Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1552-1554

Our studies led us to surprising findings: 23% of adults and 36% of millennials experience acute financial stress at levels that would qualify them for a diagnosis of PTSD. We knew people were feeling under the gun and often anxious about their futures, but this degree of clinical stress was more severe and pervasive than we imagined.
We Have to Face the Major Problem of Acute Financial Stress
Constant debt leads to trauma, stress and illness.
By Dr. Galen Buckwalter / AlterNet
November 27, 2016
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 If you've ever cried at work, you may want to hold back the tears. Researchers say crying on the job may hurt your credibility, and even damage your career.

The studies by Dutch researcher Niels van de Ven suggest crying at work changes the way a person is perceived by colleagues.

"What we see is that someone who cries is seen as warmer, but also as less competent," says van de Ven.

He adds that "the reduced competence makes people want to avoid them when something needs to be done."
Tuesday December 20, 2016
Crying at work could damage your career, study suggests
CBC The Current

 …study by Ball State university suggests that 5.6 million US manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2010 — almost nine in 10 thanks to automation, not trade. It could be worse: McKinsey, a consultancy, estimates that 45 per cent of the tasks currently done by humans could be automated as the pattern spreads into the service sector. This equates to $2tn in annual wages — and millions of jobs.
...
 if he [Trump] does succeed in this goal of America First he will — paradoxically — only accelerate the automation trend as companies will scramble to cut costs.
How robots are making humans indispensable
Gillian Tett
Financial Times
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Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1549-1551

After paying thousands of dollars in tuition, sitting through lectures with hundreds of other students taught by sessional lecturers making less than an assistant manager at McDonald’s and finally having the privilege of paying a graduation fee, it’s no wonder students find themselves asking; Where did my tuition money go?
Students at Hamilton’s McMaster University are learning exactly where their money is going: retirement “bonuses”, social clubs, financial advisers, car allowances, social club memberships, and country clubs for already well paid administrators.
Hey, where did my tuition money go?
Maclean's
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 A teenager who recently aged out of government care died on Wednesday in a tent in a rain-soaked bush area of Surrey often frequented by homeless people.

Bernard Richard, B.C.’s new acting representative for children and youth, confirmed the girl was 19 and had been in government care, but he said he couldn’t release her name. He didn’t know how recently she had turned 19 ... . Richard said he supports extending services to children in care past the age of 19.

“I think some of these kids come out of very, very difficult situations,” Richard said. “As a parent, I know that my kids never aged out of my care.
...
As The Vancouver Sun found in its 2014 series, From Care to Where, when children in care are cut off at 19, they face high rates of homelessness, unemployment, poverty, substance abuse and incarceration.
…
There have been several high-profile deaths of young people in B.C. who have aged out or who were approaching their 19th birthdays….
Girl who recently aged out of government care dies in Surrey tent
TRACY SHERLOCK
Vancouver Sun

 Fear of machines that can liberate us from drudgery is a symptom of a timid and divided society. The Luddites are among the most misunderstood historical actors. Their vandalism of machinery was a protest not against automation, but against social arrangements that deprived them of life prospects in the face of technological innovation. Our societies must embrace the rise of the machines, but ensure that they contribute to shared prosperity by granting every citizen property rights over them, yielding a UBD [Universal Basic Dividend].

A universal basic income allows for new understandings of liberty and equality that bridge hitherto irreconcilable political blocs, while stabilizing society and reinvigorating the notion of shared prosperity in the face of otherwise destabilizing technological innovation.
A 'simple policy' to make a universal basic income a reality
Yanis Varoufakis

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Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1546-1548

For the 1 in 8 Victoria residents who are living in poverty…
United Way ad

 A 2015 study from Cosmopolitan found that 1 in 3 respondents had experienced workplace harassment from a supervisor or officemate, and 71 percent of those women chose not to report it, fearing retribution. Despite the progress we’ve made in recognizing the issue, women have a lot to fear in the workplace. Homicide is the second-leading cause of workplace-related deaths for women, and the AFL-CIO estimates that 36,500 employees are sexually assaulted on the job each year, a majority of them female. 

Sexual harassment and “Last Tango in Paris”: The more things change for women in the workplace, the more they stay the same
Nico Lang
Salon
Tuesday, Dec 6, 2016
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      Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
          You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
          And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
          And the reckless rain; you put them between walls
          To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
          To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
          For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.     
Carl Sandburg

 

          

Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1543-1545

Over 3 million Canadians live in poverty.
Salvation Army, Dec. 2016

 ...if last year’s numbers hold, more than 500 of the city’s homeless will still be outdoors this winter.
Metro Vancouver looks for answers as homeless tent cities grow
GLEN SCHAEFER
Vancouver Sun

When unconditional basic-income schemes were proposed decades ago, they inevitably met outraged reactions from employers’ associations, trade unions, economists, and politicians. Recently, however, the idea has resurfaced, gathering impressive support from the radical left, the Green movement, and even from the libertarian right. The cause is the rise of machines that, for the first time since the start of industrialization, threaten to destroy more jobs than technological innovation creates – and to pull the rug out from under the feet of white-collar professionals.
..
A common myth, promoted by the rich, is that wealth is produced individually before it is collectivized by the state, through taxation. In fact, wealth was always produced collectively and privatized by those with the power to do it: the propertied class. Farmland and seeds, pre-modern forms of capital, were collectively developed through generations of peasant endeavor that landlords appropriated by stealth. Today, every smartphone comprises components developed by some government grant, or through the commons of pooled ideas, for which no dividends have ever been paid to society.
A 'simple policy' to make a universal basic income a reality
Yanis Varoufakis

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