'I'm only not paying my bills because employers aren't paying me'

[Lanark2]

Am I being unreasonable to think 'why should I pay my bills to you, the employers of the world, when you aren't paying the employees of the world enough to pay their bills?

Its gets me so annoyed..the ONLY reason I am not paying my bills is because I don't have enough money. The reason I don't have enough money is I'm not paid enough, the reason I'm not paid enough is because we all used to borrow.. BECAUSE WE WERENT PAID ENOUGH .. And the only reasons employers could pay not enough was because we have been trained not to argue, with them, then borrow... Now it's all not working (again) why should I pay my bills...

Can't I just forward them to my crappy employers??

...if people don't pay their bills then the businesses don't have money to pay their employees... I don't think you've thought this through. It's a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Are you an anarchist at heart?

It is all a bit of a con though isn't it? I mean, you in the words of Camoron 'do the right thing' by working. But all you're doing is working in order to hand your wages over to people for essentials at a price that you cannot negotiate. If you don't do this, you go hungry, or cold, or become homeless. So you do it. But the very people charging you for your life essentials are part of the same class of people who ensure that your wages that you get for providing those essentials are kept low in order that they can become obscenely wealthy through you doing the work you do, in order that they can charge you and others like you, in order that etc etc and so it goes round again in the same circle.

People aren't paying their bills anyway..

*YANBU. Unfortunately that's how capitalism works - pay people as little as you can for their labour to make maximum profit from their labour and charge people as much as you can to get maximum profit the other end.

This is why Ford was revolutionary when it paid employees more because it recognised that it needed people to be able to afford its cars. If those employees spent more, other businesses could hire more staff, and more people could afford their cars. Doesn't happen that why any more, it's squeeze as much as you can then sit on your cash reserves while everybody suffers.*

Well said. Greed, fear, or selfishness, or all three?

Businesses don't work to a polite shoestring and pay workers more if they make more money! Jeez! They pay themselves and shareholders...they don't have to do that! They also hide their debts, and don't pay their bills.. So why do we help them?

Lanark, suppose you bought an electricity meter card (so paid for your electric up front) and then the elec co cut you off anyway "playing the system" - that is plainly unfair. Now say you use electricity and then receive your monthly or quarterly bill and decide not to pay it because you're "playing the system". That's clearly also unfair and not clever.

You use goods and services, you pay for them. It's not your employer's responsibility.

The co-operative and co-owned business sector is expected to grow Lanark. Maybe the answer lies in that direction?

But why is it unfair?

To whom?..

Is it just a 'rule' and whose rule is it that it's unfair? Surely having no electricity will impact on health which will impact on productivity which will impact negatively on business. Isn't it pro business to have no bills and a low wage?

It is unfair to the people working at the electricity company for a start.

You know the ones that go to work on Christmas Day to generate electricity so we can sit at home stuffing our faces and drinking with our friends and family.

If you don't pay their employer, then some of them could lose their jobs.

I like the sound of your Utopian world where everything everyone could ever want is provided for free. How does it all work exactly?

How does it all work exactly?

As things go, it would probably 'all work' a little better than the system we have in place at the moment, where a tiny oligarchical cohort control the world's resources to an unfeasibly unjustified extent, while the majority live on less than £2 a day, where children starve to death, die from unsafe drinking water, are forced and trafficked into prostitution, where millions die every year from preventable diseases or lack of a £4 mosquito net, and where even in the richest countries there are thousands of people including working people reliant on food banks.

The thing that weird me out is that for example, a Starbucks needs ten staff to take £10,000 - £20,000 on a Saturday. Pays them £500 collectively. If they don't work, Starbucks loses £10,000 daily, so their need for them working is much higher than £500.. But the collective market pretends that the negotiation point is much lower..because they are benchmarking against benefits instead..and we let them.. Even though overall productivity would be higher at a point where people could pay bills and manage their lifestyles to be productive... So where is the business sense in having wages too low for a poor person to pay all the people mandated to take their money away..

But Barbaraofseville.. The people and energy collecting bills that people can't afford to pay and the damage to those people's productivity of poverty is damaging overall anyway...

Actually though, in your version, people don't have electricity because they can't afford it, so they don't use it so electricity company has no income from those people anyway..do you think the employees win then?

How does it all work exactly?

it would only work if everyone had the same attitude but unfortunately not everyone does - some people want everything for nothing and others want more than everyone else...

I must be a thick cunt because it just sounds like a way to fuck over small businesses and sole traders.

Its like if you are poor and have £50 the electricity wants £50, the council wants £50, the supermarket wants £50 and they are all screaming at the poor person for not paying them without realising its impossible... Some of you are piling in with all those screaming but it doesn't increase the £50.but why is it the poor person's fault, that those three can't see each other?

So elegantly do you agree that smaller gets screwed, or are you advocating only not paying big organisations?

If you don't like the way society is set up, get on the board of a company or become an MP or write a seminal book that influences thought, or set up the new John Lewis or something. And change it.

Just moaning on here is less than helpful. You have demonstrated a really simplistic understanding of what overheads are involved in running a business and what happens to the money it generates. Most large companies are public in one way or another, and that means your pension fund probably holds shares and relies on those profits you are so dismissive of, or the local authority has indirect investments in them, or the government is investing money in different pots that link to these businesses. We are all interlinked.

I went to see the Big Short the other day and I was put in mind of something super investor Michael Burry said. Basically he invests in things to do with water. Not buying up water rights, as that would be bad for society and the globe. He invests in technologies that involve growing food in areas with lots of water, to be transported to areas with very little water, as that is more efficient than transporting the water itself, or transporting populations. He makes a LOT of money doing that. But it is also a very intelligent way of dealing with a looming globalised food security problem. So as far as I am concerned he can make all the money he wants if it means people a) have fuller bellies where this matters, and b) have fewer wars over water rights.

Go figure.

I hear you, OP. It's a fucked up system. And the worst thing is we've been conditioned to think that it's individuals who are at fault, not the system.

And in that example also why don't each of them say 'you can do £50 of work for me instead.. But it would need to be £150 of work in the time needed..for us, who provide food clothes and shelter at the minimum, to get our money from your labour ' .. Currently the banks rub their hands at this stupid game stuffing tenners in pockets, then when they are used to pay someone, demanding £15 back for each... But there is still only £50...its mental

Lanark, on a less censorious note, is there any way you could generate a better level of income or restructure debt repayments so you felt you have more control over life, more agency?

The water narrative is bollocks.

Interesting that you completely ignored my post Lanark