C’mon man… My list includes 5 jobs that literally save lives… Your figurative life saving can get right outta town

If inflation causes your costs to go up, can you, and all the other plumbers in your area just go ahead and raise your prices to make up for it? Yes… People who are paid by tax money can’t just raise their rates. Even if they go private, Medicaid (in US) tells them what they can charge.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to disparage plumbers. I was using them as an example of an equally important part of society, but that gets to adjust their prices as needed instead of having to wait for a literal act of Congress to adjust prices and pay for inflation.

YOU charge… I don’t get to charge for my services… I just have to take whatever society offers… In fact, with a lot of those jobs I listed, they are legally not allowed to stop working (strike) to get better wages BECAUSE it would fuck society so bad. I’m also in the US, so my apologies if it’s not the same where you are

Sure hope you never need to find out

“Society” doesn’t pay plumbers… Like, you don’t get your plumbing fixed and bill Medicaid you know? Individuals pay for their own plumbing, and plumbers get to set their own prices… The jobs I listed are most often paid by society as a whole, and society as a whole are screwing these professions over… Don’t get me wrong, most workers are getting screwed, it’s just different.

You’re right that all workers are undervalued in our capitalist society

I made a few bad moves in my 20s because I had no basis of understanding when it came to money (parents are bad with money too and never taught me anything useful), have spent my 30s desperately treading water trying to get ahead, but it seems impossible with rent going through the roof, food going crazy, plus now I have medical debt on top of my school debt… my really big mistake was wanting to help people by becoming a social worker.

What pisses me off the most is that if you’re a plumber you get to walk in and demand whatever price you feel like, but if you’re someone who helps society, society gets to cram it up your ass and tell you to smile about it. Same goes for anyone who works for society: teachers, cops, firefighters, EMTs, social workers, librarians, nurses, etc… I don’t get why we don’t all just join together and let society fucking die until they agree to pay us what we’re really worth.

Edit: to clarify, I’m not saying plumbers aren’t helping society. I’m saying when inflation goes up, plumber’s prices go up to match… If you’re being paid by tax money, you don’t get to do that. Nothing against plumbers, it was just an example.

Everyone is getting fucked in our capitalist nightmare, but if you work for Walmart, WALMART investors are fucking you over… If you work for any of those jobs I listed above, SOCIETY is fucking you over (yes, I get that at the end of the day it’s still those Walmart investors fucking us over because the same 1% own everything and stop society from paying us what we’re worth by refusing to pay their fair share of taxes)