The Human Cost of the Ghost Economy
longreads.com
longreads.com
* Labor unions had state militias called on them and thousands were massacred at the hands of private security agencies during the Mine Wars
* Women had to die in the Triangle massacre before safety became a concern.
* Martin Luther King along with tons of other black people needed to die just to be considered humans.
* Vietnam required the Kent State Massacre.
* How many children and civilians have we had die needlessly at the hands of the police? You can't get a jury to convict them.
The American government has never represented the people. It will take nothing less than large amounts violence to change the country if history is any indicator of the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...
Claiming that both sides favor corporations is to deny reality when it comes to voting records. Republicans have consistently passed legislation that hurt consumers and benefit corporations, another recent example was banning consumers ability to start class action lawsuits against banks.
You have the DNC legislature that was enabled to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a bureau that the GOP voted whole-hardheartedly against and continue to weaken now that they control Congress and the Senate. You have the GOP that put a pro-corporate Justice on SCOTUS that thinks employees should be punished when they aren't willing to risk their life in literal life and death circumstances in ransAm Trucking v. Administrative Review Board.
I'm sorry but there is clearly one party that cares about people and it ain't the fucking GOP.
If not, I'd suggest that you block out some time to do so. You might find the experience to be illuminating.
Whether it be local, state, or federal government, it all works pretty much the same way. And none of it, despite peoples' cries, is functioning outside of how it was designed to.
Ironically, my observation is that gov't employment is often less about knowledge/expertise and more about friendsies, patronage/quotas and malleability/docility.
@ this point, I'm not convinced that the current state of affairs doesn't reflect the complicity of "the people" (who are constantly reminded to aim for "middle-class" (mediocrity)).
Since we'd be working with the same public, changing the # of parties would still likely yield the same result. And I say that as someone who regularly votes on positions not parties or candidates (and is often criticized for doing so).
Usually people get advised to 'follow their dreams' -- which can mean a couple of years of boredom and stress followed by huge debt.
Anyone who is actually interested in understanding American class dynamics should look at the history of the social CONSTRUCT of race and "whiteness." Who was and wasn't "white" has always changed based on the needs of the uber-affluent to create a protective buffer between themselves and everyone else. (And this isn't exclusive to America. Similar dynamics have played out pretty much non-European area that Europeans 'civilized'.) Digging into immigration policy implementation and development a little can teach one much.
Unfortunately, after having had so many years of being able to tell themselves that no matter their respective situations, at least they weren't N-----s, it is incredibly difficult to convince certain people to conduct an objective review of facts. At its 'settling' what was to be America broke down between those who owned stuff and those who would work for them, period. As I said above, once the numbers got a little hairy for the owners, the workers were broken into groups. Workforce and union membership expands to excluded groups as market needs change, i.e. as one group of workers becomes too expansive for employers and/or union membership flags among the initiated...
As automation progresses there is less need for any of the people and as such, I believe we end up where we are today.
Anyway, I only logged in to ask you (and other sharing your sentiment) how you'd feel about working for $15k a year?
I'm in D.C. and recently attended an event at which an 'educated' person working for a big name think tank floated such jobs as a solution to all this angst (particularly among the downtrodden "white" people, since, after Trump's election and all, they are the focus group du jour).
I was cringing at how the gentleman was standing in the open. Find cover!
However, nobody in the video answered the question of what the riots were about, except one person said that it was mostly Hispanics looting, rather than African Americans. But that's demographics, not "why".
I think it was Atty. Kim's project. And while I think the piece has some valid points, I think the 'conservative' political bent does the work some disservice. I watched it with a Korean friend, who actually tapped out early.
Anyway, and this is key to my longer post above, Koreatown was viewed by 'politicians/the affluent' as buffer zone. As is shown in the video, the police didn't respond to the looting here-- because the hope was that the rioters would effectively tire themselves out and avoid the 'important' areas.
No one really cared that rioters pillaged their own areas... There was moderate concern about Koreatown, but as it was in close proximity to the heart of the riots AND the concern of a group of political insignificance, they too were expendable.
'Divide and (keep) Conquer(ed)' is part of what social and urban planning is all about.
"Everybody in the hood has had it into here. It's getting harder and harder and harder every year... They said it was for the black man, they said it was for the Mexican[s], and not for the white man - but if you look at the streets, It wasn't about Rodney King. It's this [expletive] situation and [expletive] police. It's about coming up, and staying on top, and [showing dominance over] an [expletive] cop."
People learned from that. Unfortunately they learned the wrong thing: a massive militarization of society and a politics of fear date from this period. My gf's kid just had "active shooter prep" at school -- prepping for an almost nonexistent threat, while ignoring things that actually kill kids, like choking or traffic). So now we see things like what happened in Fergeson: massive numbers of police with military gear, simply amping up the experience.
I think what may be different now is that the middle classes are getting fucked as well. You have to belong to rebel. Revolutions (despite the rhetoric) never start from below; they inevitably are either elites against elites, or upper middle classes against elites. The yeoman farmer with a rifle has never been the base of any rebellion.
And the elites have prepared: legitimate protest is to be met with massive show of force.
I think most of us, adults know exactly what is happening, the consequences of capitalism, the reality of our societies, the reality of poverty, the reality of a large number of people struggling, suffering, sad, desperate, unhappy.
We have a sophisticated mental model to deal with it, we pretend it doesn't exist, untill you are absolutely forced to confront it, at which point you may signal, posture, be shocked, but life goes on. Our systems fundamentally and deeply reward unethical behavior and greed, and humans are survivors, we survive.
And if I do, I will be paying higher prices for the same lifestyle as my neighbors. At the consumer level this is fine, but at the business level my company will fail. My competition has saved enough money by using cheaper services that they can hire a PR firm to establish them as a 'humans first' company by brand, regardless of what is actually happening behind the scenes.
So I lose on both fronts for being responsible.
It's a problem that can only be fixed with regulation.
I don't follow. If a portion of consumers like yourself are willing to pay higher prices to uphold their values, who are they paying higher prices to if not businesses that are conforming to those values?
The fact is that poverty has been dropping markedly over the years due to the free market and 'capitalism'.
We tend to see crises because they're short term and fail to see the benefits because they happen over generations.
I suspect what is really happening here is that the USA (and similar countries) are getting closer in gdp/capita to other rising countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-in-extre...
Largest improvement in labor protections for “precarious workers” in two decades, but still no liability for injuries to temp workers: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thestar.com/amp/news/gta/20...
lol j/k, the man would never let that happen
(alternatively, completely separate out benefits from wages by law, or whatever other changes that would make it not always the correct business move to hire as few people as possible)
Then there's no incentive to cut apart a single real job in to multiple small ones 'to save money'. (Though there may be reason to take a partial job EG during school hours for parents.)
How about let's provision healthcare, retirement, etc. directly to all citizens, instead of getting angry at/banning jobs that don't provide them.
But ya, in previous life my job duties included making sure none of my fake subordinates ran into any co-employment issues, such as drinking the free office coffee. We were employed by a staffing company, we 'worked' for the company whose office we sat in, and because they had me to say "do what this guy tells you to do" instead of that guy just telling him what to do, we could still qualify as contractors.
1. Don't eat yourself
2. Don't eat other people
If we could live by these two rules, there would be no Ghost Economy.
I'm not into cannibalism, not a Survivor Type either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Type
Or is it sexual?
One day I was sent to a medical equipment warehouse. Another worker and I were assigned to untangle a pile of hospital beds easily 12 feet high. We were supposed to climb on it and free each frame. The bedsprings were snagged on each other and the pile was unstable. I called the temp agency, said the job was too dangerous and walked out. I wanted the money but I was lucky enough that I didn't need it.
I'll never forget the feeling of being treated as a resource over a person.
http://russell.ballestrini.net/how-to-work-from-home-the-roa...
"This feature has been supported by the journalism nonprofit Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
Melissa Chadburn is a fellow for Economic Hardship Reporting Project. Her essay, “The Throwaways,” received notable mention in Best American Essays and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her debut novel, A Tiny Upward Shove, is forthcoming with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux."
> Meanwhile, gazing down upon the snowglobe of our disparity was The Corporation. A man in a suit, getting wealthier, plumper, more powerful, a rapacious beast delivering the shocks.