Indentured Servitude

Want to know what modern indentured servitude is? You work 9.5 hours a day (2 for travel time), 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. That’s 2,740 hours, or 103 days per year you don’t get to be with your children as they grow up, spend time with your spouse, or enjoy life.

Now out of that 24 hour day you’ve just spent 40% at a job to just pull enough to eat, have a home, hopefully have chained healthcare, in other words just have basic human needs. 33% of the day for sleeping. That leaves 27% for family, personal care, do bills, etc.

But here’s the thing, that 30% sleeping and 27% for everything else is if you’re damn lucky. Because most people have part time jobs to just pay those bills and take care of their family. And even those who don’t spend it exhausted trying to maintain a semblance of living.

The exhaustion comes from fighting bill collectors, wading through medical bills, reading all the paperwork for your kids doctors and schools, taking the car for repair, fixing the house, taking care of elderly parents, and all the rest. For that we have “the weekend.”

Because during the week after 5:00 when you finally get home there’s dinner, trying to pay attention to your children and listen to your spouse because you do care but your brain is mush from the day and you’ve so much to do. If it’s winter it’s already dark so can’t do a thing.

Then comes the weekend. When you want to get to what you didn’t get to during the week, but now you really do have to get to the week’s bills and fix that broken thing but the kids want your attention, when did they get so big?, and your spouse needs help. And you’re done.

So that 27%, less than your job, less than you sleep, goes away in the blink of an eye. Your youthful existence comes down to this. Then you get old, get sick, get disabled. Your kids grow up. Your spouse grows old or sick. One of you dies. Most of your active life is at a job.

Yes, some of us have wonderful jobs we actually enjoy, but even those are stretched and struggling, and at some point even an enjoyable job can change if the wrong people get into place.

And what the Oligarchy doesn’t get or care about, is we the people don’t have and can’t afford personal accountants, servants, doctors on call, staff to shop for us, assistants to do the grunt work. Our one pathetic life is spent surviving, and one disaster can crash it down.

The sick part is that 40% of your working time, 50% of your pay is going to a system giving billionaires massive tax breaks, corporations (especially military) huge incentives and subsidies, wars of lies, and paying people who don’t represent you anymore to kiss lobbyists.

Our government has lied and divided us. It has used us and let hundreds of thousands suffer and die every year. It has left homeless thousands including Veterans. It has slaughtered Muslims, allowed Blacks to be demeaned and killed, and Native Americans marginalized. It has ignored the struggles of working people. All for their gain and power. And 40% of our lives help it.

We allow the falsehood of a “two party system” to keep us from change. Tens of millions have their eyes open and have abandoned voting no longer believing the lies. Dedicated Republicans and Democrats are now just cultists buying the propaganda. It won’t stop unless we ALL make it, and backing cults won’t do it. It has to end.

We have one life. That's it. Done. Over. Finished. And we're wasting it a huge, unrecoverable portion of it doing things for others that don't give a damn about us or don't even see us as anything but a commodity for their profit hoarding.