We need to get back to being human beings and human doings

  • Burray_Mookchin@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Yes we have a 40 hour work week (germany). Standard working hours are 8.5 hours a day, which includes 8 hours of paid work and a mandatory 30 minute unpaid break (So it’s really a 42,5h week). I have never heard of a 2 hour lunch ever from anyone I know that works a regular job. On the contrary, many people simply work through their 30 minute break (Which is against the law but it can be difficult to enforce and you get singled out and bullied by management very quickly if you start acting up about it in many low income jobs)

    Housing prices have been skyrocketing for decades and many people are struggling to pay for rent and groceries because wages have been stagnating when adjusted for cost of living at the same time. The welfare state has been and continues to be gutted in most parts of europe under the guise of saving money for war efforts or the covid crisis or climate change or whatever issue is available to justify it in the current moment.

    Police are increasingly militarized and overly aggressive although they kill less people (Unjust killings are still happening all the time though).

    Censorship is also ever increasing. For example targeting all shades of the “Pro-Palestinian” political movements, or incidents where people get their house raided etc. for posting unfavorable remarks about politicians on the internet. There are also incidents of courts making overly harsh judgements to create examples out of cases against leftist lawbreakers to send a signal to the populous.

    It’s the same shit over here, just slightly milder. As a poor person in europe these posts read like either pure propaganda or uneducated statements made by comfortably wealthy european workers and small business owners or american tourists. I think it’s sad that being slightly better than the USA seems to be enough for so many people to proudly support all the deplorable shit that is happening in their own home countries.

    • Jiral@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      It is a lot milder in key aspects. In Germany it is way less common that people go bankrupt over health issues. People can usually stay home when sick, paid, and those days aren’t deducted from holidays either or similar nonsense. Of course there are problems and things are moving rather in the wrong direction but things are not almost the same (“slightly better”). If you think the social system is almost as bad in Germany I doubt you have experienced how things are for the poor in the US. It is not just a little bit worse. And lets not even start about the privatised prison system and laws designed to fill those privatised prisons instead of reducing crime. Then there are laws deliberately designed to prevent poor people from voting etc.