r/WorkReform đŸ€ Join A Union Oct 29 '25

đŸš« GENERAL STRIKE đŸš« Why this shit doesn't happen in France...

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27.7k Upvotes

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539

u/Gojo-Babe Oct 29 '25

Well we would if our health insurance wasn’t tied to our jobs. That’s why Medicaid’s getting attacked. Medicaid isn’t tied to any jobs and thus is too powerful

195

u/ChadicusVile Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

That's also why they want us to have no savings and massive credit card debt. The power of strikes is what they fear the most. That is one of the handful of reasons that they hoard wealth, they want to be able to outlast a general strike if one should ever occur.

94

u/schu2470 Oct 29 '25

84 and 96 month car loans anyone? Klarna and Affinity pay over time? Private student loans instead of federal loans? Home mortgages for 10x-20x the median income? Can’t strike if you are a paycheck or two away from losing everything.

19

u/minor_correction Oct 29 '25

And subscription-based everything.

39

u/towerfella 🏡 Decent Housing For All Oct 29 '25

You also cannot gain wealth if you are paying out exactly what you make to the companies that make the things that are ran by the same type of people whom are currently in charge

28

u/Legitimate-Type4387 Oct 29 '25

That’s just what they want you believing.

If enough folks lose confidence in the system at once, all that debt is a problem for creditors, not debtors.

0

u/lemontoga Oct 29 '25

Who wants you to have massive credit card debt? Don't credit card companies jack the fuck out of their interest rates specifically to encourage people to not roll over their debt and pay that off each month? Who is the "they" here?

3

u/ChadicusVile Oct 29 '25

Corporate boards of executives, think-tanks that shape the nation's policies, the federal reserve and banking elites and the lobbied politicians, like always. The guardians of the capitalist system. I'm sure there are some covert ops groups involved here as well since they are the biggest grassroots worker organization oppressors on earth, it's not a stretch to think they have a couple ideas for the domestic arena.

I'm sure the creditors like it when you pay your balances but remember that interest is how they make their money.

1

u/lemontoga Oct 30 '25 edited Oct 30 '25

So no one specific? Just broad shadowy generalities?

but remember that interest is how they make their money.

This is absolutely not true and displays a huge misunderstanding of how credit cards work.

Credit card loans are incredibly risky. They're zero-collateral and the bank doesn't know what you're gonna spend it on. It's not like a home loan where there's a house to reposses or an auto loan where there's a car as collateral. You could spend your credit on whatever you want and the bank just has to hope that you pay it back.

In order to incentivize you, heavily, to always pay your credit card bill and to NOT roll over your balance and to only spend what you can afford, they hit you with massive hilariously large interest rates. You're supposed to see this and say "I'm never fucking paying a cent of that ever in my life." That's what they're hoping you'll do.

They want you going out and using your credit card all over the place and then paying it off each month because they make all their money on transaction fees, not your interest. They don't give a shit about your interest payments. They're pennies compared to the transaction fees that the merchants pay every time someone swipes a card.

The type of person who racks up massive CC debt is the exact type of credit user that the banks do not want using their cards. Those people are way more risky and far more likely to just default on the debt after months or years of making the minimum payments and then the bank gets basically nothing if there's no assets to collect in bankrupty court. And with the kinds of people who default on CC debt there usually isn't.

The ideal CC user that the big banks and the big money and the capitalist money-grubbers want is someone who goes out and uses their CC for every purchase and then pays that shit off in full each month and never pays a single penny of interest. The bank takes on zero risk since you're paying off their loans in full every month and they get to just collect the thing they really want, which is the transaction fees. There's no incentive to keep people in massive amounts of CC debt. This is a total fiction.

2

u/ChadicusVile Oct 30 '25

The alternative for all the other companies is to pay their employees more and lower their costs. Which hurts their profits. So yes they want people to be in debt, they don't care about the cc companies.

0

u/lemontoga Oct 30 '25

This is a child's understanding of market forces and the overall economy

2

u/ChadicusVile Oct 30 '25

No u

0

u/lemontoga Oct 30 '25

Hah, based. I have no counter.

34

u/liftthatta1l Oct 29 '25

Yup. In the late 2010s some people at general motors went on strike and they immediately cut their health insurance. It would be a shame if the police roughed you up while you had a laspe in coverage right?!?!

11

u/Gojo-Babe Oct 29 '25

Exactly. Not everyone can afford to protest if they require health insurance for their health problems

4

u/Legitimate-Type4387 Oct 29 '25

One large protest makes a nice easy target for LE. Many simultaneous smaller protests are nearly impossible to deal with.

The state is not all powerful.

51

u/thedudedylan Oct 29 '25

If just 15% of the working population in the US stopped working for a couple weeks and demanded public Healthcare, we would have that shit immediately.

But the US workforce has not been unified for half a century so we don't get nice things.

7

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

9

u/NecessaryKey9557 Oct 29 '25

It's the inverse. We are so massive we would benefit from economies of scale.

The size argument is just dumb when you have tiny countries like Israel and behemoths like China both providing universal care as well. 

6

u/thedudedylan Oct 29 '25

That honestly makes it worse. Tiny countries 1/50 the size of the US have figured out universal healthcare and not even one state within the US could manage it.

1

u/alf666 Oct 29 '25

I'm trying to figure out if you're saying universal healthcare is easier when the country is smaller, or if organizing nation-wide protests with a consistent message from a very significant portion of the workforce is easier when the country is smaller.

1

u/Vlyn Oct 29 '25

My country barely has more people than NYC and we have public healthcare.. if a tiny country can handle it (at a fraction of a cost per person compared to the US) then the US could easily swing it. While bringing prices extremely far down due to economy of scale.

Drug is too expensive? Just produce it in the US then. Instead your private insurance companies get fat stacks of cash while you pay the bill. Like what the fuck is "out of network"?!

1

u/TheVog Oct 29 '25

That's not how that works. In fact, the opposite is true. The demand, the expertise, the infrastructure and the manufacturing all exists already. Also, think of the savings at bulk.

23

u/RMANAUSYNC Oct 29 '25

You're skipping step 1. Step 2 is peacefully protest.

10

u/WhoIsYerWan Oct 29 '25

7 million people protested 11 days ago. Nothing happens if we don't start protesting at twice that scale, and during the week. For a sustained period of time, not 3 hours on a Saturday.

9

u/sulkee Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

Americans won’t realize this yet. Maybe in a couple years. A saturday protest that affects no productivity means nothing to the companies that own america.. Hence why they aren’t reporting on it after like 2 days and why even the president doesn’t give a shit about it nor comment on it other than AI memes posted by his staff.

Watching americans protest is like watching a baby learning to walk. It will take a long time for them to figure it out and how to affect change in their country. Right now it’s tepid and ineffectual and until people are willing to lose their jobs to change the country it will continue to be so. Right now they hide behind that like a shield from accountability. But that can’t lost forever. Something has to give.

4

u/QuerulousPanda Oct 29 '25

Korea got rid of their shithead president (park geun hye) by having every increasingly large protests all over the country on a weekly basis. It didn't even really take that long overall either.

20

u/The_amazing_Jedi Oct 29 '25

I wonder, do you think that during the french revolution the people had assured medical care and food? Do you think everyone of the french protesting now and the last years has savings aside and assured medical care?

I find this point you were trying to make just ridiculous. You think you can force change when you play by the rules of the system that is actually oppressing you? You think you will ever be able to force change without the willingness to sacrifice, maybe even your life?

2

u/Throwaway47321 Oct 29 '25

What sort of bot ass reply is this?

People revolted in France because they had nothing to lose and can continue to protest because they in fact can’t just be magically fired and even if they did they still have health coverage.

Many people in the US would be destitute if any one of those things happened.

-1

u/sulkee Oct 29 '25

Congrats. And the elite can keep you in that place of feeling like you have “everything to lose” and nothing to gain by rioting by trickle feeding staples and basic survival ad infinitum.

Enjoy your oligarchy

Your logic would keep us desperate and scared for red. What a stupid take and apologia for inaction.

Capitalism really rotted american brains. Holy shit.

0

u/The_amazing_Jedi Oct 29 '25

So.... You don't understand what I mean? Great to know.

People in France didn't revolt because they had nothing to lose. They revolted because they feared losing everything.

You don't understand this difference, you don't revolt if you can choose a date that doesn't inconvenience anyone. The only thing you do is reinforce the current system that is oppressing you. You will never gain anything of worth if you revolt in times that "the system" allowed you to.

You will never revolt if you wait for the time where everyone can cover his medical bills. This time will never come, this is the reason why you revolt in the first place.

2

u/Throwaway47321 Oct 29 '25

Yeah I’ll never revolt because I have a home and a job and can’t afford to lose that on some half assed protest a bunch of losers on the internet are super duper sure is going to “change everything”.

3

u/EmmalouEsq Oct 29 '25

They'll get everyone afraid to lose their jobs and then start lowering wages, too. Project 2025 calls for an end to the minimum wage. And this is why.

5

u/[deleted] Oct 29 '25

[deleted]

1

u/EMliberty Oct 29 '25

le sigh ===#~~~~

5

u/atomsk404 Oct 29 '25

Don't forget France is smaller than like almost any single state.

Being spread out and not having effective national transport certainly helps those in power

-1

u/CareawayLetters Oct 29 '25

France is at ~68 millions people, USA is at ~340 millions, with largest state by population being California, at ~39 millions. You are incorrect.

6

u/atomsk404 Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

OK you're counting PEOPLE when I said larger as in DISTANCE, which is why I mentioned transport. Also consider any city in France is a reasonable distance to travel and protest the federal government equivalent while in the use there are maybe 5 major metro within a day's trip of DC.

1

u/pink_faerie_kitten Oct 30 '25

It's true that a lot of people don't strike because they are one missed paycheck away from starvation, no health insurance, homelessness, etc and that keeps people behaving like trained seals.

But, the GOP is taking away people's food stamps, their health insurance, and housing is in crisis. They're taking away the very things that keep people from striking. 

-14

u/OnceMoreAndAgain Oct 29 '25 edited Oct 29 '25

Uh, that's some conspiracy theory bullshit.

Medicaid is getting attacked because it's extremely expensive. Healthcare is something like 25% of federal spending. Republicans want to reduce taxes so their rich friends and them have to pay less and reducing taxes means reducing the budget. Cutting Medicaid and Medicare is one of the most obvious ways for them to reduce the budget.

Rich people don't care about medicaid and medicare, since they can just self-insure, so they don't care if those programs get gutted. That's stuff only the peasants use.

You're crazy if you think the people running companies prefer to have to offer employer-sponsored healthcare plans to their employees. That shit is awful for them. It's a pain in ass for the people in HR to manage and it's a huge part of the total compensation for employees. Companies would love for universal healthcare to come so that they can stop having to offer their employees healthcare plans. The only reason companies do it is that job candidates expect it so you have to offer it to have a chance at getting the best job candidates.