You try making $15,000 a year and having money to put away as an investment. They simply don’t have enough.

People are not commodities of our economic system. Our economic system — money, in general — was created by us and exists to serve the population as a tool. Money is a tool. Nothing more. Our economic system is a tool — one that is supposed to ensure that people have a way to provide for themselves. If Capitalism cannot be regulated so that the top 20% of the population owns a reasonable portion of the national wealth — not the current 85% — then we should use another economic system.

“People are people, but when they work for an employer, they are objectified into something that is not an actual person.” — Listen to yourself, Jay. Are you as grossed out as I am? Again, our economic system is created by us — by people. Why the fuck would people want an economic system that devalues people into something other than people?

“When I buy food at a restaurant, I don’t think about the employees who are cooking, cleaning, serving, etc. They aren’t people in my interaction with them. They are simply ‘thing that cooks food’ or ‘thing that brings food to me’.” — Slow clap. We’re all things here to serve you. Again. Listen to yourself. I absolutely think about the employees cooking, cleaning, serving. I was one of them. And if I wasn’t — it doesn’t matter, because of a thing we “things” call empathy. Ever heard of it?

Americans turning their blinders on and ignoring the processes by which their food, clothing, and materials are made or by which their water, waste, or air is purified is a major problem with our society. Because of this phenomenon — the dehumanization of humans — we don’t know where our food comes from, what’s in it, or who touched it along the way. We don’t give a fuck about the farmers who are abused in the system, the employees who are mistreated, or the people who are exploited because a hot, juicy “thing” just landed on your plate, brought to you by another “thing” and cooked by another “thing,” transported by another “thing,” grown and nurtured by another “thing.” It’s why people don’t think of meat as animals. It’s why we don’t care that our clothes are made in sweatshops overseas.

“Turnover costs are a very important metric to a business that employs a lot of people. But you’re kidding yourself if you think that turnover costs are the same across every position, company, and sector. It’s lower (in both relative and absolute terms) for low-skill positions and higher for high-skill position.”

What I quoted — 16%-20%— is the turnover cost for low-skill and low-wage positions. For high-skill and high-wage positions, the cost is 6–9 months of pay. 50%-75%.

Re: the Wagner Act. You’re kidding yourself if you think there haven’t been attacks on collective bargaining since 1959. States pass laws to restrict the minimum wage, they lift restrictions on child labor and impose new limits on unemployment benefits. Overtime rights, forced arbitration, making it more difficult to recover from wage theft — all worker’s rights under siege.

It’s great that you got to see the American Dream come true when you did — if you think upward mobility and our political and economic climates are the same as when you came up through them, regardless of whether that was 20 years ago or 60, they are not.

As for the business case, only 30% of American workers are engaged in their work and their disengagement costs this country more than $450 billion annually. I wonder if that’s because they don’t even have a base level of dignity with the rest of the working population — they’re just the “thing that exists to bring you the thing.”