Working Life

Poor Amazon. It’s unhappy that it can’t do what it wants with its workers in Europe.

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That elites and the transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”) don’t understand what is happening to most working people is never more apparent when discussing the Federal Reserve Board, and the basic abandonment of the idea of full employment.

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Sometimes you can get numbed by numbers. Other times numbers make my eyes get wide. This is an example of the latter.

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A few days ago, I wondered why we anyone would think that there needs to be a debate about whether there should be a corporate income tax. Yes, I know the answer — it has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with dumb, blind ideology. I never tire of showing how stupid the argument is. So, here you go.

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I got a couple of emails about my post yesterday that posed the idea that the danger from trade deals is higher than the spying uproar underway. And those emails were, how should I say, skeptical about my point. Fair enough. Let me expand.

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Look, having the government spy on millions of people is not a good thing. But, it’s fascinating to me the lack of interest the traditional media shows in going after an equally dangerous and, arguably, a more damaging power exercised by the president: the power to seize away Congressional power when it comes to trade, and pushing through trade deals cobbled together in secret.

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Well, yes, it’s a debate that should never be had, except in the U.S…should there be a corporate income tax? Ha. So, the answer is pretty simple.

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Well, I have to hand it to Wal-Mart in one sense. The company, if only subconsciously, understands that it deals in fantasy — a fantasy that ignores the deep corruption of the company, from an entirely cavalier attitude towards the mass deaths of garment workers in Bangladesh to its own putrid track record abusing workers in the U.S. to the greed of the Waltons. So, to play out the game of fantasy, they role out one of the best: Tom Cruise.

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If you listened to the elites talk about the economy, they usually have a litany of phony excuses for economic troubles: high taxes (phony), regulation (nonsense) and, of course, high wages for workers (never a word about CEO pay). But, the truth is much more about greed and corrupt management philosophy. And there is no better example than Wal-Mart.

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To the list of institutions and individuals who totally screwed up the global economy — and the lives of tens of millions of people — let us now read the mea culpa of the International Monetary Fund. But, this isn’t a mea culpa in the sense of “we didn’t understand”. It’s an admission of “we didn’t care what other people said, we didn’t listen, we did what we wanted and none of us will pay the price”. The fucking arrogance.

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