Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 329-332

counted as one quotation:


9/84: Percentage of Americans who say they would not accept a job if a lie-detector test was required: 55

9/87: Soup kitchens in New York City in 1980: 30
September 87: 560
1989: 600

6/88: Portion of the defense budget it would take to lift every American family over the poverty line for one year: 1/9

7/00: Number of U.S. counties in which a full-time minimum-wage earner can afford a one-bedroom apartment: 0

2/99: Amount a fourth-grade Denver class has raised since last March to buy and free Sudanese slaves: $35,000

Number of Sudanese no longer enslaved as a result: 600

7/86: Percentage change in the buying power of the minimum wage since 1981: -26

7/87: Percentage increase, since 1978, in the number of full-time workers who are paid minimum wage: 60

8/87: Average annual percentage increase, since 1981, in the productivity of U.S. manufacturing workers: 4

7/87: Percentage increase, since 1978, in the number of full-time workers who are paid minimum wage: 60

8/87: Average annual percentage increase, since 1981, in the hourly wage of U.S. manufacturing workers: 0.8

7/93: Percentage of U.S. day-care workers who earn less than poverty-level wages: 57
Harper’s Index Online


Between 1963 and 1974, Dr. Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments that would become one of the most famous social psychology studies of the 20th century. His focus was how average people respond to authority, and what he revealed stunned and disturbed people the world over.

Under the pretense of an experiment on "learning" and "memory," Milgram placed test subjects in a lab rigged with fake gadgetry, where a man in a lab coat instructed them to administer electrical shocks to a fellow test subject (actually an actor) seated in another room in "a kind of miniature electric chair."

Participants were told they were the "teachers" in the scenario and given a list of questions with which to quiz their counterparts (the "learners"). If the respondent answered incorrectly to a question, he got an electric shock as punishment.

The shocks were light at first -- 15 volts -- and became stronger incrementally, until they reached 450 volts -- a level labeled "Danger: Severe Shock." The actors were never actually electrocuted, but they pretended they were. They groaned, shouted, and, as the current became stronger, begged for relief. Meanwhile, the man in the lab coat coolly told the test subjects to keep going.

To people's horror, Milgram discovered that a solid majority of his subjects -- roughly two-thirds -- were willing to administer the highest levels of shock to their counterparts. This was as true among the first set of his test subjects (Yale undergrads), to subsequent "ordinary" participants as described by Milgram ("professionals, white-collar workers, unemployed persons and industrial workers"), to test subjects abroad, from Munich to South Africa. It was also as true for women as it was for men (although female subjects reported a higher degree of anxiety afterward).…Now, for the first time in decades, a psychologist has replicated Milgram's famous study….….In the end, 70 percent of the subjects reached the 150-volt mark -- a statistic basically identical to Milgram's..…Participants are also absolved of any real sense of personal responsibility. "I was doing my job," is a common refrain.
Questioning Authority: A Rethinking of the Infamous Milgram Experiments
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet.
Posted February 12, 2009.



But while Milgram so effectively demonstrated the challenge of defying authority, he also showed that subjects were far more likely to do it when they saw other people doing it. He wrote in The Perils of Obedience, "The rebellious action of others severely undermines authority."
Questioning Authority: A Rethinking of the Infamous Milgram Experiments
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet.
Posted February 12, 2009.
(emphasis JS)




You might be interested in another psychological experiment performed on Spider Monkeys, I believe. The experiment was the same as Milgram's except the monkeys actually received electrical shocks, some in the debilitating range.The results were that once the monkeys doing the shocking realized their fellow primates were actually suffering they refused to administer anymore shocks even when denied food and water.Spider monkeys would die before inflicting pain on a fellow monkey, while 70% of humans just need to be told it is okay.
Whoa, wait a minute.
Posted by: bornxeyed
on Feb 12, 2009 1:35 PM