Just because some people are poor because they don't work does NOT mean that it is the only reason to be poor. There are millions and millions of people who work really fucking hard, 2, 3 jobs. Jobs doing dangerous shit like coal mining, doing harder work than probably anyone on this forum. And yet because minimum wage is so low, people are getting paid well below a living wage, and are poor, despite doing everything they can. Not everyone can fill the higher-paying, professional jobs. Some people have to fill gas station clerk, or grocery bagger, or coal miner, or McDonald's employee. A LOT of people do. To suggest that it's their fault they're poor when they're putting in 40 or even well more hours a week, fulfilling a role in society that is part of the machinery of it working, is absurd. People who work at something and fulfill their role should be paid a living wage. We should not have the full-time working poor as a thing in the wealthiest nation in the world. It's fucked up.
I find the conservative argument is always "well work harder and you can become rich". It's completely out of touch with reality and it completely glazes over some realities which I have just mentioned. You can't punish people for filling jobs that are needed, it's morally wrong and exploitative.
CH said:
There's just a reason the profit motive exists.
I have no problem with profit as a motivator in itself. It is a good thing for innovation, it creates competition which helps motivate people and light a fire under them. But how do you respond to the fact that there are full-time working poor? How do you justify that? How is it beneficial to anyone but a few select individuals to allow people to slowly accumulate more and more of the total wealth, to the direct detriment of other people who did nothing to deserve it and are still trying their best to contribute to society and survive. What is so bad about laws that helped to prohibit that sort of predatory, destructive behavior? We pretty much open encourage it. It's unhealthy for our society, if they succeed in creating a wage slave labor force, then the country just becomes a place for obscenely wealthy sociopaths to feed off of a population of people until they suck it dry and it collapses.
To be clear, I have no problem whatsoever with someone, say, writing a best-selling novel and becoming rich, or starting a tech company or whatever, or making it in music or other arts and becoming rich by creating something. What I have a problem is the deranged motherfuckers who exploit the people making their wealth possible, who infiltrate the government and change the laws to better benefit them and screw everyone else. It's insane for us to allow this kind of system because it is unjust.
So yeah it's a hell of a lot more of a complex issue than "well, they should work harder, it's their fault"
