Sounds like you want a serious discussion, and that's not the norm here.
As for staying on-topic, I'd argue that wage slavery is one of several symptoms of a deeper problem: Inequality of wealth and therefore power. It's that inequality that robs us of choices, and ultimately freedom itself.
ObamaCare is part of that discussion, because it ends the system whereby employers controlled everybody's access to health care. In good times health insurance was a carrot, but in bad times fear of losing health coverage was always one hell of a stick with which to beat employees. We're all demonstrably freer if employers don't have the literal power of life and death over us. And as somebody who's been self-employed since the late 1980s, I can tell you for a fact that private health insurance was not affordable except by the richest of the self-employed. Self employment isn't the answer the ideologues would have you believe.
I'd also want to examine the value system that blithely accepts that paying the lowest possible wages is a good thing for anybody except the employer. We talked about that question in the WalMart in DC discussion, which is one instance of the discussion over a "living wage", which is ultimately a discussion about corporate welfare (which helps explain why conservatives are so afraid of letting the subject be debated calmly and rationally).
Those are just some of the major issues that you touch upon when you bring up wage slavery. I don't think it's possible to discuss it in isolation without instantly branching out into the big issues.
Should I move this thread to Current Events?
Current Events » in reply to Okay, I would like to start a thread and I would really like it to stay on topic, if at all possible.
You might have better luck on Current Events
The whole thread (51 posts)
- Okay, I would like to start a thread and I would really like it to stay on topic, if at all possible.
- "Middle-out" Economics.
- Simple, Right to Work Laws
- You might have better luck on Current Events
- Unions, collective bargaining, and the right to strike.
- Yeah, I think we all owe a debt to unions.
- I don't think that is realistic anymore, ER.