trying to find different jobs for those people is an important thing to do, since there’s also a good chance they’d rather not do that if they had better options. For example, iirc ptsd rates are high among slaughterhouse workers.

Which will be difficult since they tend by nature to be the only available work far out in the middle of nowhere. Rural areas are highly resistant to urbanization and in my experience their council members are openly hostile even as their town is visibly breathing its last. I believe you're also right about the PTSD, I'd forgotten about it.

Appreciate the link, I'm..you know. Overall dumb about these things. And also shocked to find the amount they're asking for one single lobbyist — which I think would feel exorbitant to most — is lower midtier for their average salary. I don't really know what I expected.

[–] oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yep, and this is where we start getting to the limits of my knowledge and the weeds of politics. Generally speaking i think as a species we have a lot of jobs that don't need to exist or shouldn't exist, and a lot of people who would be left in poverty without them (and many who already are in poverty simply because there are more people than profitable things to do). I think there has got to be some way of meeting everyone's basic needs without a pretty binary choice of working a traditional job or living in poverty, but exactly what that looks like idk. I have some ideas, but they're probably not worth getting into here/now

No problem, and i wouldn't say you're dumb about these things. More accepting of injustice than i'd like maybe, but not dumb. I couldn't find those numbers on their site, how much is it?

[–] Nepenthe@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Universal basic income, basically, yes. Which would ideally revolutionize a lot, so while I'm drooling over the idea in a perfect world, I'm also banking on something about it being horribly twisted before they ever consent to do something close to that. They'd have more money to put back into the economy than they are, but people scrambling in poverty don't have the energy to take an active interest in the doings of the elite.

Their site lists:

For every 50 Champions contributing $200/month each, AFA will hire one more DC advocate!

So $120k per year. Googling the current salary of a DC lobbyist gets me anywhere from $56k - $210K. Should have just done that instead, huh. Getting into political arguments with strangers could have been a paid gig.