The working poor are the people suffering out subprime mortgages and fatal loans and more and more of our money - you know, capitalism is operated by extracting money, not so much directly being paid.
David GraeberWhat about precarious labor? It's actually not the most efficient form of labor at all. They were much more efficient when they had loyalty to their workers and people were allowed to be creative and contribute - you know that what precarious labor does is that it's the best weapon ever made to depoliticize labor. They're always putting the political in front of the economic.
David GraeberI came to the conclusion that most people in America would really like to be able to get a job where they think they're doing something noble and nice and good and it isn't just for the money. But the reason they hate what they call the cultural elite is that they see it as a class that's grabbed all the jobs where you can get paid to do something that isn't just for the money - if it's art, if it's charity, if it's intellectual, if it's political, whatever it might be.
David GraeberWithin a capitalist corporation, someone says, "Lend me a wrench," and someone asks, "Yeah, what do I get?" You assume that the idea of each according to his or her abilities, each according to his or her needs - in solving a problem - is actually the only thing that works. And in situations of disaster, there are often communistic notions of improvisation, where you basically exchange hierarchies and all of a sudden all those things that are luxuries that you can't afford, you have them in an emergency.
David GraeberPeople don't have an ongoing relation unless it's a form of debt because everything is an exchange, so ongoing relationships are incomplete exchanges, and therefore one party is probably to blame - more likely than not, both are. Sociality itself seems to become like a matter of sin, and inherently wrong.
David Graeber