I mostly have a great job. I'm lower-middle-class, money is tight with 5 kids but doable. I have a very in-demand skillset that pays well. Why would I come to r/antiwork for any reasons other than ideology?
To be clear, I *do* come here for ideology, because capitalism is bad etc. But the place r/antiwork really hits me in the gut has to do with my kids…
When I was a kid, my parents still had a shot. Due to circumstances, my mom had to raise my sister and I as a single mother, and with SS widower pension and a full-time job she afforded a house and a good living for us and is near retiring.
I make a lot more money than she ever did, but it's a lot tighter now. I'm nearing 40 at this point, and I really don't think I'll get to retire.
I see peoples' stories about how it is to be in your 20's now. And I have a pretty urgent and pressing concern: what kind of situation will I be launching my kids into in 10-20 years? If things keep going the way they are now, I'm worried they'll have absolutely no hope for a future, even if they have an in-demand skill set and very low debt like me. Let alone what they have to look forward to for “lives” involving 24/7 labor at 3+ jobs, etc.
I don't think people talk about this angle much. I think that they should. The financial world now is terrible, but it's on a downward slope. The financial world we're going to give our kids is going to be even worse if we don't do something to stop it. And a lot of younger people aren't even having kids because they can't afford to. That is so completely ridiculous and awful.
I'm thinking that people in comfortable-ish positions like me (though I do have a lot of uncertainty and am basically paycheck-to-paycheck), should be talked to about the world their children are going to inherit if we don't, at the VERY least, organize like we're Finnish. Not just unions though, or a subreddit, but an actual world-wide organization for workplace reform in every country. Yes I know capitalism is ultimately one of the biggest problems, but we need people working to reform capitalism as well as people looking to change it for something else, because in the meantime we need to live.