The US are 50 3rd world countries stacked in a trench coat, pretending to be the world’s greatest country.
And the trench coat was manufactuered in China.
No no no, it’s a 250 year old moldy trench coat
It’s not a trench coat, it’s a french coat!
Actually, the term 3rd world is outdated and referred to countries that couldn’t decide whether to align themselves with the US or Russia - oh wait
48, and also New York and California who are happy to pretend to be.
Most of the Midwest is solid too.
Most of the Midwest is solid shit you are correct
Solid shit is not a nice place to live on.
Its only solid in the winter actually.
That’s what you get when your government and representatives are all owned by corporates, and works exclusively for the benefit of those corporates. Lobbying works only for corporates, and not the people, and should be illegal. People should stop voting for those who fail to deliver in their FIRST term. No second terms for failures!
But American people are undereducated, low information, partisan and a very high proportion vote in a racist way, where rather than vote for their own best interests, they vote for their neighbors worst interests. Thus, they get what they deserve, but unfortunately the worst of us, the divisive politicians profit.We need to remove money from politics, make lobbying illegal and subject to capital punishment, and politicians found to be selling out our trust, liable to capital punishment also. They are worse than traitors in a war, so the punishment MUST be severe. Politicians should also be personally liable when they fail to keep their election promises, and LYING to the public needs to be punished harshly too. ALL politicians should be audited before, during and after their terms. Finally, there need to be term and age limits. Rich 80-90 year olds, are NOT representative of the people, and do NOT have the same concerns as the rest of us.
Yep, this has been my own argument for many years. I believe that if you ban lobbying alone, the rest will cascade.
The US is a trash heap that worships an orange pedo, what do you expect?
Worships the almighty dollar too
If it’s any consolation, there’s also no law that mandates that we get breaks either!
Like, at all. No lunch. No 15 minutes. Now, most companies DO “offer” breaks. But they don’t have to. Except in a couple states (Less than 10, last I checked.)
Combine that with “at-will” employment without contracts, that means in most of the USA you could be asked to work for 36 hours straight with no breaks and be fired for looking tired.
While possibly true, in reality an employer doing this struggles to keep reliable and quality staff. They would likely calculate that hiring and training expenses, poor output, and other issues are a higher cost than the cost of offering 15 minute breaks and some amount of benefits.
At least that’s how it should work.
How it should work if companies cared about anything beyond the next quarterly report.
After my former employer’s economic forecast did an abrupt sharp downturn, I went from being a highly desirable employee to extremely undesirable in the space of less than a week. Add to that a performance limiting on-the-job injury and being the highest paid person in my department.
Guess who was terminated the day before their stock and annual bonus was to be awarded.
it still shifts the power into the hands of the employer, like providing basic acceptable working conditions becomes a perk, when it’s just something that should be universal and normalized.
It hasn’t been like that for most of human history, and the standard of working conditions that I am guessing you’re thinking of is not even experienced by most humans alive today.
I think ideal working conditions should be society’s aspiration and would hopefully pay for itself through superior output. But if businesses can compete unfairly this may not be true. For that reason we should break up companies that get so large as to control entire markets and force them to compete again.
Sadly
in reality an employer doing this struggles to keep reliable and quality staff.
The same could be said about PTO, but…
Race to the bottom, bare minimum it is then
Unfortunately for labor, absent of regulation, that’s how it’s been since the beginning of time. B2B dealings are similar… Add value in excess of cost or be replaced.
That’s what prison labor is for. All those issues vanish. And it’s by design.
That’s more true in the more skilled the job is.
In entry level jobs where people are desperate, it gets a lot less favorable for the employee.
Really it’s the same argument as a minimum wage
AI don’t want no break
What is the normal break/lunch time provided? 15m sounds like torture. You would have to swallow your food and can’t even digest it before you are back working
I get a 15 minute break at 9:00 and 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00. Work starts at 6:30 and ends at 15:00. Mon - Fri
Georgia, USA factory worker
Until September we had been 6:30 - 17:00, Mon - Thu, with 10 minutes break at 10:00, 30 minutes lunch (unpaid) at 12:00, and 10 minutes break at 14:00.
Fuck corporate meddling and I hope they really enjoy the crash in production. This is the 3rd time they have tried to force us into a 5 day schedule in the 8 years I’ve been employed there, both other times reverting back to 4 10s within a few months due to lost output.
No the 15min are separate.
Lunch is usually 30min-1hr (unpaid)
Then one or two 15min breaks (paid)
At least in retail that was my experience.
There’s no federal law that mandates breaks, but I think there’s one that kicks in if an employer offers any breaks at all, mandating certain minimum requirements about paid/unpaid breaks
That’s because America is fucked…
Representatives have long since stopped caring about their constituents. Wages are being undercut at home and abroad. Foreign countries get money while benefits are cut at home. The population is fed porn, junk food and drugs. America isn’t America anymore. It’s a military-industrial golem.
And this is all by design…
Yeah but you guys have your own kind of mustard, and tomato sauce, and the epstein ballroom, and those ridiculous big cars. It’s surely the greatest country in the world.
The Yank Tank… I get incredibly angry when I see them in Spain, only good at pollution and murdering kids… Only a cunt would drive something like that
We should never tire of shaming people for being like this.
Took me so long to figure out what a yank tank is. Perfect descriptor though!
Don’t you send me down a mustard rabbit hole at 2:30 in the morning you sonofabitch
Mustard rabbit is delicious ! I don’t know about the hole though
The hole is the best part, I imagine
It’s surely the greatest country in the world.
And they also have a clown who tells them all the time that it’s the greatest country in the world.
And don’t clowns tell the truth?
That’s fucked up. Here in the UK, I work a low level job and my wages aren’t great, but I get 4 weeks paid leave and am encouraged to take it. I also get up to 6 months paid sick leave, though I need a note from my doctor after a week. I think after 6 months I still get paid half wage. The sick leave thing isn’t government mandated, but it’s not uncommon, and I’m strongly encouraged to use it if I’m not well. Makes sense, you don’t want sick employees bringing germs into work and making everyone else ill.
I don’t have kids, but I’m pretty sure paid maternity /paternity leave is pretty decent too.
Yeah, here in the US you are basically forced to come in. The only exception for this was Covid.
In various industries, there is a refrain that “You come in sick and tired, otherwise you’re fired”.
If you live in a “At will employment” (read: Terminate at will) state, you are even more screwed.
Nono, “At will employment” is terminate at will.
“Right to work” is the union busting law that prevents collective bargaining agreements
Decades later, and their bullshit Orwellian naming tactics are still paying off.
Ah, thanks for the correction.
Yeah I’ve heard that about the US. Seems crazy to me, a bad flu bug could really screw your workforce, and sick people are going to be much less effective workers. Not to mention public-facing positions - as a customer I do not want some nasty virus free with my product! Also, people tend to work harder and have more loyalty towards an employer that they feel respects and looks after them.
I managed a high volume chain pizza place many years ago. I was forced to work with a fever of 103.
I’m sure THAT endeared you to your employers…? /s
Unless you’re in a position that requires a level of college education and experience, employers consider you expendable. Infamously, Amazon had internal policies that encouraged abusing new hires as much as possible and firing at the first sign of defiance - they bet that there would be a stream of new hires right as they left the door.
When I worked at a pharmacy, I wasn’t given much leeway, even though I was directly interfacing with high-risk populations that I didn’t want to infect (or be infected by). The best I could do was buy a pack of N95s (with my own money), and use our expendable gloves as often as possible. I still got sick and was forced to show (In the middle of fucking 2022).
America is just non stop winning!
How can this be? According to MAGA (and also Bernie Sanders BTW) the USA is the greatest country in the world.
/s obvsly
Are we at least the greatest at sucking major ass?
Americans are fine with it.
If not, they’d do something about it.
“Slaves were fine with being slaves, otherwise they’d do something about it” ass take
Slaves who are armed to the teeth and hugely outnumber their owners? Who have spent a couple centuries culturally and historically defining themselves as courageous defenders of freedom? Yeah.
Instead they whine online about immigrants.
Yeah, that’s all I see here on Lemmy. Every American whining about immigrants.
Not on Lemmy no, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that the alt right has infiltrated most online spaces.
The USA is the richest third world country on the planet.
First world = capitalism
Second world = communism
Third world = all the rest
Yes, but a lot of people see it as wealthy somewhat wealthy and poor
It is pretty funny as someone from a (supposed) “third world shithole” hearing these guys hurling these insults at the US while my country is trying the best to improve our lives and get out of the US stranglehold.
Also funny is seeing Europe slowly realize that they are “vassal states” of the US.
Maybe one day they will be really aware that most of their wealth came from exploiting the so called “third world” but, sadly, I think these guys will need to fall from the horses before realizing it.
Europe got its wealth from the Global South. Colonial exploitation bankrolled the industrial revolution and Enlightenment era. A certain threshold of wealth and urbanization is needed for that progress to occur and “poor” countries paid for it with their bodies and blood.
That wealth (75% of global gold reserves) was transferred to the US during WW2 as they were in a geographic position to not face any significant infrastructure loss while raking in money selling arms to their allies.
If you’re asking for introspection from either faction mentioned here, dont hold your breath. Its hard enough to find here, let alone in a direct discussion with ordinary people out in the street. People struggle with the idea of being born in the West amounting to being born on third base (and I say this as someone born there) so we’re a long way from any kind of deeper understanding, humility or gratitude.
What? You think the coal miners from the 19th century were exploiting anyone?
This is at the state, not individual, level. The coal miners certainly thought they were better off than people living in the Global South (and more worthy of individual rights). They also enjoyed infrastructure developments paid for by their state’s exploitation.
So yes, they did have a form of privilege, on a global scale.
I thank Trump for going mask off and just showing the world how fucked up the country is and that the US is not a friend. If Europe and the rest of the world would finally stop ignoring him or treating him as some kind of entertainment but see him for the US representative he really is, the world might make a gigantic leap.
A lot of people are completely wrong
Micronesia and a country operated by a micropenis. Yes I’m just being rude but out of frustration at the situation and the lives it is costing.
Back in British Colonial rule they sent their criminals to Australia. The ones they couldn’t catch escaped to the USA. /s
I think they sent a bunch of criminals here too lol. AND some prostitutes to help populate the the place.
Pretty much all the politicians are prostitutes for sale or hire, so that does make sense. It must be a dominant gene…
Not to apologize for shitty US labor regulations, but in some places these rules aren’t enforced rigorously if at all, so this data shouldn’t be taken at face value. For example I doubt Saudi or Qatari slaves are getting days off.
Does this put your standard US citizen on the same level as Saudi or Qatari slave?
Yes.
That’s insane, have you seen pictures of what Dubai looks like? There is no way American labour could meet anywhere near that standard of quality
Abeed and Kaffir have entered the chat.
I’ve never heard of white Americans having their passports stolen as a job requirement
They have something similar though - health insurance tied to employer.
Americans are ripped off the streets and sent to foreign prisons with no judges involved.
Passports, birth certificates, DL … none of them matters with the ICE facial recognition app.
They skip the “take your passport” part entirely.
I’ve never heard it happen to quataries either
right, because they’re the ones stealing the passports. same as the white ICE agents
Excuse me sir, the correct term is “contractors”!
Yep there’s that wild Saudi DPRK shit and then there’s also the rest of the world. Where it mostly is.
‘Wow, really? Cause you never think of those other three as having their shit together’
