The confrontationality that had been scheduled for Wednesday is now scheduled for this afternoon. I would have liked it to be before the vacation, because the interesting thing is there can't really be a bad outcome to all this, and I would have liked the time off to either celebrate or process what had happened . . . nervous today nonetheless though. Strange, isn't it? But I'm going to play with this idea that somebody else's fuckups can either be your problem, or theirs. In my case, the most obvious fuckup is that on paper I've got a promotion and big percentages worth of raises since I started working . . . the reality is I'm netting almost exactly a same a month as when I started, due to Belgian taxation laws.
I would be a lousy little worm if I let that be my problem, and the good thing about that is that money is something everybody understands. I can say 'I want to set my own hours, I want to live in a less crappy city, I want to work from home', and all of those things look magnificently concrete and sensible to me, and actually rather more important than money. But they remain subjective, since not everybody thinks about work or Brussels or home that way. However, 'I'm netting exactly what I was netting during my probationary period two years ago despite a promotion, big raises on paper, and record-setting inflation, to which my rent is indexed' is something objective - something anybody with a job anywhere could understand - because it's money.
Money. It's like a code - like a bunch of social symbols for energy - my analyst explained it to me in those terms once when I shuddered at the thought of spending my dead grandfather's legacy. 'This is his energy that he stored up as money and gave to you.' I think that's why our economic system is so obviously objectionable now - money isn't a symbol for effort anymore. A woman can work for thirty years, be informed her factory is closing down, and not even get her severance if she leaves for another job before her employers tell her to, while at the same time those assholes on top of the pile pull in huge bonuses and salaries. And of course I understand there are good reasons for those huge bonuses and salaries - that is, they're good if you accept the absolutely rotten and unproductive framework in which the reasons are good.
If I hadn't been a pinko before the rot started showing with a vengeance, I'd feel a lot stupider now. But let's all get over that and have a revolution. Anyways. Onwards and upwards.
2 commenti:
It's really strange how things work out... I used to know a gentleman who created facial & body products for women, even though he wasn't one nor married to one. He's a single white man who lives by himself and has dated more women than the amount of toilet paper I go through in a year. Yet, he gets paid a generous salary and an even more generous bonus (in the range of my own annual salary when I worked), even though he doesn't have a clue about getting facials or manicures. I don't even think he moisturizes, but he supposedly knows what the female clientele wants.
I also grew up in a generation and community where money was always accessible. My friends were trust fund babies, that were able to feed their substance addictions off of the interest of their trust funds. As awful as the American recession is, I also see it as a wake up call for those who have a strong sense of entitlement. It also puts the value back in money and we're forced to be much more conscious of our finances.
Sorry, I basically blogged on your blog.
Please, that's what the comment section is for.
We have become an economy that rewards bullshitters. I don't blame the bullshitters and I'm sorry they're all losing their jobs like normal people have been since the 70's. But we do need to rethink money and how we use to reward people.
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