Where has the labor force gone?

[Dancing Fire]

Don’t worry: DF will be paying the gov’t back for his children’s free semi-socialized education, and after he’s received back from social security and Medicaid everything he put in—which happens in our early 70s—he’ll refuse to accept any more because he knows the truth: that all Americans, in old age, become welfare queens, accepting more than we contributed and leaving it to future generations to deal with.

I said it many times here that I'd support educating our kids and taking good care of our senior citizens...However, I do not support an able body living on long term social programs!

 

[westofhere]

He would talk to you while secretly suspecting you are a communist and irrationally blaming you for the virus’ spread. You see why his three children turned out as far left as possible?

 

[PinkAndBlueBling]

There was a piece about this on the local news today. It was about Spirit airlines cancelling flights partly because of a labor shortage. It segued into a discussion about a shortage of restaurant and retail employees. The main reasons were: lack of childcare, lack of workers willing to take abuse/crap from customers (a few just walked off the job) in these low-paying jobs, and fear of COVID in the workplace.

 

[Dancing Fire]

He would talk to you while secretly suspecting you are a communist and irrationally blaming you for the virus’ spread. You see why his three children turned out as far left as possible?

I'm far from a communist. In fact I'll fight against communism and socialism so that my daughters and grandkids don't have to live like my parents did under Mao.

 

[westofhere]

Mao is such a strange and horrible figure and illustrates the point about there being no political system practiced in its theoretical essence. He caused such horrific suffering but he and those in his echelon never missed a meal once in power, let alone starved. Never was tortured or worked to death for his beliefs. Never lived as an economic equal, as communism dictates.

If it interests you, DF, there’s an amazing and much lauded American poet, Li-Young Lee, whose father was Mao’s personal physician and who is emblematic of the best a free society can be. That he’s an artist saying whatever he wants is a grand and just f-you to the Cultural Revolution:

Li-Young Lee - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Daisys and Diamonds]

It'll be here sooner than you think. Socialism here we come.

Some of us are alteady living it DF



I dont understand people who dont want to go to work ?
I need to feel useful

i just had a couple of years off due to Gary's ill health (and the economic effects of the covid pandemic)
I know for mentle health i need to get up every day and go to work

They now say we have 4% unemployment but im still looking for a full time job

 

[Rhea]

A mate worked as a head chef at a major cultural centre in London. When the pandemic hit he was made redundant even though keeping him on furlough would have meant little work for his employer and would have benefited him in the form of government money. Instead he struggled, stressed his relationship, and was depressed.

Between waves of the pandemic, restaurants tried to rehire at lower wages, and suddenly all these very qualified head chefs were being paid minimum wage. My mate choose not to return and got a job at a vaccination centre and now works for the NHS. It's social hours (no Fridays and Saturdays at 11pm waiting for patrons to leave, no hot kitchens, and extreme pressure!), and about 85-90% of the pay he had before with substantially less stress.

Only now are his previous employers taking notice. All levels of hospitaility staff are pissed. They were dismissed, and offered unbelievably low wages, and so they rightly moved along. If you come to London and your menu sucks, the head chef isn't the same as before, and you don't enjoy your night as much, blame my mate and his friends. They aren't planning to return any time soon and newbies can't train or get experience quickly enough, not that enough people want to do it anyway. It's a real issue atm.

Where's the workforce? Pissed off and rethinking what they need to survive and how they'll get it.

 

[voce]

he and those in his echelon never missed a meal once in power, let alone starved. Never was tortured

Depends on what you mean by once in power. When he was fighting the war against the Japanese while on the run from Chiang/Nationalists he starved plenty along with the foot soldiers and others in his echelon. Probably post-1949 is when all that stopped. For over two decades every Communist in China faced the threat of torture if they did not defect, and many did indeed die from torture. Mao was not tortured because he was never caught.

I hate what the Chinese communist state regime has become, but like with other things you should realize that single story never gives you the full picture. The peasants in China were just as repressed under the warlords and Chiang Kai Shek's regime, and only Mao gave them hope. So Mao's more than an exploiter because he really did save China, at least from total Japanese conquest while Chiang was hiding in the mountains and sitting on the weapons given by the Americans. Chiang wanted the Japanese to exterminate the Communists while doing nothing but retreat after the Rape of Nanking occurred. He was willing to let the Japanese treat the people of China as animals to the slaughter, so some viewed Mao as the lesser evil.

Honestly, unless you really delve into the complexity of Chinese history, there's a lot of prevailing narratives that are oversimplified in the very limited Western understanding. This is akin to blind men trying to figure out what an elephant is, by only each feeling one part of the elephant.