Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 572-576

yes, the couch people are growing. friend of mine in virginia has three sons in their 20s. one has a successful theatre troupe in chicago. the other two, both with solid degrees in hand haven't had any jobs for years except for at walmart and now both are unemployed and living at home nearing the age of 30! and this is happening everywhere, a lost generation. and then there are those like me who in mid-50s is considered dead because i haven't had a job for years... good thing i'm an entrepreneur and can sell my art. good thing my wife finally landed a job or we'd be on the street. and this is with both of us having 25 year-long resumes
tazdelaney

AAA

If Straight A’s are a dream come true, then guess which dream it is. It’s that dream where you’re running late for class and suddenly remember you forgot to do all the assignments, or you flat-out forgot you even enrolled and now you have to go sit the final. If I had it all to do over again, I’d relax a little bit, have a lot more fun, go clubbing, hit on girls, go to the beaches for Spring Break, get wasted at parties. These are the memories one can look forward to looking backward on later– not memories of memorizing theorems and pounding flashcards.
Sam Alexander

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself [sic]; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men [sic] to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody."
Thomas Jefferson, 1813

So what’s the answer? Reorganizing the economy to make sure the vast middle class has a larger share of its benefits. Remaking the basic bargain linking pay to per-capita

productivity.
RobertReich
AAA

One way to change the attitude would be to get rid of that word "welfare" and substitute some such phrase as "income maintenance." In an affluent society there ought to be an income floor under every man [sic] below which society will not allow him to go - and this ought to come as a right and not as a charity.
Pierre Berton, The Smug Minority,
pp. 114

Indoctrination, Obedience

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 569-571

The real "haves" are they who can acquire freedom, self-confidence, and even riches without depriving others of them. They acquire all of these by developing and applying their potentialities. On the other hand, the real "have nots" are they who cannot have aught except by depriving others of it. They can feel free only by diminishing the freedom of others, self-confident by spreading fear and dependence among others, and rich by making others poor.
Eric Hoffer


25,000 days

on this journey given
Take away the ones you’d like to forget
And if you count the days

you were just making a living
Well then you get down to it.
The Boomers
AAA



Anyone who thinks it’s legitimate to be a wage laborer is internalizing oppression in a way which would have seemed intolerable to people in the mills, lets say, a hundred and fifty years ago. So that’s again internalizing oppression, and it’s an achievement.
Noam Chomsky
Interview with Barsamian
Z Net Commentary, Saturday, December 16, 2000

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 566-568

The dream of the corporate empire builders is being realized. The global system is harmonizing standards across country after country - down toward the lowest common denominator. Although a few socially responsible businesses are standing against the tide with some limited success, theirs is not an easy struggle. We must not kid ourselves. Social responsibility is inefficient in a global free market, and the market will not long abide those who do not avail of the opportunities to shed the inefficient. And we must be clear as to the meaning of efficiency. To the global economy, people are not only increasingly unnecessary, but they and their demands for a living wage are a major source of economic inefficiency. Global corporations are acting to purge themselves of this unwanted burden. We are creating a system that has fewer places for people.
David Korten
economist and internationalist


Competition pushed manufacturers to overproduction in self-defense. And for double jeopardy, the unique American entrepreneurial tradition encouraged an overproduction of manufacturers. This guaranteed periodic crises all along the line. Before the modern age could regard itself as mature, ways had to be found to control overproduction. In business, that was begun by the Morgan interests who developed a system of cooperative trusts among important business leaders. It was also furthered through the conversion of government from servant of the republic to servant of industry.
John Taylor Gatto
aaa

[T]he members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages.
Aristotle
'Politics', Book III, chapter 7.

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 564-565

Workaholics commit slow suicide by refusing to allow the child inside them to play.
Dr. Laurence Susser











Although it does not have to be, play can be productive, so forced labor may not be necessary. When we work we produce without pleasure so as to consume without creating -- containers drained and filled, drained and filled, like the locks of a canal. Job enrichment? The phrase implies a prior condition of job impoverishment which debunks the myth of work as a source of wealth. Work devalues life by appropriating something so priceless it cannot be bought back no matter how high the GNP is.
Bob Black
No Future for the Workplace, 1992