Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1198-1200

I know a women, nearly 52, beautiful, intelligent with two degrees, who cannot find work and most jobs she applies for are at minimum or near minimum wage. She applies for maybe 3 jobs a week, does not collect unemployment out of pride. Those jobs typically require the names of 3 or more references and have long, inane online employment forms. One recent admin asst job, minimum wage, really wanted someone who could do all the bookkeeping, accounting, and financial analysis of the food store and the ability to lift 20 lbs. The job title was a ploy to not pay an appropriate wage. She worked a temp job at a well known department store last Christmas and the employer violated many state employment practices related to hours, breaks, unpaid overtime and her co-workers often worked 3 jobs. Let us be honest, we live in a wretched economic system.
Dennis Laguna Niguel 
comment section,
Paul Krugman's
Those Lazy Jobless
New York Times
SEPT. 21, 2014

Robots are already replacing manufacturing workers. Industrial robots have advanced to the point at which they can do the same physical work as human beings. The operating cost of some robots is now less than the salary of an average Chinese worker.

There won’t be much work for human beings. 

We’re heading into a jobless future, no matter what the government does.

By Vivek Wadhwa

The Washington Post

Futurist Ray Kurzweil notes that solar power has been doubling every two years for the past 30 years, as costs have been dropping. He says solar energy is only six doublings, or less than 14 years, away from meeting 100 percent of today’s energy needs. Energy usage will keep increasing, so this is a moving target. But, by Kurzweil’s estimates, inexpensive renewable sources will provide more energy than the world needs in less than 20 years. Even then, we will be using only one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the Earth.

The coming era of unlimited — and free — clean energy

Vivek Wadhwa

VBN News

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1195-1197

I still hate being a bartender. Over the years my knowledge and skill set have expanded, but I seem to be getting worse at tolerating the “service” part. I deal with incredible amounts of entitlement, condescension, and drunk nonsense. And at a bar, it is impossible to ignore the fact that misogyny is alive and well. I can’t tell you how many times people have treated me horribly and I’ve memorized or photographed the names from their credit cards, fantasizing about internet revenge. But every time I’ve been tempted in the past (even after verbal attacks, physical affronts, or sexual harassment) I’ve stopped myself and let it go.

Woman Writes Epic Open Letter to Hedge Fund Bro Who Allegedly Groped Her

Salon / By Jenny Kutner

So check this out.

...the modern American medical system has become the leading cause of death and injury in the United States. 

...

Death by medicine is a 21st-century epidemic, and America's "war on drugs" is clearly directed at the wrong enemy!

Prescription drugs are now killing far more people than illegal drugs, and while most major causes of preventable deaths are declining, those from prescription drug use are increasing, an analysis of recently released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) by the Los Angeles Times revealed.

Death from Prescription Drugs: The New Epidemic Sweeping Across America

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

Do we really want to design a society where some of the adults are living on the bleeding edge of poverty like this, with the potential to become homeless at any moment? Also, do we really want or expect people in our society to live a life with zero entertainment, no access to any luxuries or fun, etc.? Probably not. What is the purpose of designing a society like that? Why not design it so that everyone in the society has a decent life at some reasonable standard of living?

Why and How Should We Build

a Basic Income for Every Citizen?

by Marshall Brain

September 15, 2014

[emphasis JS]

For #BasicIncomeWeek:

Jack Saturday's complete Associational Documentary

The World Owes You A Living

Volumes 1 to 8

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1192-1194

The employment report for August suggests that any remaining hope for an economic upsurge in the second half of 2014 is largely unrealistic. The new data, which shows job creation down sharply last month, is consistent with more of the same sluggish growth that has long been the norm. Plentiful jobs at good pay — the critical underpinning of a strong economy — are still not in the cards.
Jobs Stall and So Does the Economy
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New York Times
SEPT. 5, 2014

You know that moment when you’d like to rip her clothes off, and she’s given you the green light, and you are just too tired to care? That job.

Gallup just released a poll that says the average person spends 47 hours at work. When you spend that much of your week doing something, it affects every other aspect of your life. In that moment when you could be experiencing magic, all you can think about is sleeping. In order to get through the horror of those eight hours all over again the next day, you need those precious moments on the pillow. Your work is affecting your sex life one way or another. The affect it has is up to you, and largely the type of job you have. If you are in a job you hate, which is 87% of us, it could destroy your sex life 

5 Ways You’re Trading Incredible Sex for a Miserable Job

SEPTEMBER 11, 2014 BY KIMANZI CONSTABLE

[emphasis JS]

We were told to follow our dreams and that hard work would pay off. They lied. By the time you realize this, you are years behind competitors in the job market and/or being raped by student loans. I can live with the lesson of not following my dreams, but the realization that presently your career success is based more on who you know as opposed to your efficiency and competency leaves me pretty much hopeless for a future.

Tabby_Cat 

comment section

I Should Have Never Followed My Dreams

By David Sobel

Salon via AlterNet

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1189-1191

...five years into an economic recovery that has been notable for resurging corporate profits, the number and quality of jobs are still lagging badly, as are wages and salaries.

In 2013, after-tax corporate profits as a share of the economy tied with their highest level on record (in 1965), while labor compensation as a share of the economy hit its lowest point since 1948. Wage growth since 1979 has not kept pace with productivity growth, resulting in falling or flat wages for most workers and big gains for corporate coffers, shareholders, executives and others at the top of the income ladder.

Worse, the recent upturn in growth, even if sustained, will not necessarily lead to markedly improved living standards for most workers.
Labor Today
Wages and Salaries Still Lag as Corporate Profits Surge
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
New York Times
AUG. 31, 2014
[emphasis JS]

See, the sad story is that not everyone gets to be a bestselling author, a famous musician, an engineer, an astronaut, a high-priced lawyer, a multimillionaire playboy, or any of the other many dream jobs out there. Most of us are mediocre folks who will have to settle for a regular old job that just pays the bills. And no one ever tells you that growing up.

The secret to success is finding something you enjoy in whatever drudgery you end up in, I think. Find a talent that only you possess. Maybe you're the fastest folder on the sales floor. Maybe you can instantly find whatever you're looking for in the stack of paperwork piled on your desk. Maybe you're the only one in your office that has a collection of peanut sculptures. Who knows? It's what makes the day go by.
Julian Birch
comment section
I Should Have Never Followed My Dreams
By David Sobel
Salon via AlterNet

…while it certainly takes resources to address homelessness, it may cost more to do nothing at all. The costs of putting the homeless in jail for violating ordinances or putting them in the hospital for emergency care are three times as expensive as helping them find a place to live. One Florida county spent more than $5 million over a decade jailing just 37 homeless people; on the other hand, one apartment complex for the homeless in North Carolina saved $1.8 million in its first year.

The Government Is Proving That Homelessness Is A Solvable Problem

BY BRYCE COVERT POSTED ON AUGUST 28, 2014

thinkprogress

[emphasis JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom #Quotations Of The Week 1186-1188

Part of this loss of warm-weather joy develops because you stop getting summers off when you grow up. People say things like Hasn’t this summer been beautiful? and you think to yourself that it looked nice through the slit of your cubicle wall.
Happy Labor Day Weekend! Here's Why Summer Sucks for Us Grown Ups
The Guardian / By Alex Leo 

Both cubicles and dark mills signify working on other people’s terms, for other people’s goals, at other people’s sufferance. Neither type of work usually results in us owning the fruits of our labors or having the satisfaction of creating something from start to finish with our own hands. Neither allows us to work at our own pace, or the pace of the seasons. Neither allows us access to our families, friends, or communities when we need them or they need us. Both isolate work from every other part of our life.

And heck, especially if you work for a big corporation, you can be confident that Ebenezer Scrooge cared more about Bob Cratchett than your employer cares about you.

Dark Satanic Cubicles – It’s time to smash the job culture!

James Tuttle

Center For A Stateless Society

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
George Orwell, 1984