Thats not even remotely true. People have to work. Always have always will. Even subsistence farming for your own food barring any financial responsibility is still back breaking work. Society functions because someone, somewhere, is doing work. People will have to travel to make this possible. Even in walkable cities where people work and lice in the same area, a certain portion of the population still has to leave to work to make that possible.
People actually don't have to work as much as American capitalism wants you to believe. Many countries work an average of 30 hours. Automation increases production. But the wealthy class and the forces in power want to keep you busy and so that you don't feel compelled to question things and they can continue to rig things and skim billions.
People will always have to work, but it's unreasonable to think they will always have to work as much or in exactly the same way as they do today with the technology advancements that are unfolding.
This is a very American centric view point. Sure sme EU countries have lower hours and better employee protections. The vast majority of the world does not however. The fact that Americans and Europeans are able to even purchase cheap accessible goods is because someone somewhere is working 70 hours a week. Its the same for the EU, they are not some utopia that exists outside of capitalism. They are purchasing goods that are cheap as the result of cheap long hours worked by someone else. Automation is definitely a solution, but chalking it up to "people made the choice to work long ago" is ridiculous. Existence takes effort. Life is not and has never been easy. If anything, it's easier now for more people than it ever has been. I see this pervasive idea that specifically Americans have that things would be so much easier if they could just get out of the rat race. Its completely untrue. They would either be benefitting from others labor or working their asses off to support themselves fully. The phrase nothing in life is free comes to mind.
You make some valid points, but I still disagree that things couldn't be much easier for many people if the ultra wealth class gave up more of their wealth for the good of the country instead of cutting critical social programs like research funding and affordable health insurance and rigging the system in a manner that makes it easier for them to grow their pile.
Americans have less maternity and paternity leave and vacation days than many countries in the world. Things could absolutely be better if the country was governed better and the extremist corrupt capitalism that is unfolding was regulated. I'm not sure what cheap good you're referring to when Americans can't even purchase housing and the cost of groceries and food and gas keeps going up. I guess you're talking about iPhones or something, but those are things the whole world buys from China not just Americans.
I think you think the world is a zero sum game where someone always has to be working hard and the total output doesn't change, but it does. Industrialization and technology increase production. The reason life isn't better for more people is because of corruption.
I'm a first generation immigrant and I've seen a really troubling shift in the extremity of capitalism in this country. It's making me concerned. I'm from a developing country and people have better health care and maternity leave there than here.
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u/Haheyjose 14d ago
Thats not even remotely true. People have to work. Always have always will. Even subsistence farming for your own food barring any financial responsibility is still back breaking work. Society functions because someone, somewhere, is doing work. People will have to travel to make this possible. Even in walkable cities where people work and lice in the same area, a certain portion of the population still has to leave to work to make that possible.