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Comment by ramphastidae | Hacker News Reader

This is just wrong (and forgive my language, but stupid). The federal minimum wage has increased by $7 since 1938. A $7 increase in 84 years. No one is saying work should be banned. People just want jobs that allow them to afford housing, health insurance, retirement, and to sustain a family, and today the US has failed to provide that except for a minority of industries.

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I think the other thread here is even outside your average minimum wage job the link between work and reward is broken.

Holders of capital can speculate on property/real estate and make more (illiquid) money than a worker in a full year. Then to add insult to injury the worker hands over some large sum of their wage to said speculator. And is generally treated like crap into the bargain.

When idle parasitism makes more money than working and indeed forces people to work harder for longer, discontent from the generally capital poor workers is unsurprising.

> People just want jobs that allow them to afford housing, health insurance, retirement, and to sustain a family, and today the US has failed to provide that except for a minority of industries.

https://reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/r8rzk2/the_big_lie/

Definitely people that don’t want to work at all.

People might want California coastline affordable housing and Ferraris by working at McDonald’s but the US failing to provide that isn’t a failure of the US

A small number of extremists exist in any cause. I don't think cherry picking them out and redefining the whole thing with their extremist view is productive. By doing that you can just wholesale write off any idea or movement you want, it's intellectually dishonest in my opinion.

This is currently the top thread. https://reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/r8udf5/keep_spreading...

They want “free healthcare” by taxing 4%, I am not cherry picking anything, despite Obamacare existing for the poorest people. That post was at the top when I looked.

I'm failing to understand how that has anything at all to do with 'people not wanting to work at all'.

And besides the point - I completely agree with it. Healthcare costs are absurd. Who decided that my eyes & teeth aren't part of my health, why do I pay separately for those? And what is the point of insurance if they can just deny anything they want or require me to pay thousands out of pocket before they get involved at all? And this is after I pay hundreds a month to the insurance companies depending on plan. Speaking of plans - why is it the norm that I must try my best to predict the future 1 year in advance about whether I'll get sick or hurt this year? Guess wrong? - well good luck with that! The whole thing is ridiculous and unexpectedly throws people into impossible financial positions through no fault of their own regularly.

Being from a country with a national health service, I can appreciate why they'd want one. It is a reasonable thing to ask.

The US has Medicaid for elderly and people with disabilities, the VA for veterans, and Obamacare for those who can’t afford it. I’m very surprised the idea is national healthcare service doesn’t exist. We can complain about quality of course, but most foreigners either think it’s all private or free healthcare doesn’t exist.

We have a choice: free (often crappy care), pre regulation health trials, expensive experimental treatment , cutting edge medicine from specialists like the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic or University of Chicago, and healthcare from work off the top of my head.

You said I’m cherry picking extremists, Im just looking at the top posts.

Again - where is the extremism there that relates at all to your original statement of 'Definitely people that don’t want to work at all.'..?

I think you're being intellectually dishonest and am choosing to exit this conversation now as I don't see you responding to the above query in good faith after giving you another chance already. Have a good weekend.

It’s linked to late stage capitalism, do they want to work?

I sort all of Reddit by rising posts, which is why I think my feed is different.

LOL dude it's a subreddit with 30k followers. You should probably figure out how that translates to the real world and not panic just because a few people have made some posts that have gotten some comments.

I think you may have misread: it has 30k people who are, at the time of writing, online. It has 1.3million followers.

I’m pointing and laughing. Why would I or anyone panic about a subreddit of lazy people who aren’t adept enough to find another job or don’t want to work?

Again you have completely exaggerated, and your citation reflects nothing of your exaggeration.

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