since "discovering" joe bageant, i've been continually amazed at how closely our views track with each other... there's been a not-so-fantastic scenario playing out in my mind lately where the board of directors and the senior management of a major corporation are discussing business strategy... the gist of the discussion is this... "we really don't want any damn employees... they're nothing but a cost drain not to mention they're a pain, always whining and causing trouble... is there any way we can just get rid of the lot of 'em...?"
joe bageant...Paying the workers in society to produce real wealth costs money. Capitalists hate any sort of cost. It represents money that has somehow escaped their coffers. So when any behemoth corporation hands out thousands of pink slips on a Friday, Wall Street cheers and "the market" goes up. No ordinary mortal has ever seen "the market." But traders on the floor of 11 Wall Street, people who've deemed themselves more than mortal by virtue of their $110 Vanitas silk undershorts, assure us the market does exist. No tours of the New York Stock exchange are permitted, so we have to take their word for it.
In any case, in the money economy, eliminating costs, even if those costs happen to be feeding human beings, citizens of the empire, is sublime. That is why economists in the tertiary economy can declare a "jobless recovery" with a straight face. By their lights, the perfect recovery would necessarily be 100% jobless. Human costs of generating profit would be entirely eliminated.
it was only a little more than twenty years ago that people were considered to be an organization's most important resource... no longer... people as a "factor of production," as a cost to be minimized or eliminated, has trumped all respect for the dignity of labor, of the essential worth of using one's ability or skill to provide a livelihood for one's family...
fortunately, it's not true everywhere, at least not yet... in argentina, for instance, taxi driver is still considered a worthwhile and dignified career... i've met numerous taxi drivers, solid, middle-class family men, proud of their profession and respected by their friends and neighbors for the work they do... look at taxi drivers in the u.s... it's seen as a dead-end job, about on a par with flipping burgers at mac and don's...
our entire way of life is swirling the bowl but we can't rouse ourselves enough from our favorite tv programs to notice...Labels: American workplace, capitalism, corporatocracy, economic collapse, financial markets, Joe Bageant, Wall Street
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