I did some reading over Labor Day weekend as I contemplated the state of the US economy, and my present state of unemployment. One of the articles I read was on the AlterNet web site and written by Doris 'Granny D' Haddock. The title of the article was "A Small Group of Dedicated People Might Actually Do Something" The theme was about how individuals can make a difference in the world, especially if like-minded individuals band together, but the problem she was addressing was globilization of big business and corporate corruption.
She speaks of how the Teddy Roosevelt progressives, and the William Jennings Bryan populists before him handled the robber barons of the "Gilded Age", and how with all the deregulation and "hands off" policies our government has adopted and continues to adopt, they have made a come back.
She writes, "I am not talking about all corporations or all big business. Corporations of reasonable size are but groups of people. Beyond some point, however, the humanity falls away from an organization and all that is left is the will to power and profit. They care not that our seas and atmosphere are rapidly changing in ways that may lead to disaster and famine of unimaginable scale. They care not because they are not human and they have moved beyond human values. They do not need the fresh air or the water or the mountains or the birds. They are a kind of virus or a cancer, all prettied up with a nice logo and television commercials to tell us the most outrageous lies, one after the other. For in reality, they crush us under their boots and they pay off our political leaders with campaign contributions and other bribes. They trample on diversity of all kinds, including human personality, as fewer and fewer kinds of people can prosper in the world they are casting, and more and more of us are marginalized."
This is the part that I found interesting, because it is this falling away of humanity that is causing so much of today's unemployment. We keep hearing that the economy is getting better, but it's getting better because corporations are starting to show a profit. The problem is they have come to the conclusion that they can continue to make a profit with less workers.
Fire some people, dump the extra work on those remaining and threaten them with the loss of their jobs if they complain - that seems to be the general philosophy of big business (and some smaller ones too) today. Look at the want ads (when you can find any). Every business is looking for "chief cooks and bottle washers." The lists of job responsibilities are truly amazing.
E.J Dionne, writing in The Record (north New Jersey) blames supply-side economics and I tend to agree. He writes, "The simple truth is that the standard of living of most Americans depends on getting jobs that pay well. This means that unemployment matters not just for those out of work, but for those whose wages are depressed when too many people are competing for too few jobs."
When I first heard about supply-side economics back in the late '70s or early '80s, it sounded like a viable idea. Feed money in at the top, the corporations will hire more people and everyone benefits. The problem is that these corporations are no longer allowing the money to trickle down. Greed has set in and they are keeping it for themselves. Dionne also writes, "The lesson of the Depression was that if ordinary workers lacked jobs and adequate incomes, the economy would crash because too few people could afford to buy what businesses hoped to sell."
Seems to me that our CEOs, CFOs and our government need a history lesson before it's too late.
Posted by Cyberkat at September 3, 2003 3:19 PM | TrackBack