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Comment by A4ET8a8uTh0 | Hacker News Reader

I am starting to wonder if the management wants to ensure people in general do not make that connection ( and just want to have, ideally, serfs barely making ends meet ).

Covid was a big moment for me in a lot of ways, because I was very pro-corporate for a long time. Having seen some of the bs up close and personal, it made me realize how broken our current system really is ( I still remember 'we are in this together' lip service and 'driving is your zen time' ). Having a kid ( and seeing it grow up ) can be such a radicalizing moment.

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> I am starting to wonder if the management wants to ensure people in general do not make that connection ( and just want to have, ideally, serfs barely making ends meet)

Why do you think healthcare is tied to employment in the US?

Why do you think minimum wage in the US has not gone up in decades?

Why do you think 2 weeks leave is normal in the US?

Why don’t more Americans travel overseas?

At this point you have to be willfully ignorant not to make the connection.

There is no reason to make too snarky. The reality is the propaganda machine in US is really well oiled.

> Why do you think healthcare is tied to employment in the US?

Because if you would take THIS money from the people directly, they will be very unhappy.

> Why do you think minimum wage in the US has not gone up in decades?

Minimum wage is eaten up by an ever-increasing amount of regulations

> Why do you think 2 weeks leave is normal in the US?

Otherwise, the minimum wage would have to be lowered

> Why don’t more Americans travel overseas?

It seems like because they already live in the best country

If Americans truly lived in the best country, they could afford enough vacation to just travel for fun.

America is indeed the best country for rich, highly successful people. The minimum wage is not eaten by regulations, but the corporate profits which make those few so rich. Ordinary workers are better off in many EU countries, and they naturally make the majority of the population. I think the best country is one which provides the best quality of life for the average and median citizen, not just the elite.

Pretty much wrong on all counts.

For me, everything i read and hear about the US is so weirdly confusing.

Here on HN I often read that there are a lot of problems with healthcare, poverty, minimum wages, too big cars, overweight, pollution, racism, big companies and rich people having too much power...

... and then i see the result of the election and the only argument is: this guy will fix our too high taxes.

Americans have been convinced to vote against their own best interests by decades of lobbying and propaganda.

As just one example, they deeply believe Socialism is evil, never mind the very vast majority of their daily services are dependant on it.

Yep, small towns are dying, corporate wealth and power is growing, and prices are rising, and we just voted for the side who will accelerate all three.

Honestly, if you're not a radical in the year 2024, you haven't been paying attention.

I travel around a lot (a thing I can do because I work remotely). From SF to Seattle to Tampa to Salt Lake to the small-town corners of the Carolinas, everyone is struggling. You can feel it in the air, find people identifying with it in every conversation, see the slow decay of every place you know. The dead mall in your hometown, your phone forcing a prompt to take your data to train some AI, the favelas that are now the norm in every major city (regardless of local policy), the fact that you now get a prompt for what is effectively a payday loan when you try to order a pizza.

I think people underestimate how poisonous that is to a culture and to a body politic. When you don't believe in reform, you either shrug and let things burn, or you start setting the fires yourself. Neither bodes well.

Weird, i totally cannot relate. I don't see decay around me. The decay is mostly the geopolitical situation in several places in the world, together with climate change. If it were not in the news, i wouldn't even know.

Out of curiosity, where do you live?

A place that the present elect of the US referred to as 'hellhole'.

Where do you live mate?

100%. In the past 40 years we've experienced the largest wealth transfer in history, from workers to shareholders. And you don't even need to have read Piketty to see it (though it helps).

Management wants replaceable units which are cheap to source, maintain and replace and utilize to the maximum. That’s all it was ever about

It does ring true and I am not sure I can refute it ( management wants easily replaceable cogs for the machine ). But my overall thought is that humans are a lot of things, but among those things they are also horrible biological machines if seen only through that prism. Our whole value to the system is that we can adjust to the unknown.

Still, maybe more importantly, we are not all even the same cogs, but management tries to lazily put us in the same category. I am not sure we can even really call it management. That is actually a mismanagement of human resources..

I think I mentioned this pet theory before here, but it is no longer 1950, but the management has not evolved since that period in US. Maybe it is time to force that evolution.

> I am starting to wonder if the management wants to ensure people in general do not make that connection ( and just want to have, ideally, serfs barely making ends meet ).

One big reason is they are very worried about their stock grants due to the stock value nosedive that will occur once they finally have to write off all those office space leases as actual losses and report the loss on their SEC forms.

If they can force RTO then all the money being spent for office space leases remains in the "business expense" category and the stock price does not tank as a result.

This narrative has been repeated ad nauseam, but I'm not fully buying it. What is the average S&P 500 exposure to real estate for their stock price? In a handful of cases sure, but en masse it seems much more likely driven by more direct management beliefs about productivity and/or calculation to drive a "silent layoff" through voluntary attrition.

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