Ditch the Rat-Race. We Were Losing, Anyway.
By: Meg Gio
Tags: Labor, Covid 19, Unions, Leisure, Health

Ditch the Rat-Race. We Were Losing, Anyway.

Free-time to care for ourselves and maintain healthy social relationships should be something we keep post-Pandemic.

The silver-lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that more people have finally had their eyes opened to the unjust, unsustainable way our society is structured. As individualistic we may be under Capitalism, the system doesn’t care about us as individuals. We are all but numbered workers, easily replaced or automated. The government doesn’t care whether we live or die, just as long as the wheel keeps turning. This was life pre-Pandemic, but the Coronavirus makes this pain-stakingly clear.

Though we can hardly call mandatory lock downs and forced unemployment “leisure” — it is a very stressful time and a lot of us are quite emotionally unavailable or just struggling to get food on the table — we are all finding ourselves with at least some spare time on our hands. Some have filled it productively — exercising daily, cooking proper meals, learning new languages. Some have transitioned to working from home while being a full-time teacher and/or caregiver. Others are finding it difficult to do anything other than sleep in until 2pm, binge-watch Netflix and play Animal Crossing.

There have been many takes on how to utilize our free time — from “how to stay productive during quarantine” to “stop trying to be productive” — but rarely do we talk about the nature of free time. It doesn’t matter what you do at your leisure, but it is important that you have it.

The fight for leisure

The way we have normalized the rat-race-style work ethic in the US is unsustainable. We’re overworked, burnt-out, anxious shells of what we’re supposed to be. This is part of the reason why so many of us are chafing under lock down. We don’t know how to sit still. We were never allowed to.

Millennials have been raising the point of a healthy work-life balance for a while now. Chronic stress from long-hours, pressures to advance, or just from making monthly rent is known to lead to a string of physical and mental health issues. We inherited an economy full of debt, stagnant wages, and outrageously high costs of living. What’s so wrong with asking for some more free time to take a load off or maintain relationships?

Being overworked by the system doesn’t affect just Millennials. Half the US workforce is made up of low-wage labor, with nearly two-thirds of low-wage workers being in their “prime working years” (ages 25–54). Another 13 percent of low-wage earners are ages 55–64. According to a 2019 Brookings Institute report, “Sixty-three percent of Latino or Hispanic workers and 54% of Black workers earn low wages, compared to 37% of white workers,” — and education and experience do not fully account for this racial disparity. Moreover, the low-wage labor force is disproportionally female: 49 percent of the female labor force earn low wages as compared to 39 percent of the male labor force.

And now these people — half the US population! — are being venerated as “heroes” as we finally recognize their work as essential to our everyday life. But how can we look these people in the eye and call them “heroes” with the same lips that say they are undeserving of a livable wage?

“Adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.68 (in 2016 dollars). Since it was last raised in 2009, to the current $7.25 per hour, the federal minimum has lost about 9.6% of its purchasing power to inflation. Back in 2015, The Economist estimated that, given how rich the U.S. is and the pattern among other advanced economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “one would expect America … to pay a minimum wage around $12 an hour.” (Pew Research, 2017)

According to a UC Berkeley study, more than half of fast-food workers in the US are enrolled in one or more public programs, since their wages do not meet their basic needs. Minimum wage is meant to be a living wage, but today, “full-time employees earning the federal minimum annually pocket just $15,080, placing them well below the $23,850 poverty line — even for families of two.”

Conditions under capitalism limit human flourishing. The cult of excellency and constant career ladder climbing as forms of internal validation mean that if we’re not working toward something then, well, we’re just worthless. It literally does not matter how hard we work; if we’re still struggling, rugged individualism tells us that it’s our fault.

It’s a Catch-22.