something rattling around in my head like a marble lately is how disengenuous but often repeated it is that "American labor is expensive" when so much of the cost of social reproduction of labor in the states is bullshit ass fucking landlordism.
if social housing wasn't illegal here and was, instead, well provisioned for, that's probably like anywhere from 30%-50% of costs for some people. just money going straight from whatever wage someone makes for doing something, transmuted immediately into a landlord's equity... for doing nothing!
that's not even getting into the fucked ass situation with healthcare provisioning, insurance profiteering, etc, which are also huge drivers of social reproduction costs for American labor... but never actually realized by the laborer.
anyway, when I read or see that frame of American labor being expensive, it pisses me off because the laborer is the victim of that process, not the beneficiary. the capitalist who inserts themselves between the laborer and the provisioning of their necessities is the king of the assholes, and it's the newspapers they own framing the lazy, entitled, fat cat worker benefitting from this arrangement because their wage is so high these days.