Working Life

Detroit. The filing for bankruptcy is a sad, but, in a way, predictable event — if one is willing to see what this really means. It’s a deep metaphor for the failure of the so-called “free market”.

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Let me make a list of thankless jobs: taking out the trash, rooting for the Yankees and absorbing the knee-jerk hate and…defending the IRS. That last one…whew…not a pretty one. So, a tip of the hat to Citizens for Tax Justice.

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It’s an ingrained fact that health care costs in the U.S. are outrageous and economically foolish — even if the drug companies and insurance industry maggots are are happy to keep raking in billions on the backs of sick or dying people…all in a day’s work. And so the way in which the media, and others, are greeting the new health care programs coming on-line should be viewed in context.

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Corporate raiders now control the Twinkies brand. You may remember almost a year ago that Hostess Brands wanted to eviscerate wages and benefits for the thousands of workers.Typical story: the company shut the place down and it reopened with non-union workers at lower wages, all courtesy of private equity pirates. But the union hasn’t gone away.

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The bankers and other elites who were behind the global financial crisis are still out there making a whole lot of money — so the system has not really changed much. The message has been: hey, screw millions of people, no problem, go right ahead and keep your jobs. But, a smidgen more of this might help.

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A basic economic truism: if people don’t have money to spend, stuff won’t get bought. Sounds like a Yogi Berra observation? Anyway, it’s just another day showing why the idiots running economic policy are, well, idiots.

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Panic is setting in among some of those retailers who troll the far reaches of the planet looking for cheap labor to exploit. And it’s a panic that is about loss of profit and control.

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I wish I had a dime for every scare tactic used by business over my lifetime — scare tactics to argue against any taxes (“we’ll leave”), or to argue for so-called “free trade” etc. etc…because it’s a bitch when those scare tactics turn out, in reality, to be as substantive as cotton candy. Add sick leave to the list.

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Who is the guy who sits in some corporate office trying to think about the newest way to fleece workers? Is that a job title…”head of fleecing workers department”? I’m guessing with Wal-Mart, it might just be one of the actual Waltons, what with their particular greed and apparent enjoyment at discriminating against women and impoverishing workers. Which bring us to the newest scam: payroll cards.

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There is so much rubbish the traditional media churns out about taxes it’s just hard to keep track of it. So, what’s a thinking person to do? Check this out.

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