We’re hearing all kinds of explanations regarding the recent and ongoing labor shortage. To add to the confusion, I thought I would weave my own tale.

Born out of a system that just doesn’t work for everyone. I don’t buy that this generation just doesn’t want to work. At least, that’s the current scuttlebutt.

Add it up for yourself: the revolutionary thought that $15 per hour will solve all your financial woes. $15 dollars an hour, times 40, if you can get 40 hours, minus federal taxes, state taxes, social security, and any health care premiums you may have to pay, if even available.

Now, subtract from that the median price of rent in Galesburg, which according to the 2020 census was $650 and has certainly increased now. Or childcare. Minus water, electricity, and trash removal. You most likely need a car to get to work, and a minimal amount of insurance, and of course, gas and periodical repairs. Now, look what’s left.

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Welcome to the real world.

We are locked into a system that has very little room for escape. Oh, I can hear people crying, “Here we go again, more negativity.” Sorry, but I don’t buy that. There is nothing negative about speaking the truth.

Maybe today’s generation is beginning to realize the fundamental truth built into our economic system; that cheap labor is necessary for it to work. That’s capitalism. The Protestant Work Ethic helped keep us in check, but it no longer appears to be as relevant with the millennial generation.

We were under the belief that hard work could get us ahead, but that seldom came to light. To quote President Obama, “It is the labor movement that helped secure so such of what we take for granted today. The forty-hour work week, the minimum wage, family leave, health insurance, social security, Medicare, retirement plans. The cornerstone of middle-class security, all bear the union label.”

Now, we watch these things disappear as owners of businesses downsize our dreams of a middle-class life, calling that dream a detriment to their profit and the well-being of themselves and their shareholders.

People working together will be the only way to bring about economic justice. What can possibly be the reason why Amazon and Starbucks and Walmart do everything in their power to keep people working for low pay, by keeping them from organizing to create a more favorable life for themselves? They see their billions of dollars of profit being diminished by equity issues regarding their employees’.

High stock prices and obscene management salaries give them their power, which they extend to buying the favor of politicians. It’s a system they cloak in patriotism and democracy to keep us in check. Work hard, and one day you will be rewarded. But for many, that day never comes.

Noam Chomsky, noted linguist, social critic, and MIT Professor since 1976, said, “The fate of the minimum wage illustrates what has been happening. Through the periods of high and egalitarian growth in the 50s and 60s, the minimum wage-which sets a floor for other wages-tracked productivity. That ended with the onset of neoliberal doctrine. Since then, the minimum wage has stagnated (in real value). Had it continued as before, it would probably be close to $20 per hour. Today, it takes a political revolution to get it raised to $15.”

And you should have already figured out where $15 per hour will get you. So, I’m hoping this is where the younger generation is at: wondering just exactly how they will ever get ahead.

Or perhaps they are figuring out, maybe they are not supposed to get ahead. With social security in jeopardy and retirement plans for the most part gone, maybe they are beginning to understand that work will not get them away from a life of indenture.

Whatever their conclusion, it’s likely to get interesting.

Bruce Weik was a longtime columnist for The Zephyr and is co-creator of Many Paths Galesburg since 2019.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Many Paths: Labor’s untold story impacting people everywhere