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Guest Post: Corporate America Really Really Cares About Its Employees (Really) - A Distributed Rant
A twofer from Charles Hugh Smith today, as always from Of Two Minds
Corporate America Really Really Cares About Its Employees (Really)
Scrape away the Human Resource Department rah-rah about "our mission" and how much your loyalty is "valued," and what's left? A paycheck and a sucking sound.
Let's state the heretical obvious: Corporate America, you suck.
We could count the ways--subverting democracy via your lobbying and
campaign contributions, your sabotage of competition via regulatory
capture, and so on--but what really matters is how you treat your
employees.
We know: you really really care about your employees. Really.
The propaganda would be laughable if it wasn't so bald-faced. Do
corporate managers really believe in the Big Lie theory, that the bigger
the lie, the easier it is to sell?
Here is reader C's experience of Corporate America's transition to wonderfulness and caring. An outlier or "what everybody inside knows"?
I occasionally read your postings linked to Jesse's Cafe Americain and I just want to confirm what you posted about corporate bankruptcy. (The Bankruptcy of Corporate America) I was disappointed with the Reagan administration which imo was the beginning of the takeover of our government by corporations and elites. Still, having a new family, I was fortunate to get an union job at the big telco and now work in the belly of the beast.
At first it was a great place to work, proud of our knowledge & expertise helping customers, but after 2-3 mergers, the overlords have increased our workload 100% (shutting down depts. in other parts of the country and giving us their work), reduced benefits, monitor everything and have rolled out methods & procedures that have totally dehumanized the workforce; we're just button pushers. Nearly everyone there is now miserable and it's a soul crushing, mind-numbing existence. Sorry that I have nothing good to say about it all, just hoping & praying for it get swept away and that my preparations to be free of the system work out ok.
Correspondent K.R. recently submitted this account, and some advice for young people:
In March 2000, I was working for a fairly large biotech company in pharmaceutical development, many of my co-workers were PhD's. When I got out of my car in the company parking lot one morning I saw many of my coworkers walking back the their cars. I asked "what's the matter?" What we discovered that morning is that if your swipe card that gave you access to the building did not work you were laid off. If your card worked and the door opened, you still had a job.
Best advice I could give a young smart person? Skip the corporate rat race altogether. Do not get car payments, mortgages and all the other debts that chain you to your debt enslavement. Enrich your life, work for yourself or for an important cause. Nobody should waste their life on corporate Amerika.
The modern global corporation devotes considerable attention to creating a simulacrum of common purpose via human resource department’s empty cheerleading. But participants know it is only a hollow, cynical ritual that everyone shuffles through in order to keep their jobs. The reality in Global Corporate America is that every employee is dispensable, and their position is inherently contingent. The purpose is the deliver profits to shareholders, and the corporation buys a facsimile of loyalty and presents a façade of purpose to keep the work environment from becoming overtly depressing to the human spirit. The reason they must play this game is the profits, of course; dispirited workers aren’t very productive.
Given that 13% of global Corporate America’s revenues are pure profit ($1.67 trillion last year, or about 12% of the nation's GDP) and another significant percentage is overhead to support the grossly overpaid corporate bigwigs, a vast command-and-control structure and a costly Panzer division of crack tax attorneys to keep income taxes paid near-zero, then it’s clear that smaller enterprises could easily beat the Corporate America Plantation Store in price and service because a third of the corporate expenses are overhead needed by a massive, costly hierarchy and 13% net profit margins demanded by Wall Street and the Financial Elite owners.
Since the top 5% of households collect 72% of corporate profits and bond income and the top 10% collect 93% of the nation’s financial income, the immense profits skimmed from local communities do not flow back to the communities. They flow instead into the elite enclaves of those who own the vast majority of the nation’s financial assets.
The vaunted “efficiency” of Corporate America's cartels is largely a myth. The Plantation Store’s “edge” is not efficiency but these four factors:
1. exploitation of global wage arbitrage
2. access to cheap Wall Street financing
3. eliminating taxes and competition via capture of regulatory and legislative governance
4. a reliance on cheap oil to fuel their global strip-mining operations.
Take those away and much of global Corporate America is revealed as high-cost, uncompetitive sitting ducks awaiting slaughter by lower-cost decentralized competitors.
Local residents lose twice when global cartels collect much of the local income and send it to centralized corporate headquarters, as a percentage of the profits are spent subverting democracy with lobbying and millions of dollars in campaign contributions to political factotums. Local residents lose not only control of their income streams but of their political rights as cartels sabotage democracy by capturing regulation and elected officials.
A key feature of local enterprise is that it retains and recycles local income in the community, rather than sending it to some distant and unaccountable corporate headquarters tasked with maximizing profits globally. Thus even if local earnings decline in recessionary times, local enterprises can still thrive simply by taking some of the cartels' vast income stream and returning it to the community.
As investors, we have been brainwashed into seeing ourselves as disembodied zombies who float around the world, seeking higher returns wherever we might find them. We are disconnected from where we live, and are constantly told that our self-interest is only served by investing in fast-growing global corporations making money from goods and services generated elsewhere. Those who eschew investments in evil are mocked and derided; the only god for investors is maximizing profits, and how those profits are reaped and where they are reaped makes absolutely no difference.
This is how we end up with what we have now: a glorified Colonial Plantation Economy.
Ken R. submitted this story from the U.K.'s Independent on the reality behind the "maximizing profits is all that matters" facade: the human cost: Behind corporate walls, the masters of the universe weep:
In a recent blog post on the Harvard Business Review web site – and praise be to them for publishing it – Haque let rip on some of the absurdities of contemporary business and economic life. “Just ask yourself,” he wrote, “if you were to walk into any corporation, would you find faces brimming over with deep fulfillment and authentic delight – or stonily asking themselves, ‘If it wasn’t for the accursed paycheck, would I really imprison myself in this dungeon of the human soul?’”
That's a good question. What do think an honest answer would be for most employees?
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+1 Shhhh!
Commenting on your first sentence not the book (have not read)
How about using the Sherman Anti-Trust Act to bust up all these multi-national tax leeches? Too big to stomach doesn't just apply to banks. Big is the problem here.
+
"We are legion yet we are powerless" ?
Find an honest candidate and elect them into office thereby replacing the parasite encumbent.
Yeah, let me know when you find someone that fits that bill.
A little off the subject...but has anyone bought the New Anthony Weiner Blow Up Doll:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/06/anatomically-correct-ant...
The ad in The Atlantic says, "it's anatomically correct."
I junked the product which you proclaim to be the latest and greatest. Not you personally.
Anyone who has the time and energy to cavort with a doll is in serious need of Mental Health care and medication to alter said tendancies.
Ron Paul and others will tell you we do not have free markets, we have not had free markets for a very long time.
The commerce clause in the constitution for the USA has been abused to outlaw competition to mega-corporations and that overcharge for their s**t.
Presented w/out comment.
Global Research, June 17, 2011
This skillfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. "Control the food and you control the people."
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms. The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
Engdahl's carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and world peace.
Introduction
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security.To do so,we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”
-George Kennan, US State Department senior planning official, 1948
This book is about a project undertaken by a small socio-political elite, centered, after the Second World War, not in London, but in Washington. It is the untold story of how this self-anointed elite set out, in Kennan’s words, to “maintain this position of disparity.” It is the story of how a tiny few dominated the resources and levers of power in the postwar world.
It’s above all a history of the evolution of power in the control of a select few, in which even science was put in the service of that minority. As Kennan recommended in his 1948 internal memorandum, they pursued their policy relentlessly, and without the “luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”
Yet, unlike their predecessors within leading circles of the British Empire, this emerging American elite, who proclaimed proudly at war’s end the dawn of their American Century, were masterful in their use of the rhetoric of altruism and world-benefaction to advance their goals. Their American Century paraded as a softer empire, a “kinder, gentler” one in which, under the banner of colonial liberation, freedom, democracy and economic development, those elite circles built a network of power the likes of which the world had not seen since the time of Alexander the Great some three centuries before Christ—a global empire unified under the military control of a sole superpower, able to decide on a whim, the fate of entire nations.
This book is the sequel to a first volume, A Century ofWar: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It traces a second thin red line of power. This one is about the control over the very basis of human survival, our daily provision of bread. The man who served the interests of the postwar American-based elite during the 1970’s, and came to symbolize its raw realpolitik, was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sometime in the mid-1970’s, Kissinger, a life-long practitioner of “Balance of Power” geopolitics and a man with more than a fair share of conspiracies under his belt, allegedly declared his blueprint for world domination: “Control the oil and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.”
The strategic goal to control global food security had its roots decades earlier, well before the outbreak of war in the late 1930’s. It was funded, often with little notice, by select private foundations, which had been created to preserve the wealth and power of a handful of American families.
Originally the families centered their wealth and power in New York and along the East Coast of the United States, from Boston to New York to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. For that reason, popular media accounts often referred to them, sometimes with derision but more often with praise, as the East Coast Establishment.
The center of gravity of American power shifted in the decades following the War. The East Coast Establishment was overshadowed by new centers of power which evolved from Seattle to Southern California on the Pacific Coast, as well as in Houston, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Miami, just as the tentacles of American power spread to Asia and Japan, and south, to the nations of Latin America.
In the several decades before and immediately following World War II, one family came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of this emerging American Century more than any other. And the vast fortune of that family had been built on the blood of many wars, and on their control of a new “black gold,” oil.
wasn't there a movie/documantary awhile back where they had the corporate mindset 'psychoanalized'? and came to the conclusion that the pure corporate mindset is essentially identical to that of a sociopath/serial killer? 'inability to form/value lasting relationships'; 'demanding absolute loyalty while insisting it owes none to anyone'; 'absolute focus on short-term gains, even at the cost of long-term problems'; and 'an insistence on the eternal continual existence of the entity - no matter who it has to hurt or kill to do so'.
great. so now we've got an army of ted bundy's in $5000 suits pulling the strings of our governmental masters. remain calm! all is well!
The documentary you're referring to is called "The Corporation". It's very very good.
Most CEO's I've encountered are completely out of touch with reality. How could they not be? Imagine spending your entire waking life surrounded by poeple who only tell you what they think you want to hear. How can a person remain anywhere near normal in that environment?
Let's throw a little gasoline on this fire of outrage shall we?
Check this out:
Weiner sits on $1 million pension, offered ‘Entourage’, ‘Hustler’ jobsDemocrat Anthony Weiner's immediate future may be uncertain, but thanks to congressional rules and the salaciousness of his scandal, things are already looking up for the disgraced New York congressman.
Upon his official resignation in the wake of a monthlong scandal involving Weiner's risque online communications with multiple women, Weiner will still be eligible for many congressional perks, including access to a sizable pension fund. (House staff have yet to announce they've actually received his resignation letter.)
The conservative National Taxpayers Union (NTU) estimates the 46-year-old congressman's pension to be worth $1.28 million if he retires at age 62 or $1.12 million at age 56. The group's computations assume that Weiner started his pension when he served as a congressional staffer for Sen. Chuck Schumer.
In addition, NTU notes that members also participate in a Thrift Savings Plan, which allows lawmakers to rake in matching contributions from taxpayers. "NTU estimates he may have as much as $216,011.96 in accumulated TSP assets," the organization reported.
It's a rule that all former members, even those convicted of felonies, may receive their pension funds.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110617/el_yblog_theticket/wein...
Weiner and Schumer.......wow......
How about employee ownership of corporations. There are some engineering firms that operate on that principle and they are widely know as great places to work/own, and all employee/owners share in the profits and losses of the entity.
Don't underestimate the profit motive in driving efficiency and innovation. Granted the profits may be getting a little unevenly distributed to the 1% of the owners, but employee ownership would help to resolve some of that, no?
Wow. Comment threads really are a little glimpse of the discourse in society. When are you all going to realize the answer is neither black nor white. It's the gray that matters. We don't need pure socialism OR capitalism. Extremes fail. It's a tug of war - you need two sides or it doesn't work.
We need self-interested businesses. They create innovation, jobs, profits and progress. We also need regulation and oversight to prevent abuse, fraud and criminal activity.
The issue right now is that the tugging has favored the businesses and has for a while. The pull toward profits and away from oversight and accountability has resulted in a lot of bad behavior and terrible consequences.
The fix is to pull back the other way with corporate leaders being held accountable for their decisions, with regulators being empowered to act and with employees and consumers being protected. This is not central planning or governmental overreaching. It's just the counterbalance. None of this needs to be radical or seen as extraordinary. It's what we need to get balance back into our commerce and society.
So are you saying we need more dead extremists, gray equivocating sophists, or both?
America's corporate system is a Ponzi Scheme that benefits only the top 1%. Having said that, it's not the system that is at fault but the people at the top. Greed has taken over the corporation model, as popularized by Michael Douglas in Wall Street when he played Gorden Gecko: "Greed is good!"
In Brazil today there is a company called Semco that is practicing the ways things are done in a truly 21st. century company right now and have been practicing it for the past 25 years.
There are two keys which are quite simple. First, their CEO and executives understand that more money is just more money, nothing more. Second, they treat their employees, shareholders, and customers as . . . get this . . . Adults!
And the results? Fantastic beyond wide expectations. Read Ricardo Semler's book, "The Seven Day Weekend" for more information.
When I was involved in another Poniz Scheme called multiple-level marketing (when less than 1% make all the cashflow), the common joke was that "a JOB stands for 'Just Over Broke'!".
In this deadly tango between employees and the owners called "a job", the employers pay their employees just enough so that the latter won't quit, and the employees work just hard enough so that the former won't fire them.
Such a business model is dead. The corporations in America and around the world are just going through the slow motion of self-destruction and decay.
If the corporate owners, the shareholders, would keep management on a tight leash then there wouldnt be such management excess benefiting the ceo's, etc.
The owners have been getting shafted due to lax oversight of management.
Virtually all retirement plans depend on ownership of corporations and a fair return of cash to the plans in terms of dividends which are still unfairly low.
A capital strike and some activist shareholders could put management in its proper place, subordinate to the true corporate owners.
You don't get it.
When leaders grow up and realize that greed only gets them nothing more than greed, then they can start being real human beings and start treating their fellow human being as adults.
The results are quite surprising to say the least. Of course, there will always be the 5 to 10% who will take advantage of such a goodwill system, but the 90 to 95% who don't abuse this will more than make up for these delinquents. And the 5 to 10% who really run with it, they will add tremendously to the company's bottom-line.
You pot smoking hippies with your deliusions and Ann Rynd utopian bullshit. There is no such fucking thing as an activist shareholder, hedge and mutual funds are your activists.
A little over the top.
Corporations arent bad, but they can do things that are bad. Corporations are run by humans so they will have all of the human weaknesses and failures. Might as well rant about the evil nature of humans.
All business owners will tell you we definitely value employees who make or save money for us. Often for a good employee we will carry them thru a temporary rough patch at our own expense, but no business small or large can permanently act like the government or a charity. We must make money to s. urvive.
Even if it means destroying the environment or the very economy that sustains it. Corporations are notoriously short sighted, the current quater is everything, the future be damned.
Corporations are ineffecient and destructive and only survive by living in a jungle of laws and regulations that favor corporations over individuals by factors of hundreds or thousands.
If corporations were just and necessary, we would have thought of them centuries ago. Corporations are abominations of our current dilema, they are a symptom of our demise as well as its agent.
Start with the federal reserve, abolish the central bank. Limit and regulate corporations, we may have problems when corporations are smaller, but the problems will be smaller as well. Globalism was/is a mistake, tie all the boats together and when one sinks it pulls all the others down.
Corporations exists as a tool of the oligarchy, a way to shield themselves and hide their manipulations. Corporations make nations poorer and a tiny few richer than nations themselves. Corporations are a tool of leverage ensuring a few can control and exploit the many.
before you clamor for radical change remember this:
There is a marked distinction between change and reformation of an object. Change alters the very substance and concept of what is complained of about the object, and all too often change gets rid of all the essential good as well as of all the accidental negatives that come with the object. Whether it succeeds in its goal or makes things far worse off cannot be known beforehand. Far too often it fails, and we are left in an even worse situation than before.
Reform on the other hand, is not wholesale change, but a narrowly defined attempt to remedy a very particular issue that is complained of. If the reform succeeds, we are better off. If the reform fails, because it was so clearly defined and narrowly focused, it rarely comes with negative unintended consequences and we are no worse off than before.
I'm all for reforming to improve.
http://www.youtube.com/user/407buddy?feature=mhee#p/f/2/K1JiRScfPg8
Great article. Reminds me of a speech I used to give each of my staff (one on one). That I really appreciate their work, and it's great working with them, BUT if they were ever considering working someplace else to give themselves greater opportunity or wanted to follow a different path - that they should. Ironically I think this made them stay. I think everyone should have the understanding that workers in the modern era are cogs, and the only reason we have a job is because they haven't invented a machine or found someone else in India to do it (yet). Companies very rarely offer loyalty, and so I always try to make sure they understand that they shouldn't offer any loyalty in return - beyond what the company exhibits. If the company pays well and takes care of your family while you are sick, then they are being loyal to you. But if they aren't doing the things that you would expect from another human being (respect) then its time to leave. As they say, "it's just business, and business isn't personal."
Too often people get pulled into the HR bullsh*t of oneness, unity, and all the other nonsense. This is just to keep the cogs in lockstep. I think it's the responsibility of everyone working the corporate grind to wake others up to the reality of the modern work environment.
Sounds like Albertsons (Supervalu) - the dehumanization was instituted years ago. Corporations need to be BEHEADED, after all politicians.
Interesting. beaheadings down to what level? state? local? please clarify.
So nantucket how long have you worked for the cia?
is that you agent smith?
Can you get me Anderson Cooper's autograph, prefer it on a 8x10 glossy of the gray god wearing a wife beater and that fabulous smile.
Pisses me off to no end.
I sent in my resume for Imperial Executioner and they decided to go with mass starvation instead. Something about bio-hazard or something.
I grieve when even TPTB get squeamish.
Nantucket:
Down to what level? I would think at least below the chin to be effective on a visceral level; though I imagine the top-to-bottom head splitting from a sword or axe worked back in the day.
Albertson's is a gourmet deli staffed by buxom college girls in low cut blouses compared to Safeway. And Safeway is a gilt, marble-tiled vomitorium with towel attendant compared to the reeking port-o-let that is Vons. Other than that the chains are pretty much all the same.
Its not just the corps... people get dependent upon their salaries. The guy working for the govt after being a head bean counter is a great post. I would like to start a business... but...
BTW, most of the the old sayings are true... 1) you had better be where you wanna be by age 40. 2) think of life in 3rds' - first 25 years is prep; 2nd 25 years is accumuluation (assets and income producing investments); last 3rd - live off your nest egg earned from 25-50 years old. The problems that 'Merikens have is that the spent the 2nd third consuming... I'm a little off topic on the corps, but the problem is at least partially attributable to people becoming dependent... There is a reason they do not teach classes on financial independence in skool. The saddest part is that I think ammulation of assets and income-producing investments will be a little more difficult in the near term.
Sure, has nothing to do with greed and malfeasance.
Would you like some peasant pate with your wine Louis?
Slavery is when you have to sign over everything you own as collateral to the bank who gives you construction and operating loans for your small business.
After a while you realize you work for them, not yourself. And although I've been successful over the years, I won't sleep well until my name is no longer on any loan documents.
Once you're free, after you've spent all your energy winning your independence from the banks in playing by their rules, they'll change the rules on you and try to wear you back down to nothing with a whole new rat race. The benefits of capitalism are reserved for Cronies only, the rest is just an illusion to keep you from opting out all together.
Correct. Any effective (and immoral) behavioral modification system features both carrot (rewards with strings attached) and stick (punishment), crony capitalism loves both.
A very effective prison.
Rule No. 1 for a brighter future -No Accountant allowed to sit on the board.
Rule No.2 -Reduce the Tax code to 100 pages; so even an idiot can understand it.
Rule No. 3 -The Board are jointly and severally liable for any crimes committed by the company.
Rule No. 4 -Employees get shareholding dividends tax-free; that might encourage them to care about the company.
Rule No.5 -5 years relief from all corporation tax for all new start-up companies with under 12 employees, or until they get to 30 of a staff (contract or not).
Rule No.6 -No Mission Statements for Chrissakes
Any misbehaving, refer to Rule No.3.
HR professionals are a *huge* part of the problem, trying to fill creative jobs using completely un-creative processes that are overly rigid. As a result, "corporate America" is full of essentially drone minds, not creative thinkers, not engineers, not out-of-the-box thinkers. Throw in the rampant use of foreign guest labour on the traitorous H1-B program, and its no wonder the economy is in the midst of collapse.
i have a corporate Job which is soul crushing, and i contribute absolutly zero value to my community or the world through my role there but.... the up side is that wasting time is institutuional in the corporate world which gives my plenty of time to become better informed through sites like this one.
Another dismissal tactic reported by a friend in pharma is that the person walked in, was escorted out by security and told to come back later to pick up the desk items, given in a cardboard box. I told my pal not to worry. Pharma adopted this technique from Big IT. It was nothing personal.
Interview i had stated "VP likes you" for a 6 mo position.
I don't understand all this talk about class warfare. It's been going on since the US was born, since capitalism was born, and it will continue forever and for good reason. Capitalists commit class warfare regularly, systematically, and without reprieve.
As soon as the poor fight back, or even voice an opinion implying that they've got some fight in them, every pussy and his brother hollers "class warfare" as though it doesn't already exist in an assymetrical manner that completely favors those holding more capital. Is it symmetry that capitalists fear? I think they do and they should. Such is the nature of bullies.
Aside: coporations require constant growth to be of any value to their shareholders, correct? In a finite system, the nature of this process (centralization of capital for the purpose of growth) would indeed produce beneficially emergent properties in the beginning of "economic succession." If the corporate model continues beyond the early stages of capitalism, however, it will most certainly reduce competition and create deleterious effects on the system as a whole.
This is so obvious if you know the first thing about ecosystem science, but then again the business world is pretty much filled with insane, cultish alcolytes all pursuing their own self-interest, tucked deeply away in their delusions that pure self-interest yields positive results for the whole system.
Fuck. Post nuked because I forgot to diable rich text. This is really becoming a pain in the ass.
Watch "The Hudsucker Proxy" tonight and be happy.
I'm detecting a lot of angst in this thread.
Bottom line - your problem is not one of Capitalism, it is one of the human spirit meeting real Capitalism. If you're not a sociopath [not psychopath, please, wrong definitions] then the whole "But I am a nice ethical, authentic, special, empathetic human being" hits the fan of "....and then, we added dieting drugs to our cigarettes to appeal to women // we added high fructose corn syrup to make the buns addictive to children // we paid slave labour to our shoes/clothes/tomatoe pickers to make a huge profit".
GROW THE FUCK UP.
This goes doubly for the real readers of this site, who are the short-edge piranhas of the market*, and who are excessively whining and crying because bigger fish are making bigger waves and eating them up. Fucking grow up, and acknowledge that you're not the top tier predators, and deal with it. Cease the self-pity already, it makes us sick.
Capitalism is profit. The moment you add anything else into it, you're not a Capitalist. If you think that not doing the dirty will make you more money, then you're free to try - you can then look up who bought out Body Shop [COUGH] and so on.
Money has no soul. You are worth $45 mil on the open US market in spare parts [if they're working all of us substance abusers]. You are worth $4.5 dollars in chemicals when dead and organs are no longer viable. Your labour [entire life time] is worth 4.5 barrels of oil [slave labour that is]. This means a barrel of oil is, and always will be, more valuable than a human life.
If you want to pretend that the "free market" is ethical, then you're a fucking sap. Now deal with it - if you don't like Corporations, and the bullshit pretense of HR whose role is to INDOCTRINATE YOU SO THAT YOUR HUMAN ETHICS CAN WORK ALONGSIDE THE CAPITALIST ETHOS, then fuck off.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
QQ, fucking pansies. Oh, and good luck not having 2,000,000,000 people die in the next 10 years. We're really gunning for that not to happen, ain't we? Tyler is probably long on Fema caskets and solyent green, btw.
*If you troll properly, you can flush them and track them. Some impressive readers here /awe/
You're a genuine cum belching fucking deuchbag. Your definetely a fucking suck ass of high caliber I can tell and you'd definetely make a good little communist. It's ok asshole, morons like you have a bullseye on your back from this day forward.
ssshhh...he's worshipping the golden phallus...just hit him over the head with it while he sleeps or in a moment of masturbatory ecstacy...
Well done, you missed the Swift reference, and the essence of the issue.
And thus, you fall.
The only man who is really free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Renard
Think there was something on tv about some gun mfg here in the states, employees work 6 days a week, 10hrs a day. No one even makes 30k. And how much do you suppose the bastards in turn sell the guns to the gov't who buys it with taxpayer money?
Then you have our republican friends in the south where a highly skilled tig welder is only worth $10hr and the shops don't provide ventilation.
The extremely funny part to all this are all the people that will say "well that's their fault for not being properly educated."
What's funny about that? What's funny is that in some countries the most educated working as engineers, etc only pull in a few k a year and live in shacks with dirt floors.
So enjoy your future motherfucker.
I worked as a Front Loader 4 wheeled cat operator feeding sand and rock into a cement plant for a while.
One day the subject of wages to so and so came up during a wait for work... we learned from the top to bottom it was exactly just 11.50 down to 8.00 even across 22 people present.
It turned out that the County we worked in where the company is headquartered is not allowing wages to be increased beyond 12.00/hour by local ordiance.
I would love to drive a CAT loader again, it is a very idiot proof, mindless relaxing time playing with a very big toy in a bigger sand/rock pile.
Wow....after reading the article, and the posts, there is only one thing left to do. Shut the computer off and go get as hammered as is humanly possible and hope the memories go away.....................
This article is RIGHT ON ! Like "reader C", I also worked for 33 years for the Big Telco. I saw over the years a love for my work deteriorate into pure fucking hatred for the last 6 years. Corporate change,"culture change", etc., wasted million$ on mind control and propaganda. I could go on and on but after I realized there was light at the end of the tunnel, I FUCKED THE HELL OUT OF 'EM with overtime, callouts, etc. Some of you might have a distaste for this tactic, but in the end, "you must have mistaken me for someone who gives a flying fuck! Fuck Corporate America and the Horse they rode in on. Screw 'em every chance you get because they are screwing you and your family in many different ways. Unless you are one of their useless "Top Dogs", and then you'll get yours in the end, literally! Have a GREAT DAY...
Nicely done. Far from distaste, I raise my glass of Johnny Walker Black on ice and applaud your well-orchestrated and well-executed plan. Stick it to the man. And F.U.C.K. them all.
Strangely, I am actually encouraged by the uncovering of political/corporate/bureaucratic misinformation. I think that sites such as ZH gives us the unique perspective (in history) to break apart the party line and figure out what is at work. I think that the next successful form of government will actually be answerable to the people. Not representational, because the representation part allows for bribery and cheating and misuse of power. I don't know how it would work or what it would look like but I feel we are on the verge of something. Time will tell if it is great or craptastic.
If you removed the House, The Senate and the entire staffs of both.
Repopulated each chamber with one working class man or woman born and raised in the district represented.
Then have each and every issue brought to the District each week for the people to vote on at the court house. The district vote results then in turn are for the Congressman/Woman and Senators to cast the vote according to what the majority of the people so wills.
Only then we will have a effective Government. One that moves light, quick and responsive to the people.
I write this tonight because I spent time watching C one and C two and saw nothing but committies, cloutuyre votes and speeches. All of which is wasteful, hamster wheel and irrevelant to the pressing needs before the Nation.
There was a time two hundred years ago one went to serve in Government for a fixed time and then went back home to whatever they were doing before they served.
Not so sure about that, the same jerks that are policians at work--you know the type--the ones that are good at running their mouth, kissing the bosses ass and only do half the work that you do yet when layoffs come he keeps a job and they send you home-------these would be the types that try to get elected. They spend more time trying to get out of work than actually working. I've seen it happen, often.