Another great one is immigration. Liberals thinks conservatives want to restrict immigration because they hate foreigners. Conservatives want to stop immigration because the job market sucks and has sucked since 2008.
The reason why the job market sucks is that unions got defanged and international capital movement freed from the 80s onwards.
That’s why life for working people took 3 steps backwards compared to our parents and grandparents who could buy a house, go on holidays and have a boat on a factory wage. While we are going to have trillionaires soon and the only thing that’s cheaper is the fuel of capitalism: telecoms and wages.
The problem has never been another wage earner - the problem is pitting us against each other and us taking the bait.
I agree with you on the unions, but the other issue is that a lot of jobs have been outsourced over the years. Unfortunately, those jobs probably aren’t coming back.
Well yes, but how did we get here? The same forces that brought us are still working to keep wage slavey alive and well.
Free movement of capital, weakened unions and ceaseless propaganda pitting people against each other (welfare queens, immigrants are taking your jobs, eating the cats and dogs, work harder and you’ll be rich too, these other people are lazy, stupid, bad genes, wrong religion, the rich are better/smarter than you etc) - that’s how that happened.
There’s only one enemy and it’s not other wage earners.
Anecdote: Japan has many foreign workers on visa like the US, “jobs that no one else wants to do”. When I visited, I saw a van of the right-wing party driving around with a loudspeaker: “Chinese, get out! Koreans, get out! Japan is for the Japanese!” It was a bit familiar. 😑
…and leftists know that the “abortion debate” is culture warfare injected into the less-educated by billionaires to distract from class warfare.
I was just using that as an example.
Another great one is immigration. Liberals thinks conservatives want to restrict immigration because they hate foreigners. Conservatives want to stop immigration because the job market sucks and has sucked since 2008.
The reason why the job market sucks is that unions got defanged and international capital movement freed from the 80s onwards.
That’s why life for working people took 3 steps backwards compared to our parents and grandparents who could buy a house, go on holidays and have a boat on a factory wage. While we are going to have trillionaires soon and the only thing that’s cheaper is the fuel of capitalism: telecoms and wages.
The problem has never been another wage earner - the problem is pitting us against each other and us taking the bait.
I agree with you on the unions, but the other issue is that a lot of jobs have been outsourced over the years. Unfortunately, those jobs probably aren’t coming back.
Well yes, but how did we get here? The same forces that brought us are still working to keep wage slavey alive and well.
Free movement of capital, weakened unions and ceaseless propaganda pitting people against each other (welfare queens, immigrants are taking your jobs, eating the cats and dogs, work harder and you’ll be rich too, these other people are lazy, stupid, bad genes, wrong religion, the rich are better/smarter than you etc) - that’s how that happened.
There’s only one enemy and it’s not other wage earners.
When did I say that other wage earners were the enemy?
Anecdote: Japan has many foreign workers on visa like the US, “jobs that no one else wants to do”. When I visited, I saw a van of the right-wing party driving around with a loudspeaker: “Chinese, get out! Koreans, get out! Japan is for the Japanese!” It was a bit familiar. 😑
Conservatives wanted to stop immigration long before 2008…
Democrats too.