US. So perhaps not representative of international trends. Altogether worrying with implications for US education standards though. The whole college/trade/career decision logic among the US public is seriously out of whack because parents kept preaching it was either college or burger flipping, unless you had a talent or parents with money of course.
The US education system, academia, and workforce are all incredibly and seemingly unappealably fucked. The bigger picture is just some madman’s abstract expressionism. I’m convinced the Russians are behind it all, somehow because just wtf it is actually looney levels of destabilizing and I fear it all comes crashing soon enough. But whatever, stop worrying and love the bomb I guess.
Basically, America’s poorer majority have the free choice which rich conglomerates they want to be exploited and/or drained dry by? Legalised wage theft, student loan debt, ludicrous cost of privatised healthcare - spoiled for choice which monopoly to hand their entire fortune over to, really…
Pretty much. I had to explain to my mother on the phone last night why I absolutely refuse to order anything from Amazon if I can get it brick&mortar without any issue and she couldn’t understand it. “You’d rather pay more? Why not just wait the couple days for shipping?” That’s not it mom, yes I like being able to immediately receive what I paid for in a transaction, as well as the opportunity to inspect it’s package before I pay for it, but that’s only the tip of the shitberg. I will gladly go pay more elsewhere because that money is often times going back into my community in at least some fashion and I can trust that my experience as a consumer will be better when I shop with the little guy who says my patronage matters and that they appreciate it rather than the unaccountable tech conglomerate that got its start by exploiting a flaw in a book vendor’s billing system for their own profit.
“I’m voting with my wallet” “…by paying more elsewhere” “sigh yes mother that’s how this often works, welcome to late stage capitalism”