Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 670-672

The latest economic numbers have not been good. Jobless claims rose last week….

…

When the economy weakened in the first quarter, Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, and Obama administration officials said the slowdown was just a blip and growth would soon pick up. Today, many Wall Street economists are saying much the same thing: any day now, things will improve…

The Economy Is Wavering. Does Washington Notice?
By DAVID LEONHARDT
New York Times
Published: May 26, 2011

At just five feet tall and 86 pounds, the HRP-4 may be the office grunt of tomorrow. The humanoid robot, developed by Tokyo-based Kawada Industries and Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Sciences and Technology, is programmed to deliver mail, pour coffee, and recognize its co-workers' faces. On Jan. 28, Kawada will begin selling it to research institutions and universities around the world…
…
the HRP-4 doesn't goof around on Facebook, spend hours tweaking its fantasy football roster, or require a lunch break. Noriyuki Kanehira, the robotic systems manager at Kawada, believes the HRP-4 could easily take on a "secretarial role...in the near future." Sooner or later, he says, "humanoid robots can move [into] the office field."
…
As a result of breakthroughs in technology, however, a new breed of machines may soon be filing papers and pushing the mail cart. In a 2007 issue of Scientific American, Bill Gates predicted that the future would bring a "robot in every home." In the foreseeable future, though, it may be a robot in every cubicle…
The Robot in the Next Cubicle By Eric Spitznagel
Bloomberg.co

Man [sic] did not enter society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of his civil rights... Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence... Society grants him nothing. Every man is proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
Thomas Paine
Rights Of Man

Gabor Maté

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 668-669

It has been reported that Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s defense might be that any encounter was consensual — that, in effect, “she asked for it.” During my time managing, the only thing a housekeeper ever asked me for was to leave early, or have Christmas off (both of which I had to deny — as I said, the housekeeper’s is the hardest job in the hotel). All she wants to do is finish up her work and go home to her family.
Behind Closed, Sequentially Numbered Doors
By JACOB TOMSKY
New York Times
Published: May 22, 2011

On April 19th, McDonald's launched its first-ever national hiring day, signing up 62,000 new workers at stores throughout the country. For some context, that's more jobs created by one company in a single day than the net job creation of the entire U.S. economy in 2009. And if that boggles the mind, consider how many workers applied to local McDonald's franchises that day and left empty-handed: 938,000 of them. With a 6.2% acceptance rate in its spring hiring blitz, McDonald’s was more selective than the Princeton, Stanford, or Yale University admission offices.
How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker
The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class
By Andy Kroll
TomDispatch.com

Violence

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 666-667

Women express a greater desire than men to maintain what they consider a healthy balance between work and life outside their job.

Yes, that’s it.

Did you catch that?

Women simply don’t want to sell our soul to all the B.S. that comes with fitting into the traditional business model. (Key word there being traditional.)

I don’t see this shift as a bad thing, or a sad thing, or some huge problem that needs to be addressed. I see it as a celebration that women are standing up for what we want. We simply want to choose where, when, and how we want to work. And the traditional, male-designed workplaces don’t offer this option. That’s why women are running away in droves from climbing the corporate ladder.
 …
 They are creating their own definitions of success.

Women are leading the change for combining business with humanity, with family, with—dare I say it—love.

Don’t get me wrong… I applaud the women who paved the way up the corporate ladder. They showed us anything was possible, and women are still sorely needed at the top of our nation’s corporations.

But I’m seeing more women than ever choose something different.

Something better.
Are Women Less Tolerant of the Bullshit That Comes With “Success”?
Ali Brown
Forbes

Our way of life is a crock of shit. Two people slaving in the most meaningless, excruciatingly mind-numbing jobs for the benefit of stock owners frequently cannot afford a life with security and autonomy. They live in worry about how to pay the bills. They spend their days doing what they're told by some jackass who doesn't give a damn about them, and probably barely cares about the company they all work for.
Waytoomanybottlesofrum

Wise Woman

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 664-665

After more than a quarter-century as a professional economist, I have a confession to make: There is a lot I don’t know about the economy.
If You Have the Answers, Tell Me
By N. GREGORY MANKIW
New York Times
Published: May 7, 2011
N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard.


 

What's disappearing is the middle, the decent-paying jobs that helped expand the American middle class in the mid-twentieth century and that, if the present lopsided recovery is any indication, are now going the way of typewriters and landline telephones.

…
What's causing this polarization? An obvious culprit is technology.
How the McEconomy Bombed the American Worker
The Hollowing Out of the Middle Class
By Andy Kroll
TomDispatch.com

Don Tapscott, Whole New Paradigm

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 661-663

Spain's jobless rate tops 21% as all major sectors lose jobs
Headline
Al Goodman,
CNN World
April 29, 2011

About one-fourth of Egyptian workers under 25 are unemployed, a statistic that is often cited as a reason for the revolution there. In the United States, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January an official unemployment rate of 21 percent for workers ages 16 to 24.

My generation was taught that all we needed to succeed was an education and hard work. Tell that to my friend from high school who studied Chinese and international relations at a top-tier college. He had the misfortune to graduate in the class of 2009, and could find paid work only as a lifeguard and a personal trainer.  Unpaid internships at research institutes led to nothing.  After more than a year he moved back in with his parents.

Millions of college graduates in rich nations could tell similar stories.

Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated

By MATTHEW C. KLEIN
New York Times
Published: March 20, 2011

Mr. Ishizawa, who was finally allowed to leave, is not a nuclear specialist; he is not even an employee of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator of the crippled plant. He is one of thousands of untrained, itinerant, temporary laborers who handle the bulk of the dangerous work at nuclear power plants here and in other countries, lured by the higher wages offered for working with radiation. Collectively, these contractors were exposed to levels of radiation about 16 times as high as the levels faced by Tokyo Electric employees last year, according to Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, which regulates the industry. These workers remain vital to efforts to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima nuclear plants.

They are emblematic of Japan’s two-tiered work force, with an elite class of highly paid employees at top companies and a subclass of laborers who work for less pay, have less job security and receive fewer benefits. Such labor practices have both endangered the health of these workers and undermined safety at Japan’s 55 nuclear reactors, critics charge.

Japanese Workers Braved Radiation for a Temp Job

By HIROKO TABUCHI

New York Times

Published: April 9, 2011