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Subject:

I'm coming at this as someone who's never made more than $20/hour

From: Wahoo Find all posts by Wahoo View Wahoo's profile Send private message to Wahoo
Date: Sat, 05-Oct-2024 1:52:27 PM PDT
Where: SoapZone Community Message Board
In topic: ~*~*~WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 30th POTPOURRI~*~*~ posted by chloe
In reply to: This is where they get us, when we look at another worker and go "not fair!" posted by Jenners97
in her life, despite "working hard" for the vast majority of those years. Many in my family and most of my friends also aren't making, or didn't make $39/hour. So to me, asking for that much more money is...kind of gross, especially considering how many others are struggling right now just to get by. If over $100K/year is truly, absolutely needed to just meet your minimum needs then yeah, I can understand the argument for it. And I'm sure there are people living in NYC who couldn't get by on $81K/year and might now have anyone else to share the cost. But how much of the demand for higher pay is based on need and how much on want?

We have to not only stop blaming each other, but start rooting for each other vs rooting for the really wealthy people we dream we'll be (but we wont).

I never said I was "rooting for the really wealthy people". Believe me, as someone making...nowhere near $39/hour, I'm just as p!ssed off about CEO salaries as the next person and probably more because of the lifestyle I have to live to make my salary stretch to cover my needs. I've even said here on SZ before that it baffles, and infuriates, me that I'm now working for a higher end clothing store in a very high end town and making barely above minimum wage. Like, let us workers have a little more of those profits, man! But at the same time, I don't see that ever happening, and most of those CEOs will insist they "worked hard" to get where they are and deserve their obscene salaries (they probably didn't, unless you count putting in long days, and they don't deserve 100% of their salaries, IMO).

Instead they get worker A mad that worker B is making $69 vs their $39. Or get college professional worker who is making $42 an hour mad at B for making more than them and A for making anywhere near what they make b/c they went to school and should get more.

What would it benefit CEOs to get their workers mad at one another? And do most workers really get mad if someone higher up the ladder makes more than they do?

We need to start seeing each other's work as valuable and wanting that person to be paid well for it. No one needs to make 100 million dollars a year, sitting at a desk, jetting around making deals. That is obscene. I say this as someone who truly believes she deserves the Lady Dior handbag, so it's not like I don't want nice things that aren't necessary. I believe the harder you work the more you should get paid, but for some reason we've let the people in charge convince us they work hard and we work hard but our neighbor is the problem. The neighbor isn't the problem!

So...when is this going to happen? HOW is it going to happen? Dad and I were literally just discussing this. He posed this question: one person can throw a ball into a net, another can cut someone open and save their lives and a third can bring light into your house and make sure water can remove your personal waste. Who gets paid more? Who should? We agreed that actors, musicians and athletes are grossly overpaid but no musician who has a #1 album has ever said "I'm going to only charge just enough for a ticket to my concert to cover all the expenses of the crew, the arena workers and the nice folks who helped my album become a reality, plus a couple cents more to pay for my time and that's it".

We've set this up so CEOs and Boards make all this money and make us see each other as enemies. Enough. If a CEO wants to make 100 million billion dollars, fine, but they make it off the backs of those of us who work for them. And they should be required to take care of the communities that they make/sell goods or services in. Why aren't these companies forced to foot the bill for public schools vs homeowners via tax? The kids who go to these schools will one day work for these companies! Why are we setting it up so the person born to someone in an apartment has less choice than a kid who was lucky enough to be born into a home in a nice neighborhood? It's dumb.

It IS dumb. And I'm not questioning the unfairness of capitalism out of control...well, not exactly. I *am* saying making $39/hour and then striking AND turning down a 50% pay raise in favor of even more money is equally bad.


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