I grew up low class, and expected my life to be hard - only I didn’t process it as “hard”; it was just how life *was.* I was going to have to spend the rest of my life doing minimum-wage physically-hard labor, and then getting pregnant. That was the plan, but more importantly-
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I didn’t register this plan as a bad one, a sad one. It made the “I need to set aside my feelings and use my willpower” part of my brain very active, a dominant way of being. The pain in my legs from being on my feet all day was just the *way life was*. And I was grateful! -
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I’d grown up reading stories throughout history and was intimately familiar with how new and different my current lifestyle was. I was happy I wasn’t working in coal mines, or under threat of war, and that there was no famine. I viewed it as a normal feature of human existence-
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That you had to set aside your feelings and use willpower. This is the way everyone had to live in history, this was a default of existence - and anything more than this was luxury. I felt hyper aware of how unusual our state of civilization was, how luxurious my life was already
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And this is why I feel a little confused when people get really angry at stuff like the minimum wage, or having to work two jobs and live in a shitty apartment. People are complaining at working conditions that I went through with actual gratitude.
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Replying to @Aella_Girl
You would not have even had a minimum wage or a shitty apartment if not for the discontent of our forebears. Maybe you would have been grateful for barely exsiting in a workhouse in the 19th century, but others were not and you directly benefitted from that discontent.
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Replying to @PinoGap
Discontent does not mean you can’t also be grateful for what you have, and it also doesn’t mean entitlement. I’ve worked really hard to never have to work a factory job again, but it wasn’t because I felt i was owed it by anyone.
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Replying to @Aella_Girl
And who is denying both? Most people I know work hard, pay their dues, and simply want their kids to be afforded the same - including fair wages and a taxation system that ensures the most wealthy don't pay less than them.
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Replying to @PinoGap
Right now the wealthiest 1% pay like... ~40% of total income tax revenue, despite making only like ~20% of income. They are absolutely paying muuuch more than people poorer than them. And ‘fair wages’ is weird - you don’t deserve more money than someone is willing to give you
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Replying to @Aella_Girl
The worlds wealthy protect their income with tax havens from Delaware, to Ireland, to the Caymans. I paid more tax than Foxtel did last year and I work part-tim. You strived with the benefit of minimum wage laws to rise above them and seek to remove them for others by the sound.
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But even with that ability to hide their taxes, they *still* pay more in taxes than the less wealthy! The public services you use are disproportionately paid for by the rich. And yes I worked for minimum wage cause it’s illegal to work for less, even if I’d been ok with that
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Replying to @Aella_Girl
I guess that's where we differ- you'd like a return to the 19th century: working poor, wprkplace deaths daily, begging in the street and obscene, intergenerational wealth hiding in estates and no services hospitals, roads, police, fire services because the rich shouldn't pay tax.
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Replying to @PinoGap
Lol my worldview does not require a centralized authority to bring people out of the dirt, we can do it ourselves. In my ideal world, nobody would pay income tax, and the increased freedom would result in enough prosperity to reduce total poverty.
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