#proact

How Workers Can Reclaim Power From Bezos & Billionaires

For the past 40 years, the voice of workers has been steadily drowned out in both the workplace and on the national political stage by the voice of big corporations. This massive power shift wasn’t the result of “free market forces” but of political choices. 

Now, it’s time to make the political choice to strengthen the voice of all workers. Reversing 40 years of shareholder capitalism won’t be easy. But remember this: you, the working people of America, outnumber the corporate executives and big investors by a wide margin. 

It isn't an option for most people, and saying "just start a business" on a post about minimum wage and worker exploitation is... A bit yikes.

"there are other options"??

Start a single person work from home business with what??

Even if you've got skills it takes money and time and people wanting what you're doing.

And sure you'd rather live in your car, but a hell of a lot of people can't even do that.

Please do some reading and support workers, don't just jump in with that "advice"

These are good points. I do support raising the minimum wage, and I do understand that starting a business isn’t for everyone. But I didn’t think it was for me, either, until I explored it. 

Unfortunately, politics in this country tend to be binary. Right now there is legislation pending in Congress that would make about 95% of freelancing illegal. My clients would have to make me their employee. This legislation (called the PROACT) is being backed by unions, who have a great reputation of giving us the weekend and other cool things, but who in recent decades haven’t done a damn thing for workers. If you disagree, I challenge you to find one pro-worker thing unions have accomplished in the past 30 years.

I’m genuinely curious, why do you think the Amazon workers in Bessemer voted down the idea of joining a union by a 2 to 1 margin? Do you think they’re all stupid? Because I have definitely seen that suggested and I don’t think they are.  I think that even if they are unhappy with their jobs at Amazon, they looked at the potential costs and benefits of joining a union and decided it wasn’t worth it. 

I’m mad as hell that moderate Democrats have shot down raising the minimum wage, but I’m glad that at least they are holding off this awful legislation. I don’t think it should have to be either/or: either the world is good for employees or it is good for small businesses.

But jobs are always going to be crap in one way or another. You are working to make someone else rich. That’s kind of the definition of having a job. I’m in favor of abolishing capitalism completely, for the record, but what I don’t want is for running a business to only be an option for wealthy people. I know people who run small businesses who can’t work regular jobs because they are disabled, or because they haven’t been able to get hired at regular jobs because of their race or their age or their circumstances. I want people to know that their only option is not a lifetime of drudgery making someone else rich.

So in conclusion, although I’m pretty sure I kept my commentary to the tags, I understand that what I was saying wasn’t addressing the driving point of that post.

TLDR: Yes I support workers. But jobs aren’t the only ways to support oneself.