Coombs Or, capital has always required violent resistance to justify its violent oppression.

I've seen far too many peaceful protests crushed by violent oppression to agree with that.

Coombs You know how bourgeois this sounds, right? You don't get these kinds of benefits when you're poor.

There are loads of working class people who get Christmas holidays. Arguing they are the bourgeoisie just seems like you don't want workers to have a holidays, which I know you don't actually believe. Getting these small concessions doesn't make someone bourgeois.

        Qwiss There are loads of working class people who get Christmas holidays.

        2 weeks off is crazy long. No poor person can afford that, not one, unless the plan is to stay poor. My father often worked part of Christmas day and got the afternoon off. Countless billions do not get this benefit, even those who are paid decent/living wages. I think there is a disconnect in our experience and understanding. You're talking about some employer who gives time off, but many people don't even have an employer to ask for such a thing. When you're earnings are different every day because you're hustling one gig to the next, there is no time off. Just time you don't get paid for the time you don't work.

        Getting a paid, genuine, 2 weeks of actual vacation is not normal in my experience. But that's not the bougie part. I think it sounds bougie to use the fact that someone gets that benefit as a great victory when it seems so inaccessible to so many. 2 weeks off at Christmas would be great, but I don't know any poor or working class person who can afford it. Maybe that's what makes one poor or working class...

            Coombs that's because you live in a country with virtually no workers rights. 2 weeks is loads but most workers not in the service industry will get a week off here. It comes out of annual leave but at least that leaves there and it was won through industrial action.

            Your argument is contradictory anyway. You say it's not enough, which I agree with, but you also say it's bourgie to have it. If we want more we have to keep fighting.

            If I've a cynical view on this murder it's that it's too random and isolated. It'll achieve nothing because of that. I won't be feeling any sympathy for Thompson though. If there was a hell he'd surely be burning now.

              Coombs think you and the others main point of disconnect is that working in the US is extremely different to working in the UK when it comes to workers rights. Unless you're one of those people who do not have the right to work because you've not got a NI Number then you'll be either entitled to time off during Christmas or extra pay for working during that period.

              The US life looks crazy tough on workers for me, and people in general. Yeah you might ha e more opportunities but in terms of social services and support it's like two different planets. I'm still shocked that a person can get attacked and need emergency attention and has to end up paying for the ambulance and hospital treatment and be forced into huge debt unless they have insurance in the US.

                Coombs 2 weeks off is crazy long.

                To put all this in context before we get too far arguing the toss on this specific detail, I'm currently contracting to a government department that has a mandatory paid 1 week Christmas shutdown for all its permanent staff: this is leave that was negotiated by the union in the workplace agreement. The arrangement suits this department because it's an industry regulator that goes into caretaker mode during the festive season.

                Some but not all staff will choose to take 2–3 January as leave as well, so then they're off from 22 December to 3 Jan.

                Barring special circumstances, permanent salaried employees in Australia receive 4 weeks of paid leave per annum, plus public holidays, so the 7 "business days" taken as leave in this period are only about a third of the standard entitlement.

                I'll actually be working sometimes during the Christmas period, but that's because I'm an independent who negotiates every day of leave I take, and I owe some work to two of my other clients.

                Obviously I'm discussing premises of industrial relations and employment conditions that are specific to one country. I'm aware things are in many ways worse in the United States. Next try asking a shopgirl in Hanoi how often she gets a holiday.

                The point is that everywhere you will find holders of capital extracting as much from workers as workers will allow, unevenly but unrelentingly.

                In Australia, a 1980s covenant of ur-neoliberal revisions to collective bargaining and union wage claims (known as The Accord and introduced by the then Labor government) sounded the death knell of militant trade unionism, even though the economic transformations of 1970s globalisation were already bringing it about.

                Since this period the various forms of precarious labour have steadily grown as a share of total labour, leading to today's situation where there are a lot of Australian workers who have to hold down multiple casual jobs to survive with housing very unaffordable to rent or buy.

                Thing is, calling this new precarity a result of the failures of the historical left gets it backwards: we only understand with certainty that this situation sucks because of what was achieved historically.

                It's not unusual for any worker here to be taking the next two weeks off. That's something the majority of the workforce will do.

                    Burnwinter Thing is, calling this new precarity a result of the failures of the historical left gets it backwards: we only understand with certainty that this situation sucks because of what was achieved historically.

                    Maybe. Maybe. But I remain unconvinced that we are doing anything but accept the terms of capital to win relatively minor concessions for a privileged few. I also remain unconvinced that life was so horrible before capitalism that its terms cannot be more systematically challenged. What bugs me is the idea that we should be grateful for a 40-hour work week because it could be worse, when it currently is so much worse for so many precisely because capitalists can afford us to have that 40-hour work week at the periphery's expense. That doesn't seem like a victory for the left, but for capital, or perhaps more precisely, the dynamics of an exploitative global labor market.

                        All businesses are obligated by law to provide 4 weeks of paid holiday here. Certainly nothing luxurious about it. If anything, many employees might be pressured into taking some of that time during Christmas since there's less work to do.

                        Burnwinter the balls to write this after long posts arguing that it’s fine to shoot people because life is unfair 😂

                        Online Lenins unite!

                          Weird interpretation of his posts, but I guess "so you're fine with mass-murderers being shot" doesn't have the same edge to it.

                          You’re right man, let’s shoot all the “mass-murderers”. And you get to decide who they are.

                          Let’s blame the unregulated crooks for doing what voters allow them to do. Let’s not blame over half the country that believes if you’re poor and can’t pay your medical bills, you deserve to die. Just ignore that issue and keep shooting CEOs, surely something will change.

                            Gurgen Let’s not blame over half the country that believes if you’re poor and can’t pay your medical bills, you deserve to die.

                            I'm a simple soul. If a big business has established practices that inflict a huge human cost for a huge profit, I first blame the people who own and run the business and are making all the money.

                            Deranged view, I know. Overcomplicating things the way I always do. Practically frothing at the mouth with my bloodthirsty online Leninism.

                              Seeing photos of this guy in court today and it all looks like one big bloody joke to him and his cult following.

                              We have people who now think these CEOs are like mass murderers so am guessing they think this fair game. People have lost their fucking minds.

                              The problem isn’t just the healthcare companies, it’s the laws that govern them. Successive American governments have allowed them to take the piss. You'd hope the new government will look into it but killing a ceo should not be the way to bring about change.

                              Do you think the people killed by UnitedHealthcare are morally defensible because the law allows them to kill people?

                              That the CEO is a mass murderer doesn't mean I think Luigi shouldn't be sentenced. I'm against death penalty.

                                It's a red herring whether what Mangione did (who as I've said previously seems to be politically incoherent) is "good" or "evil". You can't so easily extrapolate from such a judgement to a politics, even if because he's photogenic he's becoming a lightning rod for mass resentment of the health system.

                                Instead, it's more about how we choose to explain for ourselves why anyone would get upset about a CEO taking a bullet, supposing they then tacitly accept the same CEO's company denying its customers life-saving treatments at the highest rate in its industry and thereby hastening the deaths of thousands.

                                The sarcasm of "because life isn't fair" amounts to a reactionary doubling down on these failures. There's no utopianism when the US implementing similar systems to those which exist in most other OECD nations would be a big improvement.

                                  Burnwinter Instead, it's more about how we choose to explain for ourselves why anyone would get upset about a CEO taking a bullet, supposing they then tacitly accept the same CEO's company denying its customers life-saving treatments at the highest rate in its industry and thereby hastening the deaths of thousands.

                                  What? You are making an unnecessary leap here. It's not about that at all. Not even slightly.

                                  You can't say it's not about good and evil, and then play some kind of cosmic morality card.

                                  You were right the first time. It's about ethics, not universal truths. Frameworks for living together in our societies. Neither framework that the players in this particular melodrama suggest is particularly compelling to me.

                                      QuincyAbeyie Yes like @Gurgen says we should let you decide who we label as mass murderers now. Maybe we should go and shoot all the unethical pharmaceutical CEOs as well while we are at it.

                                          JazzG we should go and shoot all the unethical pharmaceutical CEOs as well while we are at it.

                                          Do it!

                                            The speculation and panic in this thread is still about the one CEO who got shot and whether that'll be repeated. It hasn't been though.

                                            But since we started discussing this news item hundreds if not thousands of questionable health insurance claim denials will already have been handed to patients with life-threatening illnesses in the United States.

                                            There is plenty of long-standing insider insight into the sector showing that its leaders and investors deny access to vital health care for profit with full knowledge of what they're doing.

                                            Coombs You were right the first time. It's about ethics, not universal truths. Frameworks for living together in our societies. Neither framework that the players in this particular melodrama suggest is particularly compelling to me.

                                            I agree, we wandered off into the type of polarised rhetoric that belongs to the powerless. It happens. Even if I reckon assassinating a string of CEOs could be justified, I don't imagine repeating Mangione's specific act would do anything good.

                                            Revisiting the politics of healthcare reform in the United States over the past week or two, I found the extreme degree of federal capture disturbing. I can't see the Democrats seeking a mandate for the proper changes at that level, seems to be the same story for many other policy areas.