neutrally-moderated longform debate on policy We had something of that world. Firing Line was on air for thirty years, and many other countries had or have comparable programmes. It's been a long de-evolution, not a radical destruction. Every innovation in media communication was that little bit faster, that little bit more palatable, but it's a one-way street, and hard to…

Actually most revolutionary and astute observations about state of affairs recently came to me through tiktok. I wouldn't encounter them even if I watched network news 24/7

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#384

Post by nradov »

totony wrote: post #376
wonderwonder wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonist…

>So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? 1. UBI aims to streamline redistribution of wealth and remove a lot of bureaucracy around it, reducing a lot of the cost of the current system 2. Why the middle class specifically? Upper class could shoulder most of the costs (if there are) easily >I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided t…

Have you actually done the math? The reality is that there aren't enough upper class people to generate sufficient tax revenue for a meaningful UBI. While I do support higher taxes at the upper levels, you can only squeeze people so much before they decide to bail out and move to tax havens.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#385

Post by clairity »

gavinray wrote: post #182
JSavageOne wrote: post #156

I remember stumbling upon /r/antiwork a few years ago and being so happy I'd stumbled upon a thriving movement that so effectively criticized one of the core principles of society that everyone takes for granted - that everyone must effectively sell their labor to someone else (unless they're rich enough to opt out, or clever enough to create some business or invest their way out). To me anti-work is the recognition…

>Universal basic income I'm going to sound like I'm being snarky here, and I promise I'm not. How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? I don't say this from a place of privilege. I grew up lower class trailer trash and have been homeless. Maybe I don't understand the concept fully but it seems a bit absurd and unfeasible

ubi is ultimately about control: continue to extract wealth upwards and everyone who's left gets locked onto the money-printing teat (so that taxes don't even need to rise for said wealthy). it has its own logic: the already powerful and wealthy get to ossify socioeconomic stratification, creating a permanent gentry class. we should be fighting this dystopian gambit at every turn (note that dynamism is what makes political economies great, not stagnation).

note that what we should instead be doing is pushing for more meaningful work up and down the economy.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#386

Post by dragonwriter »

wonderwonder wrote: post #328
quirino wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be solved by a Negative Income Tax [1]: > In economics, a negative income tax (NIT) is a system which reverses the direction in which tax is paid for incomes below a certain level; in other words, earners above that level pay money to the state while earners below it receive money. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax Edit: I'm not economically literate enough to say I fully support this,…

So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work? Every single family would then do a calculation to see if its worth the second earner working or if they make more just staying home and getting a UBI. I would not be ok going to work to pay people that have decided that they are fine living on the UBI and don't want to work anymore. Seems like a pretty antagonist…

> So we are going to raise taxes on the middle class to give free money to people that choose not to work?

No, ideally, we would raise taxes on the upper class, to give money (compared to the status quo system where we already have means-tested poverty support aid) to the people choosing to do more work (since means-tested aid gets cut with additional income, but UBI doesn't, except by the effects of progressive taxation.)

One way to do part of this:

* Roll payroll taxes into progressive income tax (including basing eligibility for payroll-tax funded programs on total income, not just income currently subject to payroll taxes.) For Social Security, this may involve adding one or more additional “bend points” to the benefit formula.

* Eliminate favorable rates for long-term capital gains, taxing them at normal income tax rates; to better target fairness for gains that genuinely require an extended period and which would be overtaxed if treated as income in the year of realization, allow freely recognizing income (not just capital income) for tax purposes in advance of realization, and additionally allow deferral of some portion of windfall (based on recent past years as baseline) gains over a period of several years.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#387

Post by mschuster91 »

JSavageOne wrote: post #301
mschuster91 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could already have this reality today if we just implemented a universal basic income, but until the boomers retire from office that's just not happening. That won't be enough. Not just because there are an awful lot of Boomers and post-boomers who can't even go to retirement because they don't have a pension they can live on (which in turn is a problem because all the jobs that the Boomer pensioners occupy can'…

I'm 31, have a well-paying job, and enough assets to be able to retire in a third world country if I wanted to (I'm nomadic so that's not as far-fetched as it sounds), yet I still support a universal basic income. I have friends way richer than me who definitely don't need to work who also support a UBI. I guess we're not as selfish as the last generation? Even if one were to not go as far as to support a universal b…

> I guess we're not as selfish as the last generation?

One might also guess that our generation (you're a year older than me) did not grow up with as much anti-communist propaganda - we were born right after/during the fall of the Soviet/Yugoslav Bloc and there was no need for more.

What we have grown up however is the realization that global problems (especially climate change) are growing ever more dire - and that unlike past global problems like CFC gas or acid rain, politicians not just don't do anything meaningful but actively deny that there is a problem.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#388

Post by prepend »

hannasanarion wrote: post #217
fullshark wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if you asked 100 people what it meant at its heyday maybe 70-80 would say "abolish the police." Connotation of words and all that. Just for humor's sake, google dictionary definition of defund is "prevent from continuing to receive funds" thus kill/abolish.

And those same people would happily call for legislation to defund sanctuary cities, defund education, defund planned parenthood, defund medicaid, with the full understanding that the proposals aren't intended to wipe those things from the face of the earth.

I disagree as the “defund planned parenthood” want to kill the whole org. I mean, that’s why it’s a dangerous proposal as planned parenthood performs many positive functions. So defunding them would harm more than just the part people dislike.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#389

Post by GameOfFrowns »

danenania wrote: post #239
gavinray wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Universal basic income I'm going to sound like I'm being snarky here, and I promise I'm not. How exactly is this supposed to work? The government prints money and gives it away for free, nobody has to work? I don't say this from a place of privilege. I grew up lower class trailer trash and have been homeless. Maybe I don't understand the concept fully but it seems a bit absurd and unfeasible

One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs. However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent peopl…

I like the general idea of UBI but I don't see it work without price fixing which is often the first step in an economical downward spiral.

Also I don't understand how any low-trust society like ours would survive the transition phase into UBI when people (even though they like working) might take an extended holiday if the UBI pays for all living costs. Suddenly millions of critical positions would be left unoccupied.

Re: /r/antiwork: A tragedy of sanewashing and social gentrification

#390

Post by GameOfFrowns »

seaourfreed wrote: post #362
danenania wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to think about it: we already have a basic income in the US. Nobody starves to death in the US. Nobody is denied medical care in the emergency room. In many places (though not everywhere), there are shelters where a person can sleep inside. There are food stamps and a patchwork of welfare programs. However meager they may seem, things like this amount to a form of universal basic income. Does it prevent peopl…

This doesn't say where the money comes from.

> This doesn't say where the money comes from.

Taxing the middle class.

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