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No, you have not been a slave. Slaves did not have the option to stay at home and get fired. They were not getting paid.

You just had a shitty job at a warehouse.

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That's a pretty poor argument against the concept of "wage slavery", and I'm saying that as someone who is skeptical of the concept. You could educate yourself on the subject before publicly opining on it (it's best practice to first understand the best arguments in favor of a position before formulating a counterargument). Even just reading the Wikipedia article would be a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

The term "wage slave" is fairly well understood to not be literal. So your one line dismissal of this article (which has been posted before) is obtuse.

Perhaps the term "slave" shouldn't be used at all in this context. Unless that term is trying to be purposely inflammatory.

Or perhaps you should learn about the definition of the term "wage slave"?

So you are saying they use the word "slave", but it has nothing to do with the literal meaning? If not, why not use another word?

If we got upset over every non-literal use of a word, we wouldn't be able to use the word "literally" either[1].

[1]: http://xkcd.com/1108/

uhh..ok. So computer means sky now. Internet means cat.

Didn't you know?

Gay meant happy, queer was unusual, and liberal was generous.

The 'computer' must be high and clear, no matter how far away it is.

"computer" originally meant "a person who performs mathematical calculations".

The meaning of the idiom is related to but not the same as the literal meaning. This is normal for language.

If you can stay at home and get in more debt, or work and have less debt (but still lose money month-on-month) does that make you a slave? Does it make you enslaved to your debt?

What if the wage earns you only enough to live on? Some slaves were provided with sustenance and not much else. What's the difference?

The fact that you have to work in order to be able to live doesn't mean that you're a slave. You might as well say that "life is slavery".

This is all quite insulting to the plights of people who were slaves throughout history, and those who still are slaves today. Please don't equate the first-world gripes of people who are unprecedentedly well-off to actual slavery.

This is why I criticize using the term "wage slave". People actually think the lives of people who literally didn't have any human rights and were bought and sold as property are comparable to people who work under poor conditions.

The author mentions that she earned $60 a day after taxes.

> This is why I criticize using the term "wage slave".

But "slave" != "wage slave", as explained in the Wikipedia article linked above.

> But "slave" != "wage slave"

Exactly my point.

You have no point. The term wage slave has been around since the industrial revolution and has a very well understood meaning.

> What if the wage earns you only enough to live on? Some slaves were provided with sustenance and not much else. What's the difference?

Are you kidding?

Slaves are owned, like property (in fact that is the definition of slavery). That's a huge difference.

I owe my soul to the company store.

How do you advance to something more with no time to learn anything new? With no money to gain transferable skills? Continuously working 10+ hour days with no chance for advancement, where your employer could care less about your well being just to make enough to survive is in my opinion slavery.

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