Paycheck to Homelessness
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
It’s almost as if the system was designed to keep people trapped.
And insurance loss
Yep. Just look at covid. People weren’t working due to quarantine, and we had one of the biggest nationwide protests ever. That’s not a coincidence.
Yeah, hard to strike when missing work means missing rent. System’s got people too stressed to fight back.
Our jobs are tied to our health insurance. Makes sense why they don’t want universal healthcare.
100% correct
And that’s right where your new Republican gods will keep u.
That, and also that its basically currently illegal for unions to take part in one.
We pretty much are not allowed because [Taft-Hartley ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Hartley_Act)bans solidarity, political, and secondary boycott strikes. Worse, we can be ordered around by the president back to work, which means if there is a general strike we are involved in the President can force us to cross the picket line and break it.
When I signed my union card, I did not sign up for the armed forces to be so ordered around by the president. But it demonstrates the power working people have, and the fear those in power have of us.
The times ahead of us are going to be troubled, but we’ve seen this and worse before. Remember, the NLRB was a compromise to stop unionized workers from going on strike and crippling the economy and in exchange we got a government agency tasked with ensuring our fair treatment. If that agency can not perform up to it’s end, then we should not validate it by being shackled to it when it has no relief for us at all.
If you want to fight political power, organize labor.
Your right to vote can be taken from you.
Guns can be confiscated.
A piece of paper gave you a right, another piece of paper can take it away.
The power of the working class is down to the fact that without someone to do something, things don’t get done. No nation, state, or enterprise can survive the death of production. Any government that no longer requires human labor to exist, also no longer requires the consent of the people.
So long as they still need us, and the time quickly approaches where they may not due to ubiquitous automation… together, we have the power to bring them to their knees.
Solidarity, forever.
The cops who will shoot and incarcerate starving children raiding the stores and farms
This is why Leon trying to destroy every safety net is a near-guaranteed recipe for riots. If the bread and circuses stop the masses will eat the rich.
She’s not wrong.
If you have to ask…
by design, yes, everyone is in that position.
Just two paychecks? I think you forgot the one over the two.
Two is being very generous
The problem with any answers is that a general strike solves them. If everyone just stopped then the system would collapse. You can’t call the police to evict some if they need to perform 12k evictions that day or if the phone lines go down because the people that run its infrastructure walk off the job.
What’s preventing this is trust. None of use trust each other enough to do it. Like a national prisoners dilemma. The have nots hold more power then is need to change things but would rather wait for the chance to benefit solely.
So we wait, while whatever this ends up being call gets worse. People are trained to adapt rapidly and more of us than we are comfortable with will just get used to it and move on. We’ll be angry and protest but nothing will change. Once things get untenable and change becomes necessary the divide will complete. Violence will come next.
The main reason is the American worker’s aversion to unions. Most of the worker’s problems stem from this.
Which si exactly why in 26days this all goes to shit. That’s when the first real window for evictions of the Trump presidency begin.
That’s not really a clever comeback. That’s actually incredible sad
It is clear that what is needed is a way to vote out a president and their administration after they have been voted in.
We have already seen how much damage can be done in a month, imagine what is going to happen in the next 4 years.
Also works the other way, in another great depression things would get spicy fast, because no one could afford to live after about a week.
this is by design.
if you whittle down a populations financial agency to the essentials for survival, the instinct for individual survival takes the lead over solidarity.
Criminalized poverty is like a fungal infection. There’s another layer to it beyond what OOP said, though: there’s also a social curse added that leads to the need for help making one feel ashamed and almost unclean.
That’s part of why blackout protests (or whatever the don’t spend money on x day ones are called) don’t work for single days. People are just going to spend the money on the next day anyway.
Reagan was the first president to be a union buster. If unions would have stood up for the air traffic controllers back in ’81, Unions would be so much stronger today. So I’ll be surprised if unions outside of the government stand up today. Union only seem to be interested in their own people. But don’t worry if they keep this up there’ll be no unions tomorrow.
That’s why they’ve been undermining unions for the past 16+ years.
A VALID reason to strike.
This is just refusal to organize. The whole point of a GENERAL strike is that it brings the system to its heels and they CANNOT defeat it with violence PRECISELY because it is a general strike. They stop paying? Okay, 20% of the country start engaging in a rent strike as well, no more rent paying. They will evict you all? Okay, who will enforce that if everybody just squats? There’s one cop for 400 people, they aren’t evicting shit.
All of this is possible. It’s just stopped by a refusal to organize a platform which would coordinate a large enough strike, where people could convene, discuss and vote on whether they would be ready to strike. And then, when you reach a critical mass, you go for the general strike.
Historically, these platforms would have been Unions collaborating for strikes approaching generality. If you do not think unions can fulfill this role today, then it’s time to start a movement to get connected. The WorkReform sub might be a good one to start getting organized, and then expand until you have a connected grassroots movement going. Heck, if you reach enough people you might be able to form majorities in the next election as a new party.
It’s not that complicated but as long as the new Netflix show eats your time and energy you’re accepting the sweeteners from the ruling class to not revolt. General strikes have been rare because they are not easily organized, but almost always have been successful when implemented.
Then again, maybe a national “sick out” for 5 days. No work period. If the 10s of millions who voted for the woman who could speak in complete sentences alone went out and striked it could have a serious impact on the economy.
Just where they want us
TWO?!?! im one missed paycheck away from being homeless.
There is an upside to all this. The 11 months you get to be retired with all of the benefits of sleeping until 8 AM will be a time to enjoy. The only problem is that you have to get up at 2 AM, 4 AM and 7 AM to empty two tenths of an ounce from your bladder. It will be gorgeous to wake up to the sound of a garbage truck instead of being stuck in transit for 55 minutes.
The joy of almost having paid a third of your mortgage at an age of 89 sounds truly motivating. The medicine cabinet stocked up like it was a french wine cellar. I don’t understand why people would want a reset. There is one catch though. You will have to send in your 5 bullet points every Sunday morning of what you did last week to continue to receive your retirement benefits.
I still don’t understand why people don’t embrace these goals. Retirement at 89 is for the 9% of the population. The rest are collateral for the retirement funds and will have the privilege of giving a nice retirement for others.
Crazy idea, what if IRS and bank and debt collectors’ workers and such go on strike too?
Or one emergency hospital visit.
Two paychecks? More like an off week or even a few days, can’t even get sick and take a day off in most workplaces…..
2 paychecks feels generous. If I wasn’t in my extremely fortuitous housing situation, I’d be one paycheck away.
It will take courage for that 99% to stand up and say we have had enough. I don’t see that happening.
We haven’t lost enough yet. It will only happen when enough of us have nothing else to lose
Americans would find striking as communism or socialism. They dont do stuff together, it’s all individualism. Which is why they have a shit minimum wage, and shit benefits. And no universal healthcare. Their constitution is all about “ me, me, me”.