Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1527-1529

 Bill Gates made a pebble of a contribution to a Gibraltar of technological advances. There is no moral reason for him and his ilk to receive the whole Gibraltar of reward.
The Five Lies Of Rentier Capitalism
by Guy Standing  
27 October 2016
Social Europe

As of last month, 11.4 percent of men between the ages of 25 and 54 — or about seven million people — were not in the labor force, which means that they were not employed and were not seeking a job. This percentage has been rising for decades (it was less than 4 percent in the 1950s), but the trend accelerated in the last 20 years.

Surveys taken between 2010 and this year show that 40 percent of prime working-age men who are not in the labor force report having pain that prevents them from taking jobs for which they are qualified. More than a third of the men not in the labor force said they had difficulty walking or climbing stairs or had another disability. Forty-four percent said they took painkillers daily and two-thirds of that subset were on prescription medicines.

Millions of Men Are Missing From the Job Market

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

New York Times

OCTOBER 16, 2016

[emphasis JS]

 From an economic perspective, however, there can be no revival of American manufacturing, because there has been no collapse. Because of automation, there are far fewer jobs in factories. But the value of stuff made in America reached a record high in the first quarter of 2016, even after adjusting for inflation. The present moment, in other words, is the most productive in the nation’s history.
...
The enduring political focus on factory workers partly reflects the low profile of the new working class. Instead of white men who make stuff, the group is increasingly made up of minority women who serve people. “That transformation really has rendered the working class invisible,”
...
Trump... “People are tired of lies, they’re tired of losing their jobs, they’re tired of seeing their companies being ripped out and going to other places,” he said at a rally in Erie, Pa. “That’s why the steelworkers are with me, that’s why the miners are with me, that’s why the working people, electricians, the plumbers, the Sheetrockers, the concrete guys and gals, they’re all — they’re with us.”

In all likelihood, many more of Mr. Trump’s supporters are people who once worked in those kinds of jobs, or whose parents did. They are now caregivers, retail workers and customer-service representatives. When will they start to demand that candidates address the lives they actually lead?
Why Are Politicians So Obsessed With Manufacturing?
On Money
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM 
OCT. 4, 2016
New York Times
[emphasis JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1524-1526

Deutsche Bank to Cut an Additional 1,000 Jobs in Germany

By CHAD BRAY

As part of an overhaul, the lender announced plans last year to eliminate as many as 35,000 posts through internal cuts and sales of businesses.

New York Times
headline
October 6, 2016

 The job of the rulers is always to find that line and provide the lowest level of pay, security, housing, consumer protection, healthcare, and political access for society so that they can extract and hoard the greatest amount of wealth, power, and immunity from justice for themselves. In many ways, the majority of Americans live in a democracy of minimums, while the privileged few enjoy a plutocracy of maximums.
Ralph Nader
Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think

 Trade Adjustment Assistance, a government program started in 1962 and expanded significantly a dozen years later, is supposed to support workers whose jobs are casualties of overseas competition. The program pays for job training.

But Mr. Simmons rolls his eyes at mention of the program. Training has almost become a joke. Skills often do not translate from old jobs to new. Many workers just draw a check while they attend training and then remain jobless.

A 2012 assessment of the program prepared for the Labor Department found that four years after completing training, only 37 percent of those employed were working in their targeted industries. Many of those enrolled had lower incomes than those who simply signed up for unemployment benefits and looked for other work.
...
...But labor is playing defense. The robots will win in the end, because robots never strike. Robots improve with time.
...
Trade deals, immigrant labor, automation: As Mr. Arkenbout sees it, these are all just instruments wielded in pursuit of the same goal — paying him less so corporations can keep more.

“When they don’t need me anymore,” he said, “I’m nothing.”
 
More Wealth, More Jobs,
but Not for Everyone: What
Fuels the Backlash on Trade
By PETER S. GOODMAN
SEPT. 28, 2016
New York Times
[emphasis JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1521-1523

But of what value is the opinion, say upon socialism or the federal reserve system, of an economist whose job depends upon the good will of a board of trustees made up of bankers and manufacturers? And of what value is that of an editorial writer whose boss is a speculator on the stock exchange? Here, obviously, the freedom of the expert is quite as important as his honesty, or even his competence. If he is not free, then he is scarcely worth hearing, however ingeniously he may argue his case.
Henry Louis Mencken
[emphasis JS]

 What Milgram and Zimbardo show us with their experiments is that when human beings participate in social organizations, they become, at least to some extent, automatons of the larger social system. That is to say, what exactly happens to people as they shift into a "functional position " in a social hierarchy?
First, there is a critical shift in the actor's attitude: they no longer see themselves as acting on their own purposes, but they are acting as an agent for executing the wishes of another person. The agentic state is a condition in which a person sees themselves as the agent of another. It is used to describe the mental state which is the opposite of autonomy- when a person sees himself as acting on his own. This critical shift in attitude occurs in situations that are defined by a bureaucratic hierarchy which has its own special form of authority.
George Baldwin
[emphasis JS]

 If the thing they were fighting for was important enough to die for them it was also important enough for them to be thinking about it in the last minutes of their lives. That stood to reason. Life is awfully important so if you've given it away you'd ought to think with all your mind in the last moments of your life about the thing you traded it for. So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and honor and the safety of the home and the stars and the stripes forever? You're goddamn right they didn't. They died crying in their minds like little babies. They died with only one thought in their minds and that was I want to live I want to live I want to live.
Dalton Trumbo 

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1518-1520

Mondays are hard days. Not only does the sudden shift between weekend mode and work leave us stressed, but we tend to feel worse about ourselves on Sundays and Mondays. If Fridays are Cinderella ― all carefree and full of hope ― Mondays are the wicked stepmother, crushing our dreams and forcing us to do chores.

How You Feel On Monday Versus How You Feel On Friday, As Told In Comics
Abigail Williams
Huffpost
09/30/2016
[emphasis JS]

 The odds weren’t in my favor. Most likely I’d find myself in the 92 percent of start-ups that go under in three years, trapped like some of my friends — much smarter and better programmers than I’ll ever be — bouncing from failing company to failing company.
...
Somewhere out there is a coding boot camp with slightly inflated numbers, selling a dream. Their fluorescent halls and cramped bedrooms are filled with the perennially hopeful looking to take the place of those who have already realized this dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
I Came to San Francisco to Change My Life: I Found a Tribe of Depressed Workaholics Living on Top of One Another
David Garczynski / Salon
Alternet
September 18, 2016

 About 43 million Americans, more than 14 million of them children, are still officially classified as poor, and countless others up and down the income ladder remain worried about their families’ financial security.
Millions in U.S. Climb Out of Poverty, at Long Last
New York Times
By PATRICIA Cohen SEPT. 25, 2016
[emphasis JS]

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1515-1517

Statistics Canada began tracking job vacancies in response to claims of a labour shortage by governments and corporate Canada. But the number of vacancies falling below 200,000 casts further doubt on the notion that Canada is suffering from a shortage of workers.

The real problem is a shortage of jobs.

Erin Weir
The Progressive Economics Forum

Jack Saturday says: No, the real problem is a shortage of vision a few decades into an abundance economy. "Creating jobs" is like trying to improve the horse-and-buggy not only after the Model T, but after the Lamborghini or Nova C8. The work-like-a-horse ethic is obsolete. 

The topic of the market is intricately related to the deterioration of the environment. Pollution affects not only the air, the rivers and the forests but also our souls. A society possessed by the frantic need to produce more in order to consume more tends to reduce ideas, feelings, art, love, friendship and people themselves to consumer products. Everything becomes a thing to be bought, used and then thrown in the rubbish dump. No other society has produced so much waste as ours has. Material and moral waste.
OCTAVIO PAZ
IN SEARCH OF THE PRESENT
Nobel Lecture, December 8, 1990
Mexico City, Mexico

Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires.... But what history really shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit.
Mumia Abu-Jamal