What alternative are these factory workers going to do? “Learn to code and found a successful startup”?
A. You are born into wealth
B. You inherit wealth
Most of us don't fall into either of those two things under an economic system that is designed to extract the most value from the people working in it, the profits of which bubble to the top and never trickle back down.
This is why things like overtime are such an easy sell. If the company can afford to pay overtime, then there's no reason they can't afford to raise their workers hourly wages so they make the same money at 40 hours or less that they would working 50/60 hours. I'm here to tell you first hand that there's no increase in productive output of the company as a whole when everyone is working overtime versus when everyone is on 40 hours. That's a myth that needs to be quashed, especially with production being increasingly automated. As someone who visits our automtive and aerospace factories across the US frequently, the amount of guys I see standing around looking at smartphones is astounding, but so long as the company can post higher valuations by making it look like they're flush with both work and cash by offering copious overtime, they're happy. Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime and all that.
Sorry, I forgot to address your part about investments. Those are another bit of snake oil sold to the middle class to sooth their financial woes. Fact is, unless you have a considerable amount of upfront capital, all you're doing is lending money for various fund managers to gamble with. They profit more than you do, even when you do see the marginal increases you might see.
I graduated from a no name state college in 1996 with a degree in computer science and have worked for everything from startups, to small and medium lifestyle companies, to BigTech to now customer facing consulting.
While my mom got a pension, my dad just slowly saved and invested through his career. They’ve been living a good life that didn’t require working for over 30 years.
What my parents didn’t do was try to keep up with the Jones - they had their house built in 1978 and have been there ever since and added on to it in 2002. My mom has a few more cars only because she has given older ones to relatives when she felt a slight itch to get a new one. But my dad has had only three cars his entire life.
But simple math that I’m sure you have seen shows how continued automated investing over years won’t make you “rich” but will give you a comfortable retirement.
And it’s no “myth” especially for producing physical goods, that keeping the factory open longer and producing more widgets to sell increases profits. Paying people more money won’t have them producing more widgets when there is a constant amount of factory capacity that someone has.
People in all industries get promoted all of the time and make more money eve. Adjusted for inflation. You can find plenty of statistics where older workers make more than younger workers.
Other people making more than you do, doesn’t mean that you don’t make more money than you would by not investing.
[1 she was willing to volunteer for various education programs to help at risk students. But the grants were required to pay her but she negotiated a lower pay so she could work more hours and still not affect her pensions. She could have cared less about the money.
The company can be a government entity that finances overtimes not with profit, but by collecting more taxes and/or issuing debt obligations.
Think of NY police dept, which I'm sure is still rife with fraud to this day. They don't care about being able to "afford" to pay their force, since they have a money faucet and political influence.
> As someone who visits our automtive and aerospace factories across the US frequently, the amount of guys I see standing around looking at smartphones is astounding
You and everyone else who thinks like that needs to get out of this mentality that if you can't observe someone working actively for 8 hours out of an 8 hour day, that time is "waste". There are plenty of reasons to be on standby, some of which (e.g. blockers) are non-productive, and some that are.
You're supposed to be taking breaks (not lunch breaks) every hour anyway, to stretch your limbs and maybe ask a coworker a couple of questions.
This comment is probably going to come off weird, because you're posting in a forum full of people who have found such an alternative.
> the profits of which bubble to the top and never trickle back down.
this is also quite wrong for many here.