“Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.”
Companies Don’t Want to Hire
“The crisis in confidence is that capital quite enjoys the largess of the system it’s created… yet that system doesn’t serve anyone outside of that system. However, by lumping the problems of capital in with the problems of labour, the assertion is made that everyone is at risk. When actually, most non-financial companies are doing just fine… and indeed could do much better if they weren’t strangle-held by the problems of financial companies. Thus, the problem of unemployment. Nobody wants to hire because they have to protect their financial numbers. If indeed there is a finite amount of capital, the net result of this is that in order for capital to maintain it’s huge percentage of net worth and overall national wealth, the unemployed can’t have any of it. Indeed, the reason for high unemployment is that to make those people economically active requires paying them. That money has to come from somewhere, and it has to come right out of the either personal or corporate balance sheets of those that already have it. That is why companies cannot find employees. Because they don’t want them. Rupert may blow a good ring of smoke in the air and talk about missing apprenticeships and all the rest, however the problem with that argument is that basically, none of the problems or solutions verge outside a fundamental concept — capital transferring wealth to labour. … You cannot address fundamental problems if you are not willing to deal with the actual problem. And the actual problem of companies finding the right employees has little to do with a lack of qualified people and all to do with the fact those people require a salary, when it’s nearly free to work your current people dogshit into the ground.”
Commenter on MetaFilter
You Just Need to Work Harder
“Aside from the fact that it seems to be missing the point that drives the 99% movement – “the majority should not be suffering through pain and fear while a tiny percentage reaps huge rewards without risking their own”…
Aside from the fact that they compare their situation, where many of them won the genetic lottery so they are in a life situation where they COULD work that hard and stay healthy…
Aside from the fact that they were born into a good enough area and family to get the education and structure that would allow them the skills to succeed in that adversity…
Aside from the fact that so many seem like they’re missing the point that their situation is so on the knife’s edge that one bad break might tumble them into a hole they CAN’T pull themselves out of…
Aside from the fact that maybe they’re not worried about that hole because they have a support structure to help them back up which many other people weren’t lucky enough to have…
What’s so fucking maddening about these folks and makes it hard to offer them “compromise, openness, shared sacrifice, and patience” is that THEY GOT TO TRY IT THEIR WAY FOR THE LAST DECADE. They are beating the drum and demanding we keep embracing the team that talked us into a budget-busting war, cut those taxes on the top level, went after social programs and organizations they didn’t like.
They are the mob that invades a city, subjugates a people, torches buildings, and then follows it up with “dude, of COURSE you suck – look at this shithole. You just need to work harder.”"
Commenter on MetaFilter
99% Doesn’t Hate Success
“The 99% doesn’t hate success. On the contrary, they want the 1% to do well. They don’t want the 1% to do well at the cost of the 99%. Most likely, you are one debilitating sickness away from total financial ruin. If you are not self-employed, you are one round of layoffs or one branch closing away from unemployment. Your grandparents, your parents, maybe you yourself collect Social Security, benefit from Medicare, possibly Medicaid, drive on roads paid for with tax money, probably went to a public school and/or state university, same goes for your children and grandchildren if you have any. Whether you like it or not, you are brothers in arms with these 99%. You contribute to the system so long as you have work and you benefit from it. Sure, there’s some bad apples in the 99%. Most of these people? They just want to work, know they’ll have life ahead of them if they get sick, and see the 1% willing to pitch in to the country and system which gave them the opportunity and freedom to rise to the top.”
Commenter on MetaFilter
One Day I Can Drive As I Please
“For many years my wife, who loves a garden, worked at making one with the help of two boys who used to come after school hours and one Saturdays. These boys came out of working-class homes, and were going to public schools and acquiring the psychology there officially imparted. My wife, curious about this, used to ask them questions, and incidentally would try to explain to them about Socialism, and their own interests in the working class. … They both bought second-hand Ford cars out of their earnings as gardeners; and one day one of them remarked to my wife: ‘Mrs. Sinclair, it is a crime the way the rich people in this city drive cars. They don’t pay any attention to traffic signals. They just drive right through.’ Said my wife, with a touch of mischief, ‘Why don’t you follow them and have one of them arrested?’ She expected the boy to answer that they would just tear up the ticket; and this would give her an opportunity to get in a touch of Socialism. But instead the boy replied: ‘No, I don’t want to have them arrested; when I grow up I am going to be rich too, and then I can drive as I please.‘”
Upton Sinclair, The Way Out, 1933, pp. 97-98 (linked on MetaFilter)
Elizabeth Warren’s Second Choice
My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” she said. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”
The Woman Who Knew Too Much, Vanity Fair
Unshared Gains
“They all seem to believe have been taught that the Occupy Wall Street 99%ers are all looking for a free government hand out. They’re not. Also the historical self-made-grandparent stories are true only because workers between 1945 and 1975 received a fair share of their productivity.”
Commenter on Metafilter
Can You Hold Down Four Jobs?
“Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20. And what happens if you get sick? … Does pride in what you’ve accomplish mean that you have contempt for anybody who can’t keep up with you? Does it mean that the single mother who can’t work on her feet longer than 50 hours a week doesn’t deserve a good life? Does it mean the older man who struggles with modern technology and can’t seem to keep up with the pace set by younger workers should just go throw himself off a cliff? And, believe it or not, there are people out there even tougher than you. Why don’t we let them set the bar, instead of you? Are you ready to work 80 hours a week? 100 hours? Can you hold down four jobs? Can you do it when you’re 40? When you’re 50? When you’re 60? Can you do it with arthritis? Can you do it with one arm? Can you do it when you’re being treated for prostate cancer? And is this really your idea of what life should be like in the greatest country on Earth?”
Essay from Daily Kos, ‘Open Letter to that 53% Guy’
Class Warfare in 1358
“This quote from Al Franken’s book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them is circulating around the web lately: “Any time that a liberal points out that the wealthy are disproportionately benefiting from Bush’s tax policies, Republicans shout, “class warfare!” In her book A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century, Barbara Tuchman writes about a peasant revolt in 1358 that began in the village of St. Leu and spread throughout the Oise Valley. At one estate, the serfs sacked the manor house, killed the knight, and roasted him on a spit in front of his wife and kids. Then, after ten or twelve peasants violated the lady, with the children still watching, they forced her to eat the roasted flesh of her dead husband and then killed her. That is class warfare. Arguing over the optimum marginal tax rate for the top one percent is not.”
Commenter on MetaFilter
Strength in Numbers
“The goal (or one of the main ones, I think) of [Occupy Wall Street] is to reestablish citizens as the directors of their social contract by showing their strength in numbers. Bloomberg, and all of his cronies, want very much to stay in control of our government because they like making piles of cash by selling America out instead of working. They especially like their ability to walk away scott free because they know who to call. Worldwide, people are saying that no aristocracy gets to tell us that we can’t afford health care, or an education, or a decent living wage, or time to spend improving ourselves, or being with our family. We get to decide that through our government. Hiding behind invented notions of a person’s right to be obscenely wealthy — even if they have stolen that wealth through legalized theft and continue to abuse their power to grab more — isn’t going to cut it anymore.”
Commenter on MetaFilter