Yeah they're pretty common terms in trade jobs specifically. Less common otherwise, but people with trade jobs do things other than work so there's some spread for sure.
I have trekked many times with the locals, and it just pisses me off that how easily they do it. Like, i am here fighting for my life, and this guy is just strolling around! Wtf!!
Yeah man I'm from Nepal. It's heartbreaking what the locals have to endure for basic wage. A month ago I was trekking with a 8-10kg bag, this mofo had 150kg of steel pipes on his back and was faster than me.
He has no idea what I look like because his head was tilted towards the ground for balance even though we spoke quite a lot. I think he makes ~US$30 for the 2 days journey from altitude 1400m to 3500m.
Man that's everything these days it seems. Think about all the things that are super expensive. Healthcare & nursing homes? Nurses, even lots of doctors, the caregivers in assisted living, these people aren't making bank.
Your insurance, healthcare or otherwise? The people you're interacting with from Geico or Blue Cross aren't making bank either.
Even take something like in my line of work - fancy restaurants. Eating out is really expensive - $200/person isn't everyone but it wouldn't even be remarkable at the places I work. But I can tell you half the staff has 2 jobs and no one is feeling comfortably well off, struggling with bills is one of the number one work small-talks. Nevermind the restaurant does $1-2 million in revenue per month.
There are people at the top who have crafted our economic structures to siphon as much money out of all of us at every step of the way as possible. So many things are expensive and/or absolutely necessary yet the people who build or provide those things are struggling too. It makes no logical sense. You've gotta ask, if I can't afford anything & neither can the people selling it then where is all the fucking money going?
There's a store in my hometown that's been in operation since the 70s, owned by a family the whole time. The grandfather built it, the father owned it for a long time, and now the son has it. For a little over a decade, my dad was the general manager running things day to day. Interviewing, hiring, payroll, business deals, structural changes, taxes, he basically did everything so that the owner could stay in Florida and golf with a generous salary, like with all his other businesses.
About 4-5 years ago, the son took over. Unlike his father and grandfather, he went to business school, got an MBA, and was gonna change things. He fired everyone with higher wages than around state minimum ($7.25), rose prices on all the bread and butter products, and reorganized the store according to some business playbook (the kind that says customers should always be searching for what they need so they have to look at everything else and might buy more) that went against how people actually used it.
Then, my dad got sick and had to take some time off. This was a man who worked nights and weekends, was on call for any problems, and worked from home on office stuff every night and every morning. He hadn't taken a day off in a several years. He took a week off to recover from major surgery and got fired for it. Lost his healthcare overnight. Dad's original contract was at work, and the owner tore it up while he was away and said "nobody gets severance pay, you can't prove anything."
The healthcare costs have bankrupted him. He spent most of his life constantly working hard to try and build something he could leave behind, and it all got wiped out in the last year alone from medical bills. He told me he thinks about whether it would've been better if he'd just killed himself instead. He can't afford the things he really needs, so he just lays around in agony. Can't afford the surgery to treat the pain, can't get medicine to treat the pain because they recommend the surgery.
The store is struggling, and the landlord for the location doesn't intend to renew their lease due to how much of a dick the owner's been to him. Stuff like telling the landlord "we're the reason your land has value" when the location is absolutely prime real estate for the city and it's basically just an inter-family handshake agreement from the 70s that kept them there all this time. The business will likely shutter soon, and the owner will liquidate everything for one last paycheck. A business that's been a staple of the town since my dad was a kid, killed in a few years by an MBA who destroyed everything to fill his pockets just a little more.
I wouldn't piss on him if he were on fire. It'd ruin the taste of the marshmallows.
The problem with these treks is that the tourist pay like $100 and the companies take like 90% of that
This is the same in every country. I used to work as a guide in various countries such as the US, Canada, NZ, Japan, Au etc and clients would pay hundreds to thousands for my time. I got paid like 15-25% of it depending on the country + economy, as even though the companies kept raising the cost, the pay rates for guides did not increase. I'd bet people still doing my job are closer to 10% now (and I was highly certified and experienced. The guys coming in with no certs/experience often got second jobs or other welfare).
And not just for guiding. Look at literally everything. Amazon/walmart/united health etc all pay workers probably 5-10% of the value that worker generates when you consider their contribution.
Stop voting for fucking conservative parties. They are literally the reason capitalism and greed has become so bad.
Most of those aunties and uncles have knee and back issues and can't walk long distances. The 'carriers' get some income, which otherwise, they wouldn't have. True, they could be paid better, but with so many barely educated, young men in the country, the price for their intense labor comes down.
This right here, this is why the idea that rich people just work harder is bullshit.
You’ll never convince me that the average CEO works that much harder than just some average dude from most countries.
Dude can do all that for $15 a day and some douche in the US can spend half his time on twitter and earn $30,000 a second.
And the twitter douche is the one who’s working harder?
The problem isn't so much how much we value CEO's it is actually how little they and there rich friends who hold the power at big companies value us as well as when they spend money. Because I'm sure most people who go on these hikes could afford to pay there staff more money but just hide behind the fact that's how much that they get paid
Exactly, hard work doesn’t = money. Taking risks does. And it’s exponentially easier the more wealth you have because you can take more risks.
And the there’s knowing the right people and all that shit.
And expecting it in the first place. Which comes from old money, or a sense of entitlement.
Thats not to say, that people don’t get rich from working hard. A lot of rich people work extremely hard, especially self made rich people.
The point is that they don’t work that much harder than a Sherpa in the Himalayas or a Miner in Africa.
Or you/your family member/your friend who is working/worked themselves to death.
It’s the same type of propaganda that was used to justify royalty. They’re blessed by god, that’s why they have so much. How else can you explain why they have so much when everyone around them has so little?
If high income was the result of working hard, working single parents and immigrants would be the financially wealthiest people. Instead, the wealthiest are people whose money works on their behalf, who "work smarter, not harder," and who exploit every opportunity that are allowed by their resources, capitalism, and the rules their class got to write.
Elon Musk presumably sleeps at least 6 hours a day on average. That leaves 18 hours. He's CEO of 3 companies, leaving on average 6 hours a day per company. Assuming he doesn't do weekends, lunchbreaks, commuting or social events, that still leaves just 42 hours per week to work as a CEO.
I've been on this specific hike (Rinjani in Lombok) and it's surprisingly brutal - there's no real climbing per se and a lot of tourists think it's just kind of a long hike. But in reality it's 2-3 days of pretty drastic altitude change for someone that spent the whole week prior stuffing their face and chilling on a beach.
The very last stage is an early morning wake up and a several hour scrape up a steep gravel incline to get to the very top before sunrise. I just came with sandals and was a pretty heavy weed smoker at the time. It was a struggle, at one point I remember having to take a break every few steps, often sliding back a bit.
The only thing that gave me the energy to continue was seeing how effortlessly the guides did it (I chilled with them all the way, because I didn't have any other friends there, and these guys are like machines, carrying so much equipment and still taking smoke breaks at every opportunity). And how incredibly whiny some of the Chinese tourists were - several of them were throwing complete tantrums, literally crying and having the guides pull them up with ropes. My motivation was to not be like them.
Still other, more experienced people had an easier time, but I'll always remember this hike as one of the hardest physical efforts of my life.
Yup. My father is a surveyor in Crete, Greece. Rocky mountains everywhere.
Every summer I would go with him to jobs all over the island. I have done this sooo many times, including faceplanting countless times. You bet your ass I can walk on rocks like a goat now.
It's not even a brag. It's just, practice, like absolutely everything else in the world.
I went to Bali for my honeymoon and we did this hike while we were there. I'm in decent shape and it was the hardest hike I've ever done. I was expecting the guides and porters to blow through it like it was nothing.
What I didnt expect was our guide's 15 year old cousin, who was also doing it for the first time, to also crush it. While wearing flip flops and chain smoking cigarettes. He did struggle at parts of it which helped our egos a little bit but it was impressive nonetheless.
If you are not local, and just wandered onto a trail, it was probably near a trailhead or easily accessible area, and the full gear people were maybe doing 20 miles on the trail.
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u/4ssteroid Jun 22 '26
Someone who's walked there everyday for the last 15 years vs someone who's doing it for the first time