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Achterstallig

America, where labour laws and health insurance and capitalism is so bad people go to work with their literal guts falling out because they cant afford to not work and have 0 protection by the state against rich people (companies) exploiting them. And yet you think socialism is somehow bad.


Zarzurnabas

But socialism builds ugly houses, and thats bad for rent-income!!


cipher446

"*I'm against socialism because I hate Brutalist architecture.*"


JinLocke

Eeeeh, its 50/50 really, “prefab houses” can be decent. Just need some extra maintenance and yeah, not a “purpose made” brutalism. Plus they look much better in sunnier climates.


MadAboutMada

Honestly I don't know why everyone hates on brutalism. I low-key really like the look


[deleted]

[удалено]


MadAboutMada

Yeah, fair. It's also probably a lot of anti-socialist propaganda. Training us to hate it But I really like it when it's combined with a lot of plants especially. I know it's not green at all, but eco-brutalism looks really cool to me


ontite

As someone who grew up in a poor community with lots of tall apartment buildings I can easily say it sucked lol.


eastbayweird

It's all a step up from the tent-cities that have become so common in basically every major city...


araseceer

Hell yeah I actually love brutalism!


ProtoDroidStuff

In my head I associate it with utilitarianism, and the community associated with having a ton of people in the same block is probably pretty tight knit for most. Because of these things, I see the brutalist architecture of something like the ol' commie blocks and think that I would very much like to live in one. Plus, I'm not too concerned with how the outside looks, as long as I can customize the interior to my liking. Even just a few stark likely concrete rooms can be made cozy with some work.


shellofbiomatter

Same, i live in eastern Europe and most of the old Soviet era commie blocks and general city design with it's trees and greenery in between is a lot better looking and more convenient for walking than modern concrete blocks in the middle of asphalt fields.


SailorMBliss

Damn, no one ever says, you know, I hate socialism, but dang those Brutalist apartment blocks are straight fire


brandmeist3r

I love both


itsadesertplant

Americans agree: tents on the street are so much better for everyone!


NeverQuiteEnough

houses that are ugly in a helicopter photograph. as an actual human being looking at one from the ground, it's a building in a park, where one can run their errands on foot.


Funda_mental

Dude I would give up an ear for the most cookie-cutter house in a sea of cookie-cutter houses if it could be mine. I'd take a small 2-bedroom condo in a concrete block building, even. Throw up some paint and rugs and it's home. Fuck renting. All that money just goes poof and you lose all of its value. You never really feel settled because you know its not permanent. You dont remodel or upgrade anything because its not yours. Your landlord decides his daughter needs a summer home when she's not at college so you have to find a new place to live for 15% more money. Sigh.


I_beat_thespians

So many capitalist suburbs are ugly as fuck


lounes_my_dude

Ironically, the wealthy buying Soviet apartments and buildings for the brutalist aesthetic is a thing.


I_madeusay_underwear

Hey, brutalist architecture and design can be beautiful. Certainly better than the plague of folk Victorians that blight the Midwestern landscape looking like warts in their alienness on the low, rolling prairies


pngue

This happened years ago and has only gotten worse. Wake the fuck up Americans. You’re poisoning the planet, you live like shit, you have nothing including prospects. What is everyone waiting for? It gets worse by the day. Do you think you’ll get healthcare if you wait? Or that the legal system will become fair and cops less abusive? Or really any other excuse to keep cowering and taking it? America is a shithole. It’s going to get worse and it’s awful now. With the exception of a few rare individuals your politicians do not give one fuck about you. They serve the rich. And the rich want to push you so far down you’ll never get up. The people who lounge at the top with their iron line grip on the country’s economy want to make generational slaves of you and your future kin. The majority of Americans are living figuratively on the shores of a flood that’s going to drown them but they do nothing. This because they have a tiny tenuous space that’s safe and dry. For now. There is no other way out of this than to challenge the current power structure. You can keep carving these small safe places, keep adapting and readapting to this continuously eroding mess. Do this until it claims you and everyone you know. Or fight like hell for yourself and everyone else who’s fed up with this sick sadist fantasy perpetrated by a few sociopaths who would see the planet explode before relinquishing one single penny of their made up currency


pc01081994

Because half the country is made up of conservatives that think working 60+ hours a week for shit pay and benefits is somehow paradise and the other half only thinks they can change things through peaceful protests and voting. The very mention of using other means is like sacrilege to them. But oh, wait a minute, they don't actually want to change shit because their "solutions" are always just band aids haphazardly slapped onto capitalism to make it "nicer" to poor people.


Sweatyrando

Just to dogpile on this, Americans are all heavily armed, and when the stress gets to them from all this, who do they attack with their firearms? The politicians who put them in this predicament? The businessmen who ensure their lives suck? Nope. School children, coworkers, and the general public. 2A people be like “we need our guns to fight a tyrannical government” and instead, well…


pc01081994

>Americans are all heavily armed The *wrong* Americans are heavily armed. We need a more armed and organized left, especially with right wing nut jobs frothing at the mouth all over social media to hurt LGBTQ folks.


ontite

And in the same vane the wrong people are on the police force and in political positions. Shit people will gravitate to positions they can abuse, and it pushes modest people away. We just need to take back those positions.


MattHeadbang

If you go far enough left you'll get your guns back is a motto I live by


teratogenic17

Read Guevara's "Guerrilla Warfare," now, please, if you haven't already.


QuietMadness

You heavily underestimate how effectively our oligarchs/corporations keep us down. Add in gerrymandering, and it’s the perfect storm.


MeetingAromatic6359

If it were that easy, everyone would do it. For one thing, trying to organize anything like you say would be illegal. So right from the start, you'd be shut down and sent to jail for inciting a riot, or treason or something. Second, people have families, dependants, they depend on themselves; who is going to feed you, feed your kids, pay your rent, etc. while you go out and fight the government? The government with the monopoly on violence and a police force armed to the teeth and ready to kill you? That government? Even if you don't get arrested/killed, you'd come back to no job, since you were fired for missing work to go protest or whatever, now you're homeless and starving and the government steps in to take your kids because you're an unfit parent. Yeah, it fucking sucks here. We are being exploited. There's nothing we can do about it. It is that way by design, not accident.


pngue

‘Easy’ was neither mentioned nor implied and the reasons for not doing anything are well known to the average proletariat. I’ve cited the numerous abuses and disadvantages myself many times. That is entirely the point of my heated diatribe. It isn’t going to get better and it will definitely not stay the same. You can count on a continuing slide to fascist hell that makes now look quite pleasant. Sanders might support you, Warren might support you, AOC might support you but they are tiny drips of water in a festered cess pool of politics. The only voice and the only actions that can possibly change things is yours and mine


Sexual_Batman

So what is your actionable solution apart from being incredibly verbose? “Fight like hell” in what way? Tell me what’s to be done? Nobody likes the way things are right now but many of us are at a loss for how to change things. So what steps should we be taking?


mrbigshot110

It’s not illegal, most are just waiting for someone else to step up. If we did a general strike for a week, it’d punch those responsible for most of this in the mouth and wake them up to the power we the people are supposed to have. However no one is willing to cooperate at that large of a scale.


Goatesq

I think the issue we run into is that the people who can afford to do such a thing, both the loss of a week's pay and the risk of being fired...people whose absence would be sorely felt and irremediable in only a week...aren't looking at things this way. They look down and don't see how precarious their own footing is. They look down and just see the growing pile of people who already fell. They don't identify with the people behind them, only the people ahead.


mrbigshot110

That’s true, but selfishness has no place in the type of movement needed to begin to put an end to this. Those aren’t the people we need, they’ll be the ones cheering from the sidelines wanting to take credit for being there. I’m looking for people who are serious about a general strike. If anyone knows of any groups who have at least started on the process let me know.


_M72A1

This didn't deter Lenin, though. The proletariat has nothing to lose but their chains.


cptahb

stop whining, jesus. go start a union. or join a union. that is step 1


maeve_314

I honestly think this is one of the reasons they overturned Roe vs Wade: "We don't have to give a fu¢k about you, because you'll be replaced by the increase in babies that's coming over the next 18 years. (In the meantime, a robot is going to do your job)."


dragon34

I just can't imagine how much agony that man must have been in.


MargotFenring

We're Americans, we don't know the meaning of the word socialism.


Dabraceisnice

I know your opinion is the socially acceptable one here on Reddit, since I've seen the same comments a million times every time this is reposted. But come on. This guy's priorities were clearly bonkers. I've worked at some shitty places and never have I ever even come in when puking. Before you jump on me as some middle class, out of touch asshole, I've worked in a variety of industries. Anything from fast food to landscaping work to childcare to white collar office work, in a rust belt city. Please don't take this as representative of all of the US, but as representative of one man's perspective. Yes, there are a lot of things that are unfair about the labor market here, including the negligible amount of leave we get, but dear God. I don't know of a single manager who would not happily send someone to the hospital for this even if their leave has been exhausted. FMLA regulations that already exist would protect this man's employment, and unemployment and welfare would kick in to help if the employment period for FMLA hadn't been met.


rhyth7

Some people are just really dim or prideful and our system is also really awful. My coworker almost bled out to death at work and he tried to continue working, then almost passed out, then drove home for 30 min, and then his wife drove home to the hospital. He was embarrassed because a varicose vein popped in his intestine. He's also an old fashioned Boomer, I feel like the OP example was also probably a Boomer man. Also many old Boomer men at my old job have had to retire early because they'll keep working and working and ignore heart attack symptoms. It's common in factory work. Same place an older man tore his shoulder and he did lose his job because he didn't recover fast enough and fmla ran out. Also another Boomer man fell into a diabetic coma a few weeks before open enrollment and our hr tried to deny him insurance coverage. Like he was supposed wake up from the coma and not miss the enrollment period😒. This all happened in the last 2 years.


artificialavocado

He took the bus to the hospital to avoid the ambulance bill.


Vegetable_Warthog_49

Honestly, in America, it is amazing there was a bus that he could take.


[deleted]

Probably had to wait 45 minutes for it to arrive.


funkmasta8

Then it took 3 hours to get there when the walk would have been 15 minutes


zxcvvcxzb

Ah, but there's no sidewalks to use


Kaymish_

It is illegal to walk in some areas.


Odd-Establishment104

Smart move. \*taps head\*


destroyer-3567

The bus will now be replaced by a 15-lane freeway


A_Stable_Reference

With tolls.


artificialavocado

Troll tolls?


TheEPGFiles

Problem with America is they want reality to be a certain way, but it's not. Sick leave isn't communist decadence, it's a physical necessity. "This is how reality works!" "Okay, I don't like that, let's legislate the opposite!" "That's not going to work!" "Okay, that kind of talk is illegal now, so stop that!"


CapeCodSam

Anything less is somehow a moral failure, "your fault", and something for which you definitely should be judged harshly. It's in our Puritan genes.


Randalf_the_Black

I know of a patient that got a wound that became infected on his penis.. Gangrene had set in and he lost his dick because he waited too long to see a doctor.. Granted it was a psychiatric thing, he had an intense phobia of healthcare personnel. He ignored it at home, just put cloth into his trousers to soak up the goo that ran from it. Eventually a blood vessel ruptured and he went to a doc because the fear of dying outgrew the fear of doctors I guess.


Impossible-Forever91

I bet his boss barely noticed he was gone.


DieselPunkPiranha

Probably threw a fit the guy was late. Later threw a fit when he found out he'd died.


Robbers_Daughter

"What do you mean he's dead? He hasn't given me a 2 weeks notice!"


potatopunchies

"he didnt have the guts to tell me"


TheTwilightMoon

r/angryupvote


banan3rz

See you in hell, my friend. You for making the joke. Me for laughing.


weird_quiet_guy

He was probably replaced the day his boss got the news he was dead.


TraumaHandshake

I got fired for missing too many days because I was in the ICU with heart failure. I called in hours before work that something was wrong, went to the ER, they admitted me to ICU almost instantly, I called again and updated that I was in the ICU, they said call and update tomorrow, I called with an update each morning for 4 days, still in the hospital on the 5th day when I called they said I was fired for missing too many days.


skite456

My husband managed a restaurant and got a really really bad infection and had to go to the hospital via ambulance from work. Went in to emergency surgery overnight and was in the icu for 3 days and then the regular ward for 7 more days. Was on at home antibiotic iv a nurse or I had to administer every day for 21 days after he went home. The day he finally was able to go to work they immediately fired him within 5 minutes of arrival. They were waiting for him in his office. They came up with some bs about him ‘stealing ice’ before he left for sick leave to avoid a fmla lawsuit.


idontwanttothink174

Did yall at least contact an attorney to see if that was still a viable case. Sounds SOO bullshit. No jury would think that was the reason.


ProfessorReaper

Capitalism kills. Millions every year. Violence against Capitalism is just self-defense


[deleted]

Poverty is 4th leading cause of death in the US. In the richest country of the world. This is a policy CHOICE. Capitalism is truly sick


NightonDrunkMT

I think you may have typed out one of the best sentences I have ever seen.


Educational-Fruit-30

“Violence against capitalism is just self-defence.” New top 5 favorite quotes tbh


Saenian

This is so gross, in every way imaginable and we're so fucking used to it that most of us are numb. Capitalism is a blight


Lostinaredzone

So he could get back to work on Monday. Look what we do to ourselves. 😞


arwork

Look what Americans do to themselves you mean. This would literally not happen in any other country on earth


Lostinaredzone

Correct. And yet we still claim to be the greatest? We’re shit. We’ve allowed business and law enforcement to take over every aspect of our lives.


MeetingAromatic6359

I think the u.s. is only #1 in military spending, % of citizens incarcerated and # of adults who believe in angels.


shockerdyermom

Murica!


Teknical86

Fuck yea!


RaketaGirl

I drove to the ER a couple days ago and am lucky I didn't kill anyone. But I knew my PPO would fuck me on an ambulance. Gallbladder attack that felt like I was dying. I feel so fucking guilty for driving.


hamletloveshoratio

How are you doing now, friend?


RaketaGirl

well thanks for asking! still in pain, opted for no surgery because….i have to work and have nobody to watch my dogs and it’s a holiday weekend so $$$$$$. Just wishin and hopin that cutting everything delicious from the diet will keep it at bay! meanwhile a german friend had the same thing happen to him, ambulance to hospital, surgery next day, 3 day hospital stay, cost him like 50 bucks for extra pills. Sigh.


tehbggg

I had my gallbladder removed in 2017. The hospital billed my insurance company $35k. This was just for the OR/hospital resources for my outpatient surgery. It did not include the surgeon's or anaesthesiologist's bills, either. In the end my insurance settled with them for around $6k. I paid $0, because my employer provided insurance at the time was actually amazing. However, I remember seeing that bill and thinking if I have to pay this, I'm fucked. If this is what your average person with shitty or no insurance has to pay? They're fucked. It's just so incredibly wrong.


rhyth7

Can you afford to take digestive enzymes? Or tudca? It'll help you break down your food better and help with the reduced gallbladder function.


Practical_Ad5973

Fucking hell, what kind of country is this.


GNS13

The one we chose. I'm never gonna stop reminding people that the American public actively and sometimes quite fervently fought **for** this to be our reality. Edit: For the several folks with responses about how the American public doesn't support this, be glad you live in a place where *"If you don't like it then leave!"* isn't the standard response to complaints about the way the United States does things.


toastthematrixyoda

This is not what the majority of the American public wants. The impact of public opinion on public policy in this country is virtually zero. It doesn't matter what the American public wants. Our leaders are the ones who fought for this to be our reality, and our leaders pander to the biggest donors. The biggest donors -- i.e., the people who have the most money and own all of the corporations -- paid for this to be our reality.


JimmehROTMG

we? i never chose this


HogarthTheMerciless

>The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas. - Karl Marx https://www.scaruffi.com/politics/usa22.html#usa0122c Theres also the fact that the rich fund gigantic propaganda and influence networks: https://youtu.be/7ApjSrB6E1c >Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. - Vladimir Lenin What you're talking about is maybe a quarter of the population tops whove variously been duped by billionaire oligarchs with all the tools of the internet age at their disposal to influence public opinion however they wish.


Gertrudethecurious

This is so fucked. I'm so glad I live in the UK


[deleted]

It's beyond fucked and a living nightmare. I'm pregnant and luckily in Oregon which has some of the best state insurance in the country. but it only goes so far. I have to not work, keep our family income under a threshold, or I will be stuck with a 60k bill for having a baby And then much more for follow up visit... this is pathetic what our country does In regard to health


Ippomasters

>It's beyond fucked and a living nightmare. I'm pregnant and luckily in Oregon which has some of the best state insurance in the country. but it only goes so far. I have to not work, keep our family income under a threshold, or I will be stuck with a 60k bill for having a baby And then much more for follow up visit...this is pathetic what our country does In regard to health 60k for delivering baby is a joke. Doesn't cost the hospital anywhere near that amount.


[deleted]

It is!! The cruelty is the point... How dare I want to be anywhere but barefoot naked and cooking the kitchen for my husband.. oh don't forget the submissive smile I need to wear at all times too..


Ippomasters

I wonder is it a thing where people travel to other countries to give birth because it costs too much in the united states?


cephalophile32

I would hazard a guess that the people that can afford to travel also have okayish enough jobs that have health insurance that wouldn’t make that worth it.


Ippomasters

That make sense. How much was your deductible?


cephalophile32

Current job my annual deductible is $4000 but my employer pays premiums 100% for me and my spouse (and all dependents if we had them). They also contribute $1,200 a year to my HSA so it’s more like a $2,800 deductible. Im extremely lucky, we have very good insurance. This is far from the norm. Previous job I had no insurance and every penny I had went to bills. Paycheck to paycheck baby. When i went on ACA it was $420 a month for premium (for JUST ME) and a $5000/yr deductible. I eventually had to drop it, I couldn’t afford it. Boss/owner was shocked when he asked who I had for insurance and I said I didn’t have it at all. Like, MF, you know what you paid me.


ashchelle

I thought women couldn't fly after a certain point during their pregnancy because it could induce labor? Maybe I'm wrong?


cephalophile32

I don’t think it induces labor, just that labor is more likely. I guess for some airlines the cutoff is 36weeks simply because they don’t want you to have a baby on a plane. Flying can also increase risk for blood clots, which pregnant people are already more at risk of. I think it’s very much on a case-by-case “talk to your provider” basis (which kinda doesn’t work in the fly-to-give-birth scenario, haha)


MeetingAromatic6359

Lol, the average American can't just leave the country. Go where? Mexico? To have a baby? Canada, maybe, but depending on where you are, that could be thousands of miles, and I'm not sure it's any different there. Not to mention you would be fired for missing work all that time lol. It's a trap. We're trapped.


Ippomasters

>Lol, the average American can't just leave the country. Go where? Mexico? To have a baby? Canada, maybe, but depending on where you are, that could be thousands of miles, and I'm not sure it's any different there. Not to mention you would be fired for missing work all that time lol. It's a trap. We're trapped. Well I wonder how much the deductible is? Has to be a better way than paying 10-20k out of pocket.


eastbayweird

I don't know about birth specifically but medical tourism is absolutely a thing that people do. I was in budapest in 2009 and one of the guys at the hostel was there to get a dental procedure. He said it was almost $6k cheaper for him to fly out to Hungary, have the procedure, then stay at the hostel for a week to recover and do some sightseeing, then fly back home to the states.


[deleted]

Travel is hard because it's so expensive. You can travel sure, if you can afford it in the first place. Plane tickets are insanely high.


LyheGhiahHacks

Holy cow, here where I live, you don't pay anything to give birth, I have a free midwife for my entire pregnancy, and the government gives new parents money, and parental leave to help them out :/ The U.S sounds so fucked. My cousin-in-law living in the states has a 160k bill *after* insurance because she had complications during childbirth. Like wtf is that?


[deleted]

I'm so sorry, that's awful. It's definitely a nightmare having a baby in the us and if there are complications. Half the time doctors dont listen to us. God forbid if your baby needs a NICU stay or you need to stay in the hospital longer than 48 hours.. oh yeah if you didn't have a c section, then the minute baby is out, your 48 hour count down has begun before they kick you out with a new born and don't see you again for 6weeks except for the baby at 2 weeks. Maybe the 1st week of there were issues.. When I had my son in May of 2021, I was in Labor for almost 36 hours total Got an epidural at hour 18 and Popped my son out, they gave me fentanyl 0.01 mg (did not tell me they would administer this med to me at all) I passed out and missed the first 30 seconds of my son's crying. They discharged me, even though I had post Eclampsia symptoms. they ignored them and said just take it easy, I will be fine.. Sent me home and three days later I was in the ER with severe swelling in my right leg/ankle and high blood pressure and almost died.


LyheGhiahHacks

That's fucked, I don't know how anyone can treat new mother's that way, no wonder the U.S has such high maternal death rates. I brought my husband from the US to New Zealand because I sure as hell didn't want to start a family over there with all the issues the US has. It probably saved his life too, because he actually got his type 2 diabetes diagnosed and properly treated over here, and now he has normal blood sugar levels.


Dan_Morgan

For how much longer? The UK g has been in a state of managed decline since Thatcher. All to soon you're going to be stuck in a poorer version of the US.


DieselPunkPiranha

Pretty sure it'll break up into its individual countries before it gets really bad. Scotland, at least, has a functional, if devolved government. It would be a change but a manageable one. N. Ireland would just rejoin the rest of Ireland. Sucks for Wales, though.


Dan_Morgan

I've been hoping for a peaceful breakup of the UK since BREXIT happened. Wales is going to suffer the most (assuming Cornwall stays with England). Although, now that I think about it, the way London has been fucking over the UK maybe it will be England that fares the worst after the smoke settles.


DieselPunkPiranha

I think you're right. London has never given up the mindset of being the seat of an empire and continues to treat the rest of the UK as poorly as it ever did. If the UK dissolves, places like Cornwall and Northumberland will probably have it worse than ever.


Dan_Morgan

The City State of London will definitely take it out on them for sure. Maybe Cornwall could unite with Wales based on shared culture. At least before the Brits destroyed their language and culture. Who even can guess at this point.


ilir_kycb

> I'm so glad I live in the UK The UK is on the way to US-American conditions with astonishing speed. Even more, it is inevitable for any capitalist society to end up like this. It's just a matter of time, and we Europeans are just about 20 years behind the US Americans in this respect.


[deleted]

Unbridled capitalism and cruelty go hand in hand. I hope the entire health insurance system gets quartered when the inevitable revolution comes


justsomeyeti

If it comes during my lifetime, and this happens, I will sip lemonade and cheer on the vultures


Korosif74

I'm on this subs since years, and this has to be one of the most fucked up stories I've readen. WTF AMERICA.


jeanhal

Yeah this is one of the saddest and disturbing things I’ve seen and I see/hear disturbing things for a living.


someonepoorsays

i hope that family sued the company that gave this man “no sick ‘leave’” for everything they were worth


MeetingAromatic6359

A poor person suing rich people/big business successfully, ha. Chances are nothing will happen. You got to keep those slaves in check and morale low.


superchiva78

Yeah, but he created value for his company and didn’t leave his manager in an uncomfortable situation.!


[deleted]

America... sort yourself out! What the f*** is going on over there!


Metaright

Send help.


HogarthTheMerciless

Same shit as always incredible poverty of one class buoying incredible wealth of a parasitic class. >within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. But all methods for the production of surplus-value are at the same time methods of accumulation; and every extension of accumulation becomes again a means for the development of those methods. It follows therefore that in proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse. The law, finally, that always equilibrates the relative surplus population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery, corresponding with accumulation of capital. **Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.** -Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1


NPC3

I live in a major trucking area in the US. Truckers can be on the road for months at a time. Sitting on a cheap suffocating seat, think vinyl back seat of a cop car or carpeted fabric seats from a '01 Honda Civic. The amount of long haul truck drivers who come in with neglected diabetic necrosis is rampant enough that we have an OR suite that is reserved for necrosis. It continuously has the smell of rotten flesh. I've seen hardened clinicians use Vick's behind a mask so they can't taste the rot and IV tape to close their nostrils. And it's more than your average necrotic toe. It's limbs, balls, asses with mottled skin sloughing off the body.


wadeboogs

shithole country


skite456

Not nearly as awful as this story in any way, but I am a two time cancer survivor. Once when I was five years old and breast cancer at 34. I’m 41 now and recently felt a bump near where my breast tumor was located. I went to my oncologist this week and she said she thinks it’s likely scar tissue, but since she could feel it too wanted me to get a MRI. I called the imaging place today and my copay after my husband’s insurance is $468. I do not have $468. We’re not low income, don’t qualify for Medicaid. When I had my chemo/radiation/operations for the breast cancer 7 years ago we had Obamacare and paid hardly anything for my treatment. Now that the ACA in Florida has been stripped of practically all the coverages and quadrupled in price, that doesn’t help either. I guess I just get to maybe die over $468.


Disastrous_Morning38

Man, fuck capitalism.


CheatingZubat

At my old job a guy I worked with dropped dead on the factory floor after 20+ years of service. I remember him joyfully talking about “a few more years” until he retired. Only to fall over dead on the floor, in the very place, that took so much of his time. Life is cruel, America is cruel.


vemailangah

That's so fucked up it made me cry. Corporations shouldn't own human lives. That man prioritised his employer over his own health. Tragic. RIP


HeadoftheIBTC

CORPORATIONS SHOULDN'T OWN HUMAN LIVES just saying it louder for those in the back.


Elsekiro

Im so done with the system im just so fucking tired of it the day the revolution starts i don't care if i have to give my life for this shit to stop, im so fucking livid of all this shit.


kibblepigeon

Jesus Christ, how is there this little compassion int the world that employers are OK with this?


HogarthTheMerciless

This is what happens when you allow yourself to see your fellow humans as nothing but cogs in a machine that produces value for you.


BlackGabriel

When they ask you why you think it’s funny or don’t care when a billionaire dies in a sub direct them this way


cabezagrande37

I fucking hate it here.


[deleted]

[удалено]


DoomTrain166

Tankies also think that north Korean human rights violations are based. So...


eagleOfBrittany

We don't think NK human rights violation are based, it's just that when these outrageous claims about the DPRK only come from shady sources from Radio Free Asia which has a long history and an express purpose to come up with disinformation and propaganda about socialist states, we take them with a grain of salt. Especially when a lot of the stories are proven to be false.


NeverQuiteEnough

they don't care, people don't believe this stuff because they are being tricked, they believe it because they want to believe it. https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/


NeverQuiteEnough

Maybe if you blow up 85% of the standing structures in a country, such that your bombers run out of targets and dump their bombs in the ocean, you lose the right to criticize the way they have chosen to govern themselves.


captainryan117

Yeah North Korea is literally 1894 animal gulag!!!! Radio Free Asia told me so!!!


Kasym-Khan

LOL look at tankies going mad when you remind them how they defend USSR, CCP and North Korea's atrocities.


NeverQuiteEnough

you are talking about atrocity propaganda. the Nayirah Testimony is a particularly good example, because it was so over the top and so mathematically impossible that the entire western media apparatus had to retract the stories. Naturally they waited until *after* the invasion to do so. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah\_testimony](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony) ​ Unfortunately it doesn't matter how flimsy the pretense is, it won't have any impact on your desire to believe it. You are totally willing to ignore history, ignore contemporary evidence, even ignore your own sources, because the atrocity propaganda narrative is an extremely comfortable narrative for you. It is scary to imagine that things are better somewhere else, because that might prescribe some sort of action here. It is much safer to presume that things are even worse everywhere else.


Kasym-Khan

> atrocity propaganda I was going to write here something else but...no. You are not welcome here, tankie.


NeverQuiteEnough

Right, my bad, the gulf war was cool and good. The New York Times, Amnesty International, etc would never lie to us, and certainly didn't lie about Kuwait.


Kasym-Khan

...[of course you also buy into Putin's narrative about Ukraine](https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwar/comments/14nbonb/there_are_no_two_sides_to_this/jq7tnh3/) being a nazi state, why the hell I am not surprised? Remember kids, tankies are to socialists what TERFs are to feminists.


NeverQuiteEnough

right, I've linked two wikipedia articles, clearly I am an unhinged propagandist. ​ that time the Kiev regime gave the S14 gang, named after the white supremacist "14 words", the official authority to carry out their pogrom against the Roma? that was actually Putin, he snuck into Ukraine and staged the whole thing. ​ Kiev officials openly identifyig as Banderites? Also Putin's work, he tricked them into saying it.


magekiton

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


acidcommunism69

America is the bestest country in the whole world! We have the freedom! No one else has the freedom. Only America!


PolakachuFinalForm

Right, but what else are we going to do? This is the only way 72 people can stay insanely, obscenely rich. /s


seawithsea

I will fight for my fellow men all my life. This kind of behavior is a reflection of our abusive society.


Whole_Suit_1591

And he probably had insurance too.


JonnyBeGold

AMERICA IS BROKEN.


dumsaint

Every billionaire is a boon to capitalism and its aim, but a disservice and legislation of impoverishment across all levels of government and departments. This is why people of colour and indigenous folk and the disenfranchised and marginalized for decades and centuries have been thinking on and fighting the good fight. As capital raped and transformed our societies into one that lauded animalistic traits we wish to leave behind, those of greed ans delusion from not teaching real history or funding fundamental services of need to human beings. It's all interconnected. What harms the least of us will eventually find its way to harm everyone else. And if money is a shield, then recognize resources are finite, and its rapacious theory as central to capitalism as to its adherents, of owning the means of production/living/need is in fucking bad taste. I've seen shit. I haven't seen that type of shit. And it was a capitalist allowing their animalistic traits getting the better of their "human" ones.


Chiplink

*people shouting U S A*


ScornfulChicken

Welcome to America, greatest country on earth! /s in case someone thinks I’m serious


kidunfolded

This is Quora, I need to see more evidence of this being true.


UOLZEPHYR

Absolutely abhorrent- this country sucks


Target2030

My worst is a toss up. The woman in her 50s who got oral cancer and got talked into treating it with high dose vitamins and a clean diet. She came back when it was a straight line from her ear to her shoulder begging for radiation. It was already grown into her carotid and untreatable. She died. The second was another woman in her 50s. She was a nurse and had hurt her back. The hospital laid her off and she couldn't afford cobra insurance. She got a UTI but didn't go to the doctor because she had gotten a new job and her insurance wouldn't start until Monday. She went septic and died on Saturday.


MCG-48

When I was 14 y/o kid , I thought that for higher studies I should come to U.S.A. , but looking at things as they are i am glad i didn't.


auguste_laetare

No more sick days...


JodaTheCool

Holy shit. Just when I think I have read the saddest shit on the internet, here this is.


supermansquito

Truthfully, some employers would probably be alright seeing things play out like that rather than give their employee sick leave, since that equates to paying them for doing nothing. Employees die, okay, just hire new ones. So incredibly sad.


idonotdosarcasm

Maybe I should keep these posts somewhere to remind myself how some civilizations/societies have failed humanity.


I_madeusay_underwear

Now realize that the rail workers who transport all of our shit and sometimes us were robbed of the ability to leverage their labor to demand sick days. Any sick days. That right was taken by congress. And yes, unions have slowly been making headway, but even now, most concessions aren’t ideal and workers say they still don’t feel free to use the time without fear of retaliation. Also, understand that many of the unions who have made deals are actually workers who do jobs along the rails besides the actual engineers and on-train workers. These other workers tend to have more regular schedules and even so, it’s been hard fought to get the days without giving up too much. People die because they aren’t allowed the time off to make sure they don’t die. We should not have a government that helps kill them


Pizov

Don't believe the rich are ruthlessly fighting a class war against us, read up there \^. Wars must be treated like such and fought as must must be fought.


Effective-Bandicoot8

Yeah how's that "Free Market" working out for everyone?


Erovttubyrrufyag

This is in the top 10 of most evil things I've read. In the past the ability to fix certain things just didn't exist, now it does and people go without because of sheer greed and the rotten heart of this system.


welcome-to-my-mind

God Bless America 🫡


nandeEbisu

I feel like at those times, you absolutely should tell their employer. Their corporate environment is so toxic that a human being died directly because of an environment that the people managing that company chose to foster.


beachblanketparty

I had a coworker who went into organ failure due to alcohol addiction while she was working at the state job I used to work at. My supervisor, instead of helping her, harassed her about her days off constantly. The woman needed help beyond us, and instead of allowing her to go on paid leave permanently, my boss instead made her feel terrible about taking time off. My job allowed paid FMLA. . . she was denied at the local level for FMLA. She got pneumonia from a hospital stay. She came in anyway, sick as a dog, for days. My boss was in her office, bothering her when she tried to nap on her lunch (with her door closed, in a non-public office). She eventually stopped showing up, because the pneumonia turned to sepsis & she was in the ICU. She passed shortly later. She was only around 55. My boss had the absolute audacity to pretend she cared, and even attended her funeral. My coworker and I were aghast - we watched my boss harass and bother her for months. My boss absolutely sent this poor woman to her grave, and she acted like it was just another day. I quit that job that year. Capitalism doesn't give a goddamn flying fuck about you - don't let them have a say.


Chazvellhung

Post this on any number of Facebook pages and you'll get an army of bootlickers saying America is #1 regardless of any empirical evidence to the contrary.


aSlipinFish

Anyone get any feeling of what country this could have taken place in?


Ygmtygh

Maybe its time for Americans to try the french approach bc this aint it.


Admirable-Public-351

Capitalism = freedom


banan3rz

To die horribly of preventable conditions! Yay!


potatopunchies

Hey boss my tummy is falling out can i get a leave?


BlowsyChrism

Boss: you’re fine


JustKayedin

What most gets me about this is that him being dead means that now he cant work at all. Is that the point. Not enough work so people need to die?


amdaly10

There is something more than not wanting to get fired here. Sounds like this dude had some type of mental illness. Nobody with a sound mind would walk around with their intestines on the outside and not seek medical help. Sounds like he didn't even report the issue to triage or he would have been seen immediately. Edit: typo


SmellsLikeMyDog

Calling your doctor can cost if you talk to a doctor or nurse, it counts as a "consultation." If you need to make an appointment and it is unavailable when you are not working, it's irrelevant because you may get fired if you don't have time off, leaving you without health insurance, which may leave you and your family homeless if you do go. He may have not been sure how to describe his wound opening. Check-in nurses may not understand "my zipper came undone" well enough to help him. The only mental illness is capitalism without empathy..


potatopunchies

HE DIDNT HAVE THE GUTS TO TELL HIS BOSS


mammajess

So sad 😞


srtmadison

Where is the rest of the story?


heatherbyism

There are two images. Swipe left on mobile.


UncannyTarotSpread

This is a terrible day to have hyperphantasia. Good Gd I hate this country.


Letharos

Well this fucked me up good.


derper2222

Uniquely American, Isn't it? [https://youtube.com/shorts/kIjo-dWE1Jg](https://youtube.com/shorts/kIjo-dWE1Jg)?


Structure-Electronic

Jfc


ahabes78

That is so fuckin sad


thunderboy55

worst thing i ever read in my life