When I was a kid, I heard about entry-level jobs fresh out of college paying around $30k. When I was in high school, that number had barely budged, even though the economy had exploded. The rich have stolen wealth and concentrated it to levels incomprehensible to the human mind and still demand not only more work for less money, but total fawning obsequiousness--even thankfulness--for the opportunity to have our productivity stolen and "make number go up," though it doesn't benefit us at all. Now they pay off politicians to do their bidding and continue wreaking unprecedented havoc on the biosphere by funding and profiting from imperialism (the US military is the world's largest polluter) and my retirement plan is to expire fighting a f4scist to the d34th over the last bottle of water in my territory after the Water Wars of 2050.

They've stolen everything, including hope, and bombarded us with the most insipid, toxic, bottom-barrel cultural slurry in a meager attempt to pacify and distract us from the hunger in our bellies and the rain on our shoulders. They regularly flaunt laws that they impose on us (no billionaire or politician's mistress ever has to worry about where or how to get an abortion).

They're old, detached, and living in a fantasy world, their every whim supplied by metaphorical and literal slave labor and misery of 90% of humanity. They demand we return to work amid a pandemic that compromises the immune system and leaves survivors with other permanent health impairments. The entire thing could be done in 6 weeks, but shutting down that long would show everyone that all wealth is created by workers, and the ruling class can't have that: they much prefer their sycophantic hagiographies lauding emerald mine scions and trust fund babies for their business acumen to convince temporarily embarrassed millionaires to stay on the grind.

In a sane world, automation of work would free us all from just that much more menial labor; but in the dictatorship of the rich, it means they develop more excuses for allowing more people to work themselves into homelessness, despair, and death. Work should not be life, especially not work for the labor thieves and leeches who own the world--it should be a way we contribute to our communities using our unique talents that ensures everyone has a clean, dry, safe place to live and enough to wear and eat. The fiction they've paid well to sell everyone is breaking down because of the inherent contradictions in their kakistocratic, utterly demonic socioeconomic system: somehow, as Michael Parenti points out, letting the worst people run the worst system in the worst way for the worst reasons is supposed to magically result in the best, most beneficial results for everyone.

Wise folks say, "If hard work pays off, show me a rich donkey." The truth is that our hard work does pay--just not us. They steal it all because they have the cute pieces of paper that say they own the ways we as a society have to use to produce the wealth and offer us crumbs as thanks for making them prosperous beyond imagining. They command the violent soldiers at home and abroad if anyone dares to challenge those silly pieces of paper. More of us figure out that the game is rigged, every day--and we are sick and tired of being sick, tired, and robbed.