If the average white house intern is as much of a ghoul as I’m imagining maybe they should just be unpaid interns forever

  • Sea_Gull [they/them]
    ·
    2 years ago

    "Minimum wage for me, but not for thee,"

    -Lanyard bros, probably.

    Seriously though, what a damning look into how fucked up the US is? You can live next door to power and still they will not pay you.

    A part of me hopes against reality that they won't kick out the ladder once they get theirs and that it'll start a conversation about unpaid labor.

    • Quimby [any, any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      eh. the people doing this stuff don't need money. minimum wage, unpaid, $20 an hour... it makes no difference to the cohort that in the circles of power.

      also, while they are closely related under capitalism, power does have value independent of money. by that I mean that my material conditions, for example, benefit disproportionately from the family power I was born into compared to the amount of money I have. it's weird and tough to explain. like, there's no logical reason that connections would put food on the table, but it somehow sort of does.

      To be clear, all workers should be paid fairly, on principle. I'm just not losing sleep over White House interns, and they aren't losing sleep themselves.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      They don't pay you because it means that only people who can afford to work without being paid can do the job, reinforcing class and concentrating power in the upper classes.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Cost of Living in DC has gotten so high and the demand for labor has grown so intense that I suspect they can't afford to do this anymore.

        Why the fuck would I want to be a bus-boy at some White House dinner with a bunch of has-beens and never-weres when I can land a job at Amazon or Exxon or Tesla and make six-figures walking in the door? Live like a broke college kid for another four years or jump-start my career in a bureaucracy with some actual fucking clout... hmm....