What is a Wage Slave?

Hello fellow wage slave! Yeah, I’m talking to you. What, you don’t think that you are? Well, buddy, I have got news for you. You and I continue to particpate in the largest ponzi scheme in the world’s history. But hey, who the heck am I?

Well, I’m real person just like you who now “gets it”. The main difference with me is that I have chosen to identify what is causing my misery and doing something about it. My hopes are that you join me in the fight against wage slavery.

In the words of Norman Cousins:

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

Considering the alternatives like violence and a revolution, I prefer self-employment to being a slave. After all, you usually make a lot more when you work for yourself and have much more independence. But my real choice is comfortable and creative unemployment.

Let me explain.

Many people need to understand that that wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate.

I have chosen the path to explore and challenge the prevailing belief that a person’s worth and social contribution can and should be measured primarily by his or her income from paid work. I feel that this is the worlds biggest fallacy and lie.

All people should be able to refuse to work in any job they felt was wrong. They should not feel that they have to do what the have to do. I would like to see more people refuse to work for the man and educate themselves on ways to provide income and food for themselves in a way that they choose to. A world with  honourable and brave people who refuse to continue to feed this monstrous corporate culture.

First you need to understand exactly what is a wage slave. This is from Wikipedia:

Many people need to understand that that wage slavery refers to a situation where a person is dependent for a livelihood on the wages earned, especially if the dependency is total and immediate. The term is used to draw an analogy between slavery and some (or all) forms of wage labor. Some uses of the term may refer only to situations where workers are paid unreasonably low wages (e.g. sweatshops). More controversially, others equate it with a lack of workers’ self-management or point to similarities between owning and employing a person, and extend the term to cover a wide range of employment relationships in a hierarchical social environment with limited job-related choices (e.g. working for a boss under threat of starvation, poverty or social stigma).

Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted at least as early as Cicero. These comparisons were elaborated by subsequent thinkers, such as Proudhon and Marx, particularly with the advent of the industrial revolution. Before the American Civil War, Southern defenders of Negro slavery also invoked the concept of wage slavery to favorably compare the condition of their slaves to workers in the North.

The use of the term wage slave by labor organizations perhaps originates from the labor protests of the Lowell Mill Girls in 1836.The imagery of wage slavery was widely used by labor organizations during the mid-19th century to object to the lack of workers’ self-management. However, it was gradually replaced by the more pragmatic term “wage work” towards the end of the 19th century, as labor organizations shifted their focus to raising wages.

The term is now most often used by anti-capitalists (socialists, anarchists, and other groups) to express disapproval of a condition where a person feels compelled to work for a wage.

I was living a life of quiet desperation and like it says above, I felt compelled to work and my dependency for a wage was total and immediate. I was living paycheck to paycheck or as I would tell my wife, we lived 6 week months. It would take us 6 weeks to pay a months bills and that cycle always continued.

Daily, like you, I was chasing my tail in pursuit of a paycheck. I went from job to miserable job. Pretended to act like the glass was half full by listening to Anthony Robbins and chanting positive affirmations in the mirror. The optimism always seamed to wear off and the stench of reality was just sickening.

All this store bought positivity wasn’t working because I was lying to myself.  Shit, my whole working life was a big lie. The lie was me lying to myself that I likes it or had to do it.

My soul felt as if it was separated from my mind and body. My life was on mechanical auto pilot. Fueled by food, a little sleep, lost of driving in traffic, alcohol and whatever else I could numb my mind with.

I wasn’t being and individual but some type of mechanical human working, tax paying, permanently indebted, guilty son of a bitch. There was no individuality or creativity. I had turned into a mindless drone, driven by the almighty pursuit of paying my bills by trading my life for a wage.

I would complain that I never seemed to have the time for what’s really important to me, because my work took so much energy and focus out of me. I would plod along day to day; even dreading getting out of bed in the morning.

Then it hit me in June of 2007 when I did a Google search on wage slavery. I then studied the history of money and work. Within days it hit me. I DO NOT have to live my life this way!

I decided to learn some skills to pay the bills and to teach myself how to create income on the internet. My research, years of hard work and choice of work at home careers was spot on. Jack pot! More on that later

SlavetotheDollar.com is here to help inspire you to pursue greater fulfillment, to work from home and to help you figure out how to get out of the endless cycle of living paycheck to paycheck.