• MonkeMischief
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    22 hours ago

    Hehe, that’s how pathetic things are here.

    Retirement accounts? Since we’re talking minimum wage workers here, most of them have probably never even heard of those. I know I don’t have one, because I’ve only held part time employment while self-studying a bunch of other skills. I have just a savings that gets cleaned out whenever the car makes an expensive noise I can’t fix myself.

    We pay into “Social Security” that you’re supposed to be able to pull from when you retire, but that’s been an iffy thing for years now and it’s definitely not something that can be lived off of anymore.

    Over here by default if we hurt ourselves at work we get workers comp and outside of work we have salary continuance insurance

    Yeah I didn’t even mean at work, just y’know, life happening can absolutely tank your finances with medical bills. Insurance is an absolute scam here, where the affordable ones can have a “deductible” in the thousands you need to pay before the company even pays out a dime.

    At work? Yeah, “workers comp” is a thing, but to your job that’s like declaring war on your employer, the way I understand it. Often you’ll need a lawyer and they’ll send private investigators to stalk you trying to catch you being “not disabled” so they can kick you to the gutter.

    (Allegedly lots of people to try to scam the system, like anything else, but dystopian employer paranoia is comically ridiculous.)

    This “salary continuance insurance” sounds interesting but I don’t think we have anything like that here. You either use up your paid sick / vacation leave, or if it’s dire you can use “FMLA” (Family Medical Leave Act) to take time away from work, except that doesn’t support your pay, it only protects your job so they don’t outright fire you for having a serious situation come up.

    If you’re curious about the situation here, there’s a book called “On the Clock, what low wage labor did to me and how it drives america insane” or something like that. Super eye opening.

    Screw amazon but this is the first link I found because I’m literally rushing out of the house lol.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42779084-on-the-clock

    Hope this illuminates things a little. Pray for us plz. :)