From an e-mail to me of a week or so ago:
My first factory job was cleaning 55-gal drums, then I was promoted to cleaning production machinery. I made $3.10 an hour at the first job, $3.25/hr at the second. There were guys there who had been working at the plant since the 1940s. Those at the higher-paid jobs were making $4.50 an hour, maybe $5. They had families. Most of their wives stayed home to care for their children. Many of them owned homes and they drove late-model American cars, usually the lower end Fords or Chevys.Along those lines, the NY Times today had a story about the 99ers. This is not the association of women pilots, there are people who have been out of work for so long that they are on the verge of being homeless, if they are not already. These are the people that the inhuman douchebags on Fox News, in the party of Hoover and in the Teabagging movement are demonizing as being "lazy."
This was nearly 40 years ago.
...
Damn few jobs are out there for [a] paycheck [which will permit a worker to buy a house anymore]. Big business and their lackeys in the GOP have been doing their best to shove down the pay of the American workers. The biggest fights over the GM/Chrysler bailouts in early 2009 were by senators such as Richard Shelby who was adamant about cramming down workers' pay.
It wasn't the workers who failed to design decent cars. It wasn't the workers who made GM and Chrysler build large SUVs. It wasn't the workers who chose to invest large amounts of capital into building H2 and H3 "Hummers". But it was the workers who the politicians in the GOP and their propagandists on hate radio and TV went after, hammer and tong.
The days of being able to graduate from high school, get a good job in a factory and provide for one's family are gone. They are gone because the guys who run the companies, guys like Mitt Romney have made a shit-ton of money from gutting the American industrial base and sending it overseas.
You may look at a guy like Romney and others like him, who have exported millions of jobs, and think that they are smart businessmen.
I look at them and I think that they are traitors.
Sometimes I wonder why the far-Right of this country seems to revel in its lack of humanity.
12 comments:
Yes, they are traitors. And quite inhumane (see their opinions on torture, etc., for others).
I've been covering this exact topic at my blog(s) for over 3 years, but isn't it (almost) funny how it hasn't really caught on until we have 20% unemployment?
And the answer to your puzzlement is that they don't care. Check out Paul Krugman (or my current essay) for the facts.
And nyaaaah, nyaaaah, nyaaaah to the right-wing who have been exposed but not deposed yet.
YOUR time is coming.
S
Sometimes I wonder why the far-Right of this country seems to revel in its lack of humanity.
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I'm supposed to be happy to find a job making between $20k and $40k less than I was making when I was laid off last December. And I can't even find those jobs.
Well and surely screwed.
I was perilously close to homelessness from 2006 to 2008. I was planning things, actually. What I'd buy with the last of my money, what I could sell, clothing I should own.
Since getting a good job two years ago, I'm still not out of the woods. Not yet done paying off the tax debt I earned from spending everything I earned on food and shelter. It still feels like I'm hanging on by my fingernails.
Nangleator, I've had my hours and pay cut for the last two years. And now, I am on my way out the door.
Nangleator, yeah, I've been making those plans recently too.
Comrade, that door is getting mighty crowded....
Suzan, Lisa: And the hilarious thing is that the SOB's who have passed the laws allowing this to happen are, by and large, elected by the majority of the Americans in their district or state. And they keep getting RE-elected. You'd think that the very definition of futility would be doing the same thing every time and expecting a different outcome, but that does not appear to stop the American public from continually voting against their best interests...
- Badtux the WASF Penguin
Is there anything that will get the attention of TPTB short of property damage and mass death? How bad does it have to get before people recoil violently? Do they keep getting ground down until they decide to die quietly in some corner?
Will America start seeing people going off by shooting up shopping malls and rampaging through Wal-Marts with cans of gasoline instead of killing their co-workers at the job they just got fired from? I mean, if you're going to shoot yourself after doing something atrocious, do something DIFFERENT! Your workplace massacre won't get more than a couple minutes on the local TV channel these days. But imagine "News headline from tonight -- berserk citizens who had been foreclosed out of their houses shot up and burned two bank branches and a mortgage company today. Five people were killed, but no money was harmed..."
What would it take for YOU to snap? Or will you hunker down more and more? Live a reduced life, move in with your parents/children/cousins/sleep in an abandoned SUV until the cough and those weeping sores on your legs are too painful to bear...
Actually, I favour the non-violent route. But that's because I still have something left to lose. As economics forecaster Gerald Celente said, "When people have nothing left to lose, they lose it." That's why I buggered out of the U.S. when I still had a chance. Another saying I like is "He who panics first, lives." It's been wonderful to live in other countries where the sense of dread is not as pervasive as it is in the U.S. Good luck, Yanks. You really ASF...
High school diploma? Bachelor's degree? Nope, a Master's degree to get into a field these days.
Even a Master's degree guarantees little nowadays. Remember, the Shrubbery had a MBA. Colleges have watered things down so far to get more money out of students that a college degree today isn't worth much other than as proof that you are at least four years older than you were when you graduated high school (or somehow gamed the system to graduate in less than four years -- an outcome that most colleges today try their best to avoid by scheduling courses required for graduation only once every four years).
- Badtux the Educated Penguin
Oh yeah, Bukko, before you start being smug and patting yourself on the back, read this account of being homeless in Vancouver B.C.. The only difference between being homeless in Canada and being homeless in America is that in Canada you get free Prozac.
- Badtux the "Canuckistan ain't no paradise either" Penguin
Yes, but then there is the all-important networking and access to capital, both of which saved the Shrub's sorry ass.
Thanks for the link, Tux. Just about everything from the eXile (or its post-Russian incarnation) is worth reading. I'm not saying Canuckrainina is PERFECT (and Australia was better, but I'm just a prejudiced Aussiephile). It sucks to be poor anywhere.
But at least in the latter two countries, there's an official policy of TRYING to help people who have hit the skids. They don't have one major political faction -- and a large segment of the nation's population -- screeching "FUCK THOSE POOR PEOPLE! LET THEM DIE!" In Canada and Australia, poor people can get medical care, dole money and some social services without a begrudging attitude.
And I will continue to pat myself on the back. It makes me feel better about all the trouble I've gone to in the past five years, hauling my arse and all our bourgeois possessions back and forth across the Pacific Ocean. I'm probably just whistling past the graveyard where there's a waiting hole with my name already on it, but I like to think I've dodged the axeman...
Yes, BT, old friend,
As Thomas Frank said in (I forget the exact title - ha!) "What's the Matter With the U.S.?"
Insanity reigns.
Thanks for the mention.
Hope you are well.
S
nd they keep getting RE-elected. You'd think that the very definition of futility would be doing the same thing every time and expecting a different outcome, but that does not appear to stop the American public from continually voting against their best interests...
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