solarpunk memes

I feel like that’s actually pretty logical. “Skilled labor” involves skills that not everyone must have. The things that (nearly) everyone needs to be at least okay at are the things that come up in people’s lives most frequently (things like basic cleaning, socializing, and administrative/organization tasks). Without people to do the things that come up most often, society is going to fall apart.

I’m split on the name though. I understand what it means and don’t take offense (I currently work at a bakery, but I’ve also been a waitress and worked in a call center, all unskilled jobs- I’ve also worked in litigation management for an insurance company and I currently teach German classes too, which are skilled jobs, fwiw), but I get how it rubs some people the wrong way.

"In fact, not only does the market assessment of the value of different forms of work not correspond to popular conceptions of what they actually contribute to society, but there actually seems to be an inverse relation: with few exceptions, the principle seems to be, the more one's work is seen as socially useful, the more it is recognized as helping others, the less one is likely to be paid for it."

• David Graeber

Only because society won't let prisons pay their prisoners 10¢ an hour to flip hamburgers at McDonald's. That's the next step to avoid collapse of the average standard of living.

Anyone that calls any labor ‘unskilled’ is gonna get a black eye. It’s insulting and it only comes up when looking for excuses why people are underpaid.