Bootstrapping working conditions in the USA reddit post.

[scratchpad]

If you start paying your pepper pickers, landscapers, and house cleaners $80k a year with a good health package, Americans would literally kill other Americans to do those jobs.

Dont think so. In trades making well over that its hard to find good hands. Yeah, theyre trying to break the door down to get in but once theyre in they are too lazy, cant cut it, or decide its not for them. Most americans are taught school is the answer and dont want to work with their hands. Its too easy to sit on a corner with a sign or be a victim of the white man.

Prime example. Hiring signs and billboards everywhere i go right now. People sitting home collecting a check im guessing.

 

[mikev]

dude probably also talks shit about fast food workers not deserving $15/hour

 

[CABilly]

living wage (US wage), beneies, all of it is unsustainable, i wish is was possible, but it is a fairytale. the US population does not support this. most people in the US (and in this forum) go every week to walmart/harbor freight, etc to buy cheap ass chinese and indian goods made cheap by almost nonexistent worker rights and protections in those countries. not many people want to/can pay for quality.

They wouldn’t be fairy tales if labor was valued and fairly compensated. Instead shareholders, board members, and C-suite suits keep all of the profits extracted from labor with the help of generous tax laws for the wealthy. The people providing the labor are left salivating over scraps like PTO, dental, and maternity leave. Our labor is so undervalued that they would rather people live on government assistance and pay next to nothing overseas to even further exploit people for profit.

As a wage earner, I would like to know why working for my pay in real time is taxed more heavily than if I simply owned stocks.

 

[Jammer]

"Sorry, but we keep our secrets to wealth hidden away from the poors." The Wealthy

 

[Killroy1999]

I always hated the Reddit voting system. Its a ranking system based on mob mentality. Facts and truth are ignored. Another clickbait reward system that make tuns up the knob on internet toxicity.

 

[Climber]

Speaking of bootstrapping getting hamstrung, Fresno State had a really good coach and quarterback and just had their best season in years. Unfortunately, his success got attention and he got poached by University of Washington who also scooped of their star quarterback.

 

[ScarySpikes]

"Sorry, but we keep our secrets to wealth hidden away from the poors." The Wealthy

It's not really hidden.

The wealthy have lobbied to get the laws that they want. Taxes on the wealthy are low and there are ample loopholes to allow wealthy people to avoid them. Labor laws favor the wealthy owners, stockholders, etc. over workers. And what little social safety net we have in this country is being deliberately turned into a way to subsidize businesses who don't pay enough, including adding work requirements to the programs when, by all rights, no one working should be so poorly compensated that they are even eligible for them.

There's no deep secret behind what the wealthy are doing. They are certainly not the best and brightest among us. They are taking advantage of benefits that by design are denied to everyone else.

 

[Karbon]

:: protestant work ethic enters the chat::

Work hard, die poor, be grateful, and then go to heaven y'all!

::Leaves chat::

 

[msethhunter]

Completely ignoring the post following the one you quoted saying his family circumstances were lucky, regardless of 'bootstrapping'.

I actually liked Jammer's story of how him and his family made it to where they are but also admitted there was some luck involved there to get to that point...

... As opposed to you and others that just maintain this weird perspective of, "Welp... just work harder and bootstrapz" and "I did it so you can too" mentality with zero regard for any other factors.

"Hard work pays off" is a statement in a vacuum and I don't think anybody here is claiming we should just be able to achieve what we want without putting in the effort.

But that tone deaf notion of just "bootstrappin" is exactly what this thread is all about.

If you want to throw around insults, I can play that game too.

The only one here who's tone deaf is you. He saw the opportunity, seized it and worked hard. That's what the fuck "bootstrapping" is. Pay attention... it's not that hard.

If you want something, find the opportunity, and work at it. No one is going to hand it to you. I watched plenty of dipshits I graduated high school with get handed opportunity like I quoted and squander the opportunity by not putting in the effort. There's also plenty of "single mother from the hood becomes nurse while raising two kids by herself going to school at night then got both boys enrolled in college" for anyone to convince me of "BUT MUH CIRCUMSTANCES!"

Make smart choices.
Work hard and hopefully one day it pays off. If it doesn't, at least no one can call you a slack asshole. Life's more about than what you have. It's a whole lot of who you are too.

Fuck, I throw some sunshine at someone, and all you can do is shit on it. The less you play the victim card, the less you become a victim.

 

[Karbon]

IDK what is so hard to understand. People get paid less now relative to the amount of labor they produce.

You shouldn't have to spend 1/2 - to 1/3 of your life of 78.78 years toiling only to have hope as a consolation.

"The way things are" and "it's always been this way" (it hasn't btw) isn't a reasonable excuse to make it worse, deny access, or kick the ladder from under future generations. Getting high off perseverance porn is a terrible way to cope.

 

[ScarySpikes]

If you want to throw around insults, I can play that game too.

The only one here who's tone deaf is you. He saw the opportunity, seized it and worked hard. That's what the fuck "bootstrapping" is. Pay attention... it's not that hard.

If you want something, find the opportunity, and work at it. No one is going to hand it to you. I watched plenty of dipshits I graduated high school with get handed opportunity like I quoted and squander the opportunity by not putting in the effort. There's also plenty of "single mother from the hood becomes nurse while raising two kids by herself going to school at night then got both boys enrolled in college" for anyone to convince me of "BUT MUH CIRCUMSTANCES!"

Make smart choices.
Work hard and hopefully one day it pays off. If it doesn't, at least no one can call you a slack asshole. Life's more about than what you have. It's a whole lot of who you are too.

Fuck, I throw some sunshine at someone, and all you can do is shit on it. The less you play the victim card, the less you become a victim.

Just going to put it out there, Jammer's stories are a *really* poor example to use if you want to argue that the 'bootstrapping' mentality makes sense.

His dad was able to live a middle class lifestyle, yes in part because of hard work, but also because of being part of a heavily unionized industry, I presume part of the union, but he would have benefitted from the unions negotiation regardless. Also, the 'after WW2' makes me suspect that his dad also might have gotten some benefits from the GI bill.

Jammer, form the sounds of it, has maintained a middle class lifestyle, not bootstrapped himself into ultra luxury or anything like that. I'm not sure if he specifically has been part of a union, but again, the industries he mentioned are at least somewhat unionized.

His son, we know, is part of the carpenters union. There seems to be at least somewhat general consensus that he is getting a lot of benefit from that membership. Depending on where he is, that 140k a year could mean middle class, or maybe upper middle class. He also didn't rise into ultra luxury.

Fucking horrible examples for the people that argue 'bootstrapping' works. Not only have all of them benefitted from unions, and the folks arguing that 'bootstrapping' makes sense are usually not to union friendly', they are also not rags to riches stories, they are 'a comfortable but not amazing level of wealth, to a comfortable but not amazing level of wealth. stories. Not to take anything away from Jammer, I'm glad he's done alright and it seems like he worked hard to get there, but it's pretty revealing that the example we are supposed to regard as proof that bootstrapping works is a family that over the years has probably gotten a lot of help both from unions and from the government. and has just maintained middle class instead of falling into poverty.

In fact, on the other side of that, his story, about the people picking peppers, strongly hints at the opposite. The people picking pepper pales in the pepper fields worked harder than 'Bootstrapper' Jammer was willing to, and they only got a few hundred bucks a week across their entire family. They work their asses off and make the best decisions they can for their situation, and in return they get a life in poverty.

 

[mikev]

Work hard and hopefully one day it pays off. If it doesn't, at least no one can call you a slack asshole. Life's more about than what you have. It's a whole lot of who you are too.

You really don't see how this sentence is complete BS?

 

[msethhunter]

Just going to put it out there, Jammer's stories are a *really* poor example to use if you want to argue that the 'bootstrapping' mentality makes sense.

His dad was able to live a middle class lifestyle, yes in part because of hard work, but also because of being part of a heavily unionized industry, I presume part of the union, but he would have benefitted from the unions negotiation regardless. Also, the 'after WW2' makes me suspect that his dad also might have gotten some benefits from the GI bill.

Jammer, form the sounds of it, has maintained a middle class lifestyle, not bootstrapped himself into ultra luxury or anything like that. I'm not sure if he specifically has been part of a union, but again, the industries he mentioned are at least somewhat unionized.

His son, we know, is part of the carpenters union. There seems to be at least somewhat general consensus that he is getting a lot of benefit from that membership. Depending on where he is, that 140k a year could mean middle class, or maybe upper middle class. He also didn't rise into ultra luxury.

Fucking horrible examples for the people that argue 'bootstrapping' works. Not only have all of them benefitted from unions, and the folks arguing that 'bootstrapping' makes sense are usually not to union friendly', they are also not rags to riches stories, they are 'a comfortable but not amazing level of wealth, to a comfortable but not amazing level of wealth. stories. Not to take anything away from Jammer, I'm glad he's done alright and it seems like he worked hard to get there, but it's pretty revealing that the example we are supposed to regard as proof that bootstrapping works is a family that over the years has probably gotten a lot of help both from unions and from the government. and has just maintained middle class instead of falling into poverty.

In fact, on the other side of that, his story, about the people picking peppers, strongly hints at the opposite. The people picking pepper pales in the pepper fields worked harder than 'Bootstrapper' Jammer was willing to, and they only got a few hundred bucks a week across their entire family. They work their asses off and make the best decisions they can for their situation, and in return they get a life in poverty.

Yet again, you miss the point completely.

It's about not squandering the help you get, and getting your ass to work to take advantage of it.

The help is there. There's far to many examples of people using it to their advantage for me to believe otherwise.

My best friend Rachel reminds me of this every time we part ways. "Make good choices." Seems like such a simple concept. Will life's circumstances make moving up a little harder? Yeah, probably. I don't think anyone has denied that. Will being a shit stain on society, and only relying on society to bring yourself up never get you anywhere? Abso-fucken-loutly.

You guys seem to think that when someone makes a bootstrap reference, it means something different than it does.

It means nothing more than "if you want it, it ain't gonna be handed to you. You're going to have to work for it."

 

[Abacinator]

You really don't see how this sentence is complete BS?

Seriously. One shouldn't have to HOPE that working hard will pay off.

 

[msethhunter]

Seriously. One shouldn't have to HOPE that working hard will pay off.

One shouldn't also think that they're going to get somewhere good by not.

I've made huge sacrifices to get where I am today. It's taken almost 20 years. There were times when I thought I'd made the wrong choice. I still may not have. But I still get up everyday, put on my boots, and press on.

 

[mikev]

Why?

Why is there a requirement that one must work hard to get somewhere good?

Do you think those that are born into wealth work hard?

 

[ScarySpikes]

Yet again, you miss the point completely.

It's about not squandering the help you get, and getting your ass to work to take advantage of it.

The help is there. There's far to many examples of people using it to their advantage for me to believe otherwise.

My best friend Rachel reminds me of this every time we part ways. "Make good choices." Seems like such a simple concept. Will life's circumstances make moving up a little harder? Yeah, probably. I don't think anyone has denied that. Will being a shit stain on society, and only relying on society to bring yourself up never get you anywhere? Abso-fucken-loutly.

You guys seem to think that when someone makes a bootstrap reference, it means something different than it does.

It means nothing more than "if you want it, it ain't gonna be handed to you. You're going to have to work for it."

Straight talk. I never have and never will work as hard for one day as the average person picking peppers in a field does every day. Fair bet that neither have you, neither has Jammer, most likely neither has anyone on this forum. Also a fair bet, most of us work harder than people like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the like do. Yet, I'd also be willing to bet that we are all WAY better off than those people picking peppers ever will be, and I'd be willing to bet none of us will come close to doing as well as the Musk/Bezos types.

This 'bootstraps' thing is just diluted, obviously untrue bullshit that people, especially people who feel like they have made it in life, tell themselves to justify not just not trying to expand economic mobility and give more people a meaningful opportunity to 'make it', but also dismantle many of the things designed to give people economic mobility, in favor of creating a system designed to serve the wealthy and guarantee their success no matter how lazy, entitled, stupid, and criminal they act.

On an individual level, absolutely we should tell people to work hard and try to do good, but we shouldn't be putting our heads in the sand and ignoring how fucked our system has become, we should recognize it, call it out for what it is, and work to fix it.

 

[msethhunter]

Why?

Why is there a requirement that one must work hard to get somewhere good?

Do you think those that are born into wealth work hard?

You think someone, somewhere didn't?

I work hard for my kids future.

 

[Karbon]

One shouldn't also think that they're going to get somewhere good by not.

I've made huge sacrifices to get where I am today. It's taken almost 20 years. There were times when I thought I'd made the wrong choice. I still may not have. But I still get up everyday, put on my boots, and press on.

"Bootstraps" isn't just a word, it's a narrative used to hand wave away real economic, social/cultural barriers and problems people encounter. The term was used unironically to lay blame on poor people, and that LAZINESS was the only reason people are poor.

It's not a new narrative either. It's a repackaging/rebranding of ideas from Calvinism.

IDK man, I just don't want people to have grind their backbones into dust and turn their brains into raisins to live a happy and comfortable life.

 

[James]

It took me a bit to realize some of you are serious. While its true you may not be able to lift your self off the ground via bootraps, you sure can lift a leg. Nobody was promised an easy life, you are entitled to the pursuit. Anyone that believes external factors are more powerful than your involvement have been misled or your view is very small.
Being born in the US, you were deposited in the borders of the most impactful society the world has ever known (to this point).
The working majority of any example of success has similarities that nobody can take away. Punctuality, work ethic, persistence, focus.
Yeah, you can cherry pick anomalies, but that is a simple minded game.
I fear the next generations becoming more likely to view themselves as victims instead of actors and contributors.

* normally, i delete my posts. But, its getting to a point where balance isn't being displayed.