>"60-hour weeks basically means you live to work. Have you considered that perhaps someone's economic usefulness shouldn't be the only determinate of whether they have to spend essentially their entire lives on Earth just trying to survive?"
Have you considered that perhaps it's someone's prerogative and right to choose whether or not they want to pay for other people's lack of "economic usefulness"?
We're in this mess precisely because we had good intentions of helping the needy, and propping them up. All that did was raise their number, putting all sorts of economic pressures on existing poor people's salaries. Now we're expected to foot the bill even more?
You know, at some point, people are going to start saying enough to that sort of thing. It's borderline emotional-terrorism to guilt people into supporting so many needy. NO I am not a bad person for wanting the best for the people I care about. And not wanting to sacrifice it for the people who are reckless about bringing innocents into this world on my expense, and then teaching them anyways to hate me for not wanting to sacrifice further.
One last thing. I come from a family where the sole bread-winner did work 60-hour work weeks, and still does. Precisely so that I and my sibling wouldn't have to. Though I still do, because I want even better for the people I care about and brought into this world.
Your last paragraph is kind of to my point: in many other developed countries, your bread-winner _wouldn't have had to_ make such a huge sacrifice, just to make sure their dependants don't get stuck in poverty.
There's countries in the world where the bottom rung isn't such a terrible place, and people don't have to constantly sacrifice just to make sure they don't end up there. And those countries are doing just fine - there's no horde unemployed destroying their economies. There is, however, less stress, less fear, and a better standard of living for the median person. And sure, there's no country that's perfect, but what I'm saying is there's at least one alternative, which is currently working well in real economies, to the "red in tooth and claw" fight that Americans feel is necessary.
I'm not making a guilt-trip argument here. If you're a working class person in America, by a wide range of objective measures (access to health care and education, life expectancy, time with family, class mobility, exposure to crime, etc.) you're worse off than if you were in the working class in many other countries, ones with higher taxes and more generous welfare systems. Sure, if you look at just your taxes going out, it looks worse, but the situation overall for everyone in the 99% is improved. You just have to get over your distaste for your taxes helping poor (and sometimes lazy) people, because despite that it still ends up helping you.
This is especially a problem because any solutions that are politically likely at this point, like raising the minimum wage, aren't taking money from the wealthiest, they're taking money from the middle class to fund wealth redistribution.
The taxation system is a man-made thing. If Americans wanted to raise the minimum wage, but redistribute the costs of it to the upper and not middle class, that is absolutely possible.
It's possible but there's basically no chance of that occurring in the current political climate. Our "liberal" party is dominated by corporate interests. Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee is basically the perfect example of that. It probably isn't clear based on my other posts, but I'd love to have some of the policies Bernie Sanders has proposed rather than what I've talked about here. At this point it just seems a bit like a fantasy. Especially given how gerrymandering has the Republicans in a position to keep ahold of the House for quite awhile.
Have you considered that perhaps it's someone's prerogative and right to choose whether or not they want to pay for other people's lack of "economic usefulness"?
We're in this mess precisely because we had good intentions of helping the needy, and propping them up. All that did was raise their number, putting all sorts of economic pressures on existing poor people's salaries. Now we're expected to foot the bill even more?
You know, at some point, people are going to start saying enough to that sort of thing. It's borderline emotional-terrorism to guilt people into supporting so many needy. NO I am not a bad person for wanting the best for the people I care about. And not wanting to sacrifice it for the people who are reckless about bringing innocents into this world on my expense, and then teaching them anyways to hate me for not wanting to sacrifice further.
One last thing. I come from a family where the sole bread-winner did work 60-hour work weeks, and still does. Precisely so that I and my sibling wouldn't have to. Though I still do, because I want even better for the people I care about and brought into this world.