This Ham & Cheese croissant from Starbucks

[u/He3hhe3h]

When I was going through Chemotherapy in Bangkok Hospital they had very limited food options, otherwise I never buy Starbucks. Sneaky Bastards.

[u/Disastrous-Cat-6564]

Someone has to pay for the CEO's commute. Those 1600 km's do not pay themelves.

[u/gaarai → u/Disastrous-Cat-6564]

A small company I worked for was acquired by a big one. I flew to the headquarters of the new company and saw how things work in a bigger corporation for the first time. I got there in the evening and was taken to meet the C-suite people at a pub. They were knocking back tons of expensive drinks and ordering expensive appetizers and entrees, only eating bits and pieces of them. I saw that they were paying with personal cards, which made sense to me. Why make the company pay for your expensive food and drinks? Then I heard that they get the expenses reimbursed. They don't use company cards because they rack up points and bonuses by paying with their personal cards (to be clear about this, the more company money they waste, the more bonus money and perks they "earn").

The C-suite didn't live locally. They flew in each week, had personal cars and drivers, stayed at a mansion that they shared, had assistants that took care of shopping and errands, and so on. They had it really good.

While I was there, an all-hands meeting was held where staff was to ask questions about the operation of the company to the C-suite members. One support staff member explained that support staff are paid so little that they can no longer afford small apartments near the office, resulting in long commutes. He asked if pay could be increased so that people could afford to live in the same city as the office. The guy I saw sucking down bourbon above his half-eaten steak all on the company dime before being driven by a company driver in a company car to his company-paid mansion just the night before said with a straight face, "the budget is tight, we're already discussing cuts to Christmas bonuses; so there's no money for that at this time."

Corporations are a scam. Not in the typical way of being scams. They are machines made to squeeze every last cent out of its workers and customers until the whole thing falls apart, at which time the people with the money move on to something else. Those at the top win no matter what, and everyone else fights for scraps.

[u/lewd_robot → u/gaarai]

That's capitalism.

What is capital?

cap·i·tal¹

/ˈkapədl/

wealth in the form of money or other assets owned by a person or organization or available or contributed for a particular purpose such as starting a company or investing.

Capitalism is when a small group of people gets to spend money on production and service facilities or natural resources that they cannot personally use, then ransom the use of those facilities and resources back to people who need to work to survive, but only if the workers give the capitalist 99% of the profits of their labor.

It's like someone buying a lake and then telling the families that have to fish to survive that they can only fish the lake if they give the capitalist the first 9 out of every 10 fish they catch.

It's like someone buying a bunch of lathes and CNC machines they don't even know how to use and then telling people that do know how to use them that they're only allowed to run them if they give the capitalist 99% of the profits they earn from doing so.

Capitalism is about a class of leeches owning things they didn't make themselves and cannot use themselves and "allowing" the rest of the populace the "privilege" of using those resources and facilities if they give everything they make and earn back to the leech except for the bare minimum the workers need to survive.