'End Stage Capitalism:' Fury as Parking Space Makes More Than EMT per Hour

A Tweet by user Lia @socialistsloots has gained over 80 thousand likes on the original Twitter, and over 85 thousand uplikes when it was posted to Reddit.

The poster wrote: "Love living in end stage capitalism where a parking spot makes more money an hour than I do as an EMT [emergency medical technician]."

Two subsequent Tweets said: "Tbh [to be honest] if anyone wants to park their car on my corpse for $15/hour plz go right ahead", and "Just saw a parking spot for $40/hour so if anyones looking for me, Imma be at the nearest bridge throwing myself off."

The post immediately attracted opposite views on Twitter, with one user writing: "It's supply and demand ... the parking spot has more demand than you do. What's your alternative to capitalism. Socialism? Ask Sri Lanka how well that's going."

Another user criticized Lia's decision to stay working as an Emergency Medical Technician, suggesting she should have chosen a higher-paid profession to be able to afford to park her car: "So if EMT doesn't pay what you need why would you stay there, or even choose that profession? I would hope you asked they make before you started classes."

A third attempted to be the voice of reason, writing: "To be fair though, every parking space costs 50k to install on average and the median American only makes 31k a year. Only way you can make money on something that costs more than many people make a year is to charge more than they make and hour, right?"

According to the United States Census Bureau the official poverty rate in the USA in 2020 was 11.4 percent, and 37.2 million people in poverty, approximately 3.3 million more than in 2019. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average salary in 2020 in the United States was $56,310 with a median wage of $20.17. As of 2021, they estimate that women in the U.S earn about 82 cents for every dollar a man earns.

This post is also poignant as inflation caused the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to jump to 1.4 percent in June 2022 with a 9.1 percent spike over the last year, the highest rise since 1981 when the President was Ronald Reagan.

In the UK there is continuing outrage at the wages of the National Healthcare Service staff, with the news that nurses were having to resort to using food banks widely reported and condemned by both the public and former Prime Minister Gordon Brown.