@zombiecide @ned yeah, i've seen the idea that billionaires just have incredible work ethics, thrown around, and that certainly helps the two glue together, anyone who is not a billionaire is a slacker who will stop working as soon as their basic needs are fulfilled.

And by being so special, and so good for humanity, they deserve everything.

Of course, to believe that, you have to ignore a lot of facts, so i'm not sure how to go over that motivated reasoning.

@mistergibson

Don't think that would apply to me in Canada, but I know ya'lls got it much worse right now under Trump. We just had a Federal election and staved off our own mini-Trump who was trying to bring the same policies into Canada. Had the election gone the other way, it would have been time to organize across the nation here, too.

@mistergibson @ned

do not use this website. there is a good chance it's run by cops. this is not how a general strike is organised.

@raganwald @ned I can tell you that I don’t take transit. It’s because we don’t have transit where I live. There is zero public transportation here. In the two cities nearest me there are city buses that circle the city, and then there are commuter buses that go between the two cities a couple times a day. But each of these cities is 10 miles away from me, and the last time I got on that commuter bus it was like $23 to go from one city to the next.

And even if we did suddenly get public transportation, people refuse to stop spreading airborne viruses, and as someone whose life was destroyed by a virus, I am unwilling to become infected by any of these gross people.

If I don’t have a car I will die. I cannot get to a doctors office, I cannot get medication, the only place I can get food from is Walmart. Can you imagine that life? It wouldn’t last very long. I only weigh 44 kg how long do you think I could go without food?

@Oldfartrant @ned yep, I’ve been on SSDI for almost 10 years now, after I got Medicare I got well enough to work part time. At that time I could earn $910 a month before Social Security would even count it for anything, so I did.

In 2021 I think that amount was up to $1050 a month, I had been at my part-time job since 2019 and I really enjoyed it. I was literally getting paid to read books because I sat in an office at an apartment complex where I just had to make sure there were no shenanigans in the gym or the pool area, I answered the phone if it rang, and I would show apartments if they were empty.

Beginning in 2020 they were never empty so I really just read books all day and they were fine with that, it was great.

Then in the summer of 2021 my boss decided he wasn’t going to ask tenants to wear masks if they came through the lobby because the CDC said they didn’t have to. So I quit my job. And I won’t work again. If I get sicker I won’t be able to clean my body or my apartment and I certainly don’t have enough income to pay for help.

@chaosbastler Yeah I guess they think there are different kinds of people:

1) poor people who are poor because they're lazy and lounge about on welfare, so we need to motivate them to work by making them even poorer so they have no other choice

2) normal folk who *want* to lounge about but know their duty

3) rich people who are rich because they're geniuses working non-stop to create jobs for normal folk, restricted in this noble goal only by excessive tax and regulations

@ned @timpritlove