A rather bleak, but realistic thought I recently had and I felt like I should share it here.
When you are born, you have nothing. You don't have any property or skills, you have nothing. “Obviously”, you're going to say, “because you are a baby!!” But there is one thing you have: time. We are all born with a certain amount of time on this planet, and your whole life will be spent exchanging that time for things you want or need. If you want a hamburger, or a car, a vacation, or even a day off: these are things that cost you, and intrinsically you do not have any money except for that money you've obtained by selling your time. Even education is something obtained by investing your time, now you're just investing it in yourself so that your time can be marketed as more valuable than it was before.
As an employee, that seems bleak. But let's flip that around now and look at employers: they need time. Not a single CEO can do all the work themselves. They need dozens or hundreds or even thousands of hours each day to make sure their company can produce the results they are promising their customers. Whether that is building cars, resolving tickets in a helpdesk, brewing coffee for a cafe, or answering the phone at a helpdesk. They do not have the time to do all the work on their own, but where they have a shortage of time they have a surplus of money.
The real issue is that we've let ourselves become replaceable, and the employers of the world did that. They tell you to be envious when someone makes more money than you, and that you are better than the people who make less money. And what a scam that is! Because whether you are a barista or a lawyer, a janitor or a doctor, a garbageman or a teacher; we all sell our time to the employer so that we can get some of their money. But how do we fight back, when we can be fired and replaced? By banding together.
I know, I know, I know; that's a union speech! You don't have to unionize, but then you don't have any legal power as a collective. (Again, a tool from the employers. Labor law generally doesn't exist to protect you as employees, it exists to maintain a power structure.) The only thing we as employees have that we can take away from the employer is our time. We are currently in a renaissance of employee power, and I do believe that the best way to seize that power back is to unionize. But if you do not fight back, all you can do is be used by the employers as so much cattle. They will work you until they no longer appreciate what you offer, and then they will replace you. They will squeeze you like a tube of toothpaste, and once they empty that tube they discard it to buy a new one. It's your duty to yourself to safeguard that one commodity you have, the one they cannot take away: your time. They squeeze you, but you don't have to make that tube of toothpaste cheap for them.
You have to fight for your wages, fight for your benefits, fight for fair treatment and respect. But if you do it alone, they will discard you and replace you.