Midget and Giant

Dr. Cornel West
22 sec

Griffin, How The Banks Got Wealthy, West, Banks Now

4 min 18 sec
G. Edward Griffin
from
History... Interview with G. Edward Griffin
TragedyandHopeMag


Dr. Cornel West
29 sec

From Outside the Orthodocs

2 min 13 sec from the movie "Sister Kenny", true story, 1946

I Want To Hear You Say

Les Barker

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 987-989

On research it is still worthwhile returning to the Jewkes 60's book THE SOURCES OF INVENTION, funded by the 20th Century Fund. Project scope was to analyze the 50 most important inventions of the 20th century in order to reform the patent system. Of these inventions only 1, the Pilkington floating glass process, was the result of a company using persons trained in the business working on a defined objective.

There arguably was another when a British textile firm aimed to produce permanent press textiles, but this was undercut by the strict requirement imposed by the firm that no one with previous experience in textiles be allowed to work on the project.

Remaining 48 were all invented by persons outside industry, often in garages, such as the lawyer developing copying machines.
 terry
 washingtonville, new york
comment on
Questioning the Mission of College
By FRANK BRUNI
Published: April 20, 2013
New York Times

[emphasis JS]

A troubling problem that refuses to go away: what to do with our growing “surplus-population” (to paraphrase Scrooge by way of Malthus)? That is to say: in our 21st century post-industrial economy, tens of millions of people—i.e., human beings, right?—now have little or no “market-value.” Two factors are primarily responsible: hi-tech automation and offshoring (capital flight, “race to the bottom”). Their job-skills—such as they were—are now overpriced, redundant, outmoded, superannuated. They can neither be exploited as productive (but underpaid) workers nor as affluent (well-paid) consumers. They are idle, discontented, restless—and are liable to sudden spasms of rage and social unrest.

What to do? We’re talking of, say, up to 20% of the people living in the U.S. Within the ideological prism of late-capitalism—in which individual “worth” is reduced entirely to “market-value”—they’re “worthless.” (Remember: “there is no [civil] society”– Margaret Thatcher.) You can’t just… kill them—although that would be the easiest, most-efficient and cost-effective way of disposing of the problem. The elite 1% (or should we say, one-tenth of 1%) may still enjoy limited-liability for the crimes and reckless actions of the thousands of profit-squeezing machines they rely on, which we call Corporations. Still: there remains a residual, normative/legal constraint against premeditated murder. (The unmentionable if glaring exception: bombing and burning thousands of innocent people in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.)

So, I ask once again: what to do?
Obsolete People: A Disposable Problem?
by William Manson
Dissident Voice
December 29th, 2012

[emphasis and link JS]

Dr. Kornrich and Dr. Furstenberg warn that social mobility is in jeopardy. “In the race to the top, higher-income children are at an ever greater advantage because their parents can and do spend more on child care, preschool, and the growing costs of postsecondary education,” they write.
...
Suniya S. Luthar, professor of psychology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Dr. Luthar stumbled upon the subject of troubled rich kids. “I was looking for a comparison group for the inner-city kids,” Dr. Luthar told me. “And we happened to find that substance use, depression and anxiety, particularly among the girls, were much higher than among inner-city kids.”

That accidental discovery set Dr. Luthar on a research path that has prompted her to conclude that the children of privilege are an “at-risk” group. “What we are finding again and again, in upper-middle-class school districts, is the proportion who are struggling are significantly higher than in normative samples,” she said. “Upper-middle-class kids are an at-risk group.”
Money Cuts Both Ways in Education
By CHRYSTIA FREELAND | REUTERS
New York Times
Published: May 9, 2013 

[emphasis JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 984-986

And while the American economy has come back more robustly than some of its global rivals in terms of overall production, the recovery has been strangely light on new jobs, even after Friday’s better-than-expected unemployment report. American companies are doing more with less.
...
Employers are particularly reluctant to add new workers — and have been for much of the last 12 years.
The Idled Young Americans
By DAVID LEONHARDT
                                                                                     New York Times
                                                                                     Published: May 3, 2013 

[emphasis JS]

 
 I think the person who takes a job in order to live - that is to say, for the money - has turned himself into a slave.
Joseph Campbell

 "When we do nothing for men and boys, we do nothing for women". My god! You mean... we're human? Valuable? We're not living pieces of shit for being born males? Maybe, just maybe there's something OK about us? We are more than violent, brutish, cro-magnon, patriarchal raping machines? We get to actually have feelings and not be perfect and super-heroes and be OK, and worthwhile and desirable? Fuck I wish I'd heard that early on in life.
ZephZhang
Comment on
Brene Brown at The UP Experience 2009

Who Has The Courage?

Dr. Cornel West
2 minutes 11 seconds

To Hell With The Housework

Laura Mathis
1 min 50 sec

Leave the dishes unwashed and the demands on your time unanswered. Be ruthless and refuse to do what people ask of you.
Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Wise Old Man, Slavery

Tony Benn,
21 seconds

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 981-983

I can’t imagine anything that will change all of our lives as much as the coming Robot Age. We are the last generation that will remember life before robots. In about five years, shit is gonna get real.

...

The robot revolution will make the industrial revolution look like practice swings.

Scott Adams
Cartoonist of Dilbert
[emphasis JS]

Renters pay me because I own stuff that other people don’t. I’m in that position, because I just happened to have a brother who needed an investor just when I happened to have money to invest. I was in that position because I just happened to get a job in Qatar. The Emir of Qatar just happened to be able to give me that job because arbitrary decisions made long ago by the British Empire just happened to have worked out so that he owns stuff that other people don’t.

Lucky break upon lucky break upon lucky break determines who owns resources and who does not. Those who do not own will pay those who do, year after year, from now until the end of time or until we decide to change the rules. We don’t need to eliminate property to change the rules in an important way. How about a little rebate from those who own stuff to those who do not? It would compensate them for all that they have to pay just because others control the resources we all need to use.
I have my own Basic Income - one man's very interesting story
Karl Widerquist
[emphasis JS] 

  “I found out at this age that I am artistic and creative and innovative and smart. I just woke up to the fact that I have a mind of my own."

JUDITA GROSZ, 69, of Pembroke Pines, Fla., after recovering from a debilitating depression.
How Therapy Can Help in the Golden Years
By ABBY ELLIN
New York Times
4/23/2013

Anti Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 978-980

Americans like to think that a fair day’s work brings a fair day’s pay. Cheating workers of their wages may seem like a problem of 19th-century sweatshops. But it’s back and taking a terrible toll. We’re talking billions of dollars in wages; millions of workers affected each year. A gigantic heist is being perpetrated against working people: they’re getting screwed on overtime, denied their tips, shortchanged on benefits, defrauded on payroll, and handed paychecks that bounce like rubber balls. A conservative estimate of unpaid overtime alone shows that it costs workers at least $19 billion per year.

The laws protecting workers are grossly inadequate, and wage thieves go unpunished. For giant companies like Walmart, Citigroup and UPS, getting fined is just the cost of doing business. You could even say that they're incentivized to cheat because punishment is so unlikely, and when it happens, so light.
By Lynn Stuart Parramore
AlterNet
When Your Boss Steals Your Wages: The Invisible Epidemic That’s Sweeping America
[emphasis JS]

Ireland is trying to cut working class wages enough to out-compete Italy, but Italy is trying to cut working class wages to out-compete Spain, which is trying to out-compete Portugal, which is trying to out-compete Greece, which is trying to cut wages to out-compete Turkey.
...
When I criticized the “Road to Bangladesh” strategy, the conservative economists I was appearing with rushed to praise Bangladesh as the model for successful economic growth through exceptionally low wages.  They responded that if Portugal was in fact on the Road to Bangladesh it was actually on the road to success.
By William K. Black
New Economic Perspectives
AlterNet
Why Economic Criminals View Bangladesh as a Model for Workers Everywhere
[emphasis JS]

Advice: #1. If you truly believe in freedom, for a satisfying future, get rid of your job as soon as you can. True freedom is doing what you want to do with your time, spending as little as possible doing what others decide you should do. That's the best reason to avoid a life of crime. And having a job is a lot like being a convicted criminal (or a slave), others decide how your time will be spent.
#2. We all have needs that require things, food, shelter, clothing. But avoid acquiring things that are not needs, or tools to help you live the life you choose. The acquisition of things by shopping should be maximally minimized. It usually takes time to get the money to buy things, and more time to maintain them. Be very thrifty with your time, consider and conserve it carefully, it is the most (only) precious asset you have.
#3. Spend your time wildly on those endeavors which satisfy you and make you happy
tomdoff
comments
Slaves to Our Stuff: A Creative Vision to Break Away From Consumer Culture's Destructive Grip
AlterNet / By Sabrina Artel

Story of When A Great Poet Teaches, First Day In Class, Grade 7

3 min 25 sec