It's Not Your Imagination, You Really Are Working Harder for Less Money.
See, Republicans and corporatists will love this - they'll say, "See how much they're producing with fewer people? Obviously, they were slacking off before." Remember, Republicans believe they're entitled to cheap, disposable labor without any pesky legal rights or protections that may get in the way of their profits.
Kind of reminds me of that scene in "Schindler's List," where Ralph Fiennes as the camp commander shoots a very sick man who somehow did the impossible task he was ordered to perform.
"Why did you shoot him? He did what you asked," another guard says.
Fiennes replies, "Why didn't he work that hard for me all the time?"
Yes, welcome to America, where "Work Will Make You Free". (Or is it "You'll Work Almost for Free"?) Hey, at least they don't shoot us - those of us who still have jobs, I mean:
Feel like you’re working a lot harder these days, putting in longer hours for the same pay — or even less? The latest round of government data on worker productivity indicates that you probably are.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that the American work force produced, at an annual rate, 6.4 percent more of the goods they made and services they provided in the second quarter of this year compared to a year ago. At the same time, “unit labor costs” — the amount employers paid for all that extra work — fell by 5.8 percent. The jump in productivity was higher than expected; the cut in labor costs more than double expectations.
That is, despite the deep job cuts of the past year, workers who remain on the payroll are filling in and making up the work that had been done by their departed colleagues. In some cases, that extra work came with a smaller paycheck.
The higher worker output and lower labor costs have been good news for companies struggling through the worst recession since World War II. So far, some 70 percent of companies in the S&P 500 have turned in better-than-expected profits for the latest quarter.
Really, the Nazi-era atrocities were so horrific that nobody ought to be casually invoking them.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNrJwWjW1fM
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Metropolis - Georgio Moroder restoration
For fifty five years or so, Republicans and their CIA death squads have been attacking, invading, toppling governments, and butchering the world's intelligentsia and poor people.
They copied (and improved on) the worst behaviors of Hitler and Stalin to a tee. Post WW2 the CIA imported to the Americas the worst of the SS and Gestapo to train and do the dirty in South/Central America and other parts of the world.
Who's going to buy the goods and services these corporations make their mega-bucks on when consumers are no longer able to pay to consume? Seriously... this house of cards is gonna collapse big time! Pretty effin' stooooopid of the CEOs and other miscreants (MBA anyone?!) not to calculate that they're shrinking their market.
1. Pay less money to workers (who are also the consumers)
2. Make the work longer (so they have less time to purchase goods)
3. ??????
4. Profit
Even an unabashed fascist sympathizer (to tie in with the ridiculous meme of the article of this thread) knew enough to figure out that paying decent wages to his workers, meant more automobiles sold.
Already got theirs. Could care less!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
they won't crush wages into nothing. they know people will get second jobs or find ways to cut expenses or work more hours. businesses still made money in the dark ages. also obama hopes he can get credit rolling again so people can run up their credit cards with purchases. also, the plan is to shift consumption to china.
Why the Chinese of course. They are building a middle class in China. Except this time, there won't be any pesky "democracy" to get in the way over there. It will be corporatism combined with the ruthless communist regime to keep the workers in line. In other words, paradise.
... American worker's productivity has increased at a linear pace, whereas salaries/purchasing power has remained literally flat lined for the better part of 3 decades.
However, the whole nazi reference is just, to say it bluntly, stupid.
They are the survivors or descendants of people who fled and or survived the third reich, its no coincidence the best film makers were refugees of tyranny, they saw the worst and best in people and countries.
Hungarian expatriate Mihali Kertesz moved to America, changed his name to Michael Curtiz, and among others directed Casablanca, and the Adventures of Robin Hood.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
With due respect to the owners of the site:
The comparison is very inappropriate and shocking. The use of a photo of Auschwitz is inappropriate.
Best wishes
Just have a long, truthful talk with your nearest racist. The Profiteers have already convinced them that us non-whites have stolen his/her education, income and lifestyle.
The first fascist - Musolini; actually called it "corporatism."
I refer to the Corporate Fascist States of America all the time. I wish this wasn't so, but it is!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
it's shit alright... I wonder when everyone's gonna wake up and be so frickin' pissed about this. I also wonder what it's gonna take for that to happen. I keep thinking This Is It, but it's not... apathy has set in at a horrific rate.
EDIT; I assume from the various comments it got changed to this.
Gawd Damn right I am. And it sucks. But I'm not the only one getting the shaft. And there are ways to get what you deserve.
That sucks too. Don't expect anyone to say "here, thanks for doing a good job". It's the nature of the working world.
Both parties fucked this up. But by in large, the GOP fucked it up the most. They can say what they want. The Truth is, it's the GOP's fault.
Oh, and I agree with the other folks saying that the photo up there is in bad taste. sorry.
What is your conceptual, continuity?
A huge and permanent underclass for the haves to choose from.
Interesting thing is that Steven Spielberg wanted to use an actual death camp for the death camp scenes in Schindler's List (Buchenwald?), but was denied by the town.
So he built his own mock-up death camp, and many of the extras were decendents of the death camp survivors. Spielberg said he had to stop shooting many times, because the extras were getting too upset.
He said the gas shower scene went particularly bad, where all the prisoners were screaming, but after shooting a young granddaughter of a survivor went into hysterics, an couldn't stop screaming, and they had to get her medical attention.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Ummm... death camp graphic not appreciated and spoils otherwise important observation.
it isn't just in the US that this is happening.
We have a very grim future.
We have peak oil on us now, in ten years, peak natural gas, ten years after that peak coal. The industrial age is the age of fossil fuel, that age is ending.
We are not prepared for a transition.
But before it ends we will have ramped up the CO2 level sufficiently to greatly change the climate. It will not be uniform and it will not be predictable but it will be substantial.
We have peak ecology and peak capitalism.
Exponential growth will be a thing of the past. The growth of the last ten years as demonstrated by the financial sector has been based on phony accounting, misrepresentation and outright fraud of products sold.
I am not alone in this outlook.
We are seeing the first shock of what will be a continuing contraction.
It is the end of growth. The end was sometime ago because our inflation and GDP numbers were phony.
If we told the truth, we would be paying vastly greater interest for our national AND private debt. We would be paying greater COLA in Social Security. So we cook the numbers. It has been going on for twenty years.
The Federal Reserve is rolling the printing presses mightily in an attempt to reflate the great bubble.
It will be bad if they fail, it will be worse if they succeed.
I am a Doctor of Doom. Politicians who preach Doom do not get elected.
Jimmy Carter tried telling the truth on April 18, 1977 and it got him and us Ronald Reagan.
We have taken too much from the Earth, now China and India want to join us.
China has passed us as the premier producer of CO2 and garbage.
Many people think China will be the great power of the 21st century.
They have gotten to the dance as the band is playing the party is over.
The great jig is up.
My advice, MASSIVE conservation. Cut the oil consumption to 25% immediately and then keep cutting it. Burning it in our cars is the stupidest thing we can do. Petroleum is the basis for our entire technological civilization, as it becomes scarce and expensive, everything we do will become expensive and restrained.
And then end.
We must cut our CO2 MASSIVELY, which means cutting energy consumption everywhere.
Would anyone vote for this?
This is not to say, that in the interim it will not still be a good world for some. We will see a great falling back of the many. We will see many perish. Without cheap petroleum we cannot feed seven billion.
It will be on the order of one billion left, after widespread horrific decades long episodes of musical chairs.
Deck chairs on the Titanic.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
Yes, many will perish, but what are you proposing that would lessen the social and economic unrest that will result from the policies you outline--e.g., immediate and drastic cuts in petroleum consumption?
You realize that it will be the weak that perish, right? You realize that existence will become a fight, right? Are you going to fight to survive, or are you going to sacrifice yourself? Are you going to buy weapons to protect yourself, or are you going to allow well-armed conservatives to rule the land?
I will wave my magic wand and suddenly everyone in America will have an overbearing social conscience that will help them to understand that they can be perfectly happy in their lives by consuming much, much less than they do now.
I am not nearly smart enough to know all of the details of how this restructuring will best occur.
I can only hope my wand knows the details.
I know that the Owners will lose the most, we will equalize incomes and wealth. For most that will be down, not up.
We will give up the impossible dream of endless growth.
The economy which we invented, it is entirely a human invention, is a subset of the ecology. Not the other way around.
If we do everything right, we might avoid catastrophe.
But in reality, I have no magic wand and I don't have an answer to your question. Karl Marx wrote at the beginning of the Industrial age and he envisaged a communal egalitarian life, with workers in control of the means of production.
State Socialism proved in the USSR to be very inefficient. They had three times the energy throughput as we and their own oil peak in the mid eighties is probably what drove them under. The ideas of democracy we were not appealing. None of that can be envisioned today.
If Marx were writing today at the end of the industrial age, it would be with the likes of Bill McKibben and Richard Heinberg at his side. Together they might possibly describe a means for our survival.
I do not have an answer. Either we will find a new communal way of life or we will have neo feudalism and catastrophe.
Last summer in mid July the price of oil peaked at $147 a barrel.
It was a large contributor in crashing our economy.
The weakness of the dollar accentuated the effect here, the apparent uptick was not as severe in Europe.
However it was very severe in the third world. There were food riots.
It has been established that the oil spike was from future contract speculation.
This was not an anomaly, it will become the norm. It will not be the worst example. In fact it will nothing compared to what is coming.
Peak oil does not mean that suddenly we are out of oil. It means that production has peaked and now will fall forever.
When our economy seems to recover demand will increase and hit the production ceiling, prices will spike and crash our economy again.
And so on and so forth.
Production keeps falling. The last great oil finds were in 1969, Alaska and the North Sea, they are both in steep decline.
We may find great fields when the ice melts from Greenland and Antartica. By that time the Earth is going to be very different. We would be damn fools to burn it up.
I am old now, I will perish no matter. If I were young, I would try to get farm land and learn how to farm. With farm animals.
I didn't answer your last well formed questions. I see turmoil because I have no magic wand.
I know what the young Trotsky would have said.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
We're effed! and have been working toward it continuously for years, as you note.
12% of republicans don't believe in Hawaii! They don't believe Hawaii is a State! Ah man. Who's gonna tell Elvis?!
Don Ho?!
Ukulele makers?!
Perl Harbor FFS?!
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
I thought we were suppose to be better than them and not reference Nazis? I'm all in! Fucking Nazi bastards should die by the same sword they point at us. LETS GET THEM!!!!!
is intended to be a factual statement
Remember now - Forest is as Forest does...
How about just referencing fascism. that's what we really have here - unfinished fascism from decades ago. Some imported. Some indigenous. some new generation. All now conspiring to take control over government. to take command. Fascism that's not afraid to use torture and genocide to get it's way. Now that's just sick. of coarse the fascists already know that.
When you think Republicanz think fascists.
to the best of my knowledge this is the knowable truth at this time.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Today's republicans are a textbook definition of fascists.
I agree with Indiana Jones - I really hate these guys.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
I fully support most, if not all, of the political opinions espoused by this site, but the use of this image for this article would seem to be in extremely poor taste.
Schindler's List may have been a movie for you, but for some of us, it was our families.
Thanks
Metropolis - Georgio Moroder restoration
would suffice.
But I can easily understand the anger toward a regime that can easily be compared to the nazis:
fer shite sake, TORTURE!?!
Use the nazi comparison where warranted: genocide, naked agression, torture, racism...
Exploitation of the working class by royalty has been with us a long, long time.
BADOING. So has all that other crap...
I'm shutting up now.
Do the writers choose the graphics?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Metropolis - Georgio Moroder restoration
[No more. It's turning into spam-Sitemonitor]
I always wanted a musical track added to Metropolis as a dvd option.
But I always heard different music: Kraftwerk, Einstürzende Neubauten, Schönberg, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, Nina Hagen and Philip Glass.
Pat Benatar and Bonnie Raitt....puhleeeeze....
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Klaus Nomi - Nomi Song
I only looked at your clip after my comment.
I thought Georgio Moroder was the producer of Donna Summers, and likely that crapped out rock version of Metropolis.
However, it is somewhat applicable in that it's the cheap labor so valued by the elites.
But we got to remember Thea Von Harbou, the screenwriter, was a hard-core Communist, and her husband Fritz Lang pretty much saw himself as just an entertainer.
I just wish someone had done a movie version of Karel Čapek's play, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), who coined the term robot in 1920.
These were not the mechanical men we know and love, but people whose whole identity was fixed into the machines they worked, like in Metropolis, and by extension the Golem in Paul Wegerner's movie of the same name, and even in Universal Studios Frankenstein, and all the mad scientist movies to follow.
Interesting coincidence though was the UFA, the studio that made Metropolis was nearly bankrupted by the budget, their acronym stood for Universum Film Ag.
Das Kabinett Des Doktor Caligari's somnambulist Cesare was another mindless drone of a powerful, evil mind. It seemed to be a common theme in Germany even well before the Nazis gained power.
But I'm already falling asleep, and having trouble keeping my thoughts in order, and need to skeedadle now.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
More what was on my mind.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwsR71YZPac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_A6IR58Htg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQeWvFPb5zA&fe...
I was listening to him back when I was in the Air Force, needless to say that didn't make me terrible popular, except with some stoners.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
I don't think I've heard anything of his I didn't like.
I liked the "crapped out rock version" of Metropolis. I have both the original and the redux. I even made a CD of the sound track. Anyway, Wikipedia says there's a feature film coming of Karel Čapek's play! Hopefully it will happen as I really enjoy the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXHUHGGCWTI
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIZ4nAprSSE
from the 80s or so.
I wasn't thinking - just that I agree with other posters about the relevance and was trying to suggest an alternative.
Increased Productivity is a term economist use meaning the company rank and file are working harder, producing more than they did the previous quarter. Increased Productivity usually happens after layoffs. This results in addition work work loads for remaining staff with the same pay. Wall Street, board members and their CEO's love this term. More money for their Swiss bank accounts.
This is not my father's America
It's not "Kosher" when they do and it ain't when "we" do it either. I don't care how hard they work you for a wage, in a job you can quit, it ain't a "Concentration Camp"! Though it may be barely tolerable. Stop incorrectly equating the struggles and enemies (ancient boogeymen) of past generations, whether they be African American, Jewish, Asian, Persian, "middle Eastern?", European, Aboriginal indigenous peoples (sp) or whomever. Even the corporations that are trying to squeeze us unendingly are not the "Fascists of old". We confuse all the issues and the true fight when we do this.
I disagree. There is a tremendous amount of similarity between todays corporate fascists, and the ones from long ago.
For christ sakes, we invaded another country and killed unknown numbers of innocent people, so our sadistic nutjob of a freaking Vice President could steal their resources for his corporate cronies.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Examples?
With what opposition?
There was at least the tacit acquiescence on the part of many individuals and nations this time around. In the years since World War II there were myriad examples of the USA invading countries and killing whomever, as well as other countries doing the same. How does it equate with Nazism or any other "ism" for that matter? Find new terms, define these events accurately or we're are just parroting the same BS as some on the far right.
You need to read how Hitler came into power. He did many of the same things the republicans are doing.
Give me one example of the U.S. invading another country so that someone in the White House could enrich their own personal portfolio and that of his chronies?
Viet Nam was a reaction to the commie threat. Korea, same thing.
Webster: fascism; government run by a small group of elite corporations who are connected directly to the ruling political class, they use propaganda in order to promote nationalism and ethnic division to meet their ends.
Sounds like the Corporate Fascist States of America to me!!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Quality _and_ quantity. Otherwise, people just aren't impressed these days.
is expensive health care which is only affordable when in some crappy job with 'benefits'.
A single payer health care system would allow people to vote with their feet in endorsing or changing jobs, then bosses would have to offer real wages and vacation and shorter hours to tempt employees.
Its absolutely no coincidence the people who are resisting Single Payer beyond the HI industry is the other corporations, they know it will shake up their power over workers.
Wait a minute, after witnessing the Rights insane Nazi comparisons we go ahead and one do an insane Nazi comparison too?
What the hell...
"The force of his own merit makes his way." — Shakespeare.
..are just the same today as they were yesterday. Man works hard for money. Money is his motivation for working. After all, what man would work or labor for others if it were not for pay?
I believe we are all better off for our labors, but, we are fooling ourselves if we are not thrifty in savings and frugal in our manners. Our culture has forgotten how to save money and we spend money we have not earned. Credit is our downfall. We must overcome our urge to spend and control ourselves by saving once again.
"Know, prudent, cautious self-control
Is Wisdom's root." — Burns.
It's kind of hard to save when you have had stagnant or reduced wages for thirty years. When my parents were working, they always got a cost of living raise. It was not uncommon for them to get 5-6% raises some years.
Now, thanks to the psychotic republicans and stupid Americans, the rich have all the money, so we are happy to just keep our wages at where they are.
The middle class in this country bartered away their own existence for a couple of GOP taxcuts, that didn't amount to much more than a couple of grubby dollars.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
if you make it a habit. Just put a few dollars away everyday or every paycheck and be content.
A FABLE.
A Grasshopper, half starved with cold and hunger, came to a well- stored bee-hive at the approach of winter, and humbly begged the bees to relieve his wants with a few drops of honey.
One of the bees asked him how he had spent his time all the summer, and why he had not laid up a store of food like them.
" Truly," said he, " I spent my time very merrily, in drinking, dancing, and singing, and never once thought of winter."
"Our plan is very different," said the bee: "we work hard in the summer to lay by a store of food against the season when we foresee we shall want it; but those who do nothing but drink, and dance, and sing in the summer must expect to starve in the winter."
I wish you were right. I really do. But reality tells me otherwise.
I am in the same profession as my dad. Same number of kids, stay at home mom. When he died suddenly at a very young age, they were already preparing to buy a very nice home in an exclusive subdivision, and had plans to build a cottage in the U.P. as a summer home.
I couldn't even dream of buying the same home, let alone build a cottage.
He also bought a new Ford Galaxy 500 the year before he died, and paid cash for it!
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
You're missing the point - there's nothing to save. It's not that we wouldn't save our extra cash if we had some; it's that there is no extra cash - far too many people are living on subsistence wages, just enough to have a (leaky) roof over their head and (moldy) food to eat. It's as if the bees could barely find enough flowers to survive, and none left over to provide honey for the winter. This is why there's a recession - customer purchasing has crashed because they can no longer save or spend.
I'm not sure how many people are really being paid less, but that isn't even the most serious problem.
The real kicker is, and which most people don't seem to get (or talk about), is that the dollars you are being paid in are losing purchasing power.
If your pay doesn't increase at the same rate of inflation, you are effectively being paid less.
Our rate of inflation is going to ACCELERATE as we continue to spend even more money that we don't have.
But yeah, hey, lets focus on the partisan issues like wingnuts, teabags and fascists... you know, the things that keep the troops energized and polarized. We can't have the two sides talking to one another in calm rational conversations... they might wake up and realize how they are getting screwed by the status quo and actually do something to bring about REAL change.
Us lefties are smart enough to figure out who was screwing us long long ago.
The wingnuts; they still haven't figured it out, and the future doesn't look too promising.
Like I always say, I don't want NO STINKING BIPARTISANSHIP, because anything a fucking fascist republican would put into legislation, would have the sole purpose of screwing the shit out of the people on behalf of the evil corporate parasites.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
The whole "my team" vs "your team" mindset is what allows this insanity to continue.
There were plenty of Democrats that went along with Bushes policies. And now that the Democrats essentially have control of things they haven't really reversed anything. And what the hell did Pelosi say impeachments off the table for? What the fuck? How can you possibly expect there to be responsible leadership when there is NO accountability?
Am I blaming only the democrats? NO. The Republicans are just as corrupt/dumb, if not even worse. The republicans were the ones that were SUPPOSED to be fiscally responsible. They have been the complete opposite. What kind of idiot starts 2 wars overseas without some plan for financing it? Yeah, I guess they didn't think that far ahead... they were probably too busy negotiating kick backs with the corporations that we were going to be throwing insane amounts of (your) money at.
The point is, as soon as you lump the blame on the "other team" you stop holding all the people acountable that should be held accountable.
I think lots of folks on the left are at least nominally Democrats because currently there are only two real choices. The problem is that many politicians who would normally be moderate GOPers (back when that term wasn't an oxymoron) are now Dems. So in today's Demcoratic Party there's a lot of ideological spread, probably as much as when the southern segregationists were Dems. The net result is as Bill Haher put it: the Dems have moved to the right and the GOPers have moved into the nuthouse; or perhaps for Democrats: we have met the enemy and the enemy is us.
I am more than happy to include the bluedog DLC corporate whores in with the repugs. I am an equal opportunity hater when it comes to any corporate fascist.
That is why I never liked Clinton "Mr. NAFTA," and was disgusted by all the Clinton flunkies Obama picked for his team.
But to try an equate a totally insane, psychotic party of fascist GOP imbeciles (99%) of them, with a party that contains only a 20% batshit crazy membership (dems) - is rediculous.
There are levels of suckitude. On a 1-10 scale (10 optimum suckitude), the democrats are about a five, and the republicans are around 100! The GOP is totally off the suckitudes, and has been for a long time.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Frankly I think that the Americans were historically well ahead of the Nazi's with the sadistic atrocities and mass murder involved within the African slave trade and the obliterating genocide of the American Indian.
the American govt wouldn't take in Jews before during or after WWI. Not easily, anyway. Unless they were rocket scientists. And from the early times of med school in the states up until the 50s, Jews attending medical school was governed by a strict nationwide quota. And it was a teeny tiny number.
me-oww!
There you go! Now that's what I'm talking about. New definitions for new eras! The bar get's set higher all the time, unless of course you account for the spikes when something happens and no one's looking.
Certainly I believe the study's findings, and I get the implications, but I'm concerned about C&L's invoking the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign. With Glenn Beck and others calling Obama and his supporters, and Orly Tait calling the media "Brownshirts," I'd think we can find better ways to paint our arguments then using the same tactics of fear.
Oh, and Godwin's law.
That being said, I can definitely see this study being touted by some as "the success of the free market system," for the wrong reasons. Going to keep our eyes on this, I think...
I was among the retrenched and finally took a job making 15% less, working twice as hard, doing the same thing. And the sad part is, I feel thankful to have a job.
The funny thing is, my mortgage hasn't gone down. And neither has the cost of living. Hmm, wonder how 70% of S&P 500 companies were able to achieve their profits...?
that's what's going on currently. the unemployed/underemployed are/becoming desperate for work. they have kept wages stagnate as the cost of living increases. NOW businesses are dropping or reducing medical benefits. changing policies is routine and difficult to keep informed on. this is the leveling of the playing field strategy for the global economy. the global elites/financial elites have decided to turn-up the Darwinian Capitalism....everyone for themselves.
*
http://www.businessinsider.com/harry-markopol...
... (Medicare-for-all as the public option) it's time to turn to EFCA!
Thanks for changing the picture, BTW. The first one was a bit much. The quoted piece is important.
Thanks but I realized this years ago .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
When will Americans wake up and realize what the last 30 years of predominantly conservative rule have done to this country, particularly the little guy. All these nimrods at town hall meetings screaming, trying to subvert democracy, all to defend the rights of the rich to be rich.
You should be ashamed. Leave it to some idiot commenter to compare other Americans to Nazis unless of course you are dealing with actual American Nazis. I find this rhetoric mindless and offensive. Godwin's Law: Learn it. Live it. Love it.
Good Morning all. Good to see you changed the picture Susie. Democracy does work in some cases.
is intended to be a factual statement
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiUdtxe2YnU
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
OK, I created an account just to respond to the comments re: comparing Americans to Nazis. First of all, she didn't compare an American to a Nazi. She used an analogy from a movie representing a Nazi. She wasn't calling any CEO Hitler (unlike some of the things that are being said about the current president, btw). She was making an analogy of kind, an analogy based on a reference that many would get, having seen this very respected and popular movie. This is called good writing. Style. Craft. Reaching out to an audience. Secondly, just because Nazi atrocities were so, well, atrocious, does not mean that we have to maintain a stolid silence about them. Yes, we should be very careful when we invoke direct comparisons. Because we do not want to belittle in any way what the people who lived and died through that horrifying regime went through. But if we insist on never talking about them, then we've committed the one sin that holocaust survivors caution us against. Forgetting. Never forget. Don't jump on the "we can't talk about Nazis" bandwagon simply b/c you have no real thoughts to add.
You're late to the game.
Last night they had a picture of the entrance of Auchwitz to go with this article, that's what initiated the responses.
Since then, they've replace the photo with the one above of an American prisoner sentenced to hard labor.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
Well, then, that does explain it a bit better. Ill-advised, to be sure.
hell yeah gang. this economic mess is an employer's paradise. they have us so straddled with debt that we fear asking the boss for a raise or we fear protesting when the boss makes us pay more of our health care premiums. we can't go to another job because there are none. A different company will ask "why are you leaving?", you answer "better pay and benefits" and they will immediately laugh in your face because they know they can find some joe schmo that is down on his luck who will take anything just to have some sort of income.
there was an article in the lansing state journal the other day about how a lady's sister was sick dying in the hospital and when she told her boss she had to leave to be at her side, her boss said "if you leave, you won't have a job when u get back." of course she left. this article continues on to say most employers aren't like this, blah blah blah. but hey, we don't need unions, they screw the company and bully workers.
I'm interested in seeing how my income will pan out this year. No raise - instead anyone making under $50,000 will get 2 $500 checks (in October and April). That $1000 is more than I get with my usual 2.5% raise, so I'm feeling good. However, I have no idea what impact taxes will have on such lump sums. Well, I'll find out. I work at a university that's just had layoffs, so I don't know what math they're going by.
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