Weaving Our Own Safety Nets

What does it mean to build our own safety nets? 

So that we don’t have to rely on a job for healthcare, retirement, and unemployment benefits

So that we instead can lean on each other better and have our own resources we can individually plug into in an instance of an emergency?

So that we can be financially free (and feel safe enough) to take bold risks?

I’m reading this book on mutualism which shares about what happened before late stage capitalism in the United States 

Where the voices of workers weren’t divided between low middle and upper middle classes 

AND

Where the voices of workers weren’t split across two political parties that mostly catered towards elite interests and separates workers voices by race and class (one side for working class republicans and one side for working class dems)

Unions existed because workers saw problems and built institutional safety nets as a response 

People would pay a fair amount of fees each month and the unions would pour back into people. 

The government absorbed many functions of these unions as a part of the new deal in the 30s by requiring employers to provide fringe benefits like health care, 401k, etc. to employees. 

After the new deal these benefits began to slowly lose steam for a few reasons like: 

• Democrats absorbing a political stance that appeased more wealthy people instead of the working class

• Republicans caring more about “the market” instead of workers interests 

• Racism in the creation of many New Deal policies that allowed for domestic and agricultural workers to be left out of these protections creating a class of “contract workers” that do not receive benefits (not so fun fact: if you fast forward to now where almost any type of job can be “freelance or contract” work, including things like nurses and lawyers AND this category makes up 40% of our work force)

As unions have pared down and people stopped collectively using their voices to create change together, we have begun to break apart and after many political battles, the investment in labor has dwindled to what we see now - an extreme wealth gap between those in the top .1% of income earners and everyone else AND the elimination of worker protections for mostly everyone else

This looks like patchy governmental interventions for low wage people, a privatized social good sector (aka non-profits) and millions of people still struggling financially to survive let alone feel free enough to make dramatic change 

(Side note - you don’t need a ton of money to transform your life positively by finding BETTER ways to work)

Division kills community and if you are not working with someone for a shared interest, like the working class used to - to some degree,  elitism and prestige can come at the cost of connection and depth. 

creating a world where we don't follow our own interests and impulses because we are too busy following someone else's expectation of us

Now I’m still making my way through this book but I am currently chewing on different pieces of it that mirror my own experience and the work of income REBELLION like:

What does the next push for safety and security look like for us as a collective and what roles are needed in designing and building it?

How can we build pillars of community that are strong enough for us to rely on each other?

Here at the income REBELLION we play with these ideas and experiment with different models of work, in a highly individualized way (for now!) so that you can create stability and comfort in your life. 

An individualized approach is better for me as a single non-binary person with a laptop and ever-dwindling white space on their calendar

AND

because the community we are left with at the end of this push away from community connection has created a world where our relationships are more conditional

Many live in fear about doing the “right thing” or losing social approval by taking on more enjoyable and aligned forms of work.

Clients have felt greater connection to their truth by going through the income REBELLION process and greater financial and social freedoms as a byproduct of our work together. 

I believe that this is because when we go through an income REBELLION journey we get clear on 

1. What makes you feel free day to day (the hardest part of this is telling the truth to yourself without contorting your needs to be accepted by the world around you) 

2. How your freedom - your ability to be yourself solves a unique social need

Then we play with ways for you to financially thrive based off of those two principles 

The key here is experimentation

We need to ALL have a greater sense of safety and security in our day to day but the journey towards that safety doesn’t have to come at the expense of our well-being like it does for many in our current world. 

In fact, it gets to be a journey that gives you joy, life, excitement, and opens up new channels of possibility for you (and the world!)  

That’s why REBEL’s are here to build and embody the future. The things that have not yet been stated or done before. The creators and innovators.  

This is the work you have been brought on this earth to do and if you made it this far - CONGRATULATIONS you are already doing it. 

Plug into some deeper work:

🧚🏾Check out the FREE workshop coming 11/5 for UNCHARTED, unprecedented, intuitive career design this is going to be an INCREDIBLE event that you’re going to want to show up live for!

🧚Plug into the podcast to dive deeper into all of these themes I have something exciting for you if you enjoy it, share it to your socials, and leave a review 😜

🧚🏾Walk the path of a values aligned career journey for less than a dollar a day ($29/m) in the membership. Cancel any time, get weekly small group coaching, resources to make your work better and more! 

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