The thing that really pisses me off about political speeches is the ridiculous requirement that the main goal of any policy is “the creation of jobs”. It's in every single speech where the economy is involved and permeates even the well-meaning progressives' stances.
The thing that pisses me off about it is that they're downright obsessed about whether or not people have a job. As if having employment is a basic requirement like breathing and eating. I'm not sure how to properly voice this problem because a word for “gaslighting people into thinking they need labor like they need air” does not exist in the English language (if there is I haven't heard of it).
People don't need labor. We've never needed labor. Labor has always been the thing we use to get the things we need.
You need to eat and drink, you use labor to get the food and water. Labor itself does not sustain you.You need shelter, you use labor to make that shelter. Labor does not magically shelter you.You need to be safe, you use labor to make things safe. Labor is not in itself safety.You need to achieve your dreams, you use labor to achieve them. Labor is not the dream.
But for some reason, the “need” for labor takes precedent over all of that. The “need” for jobs is placed on a pedestal over literally just feeding the hungry. And the “need” to satisfy an employer's demands for labor are placed over giving the employees fair compensation.
All while telling the employee that they should be grateful they have a job at all.
It's quite frankly disturbing, and it's been a disturbing note for me for quite some time. Cause this deliberate misdirection of what people actually need in life is and has been the way employers can get away with paying people pennies on the dollar for labor, half of which gets erroneously tagged as “unskilled” labor to allow for even worse wages.
And the most jarring part, even after all this time of knowing this is wrong, is that so many people think it's perfectly normal even as the belief makes their lives worse and gives employers so much undue power over them. I literally cannot find a place to have a conversation about people's needs without some well-meaning someone chiming in “people need jobs”, instantly derailing the conversation in favor of that instead of giving people food or the money to buy food.
If people could snap out of this utter delusion, and it is a delusion, they'd realize that the only reason they “need a job” is because that's the most reliable way to earn money, which in turn is the most reliable way to get the things they actually need.
And with that realization, they might realize that working down to the bone for barely enough to live is a very bad deal, and that they should demand a better deal in exchange for using their time to give someone else their labor.