Cutting Unemployment Benefits Is About Lowering YOUR Wages
Is cutting unemployment benefits all about "getting those lazy gamers to get back to work?" Or is that a narrative cudgel used by corporate media to lower your wages? Spoiler alert, it's the second.
You've probably heard it sitting before the glow of your TV screen. The unemployed? "Ah, they're a bunch of leeches. Leeching off society. Sitting on their asses playing video games and eating chips at your expense! They're just lazy!"
But have you ever thought about why that such a common thing to hear on corporate media or from politicians?
Because the answer may, or may not, surprise you. Despite appearances, it's not about shaming “lazy people” who can work back to work. No, it's about cutting the wages of working people. Cutting your wages.
How’s that? Let me take you on a journey through this wild world of capitalism to find out.
How Little Are You Willing to Accept?
First we have to ask ourselves an important question: How is your wage determined?
Well, a lot of factors go into it but fundamentally it is a product of what the company you work for is willing and able to pay you and what you are willing to accept.
Now, that last one is very, very important. What are you willing to accept?
And the answer to that can change based on your situation. If you're currently economically secure, able to eat, able to get the healthcare you need and you have a roof over your head for the foreseeable future, you have bargaining power. You're not quite as likely to accept a poverty wage and a job with no benefits. No, you're probably going to hold out for a job that pays at least a decent amount.
But what if you were desperate? What if, if you couldn’t get a job within the next month, you didn't have money for food anymore? What if you or a family member had a medical issue, and you couldn't get proper healthcare without having a job? Well, if homelessness, starvation or death are your alternatives you might just accept that poverty wage. After all, it's better than homelessness or death, isn’t it?
And that is what all of this smearing of the unemployed is all about.
They “Unemployed Are Picking Your Pocket” Narrative
Telling people the truth, that the majority of the unemployed are unemployed because they're holding out for a good job, or because nobody will hire them in their field, or because they have a medical issue that makes getting hired difficult, or no job is willing to offer them the flexible schedule they need to take care of their special needs kid when they can’t afford day care, is not so convenient. Those all sound far too reasonable to people
No, no, no. If you're a rich business owner, what you need is a useful narrative. One that tells people that the unemployed are picking their pocket. That these people “are just morally flawed. They’re lazy! They're stealing from you!”
Because as soon as you assign the blame to the average joe, unemployed person rather than the system at large or corporations being unwilling to offer decent wages and good benefits and as soon as you convince working people that the unemployed are unemployed on their money, leeching from them, stealing from them... as soon as you can do that, you have justification for what you actually want to do.
You get public consent for cutting unemployment benefits. Or for putting work requirements on getting basic medical care. Or any number of similar things. Things that make being unemployed for any length of time much, much harder. So that unemployed people, all unemployed people, are as desperate as possible.
As we concluded earlier, the more desperate you are, the more willing you are to accept a low paying job.
And the thing about a market system is that it's all about competition. And that's not just businesses competing with each other. Oh no, that's also you as a worker competing against other workers. Including deseparate workers who will work for less pay and fewer benefits.
The Beauty of Competition (for the Rich)
More desperate workers, means more competition which is willing to undercut the pay you want. Which, eventually, forces you to lower your demands too or stay unemployed.
What if you already have a job? Well, maybe your boss decides you don't get a pay raise this year. You're not ok with that and you want to quit? Hahaha, good luck! Because unless you've got another job lined up already or enough money in the bank, all this will do is make you another desperate person competing with other desperate people to work for the lowest possible wages.
And that, my friends, that is the point of this narrative cudgel.
When you hear about how the unemployed are lazy, just playing video games and leeching from society from some guy in a fancy suit on the news, maybe ask yourself what he has to gain from saying that. And then remember that the unemployed being desperate means they accept lower wages, which drags down all wages including yours. Thus allowing that man in the nice, fancy suit to get a 100 million dollar bonus that year.
And, hey, isn’t you being homeless a small price to pay for him getting that private jet?