Comment on EU vs USA
dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 week agoWe have some monstrously large hurdles to clear in this regard. What’s working against a general strike:
- No social safety net for housing or medical until you’re below the poverty line for a tax year
- Bankruptcy, poor credit, limits future employment options (e.g. background checks)
- Most industries are not unionized, so your job can easily be filled in your absence
- Really high unemployment right now for skilled sectors like IT
- A lot of people are paycheck-to-paycheck thanks to a host of factors like high rent
To say nothing of all the illegal shit government and private business will do to end and/or prevent a strike.
It’s not impossible, but it does mean that any reasonable person would like to know that millions upon millions of others will be striking alongside them. Support networks for unemployed strikers along with strategies to deal with scabs would be a good start, too.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Absolutelly: the system in the US is designed to remove choice from the “riff-raff”.
Then again to a large extent in the past it was also so in those EU countries talked about here (and, as an EU resident, let me tell that there’s a lot of effort going on around here slowly reverting things back to those days)
Further, people too have make it so in the US, for example by not joining Unions or by parroting propaganda about how Free a country America is (which is pretty close the opposite of true: real Freedom in America is something only the rich have).
Whilst I dislike the near-religious take on the “Founding Fathers” of America (who at best were “progressive” for slave owners) the “American Constitution” (a prototype for Democracy which is riddled with problems, hence the current situation), many things from that time including some said by American Founding Fathers are eternal truths, such as the one about “eternal vigilance”, and the one about the tree of freedom needing to be periodically refreshed with the blood of patriots.