this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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“There’s just a lot of people in this country that don’t want to work, period,” Rep. Virginia Foxx said during a hearing about people who work too much.

House Republicans held a hearing Wednesday throwing cold water on President Joe Biden’s plan to give more workers overtime protections.

Even though the hearing was about employees who work long hours, the GOP chair of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce took a moment to argue that too many Americans don’t want to work at all.

“There’s just a lot of people in this country that don’t want to work, period … and want other people to take care of them,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.).

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[–] [email protected] 202 points 8 months ago (5 children)

This woman has worked in politics for nearly 30 years. She has no idea what work even is anymore.

[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but see: she worked incredibly hard to

  • defeat hate crimes prevention legislation
  • prevent extending disaster aid to Kathrina victims
  • prevent the expansion of the Voting Rights Act
  • prevent the Armenian genocide from being declared a "genocide"

and she firmly stood her ground in telling everyone that Obamacare was a danger to the nation bigger than any terrorist attack on America ever could be.

That's a lot of hard work, you see?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

She's working hard to please her corporate masters. Dance, monkey, dance!

[–] [email protected] 68 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It’s “showing up for a paycheck”

Just another reason to add term limits.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Give politicians minimum wage, the worst publicly available healthcare plan, dorm style living, prison food and 40hrs of mandatory office time and no overtime for floor time and they will all start singing a different tune.

They need to really walk in someone else's shoes so they understand what's really wrong in America.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Tie their pay to the median income for their district. Give them a direct incentive to increase the quality of life for the people they represent.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (2 children)

They don't make their money in salary. They make their money in investments, kickbacks, and donations.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also, start prosecuting trading on insider knowledge on both sides of the aisle.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

I mean, we would have to start by making it illegal.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Little column a, little column b. Just cuz they make more money from being a shill doesn't mean their salary is peanuts. Anyway, as long as we're gonna crack down on politicians, give them the same rules as athletes in the NCAA: can't make money off your position or image or else you're out. Fire anyone who gets money from anything other than their salary or mowing the lawn.

Yes, tie their salary to the median income of their district and tie their insurance to what's offered in their district. Finally, have them fined student loans and medical bills that match the averages of their district. Same people who say no free lunch? Guess what, pay for all of your own meals, no gifts, no per diem, get our politicians off welfare. Bootstraps and all that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It's not that their salary is peanuts, it's that their salary is peanuts compared to what they make on the side. More than half of them are millionaires, and none of them got that way on a government salary.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago

Somebody give the Grim Reaper another roll of quarters for the claw machine. Why stop at just Kissinger?

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 8 months ago

She lives in a gerrymandered district that not only means she barely has to campaign or work, her district strategically cuts chunks out of two very blue NC cities.

Fuck her lazy incompetent ass and everything she stands for.

Source: my vote is specifically suppressed by her district.

[–] [email protected] 76 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (3 children)

perhaps it is so common because it's true. I know I don’t want to work. And I even like my job and get paid plenty. I just have things I would rather do with the time, and noone wants to pay me for those.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

We aren't supposed to be working. Seriously. Members of hunter gathered tribes put in about 15 hours per week and a medieval serf worked about ⅔ of the year. Our lives are supposed to be filled with leisure time. We are our neurobiology evolved around having fun and doing the minimum necessary for the survival of our community. We aren't supposed to be spending huge swaths of our life toiling to make someone else rich so they can have 100% leisure time. We aren't supposed to live in persistent existential dread because we are one sniffle or broken bone away from homelessness. We aren't built for our world.

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 8 months ago (1 children)

These fuckers will make up anything with no data to back it up to whine about “laziness” when nothing short of abject slavery is what they want— and even then, they’d still complain.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago

"They sure don't make slaves like they used to! Last batch of imports were dead on arrival from UPS. And the ones that we DO have want food. Like EVERY. DAY. I gave them food last Christmas, which I don't REALLY have to do, mind you, but I'm all Christian Holy and shit, and they still just bitch and whine that they need food daily. Bunch of entitled freeloaders."

"But Bob, you lost you last batch due to dehydration. You need to give them water every day, too."

"There is a MOTHERFUCKING OCEAN only a TWO HOUR DRIVE from here. They have EIGHT HOURS A DAY they don't work for me, but no, they just lie around napping."

"But they are chained up and can't drive. Besides, once the flies are living in their wounds, that isn't napping anymore."

"You sound like one of them liberals! Always spending brain power on an excuse instead of good, hard work."

[–] [email protected] 67 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Don't we have a record number of people in the workforce and a really low unemployment rate?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Not to mention a lot of people with 2-3 jobs because pay is low.

Unemployment may be low, but a lot of those jobs are minimum wage and/or part time.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but we all hate our jobs so “no one wants work work” is accurate. We do it, but we wish we didn’t have to.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Anytime anyone says "Nobody wants to work anymore!" I always want to say, "Anymore? Nobody's ever wanted to work. If people could just get paychecks and not work, the vast majority would definitely choose that over working. Congratulations on figuring out what everyone else has known since the invention of economics."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

That's not entirely true. Work that's fulfilling is something I want to do, and I would be willing to bet most people feel the same way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Yes, but probably not as much as you work now, and definitely not overtime until burnout.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 8 months ago

"OK Boomer" is literally designed for this.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (1 children)

She is the advocate of HR 1313. The bill that would allow insurance companies to charge more money to people based on results of genetic tests.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (1 children)

No shit, that's why you have to pay them money to do it. An aversion to unnecessary toil is not a moral failing.
Sounds like this elderly woman is still pushing the American dream and welfare queen myths, echoes from political talking points of old.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Yeah she pushing them because they still work on her dumb fuck boomer constituents.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Surely this isn’t the same lawmakers that make 3x more money than the average worker while working 50% fewer days than the rest of the country….

And that doesn’t even take into account their “working days” where they do fucking nothing of value because they have interns and staff that actually do the work for them.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I hope she gets that new respiratory thing going around. Fuck her and the horse that rode her in.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

I'd feel bad for the virus

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Just how much vacation time do lawmakers get?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago

Says the bitch who tried to give herself a vacation in the form of a government shut down. Fuck alllll the way off

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Can we collectively agree that the proper response to "nobody wants to work anymore" is "no shit" or "nobody ever did"?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

People like Rep Foxx, they've got this image of an America gone by in their heads, of a nation made of calloused hands and workman's coveralls, of nails and kneecaps, of fists and hammers, not necessarily hard-hearted, but with their egos safely tucked away behind the 6 inches of emotional boiler plate needed to sally the fuck forth into the wild blue bitchfest that is life.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Or that the vast majority of jobs that can be had are really not making the world any better. Like, we might actually have more resources as a collective species if nobody drove to taco bell or pac-sun anymore for any reason.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago

Where is the data?

I don't care about how you feel.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

It's always these out of touch assholes that claim people are lazy and don't want to work. Naw fuck you. People want to get paid for their work you gasbag.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Boooo....oh shut up. Knew she looked familiar.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

Obama tried to do a similar move through an executive order near the end of his second term. My job at the time scrambled to give me a raise just above the proposed threshold. I declined and said I'll take the time and a half. Ibwas routinely working 60+ hour weeks at that time. Trump repealed that order early in his term, and I didn't get that raise. I left that job a few months later.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Why is politician even a career? It should be the lowest paying job.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (5 children)

It shouldn't be a career, but it should also be paid relatively well.

See, if you take away the pay, then only the very rich could ever afford to be politicians, and the very rich are not the sort of people you want in charge of a country...

Case in point, this very article.

Also, when you don't pay politicians, you end up paying them anyway through outright corruption. Which is already a problem, don't make it worse.

The better solution is a consecutive term limit. You can be elected as many times as you can pull it off, just not in a row. You have to go spend a term in your home district every other term or so. So two on, one off.

As a bonus, this two on, one off setup would result in a lot of turnover without forcing every single person in congress to learn how to be in congress every term.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

If you don't pay them well, only the wealthy can afford it.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Great.....and what exactly does that have to do with people working overtime and not getting paid for it?

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

People: Work overtime. Republicans: NOBODY WANTS TO WORK!!

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

Imagine taking 100k moneys to an investor. A year later you check in and they say "Great news, you have 100k moneys as of Jan 1st." You tell that person to piss off and you take your money elsewhere. They lament, "No one wants to invest anymore!"

If it doesn't pay to work, why be miserable AND poor? The next time you hear someone say no one wants to work just tell them to shut the fuck up.

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