• aesthelete@lemmy.world
    69·
    9 hours ago

    It’s almost like there’s greedy fatcats in every industry stuffing all of the profits down their fat gullets while everyone else barely holds off starvation.

    • Mighty@lemmy.world
      7·
      8 hours ago

      yeah you just have to not work so you can take care of your kids and elders yourself. of “people you know” will just do it for free? how about teachers? how about daycare?

      • CondensedPossum@lemmy.world
        14·
        7 hours ago

        what the fuck are you talking about, no, you just pay the people instead of the company that doesn’t pay them enough (home care workers make like 11.50 an hour in the USA rust belt)

        why would you assume something that doesn’t make any sense

  • BlanketsWithSmallpox@lemmy.worldEnglish
    105·
    3 hours ago

    The internet has a serious issue with managers, upper management, and even landlords nowadays. It’s so weird to see people slip back into blaming anyone but the real grifters who provide no benefit but take a dollar for no real benefit, or the wage inequality with CSuites. Even people here are falling back into blaming people in their own wage bracket rather than looking at people who provide nothing or paid too much.

    As someone who’s worked the peon doing the shit to management, so much of the issue is rooted in insurance and government mandated oversight.

    People love to hate on their manager making $20,000-40,000 more than them, but they’re basically the same as you to everyone grifting or the 1%. Quit blaming them for living in a society that both WANTS and REQUIRES massive oversight.

    Running a business ethically takes far more money than anyone wants to admit.

    Running a business while making sure you follow all government regulations, codes, is insurable, and is cost efficient is even harder.

    First, get rid of for profit insurance. They should all work as collectives.

    Get rid of for profit healthcare and go single payer. Remove middlemen who provide no benefit. Quit overpaying shit like salesmen because they’re a clear tick that shows more $$$$ and pay people nicely. A housekeeper making $40,000 shouldn’t be $50,000 away from their manager and shouldn’t be $400,000 or more away from their President. Quit overvaluing and paying a rich person to what amounts to having to have someone dedicated to sucking up to other rich people to stay alive.

    Understand that the stock market only works with infinite growth. You will need to save up exactly what you plan to use in retirement without the magic of it or compounding interest and redistribute the wealth through unionizing, and collective bargaining.

    Understand that all of it takes someone to lead and do it that will need to be paid as well. People want to live their lives happily, not sacrifice themselves and their life out of some noble goodness of their heart. Pay them appropriately and understand that if you’re in these positions, you shouldn’t be paid double what other people make just because you do important work. We all do.

    Remember that it takes more people to run anything that we like to admit, and that often these regulations are there for a reason. Find the real fat, and cut it while you can.

    Seriously though, blame for profit businesses that should just be government run if they’re a requirement. Insurance/public health, safety/audit oversight, infrastructure, utilities, public health.

    Push for cooperatives for things that can be more privatized but get sketchy when it’s all government or full on for profit, like private land ownership, private schools, banking to credit unions.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    1311·
    11 hours ago

    It seems that they do understand this economy. It’s capitalism.

    • NielsBohron@lemmy.worldEnglish
      54·
      8 hours ago

      Community college professor here. I’m lucky enough to be tenured at this point, but when I started teaching, I was making just enough money such that if I had been paying the going rate for rent edit: and health insurance, I would have been losing about $100/month, before taking into account other expenses like food (or health insurance or gas or utilities…) (edit: I went back and checked numbers, my memory was a little off). And that was with me teaching 75% at two different schools (so, a total of about 24 units per term when full-time is usually 16 units per term)

      I was privileged enough to be able to live with family while I pursued a full-time position and extra work, but many are not so lucky.

      So, yeah, college professors are drastically underpaid, on par with K-12 teachers

      • Rolando@lemmy.world
        79·
        10 hours ago

        It’s a little more complicated than that. I think the factors are:

        • part-time adjunct vs full-time
        • research vs non
        • type of college (prestige, size, focus)
        • what you do in summers
        • field

        So for example you could be a machine learning Research Professor (non-tenure-track) in a first-tier university and bring in a lot of money through grants. Or you could be a tenured teaching professor at a smaller college and not work in summers and make a mid-level income. Or you could be a part-time instructor (e.g., adjunct faculty) in the humanities and make very little.

        • osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org
          4·
          9 hours ago

          Agree with the above, with the exception of summer work which is unrelated to what they make from being professors. If you are a college professor and need to keep a second job to keep the roof over your head, then I think the point stands.

          • Rolando@lemmy.world
            3·
            7 hours ago

            Last time I interviewed I saw a couple jobs that had 9-month academic calendar (fall/winter) obligations, for a given salary. If you wanted to teach summer classes at that college for additional pay you were welcome to, or you could just take those months off. or do consulting, or visiting teaching somewhere else, or get a grant to pay your salary while you did research, etc.

            My last post got downvoted so I hope it doesn’t sound like I love the current academic environment. On the contrary I’m jaded. But if you’re just starting out, ask the older people for advice, the more you know the better your chance of survival.

        • NielsBohron@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          9 hours ago

          Typically, the amount of grant money you receive does not affect your salary. It can affect your job security and it can be a factor in earning tenure, but in general, writing more grant proposals=/=higher pay (just more money for research).

          Plus, even at R1 schools, tenure-track positions are often starting out with pretty low pay compared to tuition and very low compared what the professor could be making in private industry. According to this study by National Center for Educational Statistics, only about a third of college budgets are spent on instruction, with about another third on support services (counselors, financial aid, tutoring/library services, accessibility services, etc.), with the remainder spent on administration. But that doesn’t look so bad until you realize that at most schools, 50%-75% of the courses are not taught by full-time instructors, but by adjuncts, and adjuncts are often paid at or below the poverty line (about 25k/year in 2020). Even as a tenured instructor with 10 years of salary schedule advancements and a partner with a full-time job in higher education, I’m still living paycheck-to-paycheck.

          So, yes, it is more complicated than “all professors are underpaid,” but not by much. It’s really more like “75% of college instructors are near or below poverty level.”

          • Rolando@lemmy.world
            5·
            7 hours ago

            Yeah, I agree that most faculty are underpaid, especially in the humanities. Also, I agree that universities should have more tenure-track Teaching Faculty (whose main job is being good teachers to undergraduates) rather than just having part-time adjuct faculty or research-focused professors who don’t really want to teach.

            I didn’t mean to sound like I was defending the status quo. Just that there are a lot of career considerations that I didn’t learn “until it was too late” that I was hoping to communicate to younger generations.

            • NielsBohron@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              4 hours ago

              That’s fair, and I think a realistic view of the current situation is definitely beneficial for aspiring academics, especially given the current “academic industrial complex” pumping out PhDs far faster than jobs open up.

    • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
      4·
      10 hours ago

      I don’t know, tenure track professors doing research, probably not. But the cost of living here is kind of insane. If we didn’t have a double income, my wife would have to take a pretty substantial downgrade in where she lives. Cost of living is getting out of hand everywhere regardless, and the point still stands I think.

      • tburkhol@lemmy.world
        11·
        10 hours ago

        There’s really a two tiered structure to academia that seems to be hidden from most students. Maybe even 3 tiered. There’s the tenure-track research faculty who might teach one class per semester (often less) - they’re still underpaid relative to industry equivalent jobs, but they get their research freedom and low six figures after a few years while bringing in seven figure research grants for the university. Mid-six-figures if they’re upper admin. There’s non-tenure-track adjuncts & academic professionals who teach 3-5 classes per semester, often at multiple universities because no one will give them enough classes to live on, doing the bulk of a university’s teaching, especially at ‘tier 1 research’ universities, and they’re lucky to get median salary. There’s also a set of tenure-track faculty at universities without big research programs who teach 2-3 classes, maybe do a little bit of research or literature review, but probably without any significant extramural funding. They get paid somewhere in between.

        They all get called “professor;” they all have PhDs; there’s infighting to keep the faculty as a whole from rising up. I used to tell my students they (or someone on their bahalf) paid about $200 for each of my lectures, and they’re free to skip them if they want, but even in a tiny seminar, 10 students, $2000/hour revenue, the highest paid professors are only getting 5% of that (not accounting for out-of-class effort).

      • Philo@lemmy.ca
        26·
        8 hours ago

        You do know these are all about the same lady from 7 years ago. Stop living in the past.

        • Varyk@sh.itjust.works
          3·
          7 hours ago

          oh, you’re like a fake news guy?

          seems a bit wildly ignorant in the face of evidence.

          2024 is this year, not 7 years ago, by the way.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    10·
    10 hours ago

    So the money comes from being a middle-agent. I’d need a lot of capital to open a business where I could exploit my workers. Guess I’m not the target market for this economy.

  • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    10 hours ago

    they want the peasant class to remain desperate and buried in debt, so they’re forced to take shitty jobs with shitty pay just to get by

    • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
      24·
      7 hours ago

      Not just the staff either, providers are making significantly less every year.

      I work in orthopedics and rehabilitation, and even though the cost of school, licensing, and insurance has skyrocketed. My field is basically being paid the same amount they were 30 years ago, and that’s not even accounting for inflation.

      In some ways it’s nice, as medicine doesn’t attract people who are just in it for the money any longer. But, hospital organizations now know that providers are basically locked in a sunk cost fallacy to pay back their loans, and on top of that they have a calling for it.

      • ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.oneEnglish
        2·
        5 hours ago

        But, hospital organizations now know that providers are basically locked in a sunk cost fallacy to pay back their loans, and on top of that they have a calling for it.

        Sounds like slavery with extra steps.

      • Bluefalcon@discuss.tchncs.de
        7·
        6 hours ago

        That is the main reason my wife and I are moving to a different state. As a nurse, she has seen her income decrease with her 1.5% raise with inflation going up 3-5% year over year.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
          5·
          5 hours ago

          Hope she cashed in during COVID. Our hospital administration was trying to get everyone to turn on all the nurses making bank during lock down, but pretty much every provider I know was just happy there were people hitting the administration where it hurts.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    303·
    4 hours ago

    This is generating the typical anti-capitalist hate, but we should also consider that this is also a reflection on the kinds of unpaid work that women have been doing for generations. The problem isn’t necessarily profits or middle-men, it’s just that some things are always going to be expensive if people are actually paid for the work they do.

    Take daycare. In the US the government says that one adult should care for no more than 3 infants, no more than 4 toddlers and no more than 7 preschoolers.

    Take someone working at the US poverty line at about $15,000 per year. That’s $1250 per month. For 3 infants that’s $415 per month each, for 4 toddlers that’s $312 each, for 7 preschoolers that’s $180 each. That’s the absolute cheapest you could possibly go, where a worker is at the poverty line, and there are no costs for rent, supplies, and also zero profit.

    But, as a parent, you probably don’t want the absolute lowest “bidder” to take care of your kids. You probably want someone who’s good with kids, kind, gentle, patient, etc. So, let’s not even go all the way up to the lowest possible teacher’s salary of $34,041 in Montana. Let’s say the daycare worker is great with kids, but doesn’t have the teaching background to get even the least well paying teaching job available in the country. Let’s say you’d be willing to have someone who makes $24,000 per year for easy math. That’s a wage where the caregiver is going to struggle to make ends meet in most of the country, but maybe it’s worth it for them because they like working with kids. That’s $2000 per month. For infants it’s $667 per month each or $8000 per year, toddlers it’s $500 per month each or $6000 per year. preschoolers it’s $285 per month each or about $3500 per year.

    Again, this is before you consider any profits. That’s money straight from the parents to the caregiver’s salary. That’s before you consider rent, before supplies, before snacks, etc. That’s no reading nook, no library, no arts and crafts, that’s presumably just using someone’s living room.

    Now, if the daycare worker is going to be able to take sick days or vacations, you’ll need to pay part of another person’s salary who will cover. So instead of 1 person watching 7 preschoolers, you have 10 people watching 70 preschoolers plus 1 who rotates in to cover when the main workers are unavailable, so make that another 10%. We’re up to almost $9k per year for an infant, and we still don’t have cribs, baby food or a cent in profit, and we have a worker who is barely scraping by.

    The point is, any job that involves a lot of human supervision is going to be very expensive. Caring for babies and old or sick people involves a lot of human supervision. Much of this work used to be done by women who didn’t work outside the home. Now that women are working outside the home, even when they have young children, we’re realizing how expensive it is. None of what I’ve talked about involves capitalism or profits, it’s just purely paying someone to do child-care work while the woman does other work.

    But, this is where the capitalism / socialism aspect comes in. If we want women to be able to work outside the home, and we also want kids to be something that isn’t financially ruinous, society needs to help pay for those things. In a purely capitalist, no socialism, winner-take-all world, having kids is a major liability. Having an option to not have kids is great, but in the long term society is doomed if nobody is willing to have kids anymore.

    • sweetpotato@lemmy.ml
      6·
      2 hours ago

      This is a very interesting thing to point out, but I believe you are not realising how intrinsically tied the generations of women unpaid work is to the economic system.

      “mainstream economic theory is obsessed with the productivity of waged labour while skipping right over the unpaid work that makes it all possible, as feminist economists have made clear for decades. That work is known by many names: unpaid caring work, the reproductive economy, the love economy, the second economy.”

      “the household provision of care is essential for human well-being, and productivity in the paid economy depends directly upon [the core economy]. It matters because when – in the name of austerity and public-sector savings – governments cut budgets for children’s daycare centres, community services, parental leave and youth clubs, the need for care-giving doesn’t disappear: it just gets pushed back into the home. The pressure, particularly on women’s time, can force them out of work and increase social stress and vulnerability. That undermines both well-being and women’s empowerment, with multiple knock-on effects for society and the economy alike.”

      Doughnut economics - Kate Raworth

      Capitalism thrived and keeps thriving in concentrating capital because it is able to get away with not accounting for the value it extracts. This is true for this example of unpaid labour as well as for natural resources extraction, ecosystem damage etc(we are beginning to realize this with carbon tax). That’s the cornerstone of the system function, not just a side effect. The unpaid labour may be starting to be dealt with in the West, but this just means it is aggressively outsourced in third world countries. Without these so-called economic externalities there is no profit (or extremely little of it).

    • recklessengagement@lemmy.world
      5·
      3 hours ago

      This is a really good point. Historically communities have always relied on unpaid/underpaid labor in some capacity. Even mowing your neighbors lawn once in a while could be considered a value of a few hundred dollars (fuck lawns btw) - there has always been this invisible layer of communal support that is now becoming commodified.

      Marginalized groups being fairly compensated is an objectively good thing, but the financial stress is real. As society continues to grow even more individualistic, we will probably see additional pressures mount until another fundamental shift happens. I have no idea what that will look like, but it is interesting to think about.