This is a 22-minute primer on just how long this exact phrase has been used in the U.S., as well as government actions (some might call it collusion) taken to put the thumb on the scales in favour of corporate greed.

This line was being used in the fucking 19th century.

And, bluntly, I don’t want to work anymore. Between the hell of job searches with now thousands of applicants for positions that pay a living wage and the standard of 0% raises, forcing a job hop (that’s nigh impossible to land) just to keep up holds zero appeal.

In the early aughts, copyeditors with 20 years of experience at metros were making an inflation-adjusted $140K in 2026 dollars. Now those jobs simply don’t exist or pay $40K, and the competition includes people with master’s degrees.

I loved my job when it allowed for dinners out with friends or my current partner a couple of times a week, a vacation or two a year, and layoffs not coming every six months. I spent nearly three years living in a van because it got to the point of rent or food: pick one.

Add in the ATS bullshit, and I’d surmise that nobody wants to look for work anymore. That much has changed – given that, time was, COLA raises and promotions were standard to retain valuable workers – but capital’s greed hasn’t.

It’s not that nobody wants to work anymore. The sentence actually continues “for these wages and under these conditions.”

Oh, and strike “anymore.” This is a long and storied trope going back more than 100 years that gets trotted out whenever too few ungrateful people accept poverty wages.