Slavery was abolished, so the rich are now trying to make economic oppression the equivalent of slavery.

Amen.

You can't keep slaves anymore, but you can own a company and pay your workers an amount that makes it hard for them to pay for basic necessities so they don't have time for leisure, or organising unions, or finding other jobs. The workers are free to go, of course, but then they'll fall into financial ruin and not have healthcare.

Frighteningly few have health care with full employment, sometimes it’s not offered, when it is, it’s still not budgetable.
That's exactly what it is, then I've had people laugh at me when I compare it to slavery.
- It’s called wage slavery and you can use that information to educate, if any will listen.
They should just start their own business then and stop being a bunch of lazy complainers

Reminder that slavery was never outright abolished in the US, the constitution explicitly allows slavery as punishment for a crime which is why private for-profit prisons are a thing in the US.

We need to abolish that and make prisons truly rehabilitation facilities.

I wish one of the bigger industrial countries had the balls to curb the state-like influence of billionaires, by flat out capping the amount of wealth they get to wield. It's not even that people should not be allowed to be "rich". But "rich" should mean owning 1-50 millions or so. Not billions.

- Oh no Switzerland is in shamble 😰
- Not true at all. Sweden has worse wealth equality than the US. Sure we have high income taxes, but basically no wealth or inheritance taxes. The only reason social democracy ever took off in Scandinavia was due to the fear of the nearby Soviet Union. The moment the Soviet Union collapsed all the countries of Scandinavia started dismantling the welfare and privatising.
- My buddy is in Switzerland doing his phD. He says col there is hella expensive. Do they have a tiny tax rate?
If we're not going to abolish money, it should really be entirely illegal for the highest paid person in a company to make more than, say, 15-20 times more than the lowest paid person.
Lol 1 million doesn’t even buy a house where I live.
Rather than worrying about trying to tax 1 person heaps (they will dodge it anyway)
Why not put in place improved worker protection and pay laws.
Higher minimum wage - say equal to the bottom quartile median house price in the area, mandatory health care even for the lowest paid employees, absolutely no overtime.
They can dodge this by moving manufacturing overseas... But they already did this.

Progressive history nerd with an "aKshUlLy" for you to consider:

Slavery was never abolished, it was moved. There are more slaves in the world today than ever before and the US (among others) is funding it. Our stores are full of goods made by slaves. It's worse now than when slaves were just farmhands because those old high paying factory jobs were still a boon for the domestic worker. Those are slave jobs overseas now. A foundational economic pillar of stable, unionized labour was removed and never replaced.

So certainly, stagnant wages and everything is costing more and giving us less. Our current spiraling situation for workers at home is deplorable and getting worse, a true dystopia. But slavery is another kettle of fish. There's a scene in Roots, the miniseries from the 70s about slavery. When we get to the aftermath of the civil war in the south, a governor told the nervous former slave owners that like peter rabbit trying to get into the garden, when the farmer puts up an obstacle, you just find a way around it. For a time, that meant chattle slaves simply become indentured slaves, working to pay off costs they can never quite catch up on. Once that was abolished, we just laundered our slavery through international borders. Out of sight out of mind for the average American. It's the same people doing the same thing, it's just a shell game. The oppression of the working class is intersectional as fuck with slavery, has the same root cause, and evolved along side slavery, but the human suffering experienced by actual slaves is much worse than the typical underpaid worker, so for me, I don't think it's quite the same thing. But this is just symantics.

- Automation means that proportionally fewer slaves can provide more. That "denies the slave's existence as a human being" bit is rather vague. Are you saying modern slavery is not denying the slave's existence as a human being? What does that mean?

This has always been the case. Look at immigrant exploitation, the truck system, sharecropping, child labor, exporting work to undeveloped countries to exploit unregulated labor forces there.

It was always about bringing back slavery without calling it slavery.

And it will always be so long as we let them keep trying.

Violence is not the answer until the hour that it is.

These kind of conversations will get to the attention of a 3 letter agency. Our just social stances will get lemmy raided.
- I half wish it did. Within the far-right sectors of the social mediaverse, calls for murder or desires to engage in pogroms are commonplace, and are typical in the social media histories of rampage killers in the weeks leading up to their respective incidents. It's conspicuous how often their rage-filled comments discussing violence have failed to trigger an investigation to see if that there fellow needs to be watched for a while.
  In my case, I'm not going to engage in violence. At very least, I'm not fit for service in mischief or sabotage. My own next step is to do some research on mutual aid organizations which can serve to support protestors and, if necessary, saboteurs and other makers of mischief.
  My comment is a reminder to myself that yes, violence eventually does end up on the table, as happened with Iran when the Mahsa Amini protests were responded to violently by Iranian law enforcement, which is when the banners were swapped for molotov cocktails, and state offices were burned to the ground.
  In our case, we know the public will not gain rights until we make it disadvantageous to our governing officials to not do so. And as we're seeing, they're glad to take those rights away once they believe the threat has subsided. This is the justification for The Terror in France: while The Terror itself ended with Robespierre, the guillotines came out and aristocratic heads were piled high multiple times in the following century when kings had a propensity for rolling back established constitutional rights.
  So long as we're not going to tear the establishment down to distribute power more sparsely, we're going to need some way to hurt officials who fail to defend the public interest from their donors, maybe so hard that it hurts the donors. How to do this is well beyond my pay grade, but without such capacity the transnational white power movement is going to continue advancing, and we can expect the US Supreme Court to keep stripping away our rights.

Trying? Abolished? Sigh. Words. Slavery never left. Put all the pretty paint you want on those bars. It's the change of perspective that comes with wisdom. Use that power well.

Too many elite shitbags think they’re rich because it’s ordained when in reality their grammy and pee paw just fucked first.

Nothing divine or important about that.

So the next time you see a rich person give them the finger and a bad look because their family is probably a bunch of tax dodging cock sucking thieves.

Legacies are for insecure shit cunts.

They've lured us in with the promise of overtime to get us to work for them more, while keeping our wages artificially low so we have to work overtime.

Lets finally change it. Lets just get up and act, fuck it. I don't want to play the game anymore.

Then be prepared to get hurt. Sure small strikes are tolerable to a government. Strikes that actually disrupt the economy are never tolerated, and are almost always met with police violence. It's literally their first job, to maintain public order. Imagine what would happen if Lockheed Martin employees striked?
- We are already hurt.
Individual action won't accomplish anything it has to been collective and coordinated. Without strong unions I don't know how that's possible

Amazon workers with their forced over time go unheard.

Our only hope is to become a strong union country. Without collective power we'll never reign in the greed of the billionaires

What's this "trying to" bullshit? The for profit prison system and a legal system that punishes people for being poor would suggest they have already largely succeeded. Never mind that slavery is explicitly legal when it comes to prisoners.

Humans get powerful and don't see the point in power unless they can abuse people

Screenshot from a xitter post seriously? Ban this shit from this sub if you want to achieve anything at all

Too many elite shitbags think they’re rich because it’s ordained when in reality their grammy and pee paw just fucked first.

Nothing divine or important about that.

So the next time you see a rich person give them the finger and a bad look because their family is probably a bunch of tax dodging cock sucking thieves.

Legacies are for insecure shit cunts.

You guys don't have a 40 hour work week?

Is this an American thing or a certain industries thing?

Some industries (like mine) have mandatory overtime, but workers are absolutely compensated for that overtime.
The UAW is one of the most powerful unions in the US, so I'm not sure exactly where this post is coming from (as in, what specifically they are chasing via union action in this post), but from the context of other news it sounds like they're wanting similar comp without mandatory overtime in their industry.
- I was not aware that mandatory overtime was a thing.
  Seems kind of shit. Means that there is potentially no limit for how many hours they could make you work, and it's obviously not healthy.
  I've worked in a company that allowed overtime before but it was all optional. They would be like "is anyone willing to work this holiday?". Depending on how low demand was, you could be paid up to double as much on those days.
  It was a manufacturing company so running the line is crucial to revenue.
There are some exemptions, mostly for salaried workers.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/17a-overtime
The FLSA requires that most employees in the United States be paid at least the federal minimum wage for all hours worked and overtime pay at not less than time and one-half the regular rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
However, Section 13(a)(1) of the FLSA provides an exemption from both minimum wage and overtime pay for employees employed as bona fide executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees. Section 13(a)(1) and Section 13(a)(17) also exempt certain computer employees. To qualify for exemption, employees generally must meet certain tests regarding their job duties and be paid on a salary basis at not less than $684* per week.
- Am I reading right that they can pay you half pay for overtime, or do they mean that overtime is minimum 150% regular pay?

With enough inequality and without a strong social net, wage labour is equivalent to slavery. They cover the minimum costs of your survival and you spend as much time working as they ask or else they'll find someone more desperate.

Really, we should be advancing beyond the 40 hour work week and into a 50, or even 60 hour work week.

Slaves used to wear chains. Now they're all in debt. They've expanded slavery, that's all.

Slavery has always been with us. Every now and then it just gets redefined.

'trying to make' 'have made'