Yeah, wages should have gone up. That was the whole idea - revitalize the working class by making jobs more dear. They'd be forced into paying more. But now we see that that was never the plan, capital is just going to use its power to nullify the result. The people are really screwed. They used electoralism in 2016 to vote for their interests, and in 2019 they even voted Tory as Labour were dead-set against Brexit and at any rate abandoned the working class in favor of sneering at them. And this is what we get: we want foreigners to do the work for cheap!

I’m really not seeing what advantage all this whining is giving to capitalists

I think it's a knee-jerk "a bad thing is happening to us, the most important people, so obviously people care." Or maybe it's supposed to suggest that we should cut social programs so people get back to work. I don't think it's some cunning propaganda plan.

The biggest thing a labor shortage means is more leverage for strikes, so if they knew what was good for them, they'd cover it up. But capitalism isn't some giant conspiracy of competent people making competent plans to oppress us, it's just a weird system of power distribution that favors whichever organizations make the line go up.

Reactionaries:

"Government stop those icky browns from asking to not get killed! If they don't get killed that goes my interest because they'll want to oppress me as revenge!"

"We need a new COINTELPRO to slander feminism, if the gender pay gap is closed that will go against my interest because that MUST mean I'll make less!"

"What do you mean that porky would rather have us all work for free if he could get away with it? Why are you so CYNICAL!? Tsk tsk, mistrust everywhere..."

In the case of the UK they're manufacturing consent to re-allow worker migration.

They need to do this because the reason the northern British working class voted for this was immigration, specifically economic immigration. They wanted Brexit because they CORRECTLY recognise that economic migration is suppressing wages. Entire factories were filled with Polish workers off the boat from EU. I have seen them.

Now, we can argue about how that's exploitation of the worker blah blah blah. The British worker sees it however and sees the solution as "let's stop the migration then, then the bosses will be forced to get the workers here at the rates the British workers want".

That's not how it works though and of course they won't raise rates. Some of the factories probably can't even justify it.

The British worker needs to learn this lesson but it's incredibly hard to teach it to them, they don't want to hear that the answer is to fight the bosses, they want the answer to be halting the migration. When the tories betray them and allow the migration the result is going to be that many go even further right. And a segment of the bourgeoisie are completely ok with that, they want fascism. The left is dangerous right now and they're terrified of the young waves and ongoing radicalisation that is happening. They feel a need for a fascist cleanse.

A few possible advantages for porky:

• Getting rid of those pesky health and safety rules.
• Gutting the social safety net, thereby increasing their leverage over workers
• Getting access to new easily exploitable sources of labor, like immigrants on short-term visas or prison labour.
• Getting consumers to accept worse service and higher prices.

I think what I was trying to say was that economic markers such as job vacancies are still within the realm of :porky-happy: thought.

I might have gone too far with my skepticism. I’d say we should be disdainful of claims made by boujie media — they misrepresent things all the time — and I enjoy ridiculing them.

Gen 4 remakes were popular, and then were met with a lot of backlash initially when Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were announced.