I’ve been looking through some US and EU labor data and I have started to wonder why don’t more of the working poor join local mutual aid groups instead of staying at their likely shitty jobs or relying on charities?
This is a study on the labour distribution in the US among the working poor
On table 4 it shows that there are about 5,812,000 people that are classified as working poor ( Its says number in thousands so I multiplied the number given by 1000) and that alot of those jobs are in essential services like making food or providing support to others.
Similar diversity is show in the EU as well
So if most of these people decided to stop working at their current job and instead bring that those skills to a mutual aid network wouldn’t they still get most of the resources they need because other specialists would be there to help them and also live a generally more happy life?
Also the reason why I am saying instead of charities is because charities become less effective the more people request from them because they have limited resources to share and also mainly supported by wealthy people that can unilaterally give and take away support.
Whilst mutual aid networks can take the diversity that more people joining the network gives them and use it to offer more services to other people in that community.
This seems like a no brainer so what am I missing?
What you’re missing is the fact that it would be a huge risk and we have mouths to feed and bills to pay. Who’s to say the other people in the mutual aid group will stick around? Without a job I have no health insurance, what happens if I get cancer? Who pays for that? How do I know that I’ll be able to pay rent every month? With whose money? What happens if my dog needs surgery, who pays for that? Where do I get money for groceries?
Also as one of the working poor I have never relied on charity for anything because I live in a shit hole that doesn’t really even offer anything. Only churches do charity work here and my gay ass is not welcome there.
That’s not even taking into account the fact that you’d have to get people to agree to help each other. Do you think all the racist white assholes in my town will join up with black and Mexican families? lmao