Tapscott on Dropouts and Internet

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 712-714

A friend asked me just now about an unusual context for the word ‘employ’. To clear things up, I explained that ‘employ’ actually means ‘use’. For example, one employs a hammer to drive a nail.
It struck me as odd that we never hear ‘use’ when someone says ‘employ’ in relation to a person’s profession. “I am used by a large software company”. “My husband is used as a secretary”. “My daughter is used on a fixed-term basis”. Doesn’t sound very pleasant does it? Makes one sound like a piece of gym equipment.
Conversely, “I am unused” sounds far more pleasant than “I am unemployed”. I think I’ll start using it! Or rather employing it.
New Escapologist

…we squander between a quarter and a half of all the food produced in the United States. Even using the more conservative figure would mean that 160 billion pounds of food are squandered annually--more than enough, that is, to fill the Rose Bowl to the brim. With the high-end estimate, the Rose Bowl would almost be filled twice over.
Americans Waste Enough Food to Fill a 90,000-seat Football Stadium Every Day -- What Can We Do About It?
AlterNet / By Jonathan Bloom

If there is anything that we wish to change in our children, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves. Take our enthusiasm for pedagogics. It may be that the boot is on the other leg. It may be that we misplace the pedagogical need because it would be an uncomfortable reminder that we ourselves are still children in many respects and still need a vast amount of educating.
C. G. Jung
"The Development of the Personality" (1934). In CW 17: The Development of the Personality. P.287 



Ralston-Saul Raps

Did It All On Your Own?

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 708-711

Hard times were common enough, but except in extremis most people retained land and tools, not to speak of common rights to woodlands, grazing areas, and the ability to hunt and fish. They were -- we would say today -- “self-employed.” Only when such means of subsistence and production became concentrated in the hands of merchant-capitalists, manufacturers, and large landowners did the situation change fundamentally. A proletariat -- those without property of any kind except their own labor power -- made its appearance, dependent on the propertied to employ them. If, for whatever reason, the market for their labor power dried up, they were set adrift.

Massive Unemployment: Proof That Global Capitalism Doesn't Work
By Steve Fraser and Joshua B. Freeman
September 11, 2011
Tomdispatch.com /
Via AlterNet

The extreme poverty rate among women climbed to 6.3 percent in 2010 from 5.9 percent in 2009, the highest rate ever recorded.

Women and children last
DIGBY
Hullabaloo

[W]e are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

...

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.”
Douglas Rushkoff

I believe that as technology continues to develop a new approach will have to be adopted globally. Capitalism simply doesn’t work when technology surpasses the abilities of humans, and believe me that reality isn’t far away.
Technological Unemployment

March 22, 2011
By Josh Hunt

Eliminate The Vote for the Unproductive

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 704-707

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, which has been polling over 1,000 adults every day since January 2008, shows that Americans now feel worse about their jobs — and work environments — than ever before. People of all ages, and across income levels, are unhappy with their supervisors, apathetic about their organizations and detached from what they do. And there’s no reason to think things will soon improve.
…
In fact, workers often expressed frustration, disdain or disgust.
Do Happier People Work Harder?
By TERESA AMABILE and STEVEN KRAMER
New York Times
Published: September 3, 2011


…briefcases and pinstripes, umbrellas and raincoats, and the musty scent of damp business wear. The silent faces are not animated by anticipation. Rather they seem steeled in preparation. Today each rider seems to be looking far away, or perhaps deep inside, preparing for a return to toil.
…
“I don’t want to go to school,” the girl cries.

“Believe me, I understand,” Mom says. “Grown-ups don’t always like going to work either, but we have to.”

“Why?”

“We just do,” Mom says. “Here, want some M&M’s?”
Summer’s Over; the Game Begins
By SETH SCHIESEL
New York Times
Published: September 7, 2011



Demographic

By
Dorianne Laux

It's time for me to walk to the bus stop
And sit down among them, the man
Tied into his wheelchair, the woman
With the humped back, time for me
To kneel and hold his cup while he adjusts
His books and his pack, look up at her,
Flowered blouse. His scratched glasses.
There's a sky full of rain that won't
Come down, pigeons asleep on the lawn,
And across the street pumpkins piled high
In front of the market, Xeroxed flyers
Stapled to the telephone pole. To the east
A day moon above the bridge, cars
Filing under like a school of fish,
And if I look down at my feet I won't
Knock over the plastic dish the blind man
Has filled to the brim for his dog. It's time
To go to work, to wait while they gather
Their belongings, while the metal mesh
Platform unhinges and bangs down,
Time to nod to the driver as he pulls
Back on the lever and a man lifts
Into the air, to cup her elbows, a thin wing
Sharpened by suffering, to enter
The threshold and stand among them,
Listen to their murmurs, the news
Of the day, to slip my hand through
The frayed canvas noose and hold on.

The Best American Poetry 2006

A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.
Margaret Sanger

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 701-703

America now has more than four unemployed people for each opening.
Did We Drop the Ball on Unemployment?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
Published: August 27, 2011

“We did everything we were supposed to,” said Stephanie Morales, 23, who graduated from Dartmouth College in 2009 with hopes of working in the arts. Instead she ended up waiting tables at a Chart House restaurant in Weehawken, N.J., earning $2.17 an hour plus tips, to pay off her student loans. “What was the point of working so hard for 22 years if there was nothing out there?” said Ms. Morales, who is now a paralegal and plans on attending law school.

Some of Ms. Morales’s classmates have found themselves on welfare. “You don’t expect someone who just spent four years in Ivy League schools to be on food stamps,” said Ms. Morales….

Generation Limbo: Waiting It Out
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
New York Times
Published: August 31, 2011

I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
Harriet Tubman