So I've been stalking this sub for a while, commenting, you know, the reddit thing. Today I was talking with a friend who is a fellow musician and choir director about how doing our job is almost impossible right now because of the way things are going, people can't come to rehearsals bc they have to work, don't have gas money, whatever.
And then I realized that if all of us who hate the current status quo (which is mostly gen x, millennials, and gen z) were to just stop. Walk out. Strike. Whatever. That the entire economy would grind to a halt. Honestly even if just the US did it, shit would just cease to function.
And in my head I'm wondering, why haven't we? Like, yes, in theory there's the whole if the bills don't get paid you can't live bit, but if every one of us who was tired of this did it, how are they going to be able to process all of the evictions, cut offs, and more. Companies would collapse. Systems would collapse.
Baby boomers and the silent generation combined only account for 27% of the labor force in the US from the data I could find.
73% of the labor force is gen x, millenial, or gen z. The silent generation and baby boomers, by contrast hold over 70 % of the wealth in the US. I get the feeling this tracks worldwide. And then if you remove from that folks who simply inherited their wealth from genx and later and included that in the baby boomers and earlier who ACTUALLY own the wealth, I bet the discrepancy is fucking insane.
So why haven't we just turned the world on its head? I remember occupy Wallstreet. Like, why haven't we combined that idea with more forceful, focused action? If we're antiwork and recognize that the system is garbage, why don't we organize and show exactly what happens when somewhere around 70% of your labor force can't afford to live and pay bills and have a life outside work?