Workers are the unhappiest they've been in 3 years—and it can cost the global economy $8.8 trillion

return2ozma@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 445 points –
Workers are the unhappiest they've been in 3 years—and it can cost the global economy $8.8 trillion
cnbc.com
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And the immediate concern is about what it can cost the economy. Not the social impacts regarding family, friends, and society as a whole but the economy.

We will sacrifice our entire society to protect our beloved economy!

You hit the nail on the head.

The entire point of an economy is to be a mere tool to better distribute goods and services within a society for the explicit benefit of said society. If an economy is working against a society, it is literally doing the opposite of what its role is.

Whenever theres a crisis under our modern global rigged capitalism, the first thing that happens is the well bribed, middle manager politicians come out to assure the citizenry that any and all cruel measures will be taken against society in order to protect our beloved economy. it's a perversion of priorities. The tail wagging the dog.

Our modern global economy has turned humanity against humanity for the sake of stoking sociopathic greed, both in the few that have dangerous, society warping levels of wealth, and the billions of wannabe temporarily embarrassed millionaires fucking other peasants over for scraps.

The global economy needs to be smashed to bits and rebuilt with entirely different goals and values, or it will make our species destroy ourselves in the name of profit for a few thousand narcissistic asshole families.

We won't though, we'll keep following the owner's orders to our doom, even after they're barking them remotely from their luxury climate change bunker compounds protecting them from the climate apocalypse they caused, until the last peasants struggling to survive stop bothering to answer on the other end.

People are always like "Why is there no revolution!?"

Because most aren't willing to risk their lives and their comfort to make the world better for everyone. "What do I get out of it?" they will ask.

Part of the issue is past revolutions didn't have a ruling class that literally employed the best psychologists that money can buy to spew propaganda that has been scientifically proven to confuse citizens and change minds.

The idea that it will get easier to fight back against your oppressors as they grow their pile of tools and weapons with which to control society is a joke.

The longer is waited, the harder ripping off the fucking band-aid will be.

Wait too long and there won't be a band-aid to rip off as mass extinction comes for us all.

They control us through propaganda to make us as self-interested and sociopathic as them, as you said, using the major media they own and the policy making politicians they also own to make greed "rational self-interest" mandatory from Kindergarten through colleges of economics and beyond. Then they point to the society they've made cruel and selfish, and declare capitalism to be human nature, partly as a normalizing tactic, and partly to feel more peace about their cruel, withered hearts.

Their other major tool is what I like to call "subsistence opiates." Pathetic niceties people cling to that often do more harm than good: social media, fast food, literal opiates, etc. Things that don't make most people's lives better, but allow them to endure the pain capitalism induces, and that they're terrified that revolution would inturrupt the slow dopamine drip of. This is the main reason there will sadly be no revolution.

The good news is that will make collapse an eventual certainty. A house dependant on the impossibility of infinite growth will collapse, even if it takes the form of humanity destroying the habitability of its only world, as we are racing to do.

One can only hope we leave a lesson to be learned to some other future civilization, although that's highly doubtful.

Because most aren't willing to risk their lives and their comfort to make the world better for everyone. "What do I get out of it?" they will ask.

I don't think this is it. I think it doesn't happen because people don't know who will be with them. If I knew there was going to be a general strike were 20 to 30% of the population stopped working, I'd be in. However, I don't want to torpedo my entire life for a movement with no followers.

Part of the issue is past revolutions didn't have a ruling class that literally employed the best psychologists that money can buy

They absolutely did, except they weren’t called psychologists and they were much less effective.

weren’t called psychologists and they were much less effective.

So literally not the same thing, then?

Well if it's not literally not the same thing, then it has zero bearing on the situation!

Absolutism is the death of intelligent discourse.

If I call it a trowel and you call it a spade, they’re not different things.

If mine is made of paper and yours is made of aluminum, they’re still not different things.

Except one of them has a history of the science of psychology behind it, as well as the many certifications and education you need to be a psychologist, and the other was a propagandist with no deep scientific education behind them, no showing why the techniques they were using were effective (because they often weren't). One of them has evidence and science behind them and the other does not. They are not the same things.

Literally different things.

EDIT: Also it is worth noting that modern propaganda began after revolutions against monarchies. The French state post-revolution was a hotbed of propaganda.

So, even by your argument, its clear that modern propaganda methods took root after the age of revolutions and at the beginning of the age of Nations.

Yeah but their feelings say that they're the same thing, so you might as well just pack it up pal. Hold that L.

None of those prove that a psychologist using well documented evidence on human psychology is the same as fucking nitwits naming monsters after people they didn't like. I literally referenced the era of modern propaganda techniques, which coincides with a growth of the understanding of psychology in promoting propaganda. I didn't say "propaganda never existed at all prior to the revolutions."

But keep ignoring specific words I use to try to convince yourself you're right. Seriously, comparing psychologists to people who named monsters after disliked people. Fucking laugh riot.

I’ll be waiting patiently for your semantic objection to something inconsequential in one of my sources so that you don’t have a bruised ego 😄

Right on cue, champ!

Honestly if you can’t see how invoking monsters to inspire fear is just a rudimentary employment of psychological warfare, I’m not sure you have any business speaking to psychology as a whole.

You think you're clever, but you're not. I'm not sure someone whose education seems to be focused on an era where psychology didn't exist as a discipline should be expounding on it, either.

So, the people invoking monster names knew what psychological warfare was because they understood psychology? I call bollocks on that.

But keep telling yourself you're right and just misunderstood. I'm sure that will mean fuck-all when you're dead and nobody remembers you existed, just like me.

If people stopped working for employers and started working to improve the lives of family, friends, and society, the economy would crumble.

Oh no. Would someone please think of the economy..

Imaginary numbers go up boss get rich
Imaginary numbers go down I lose job boss get rich

Slowly but surelly over the last couple of decades the political discourse moved from "best for people" to "best for money".

By now politics isn't about doing what's best for people anymore (it's what's best for "The Economy" or for "Businesses") though we get thrown a few never really fullfilled promises (almost exactly like modern marketing, even using Focus Groups to find out what are the things to say which will have the most positive reaction from the public).

And just like when companies successfully shift to a Marketing-heavy strategy, for Political Parties too the quality of their product - policies - went down as they shifted to marketing as a way to keep their "consumers" - i.e. voters - "buying" their product, and the price - in terms of how much wealth they're extracting from the broader society for their leaders and their paymasters and how little they leave for everybody else - has gone up.

Unsurprisingly, by now more and more of people are getting dissatisfied even if most don't quite get it how they got there.

It kind of makes sense to put it that way. Presumably, workers being unhappy might make some sense if it was a tradeoff between productivity and work-life balance.

But no, it's bad for both social effects and economic effects