• sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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    10 months ago

    Over a decade ago, Obama proposed significantly expanding AmeriCorps, the tea party Republicans basically did everything they could to water down the expansion to amount to basically nothing.

    I wonder if Twitter Republicans even know AmeriCorps exists…

    Anyway, what we should actually do is mandate that everyone who earns double area median income for 3 years in a 5 year period has to spend 6 months working in a call center, retail, customer service, fast food.

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Stop demonizing your neighbor. Demonize the 1%.

      That income range still very much encompasses “normal” people who already pay a large share of income taxes.

      Tax the super rich (both income and wealth), and redistribute that money via healthcare, education and social programs like UBI.

  • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Anytime I’ve done some world building in my head for the great human empire :tm: it involves some sort of rotational labor period in each citizens early 20’s to give them exposure to a few different styles of work

    It’s a nice way to give back to the community while also getting to see how the rest of the world lives

    I’m sure there’s flaws with it but sounds a hell of a lot better than what we have now

    • Aremel@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I genuinely believe everyone should serve some sort of customer service role at least once in their life.

      • ch00f@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Except the American response to this would be to be extra shitty to retail workers since customers were shitty to them during their tour.

        • David WBL@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          That’s not how walking a mile in someone else’s shoes work. It’s the opposite.

          • kemsat@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Many Americans believe that the new guys have to suffer, like they had to, and that it’s the suffering that unites us. Many don’t seem to be ok with being the last ones that suffer so the next don’t have to, which is seen as unfair. At least that’s been my experience living over here.

            • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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              10 months ago

              That’s a really unfortunate philosophy because at best it guarantees things never improve

  • JargonWagon@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Didn’t they try this already on like teenagers or college students or something? Didn’t it go horribly wrong?

    • sudo@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      +3,000 student athletes in The A-Team. And yes it went horribly wrong. Some students started unionizing immediately.

      “Then you go out in the field, and the first ray of sun comes over the horizon. The first ray. Everyone looked at each other, and said, ‘What did we do?’ The thermometer went up like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon. By 9 a.m., it was 110 degrees.”

      Garden gloves that the farmers gave the students to help them harvest lasted only four hours, because the cantaloupe’s fine hairs made grabbing them feel like “picking up sandpaper.”

      The farmers sheltered them in “any kind of defunct housing,” according to Carter — old Army barracks, rooms made from discarded wood, and even buildings used to intern Japanese-Americans during World War II.

      • Madison420@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        It does make sense and the issue here isn’t communal service periods but for making it only the young which “by chance” makes it so almost everyone who had any hand in it wouldn’t have to do it ever.

        If it were every citizen had to do some form of labor for some period I don’t think anyone would have much of an argument.

  • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Yeah, can’t wait to see what a bunch of bored teenagers and twenty somethings will do to our food supply after the first couple of seasons fucking around. Forced labor also doesn’t mean quality labor.

    Authoritarians never learn that forcing people to act like they want doesn’t work.

    • sudo@programming.dev
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      10 months ago

      Its actually been done before and most teens quitted or were fired within weeks because of the inhuman working conditions. The quality of the work they would do is completely irrelevant.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      10 months ago

      RFK Jr has seriously proposed sending drug addicts, which he defines as people taking prescribed medication for mental health reasons, as well as your more stereotypical hardcore drug addicts… to basically agricultural work / detox camps.

      No meds, no phone, live in a barracks, do farm work… while you and everyone else are cold turkey quitting heroin, or fentanyl, or ritalin or zoloft or wellbutrin.

    • bratorange@feddit.org
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      10 months ago

      The trick is just that everyone has to do it. Without exemptions for rich, influential etc…. (Ofc. not disabled, pregnant etc…)

      • Cypher@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        You will quickly find all the rich have bone spurs which prevents their service.

        Now get back to the fields peasant.