Is the US a dystopia?

The insurance lobby holds much more sway than does the patient lobby.

The patients are sick and tired of struggling to extract the necessary care from the system. But too sick and tired to be an effective lobby.

Just want to recommend (again) Metzl’s book Dying of Whiteness. The chapter focusing on Tennessee literally gives many pieces of evidence that white people would rather struggle and die earlier without more accessible health coverage if having accessible health coverage means Black and Brown people get it, too.

Thanks, table - just borrowed that from my library.

xp perhaps if we looped in free pet health insurance as part of the deal?

(Kinda-sorta not joking about that)

Yes, sure, but we do actually have the power to change it.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra)

that's the crux of it, isn't it? _we_. the people united will never be defeated, and the ruling class, i figure at least _some_ of them must know that. by myself, what power do i have? to vote in rigged elections? i work for an insurance company. and what? i've been looking for different jobs for months now. "the tech job market is bad", they say. "the big companies are all taking on freelancers", they say. well, what? we have no rights. we have no collective power. i talked to a friend this morning. "how you been?" i ask. "alive," she answers. she says she doesn't know if she could work again if she lost the job she has. i feel the same. i feel like i'm hanging on by my fingernails here. i fucking hate my job, and i'm fucking terrified of losing it. my girlfriend decided she's going in for disability. one doesn't want to go that route, trying to spend all that time and effort convincing capital that you belong on the _other_ side of the balance sheet, that you're better off trying to live on the table scraps people begrudgingly throw at you, but what else is there, these days?

today at my team meeting we're talking about the results of the "engagement survey". the scores are pretty low. particularly, it seems like most people have some pretty bad burnout, and there's a lot of dissatisfaction with senior management. senior management say that they are taking the results of this survey _very_ seriously and that they are going to work _very_ hard to fix things. in the meantime the two most senior managers in the department have quit. one of them has decided he'd rather be a high school math teacher. god, maybe i should have been a high school math teacher.

at least i won't be shot for singing, right? i'm a free agent. i can protest.

Just want to recommend (again) Metzl’s book Dying of Whiteness. The chapter focusing on Tennessee literally gives many pieces of evidence that white people would rather struggle and die earlier without more accessible health coverage if having accessible health coverage means Black and Brown people get it, too.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

i mean, that's the thing, right? i can try and tell the dispossessed rust belters that we're on the same side, that we can work together and oppose oppression, but we're not on the same side, really, because they care more about my _dick_ than they do about their _own fucking lives_. these folks who are dying of whiteness - it doesn't fucking matter to them, because it's always the Black and Brown people who die _first_.

and that's why i'm so fucking cold, when it comes to a lot of people who are suffering. if someone can find it in themselves to care for one god-damned second for somebody who's not _like_ them, these are the people i care about. anybody who can't, well, they can fucking die alone.

God bless the USA, beacon of democracy, where almost everything we buy or look at has the stink of slavery on it

https://apnews.com/article/prison-to-plate-inmate-labor-investigation-c6f0eb4747963283316e494eadf08c4e

i agree it’s horrendous. thank god it cannot get any worse.

of course it can.

i think that was irony, but how to be sure?

i understood that, fwiw

i know how smart you both are so i don’t worry about you catching my tone, and to the extent i am myself dumb or rude, i do beg forgiveness.

i mean that.

and still yeah, irony

It sure is surprising that we have slavery going on in prisons 150 years after we passed a constitutional amendment explicitly allowing slavery in prisons.

Yeah, who could have seen that coming?

Lock it up

Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024

https://theweek.com/business/economy/gen-z-work-child-labor

Thousands of teens are revitalizing the part-time job market. It is a significant shift for Gen Z, with an increasing number of them seeking after-school and summer jobs, "reversing a trend of forgoing work when millennials were teens," The Washington Post said in a recent analysis.

"You know, in the last year or two, they've really helped keep the service sector going," said Abha Bhattarai, economics analyst for the Post, to Marketplace. Several restaurant owners told her that if it were not for the influx of teens working for them, "they just would have had to shut down by now."

Still, this galvanizing employment trend seemingly has an underbelly, as the recent boost in child labor law violations highlights.

last line made me lol, what a country!

Keeping them at work under the watchful eye of bosses is the only way to protect them from classroom groomers and adrenochrome harvesters.

my state's rolled back a bunch of controls and 16 year old grocery store cashiers can sell liquor again

yet there's a dark side to this dark underbelly

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2024/feb/12/immigrant-child-laborers-killed-factories-osha

also their skin has a tough, sour flavour when cooked, some theorise that heavy vaping is to blame

Still, this galvanizing employment trend seemingly has an underbelly, as the recent boost in child labor law violations highlights.

That's the most coldly evil sentence I've read in a news story in a while.

Hmm. In my world, children cannot (and probably should not) get jobs. The jobs that teenagers used to do (mowing, shoveling, burger-flipping, golf caddying, retail cashiering) now go to adults who need them to feed families.

(Which is itself troubling enough.)

Paper routes

I had a paper route, it was awful - I was classified as an 'independent contractor' and had to buy my own rubber bands and plastic bags, and do the collections

Pretty sure I was making about ninety-one cents an hour, if that

I'm not quite sure what you're saying YMP, but:

At least 250,000 more teenagers are now working compared to before the pandemic, part of a gradual but consequential shift that is boosting employment at restaurants and stores, and changing cultural norms. In all, 37 percent of 16- to 19-year-olds had a job or were looking for one last year, the highest annual rate since 2009, according to Labor Department data.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/01/21/teen-jobs-pandemic-wages/

"looking for one" is a bit squishy, but children/teenagers can and do get jobs

Yeah, it was a shit job, but now it's all done by adults. At least they don't have to go door-to-door to collect anymore.

I hear there's big money to be made in print journalism

I had a paper route too and I liked it, outside of having to get up early on Sundays. getting a bunch of tips on Christmas would be awesome too like suddenly I'd have $200

they wanted us to deliver samples of random products, mostly cleaning stuff. I always just gave 'em all to my Mom, lol

the collection thing *did* suck but luckily everyone in my neighborhood was nice. some of these folks fell so far behind though

Lol jimbeaux, you say that as if newspapers still exist.

I never had a paper route but was definitely carrying golf bags at 12, bussing tables at 13, laying out newspapers at 15, waiting tables at 16, selling clothes at 18... I have worked constantly since 1981.

But my children? We just spent a week on a single camp-counselor application and the idea of McDonald's (or whatever) seems like a non-starter.

Rob, I'm not sure what I'm saying either (apart from what I have already said). But it is a different employment landscape now, and I don't think that is a controversial statement.

Lol jimbeaux, you say that as if newspapers still exist.

I have a friend that helps his day by delivering NYT print edition, but it's mostly to stores, not to individual residences

We still get the daily paper, and I get my wife the print NYT every Sunday.

When I was working at grocery stores from 5PM on everyone working front of house was a high school student, if we needed an adult we’d have to call up a manager from stocking or another department.

I’m terrible at guessing ages but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a grocery store crew that seemed to have anyone I’d assume to be a high school kid.

the Piggly Wiggly here has kids who I think aren't even in high school. I remember seeing one who looked like he was almost my son's age! (my son is 9) he was super nice too! but there's no way he was older than 13!

I had a paper route when I was pretty young — 13 or 14 — but I only lasted a couple of weeks. Getting up at like 5 in the morning to fold all the papers into my delivery bag and then riding my bike all over the place to deliver them? Fuck that shit. I wound up throwing them down the sewer and calling the paper to tell them I quit. Then when I was 15 I got a job at Baskin-Robbins and have been working ever since. One of the greatest times in my adult life was in 2009-2011, when I got fired from Metal Edge magazine because the publisher went out of business, but because of the Great Recession I was able to collect federal unemployment for two straight years. Thanks, Obama! (Seriously. That shit was awesome.)

The pandemic has killed well over a million people in the US. The pandemic stimulus injected considerable amounts of cash into every household in the nation. The federal government's border policy has drastically shifted toward strangling immigration from poor countries. Boomers are aging and retiring.

There's plenty of macro-economic reasons why historically underemployed groups like teens and Blacks are getting jobs at an unusually rapid pace and no surprise that the jobs they're getting are among the shittiest lowest paid ones, or that those jobs are seeing wage increases -- even though the working conditions for those jobs remain as bad as ever.

How all this fits into dystopia is a tangled thread, but... capitalism!

I definitely started working summer jobs and after-school stuff around the age of 11. Nothing “on the books” until I was in high school, but walking the neighbors’ dogs and fetching their papers and mail for them when they were out of town was a sweet and easy gig.

Other than a stretch between January and June '96 and two months in '00 I've held some kind of job since Poppy Bush was prez.

i never had to risk being flayed alive at a meat packing plant.

Aside from the paper routes (I echo unperson's assessment of the job), I got my first actual employment at Burger King when I was 15. Working in fast food is a great way to learn that you are entirely fungible.

but because of the Great Recession I was able to collect federal unemployment for two straight years. Thanks, Obama! (Seriously. That shit was awesome.)

I never got unemployement - I was lucky enough to land a job during the recession, in fact I was the only hire in that department for nearly 18 months. but I had friends who did this and indeed it was pretty awesome - everyone was just hanging out all day, but they had money to do stuff.

I remember cleaning a neighbor's junk-filled yard when I was about ten, spending a couple hours... and getting a shiny fifty cent piece for my trouble (no this was not 1940)

A tender age to learn about worker exploitation

Great Recession unemployment insurance was awesome! Just when you thought it was coming to an end, they'd re-up you... did a lot of day partying, all my buddies were similarly unemployed

lotta people criticized my friends for staying on it so long but it's like come on, they're gonna be paying into this system for 40-50 years, let 'em have it now. and it's not like there was a lot of steady work around. they weren't like...*not* trying to get a job, but they weren't exactly trying to get one either (it was pretty well known which places you could apply to with basically no chance of landing anything)

My GF at the time was like "So... are you even looking for work?" with a frown

I would do under the table odd jobs but I didn't want to jeopardize that sweet federal gravy train

i feel like i've always worked. full time for 40 years or so. i had a paper route for years before i was 16. it kinda sucked and i don't know why i did it that long. i made like no money doing it. i did odd jobs too for whatever money anyone would give me. also, i would wake up early every sunday morning at around 6am and go across the street to the village store and put together all the sunday new york times by hand. they came in bundles of sections back then. you lined up all the sections in order and then it was like an assembly line. a hundred papers took awhile. i would get paid five bucks and two apple turnovers. i smelled like the new york times all day every sunday when i was a kid.

Strangely - I had a few old skateboarding buddies who helped create the Great Recession. They'd all moved down to somewhere in Orange County (I think Laguna Beach or Santa Ana, not sure) and were selling these amazing new mortgages at a very bro Glengarry type office.

"Andy, you want to buy a house? Let's get you into a new home!"
"I don't have any money."
"That's the thing - you don't neeed any money! And you can take loans against the property!"

I think OC was the subprime epicenter for awhile, and then spread all over the place.. I wanted nothing to do with it, but these guys were making bank until it all fell apart