this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Work Reform
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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.
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- All workers must be paid a living wage for their labor.
- Income inequality is the main cause of lower living standards.
- Workers must join together and fight back for what is rightfully theirs.
- We must not be divided and conquered. Workers gain the most when they focus on unifying issues.
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- Higher wages for underpaid workers.
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- Better and fewer working hours.
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I don't really understand your initial assumption. What if someone has 10 million dollars? Would you say he has 0.01 billion?
I think that your theory has some merit, but I believe it's more apparent when we describe the people who own the money, as opposed to the money itself: A millionaire will stay a (multi)millionaire until they become a billionaire.
I think the idea is that we still think of someone who has >1 million but <1 billion as having some number of millions of dollars, rather than subdividing "millions" into "millions," "tens of millions," and "hundreds of millions." Of course we do subdivide that when we're being particular about how incredibly rich some actor is or something, but generally they all fall on the same order of magnitude in our minds.
Correct
That’s my point. We (those of us that aren’t at least millionaires) don’t really differentiate in society between someone that has a million dollars and someone that has 10 million dollars; they’re both stuck in the “millionaires” tier.
So say you are making $50,000 a year, well it’s easy to see how you or someone like you could (theoretically) get to $100,000; that’s just the next tier up. And then it’s easy to imagine someone going from $100,000 to a million because that’s the next tier up again. But once you get there, people don’t tend to think of ten million as a tier and usually not a hundred million either. The next tier in our zeitgeist after million is billion.
So people tend to think of billion being kind of the same as going from $100,000 to $1,000,000. Hence the common disconnect about just how much more money a billionaire has than the common man.