a dead man walking ...
Commenting, in part, on a New York Times article, and to others commenting on it:
- http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?8ty&emc=ty
_
Unions can and do provide good benefit to workers - something I always agreed and pointed out, even while chafing under having "two bosses" (never liked that part).
One thing I find most troubling is tendency of union "bosses" to "inflate" some workers into thinking they are "skilled" - people with no more than a high-school education may be skilled in having multi-year experience at "tending" a machine, which actually does the work, so there is some *skill* involved in making that machine work to the best of expectations, or preventing it doing otherwise, but beyond that environment, what *skill* does that worker actually possess ?
Maybe none ... and not much in the way of "social skills" either for having been so long with the machine.
I think it is an inescapable fact that those who do not acquire some real skill (at least one) are simply going to be "left behinds" in the current technological era ...
... and if society meets with some catastrophe for which our dependence on technology suddenly ends, because our infrastructure is destroyed, there is another even more critical importance for our survival depending on acquired skills.
A "class" of people that does not possess skills to survive will not survive without a "nanny" state to support them, and even then, if such a state decides to withhold that support ... or is not longer able to provide ?
_
" ... the top five Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) are the essence of "robber barons" and not so easily stopped as some other corporate entities which could more easily be "starved" - which is not to say nothing can be done about them.
They are, however, the real targets of anyone who would ultimately change the way things are: not the obscene bonuses, but the way they do business, and the very business they do.
I think a more serious question needs to be asked:
*Where does "American wealth" reside ?*
American "wealth" is largely in the form of worthless paper.
Aside from gold or other metals, real estate is probably the closest thing to *wealth* Americans can hold - actual ownership, that is: no mortgage.
Even so, RE handicaps owners who are required to pay a continual "tribute" to maintain an illusion of ownership, without which their "wealth" evaporates into government coffers - except even that is illusion, when in fact government under our present system is in debt to the banking system ( the Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, et al) whose control of our money is beyond anything "federal" (Federal Reserve is not federal) and who collect profits not only from government debt, but from everything you and I do.
I have no doubt it is provable that other CEOs who collect "obscene bonuses" by and large do not sit in their chairs without some nod from the above mentioned "Bear Sterns et al"
In a real sense it seems to me these CEOs are not as much "removing the wealth" of the nation as they are maintaining, and being rewarded for keeping, control.
_
"Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite control it, and they have turned it to their ends."
I do not even see so-called "productivity gains" of past decades as having been "beneficial" to American workers, who now are caught in a no-win position of sustaining a "consumer society" in order to have income even though they can hardly afford necessities.
The "work" of the Federal Reserve is just about finished.
"The pervasive unfairness in the way the great wealth of the United States is distributed should be seen for what it is, an insidious disease eating away at the structure of the society and undermining its future. The middle class is hurting, propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt. The safety net, not just for the poor, but for the middle class as well, is disappearing. The savings rate has dropped to below zero, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than for divorce."
... misses the reality that "the structure of the society" is already demolished, the "middle class" is essentially extinct, so that the only "present truth" is that our society is "propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt" without which there would be no economy, because there would be no money.
What "safety net" is there ?
Only the smoke and mirrors of our *debt-based* (unsustainable) economy keeps our government from bankruptcy - it IS bankrupt, impossibly in debt to Bear Stearns et al who, in just almost a hundred years, have reduced the value of the American dollar to nothing.
Making reference to a view of "enlightened" America:
- http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/02/invade.html
Someone who cannot distinguish between Iran and Australia on a map who still thinks the dollar in his pocket, which he does not own and can be taken away at any time, cannot buy a sustainable meal anywhere, likely has no place to grow one, and even if he did would be hard pressed to make one grow.
He is for all practical purposes a dead man walking.
.
- http://select.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?8ty&emc=ty
_
Unions can and do provide good benefit to workers - something I always agreed and pointed out, even while chafing under having "two bosses" (never liked that part).
One thing I find most troubling is tendency of union "bosses" to "inflate" some workers into thinking they are "skilled" - people with no more than a high-school education may be skilled in having multi-year experience at "tending" a machine, which actually does the work, so there is some *skill* involved in making that machine work to the best of expectations, or preventing it doing otherwise, but beyond that environment, what *skill* does that worker actually possess ?
Maybe none ... and not much in the way of "social skills" either for having been so long with the machine.
I think it is an inescapable fact that those who do not acquire some real skill (at least one) are simply going to be "left behinds" in the current technological era ...
... and if society meets with some catastrophe for which our dependence on technology suddenly ends, because our infrastructure is destroyed, there is another even more critical importance for our survival depending on acquired skills.
A "class" of people that does not possess skills to survive will not survive without a "nanny" state to support them, and even then, if such a state decides to withhold that support ... or is not longer able to provide ?
_
" ... the top five Wall Street firms (Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley) are the essence of "robber barons" and not so easily stopped as some other corporate entities which could more easily be "starved" - which is not to say nothing can be done about them.
They are, however, the real targets of anyone who would ultimately change the way things are: not the obscene bonuses, but the way they do business, and the very business they do.
I think a more serious question needs to be asked:
*Where does "American wealth" reside ?*
American "wealth" is largely in the form of worthless paper.
Aside from gold or other metals, real estate is probably the closest thing to *wealth* Americans can hold - actual ownership, that is: no mortgage.
Even so, RE handicaps owners who are required to pay a continual "tribute" to maintain an illusion of ownership, without which their "wealth" evaporates into government coffers - except even that is illusion, when in fact government under our present system is in debt to the banking system ( the Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, et al) whose control of our money is beyond anything "federal" (Federal Reserve is not federal) and who collect profits not only from government debt, but from everything you and I do.
I have no doubt it is provable that other CEOs who collect "obscene bonuses" by and large do not sit in their chairs without some nod from the above mentioned "Bear Sterns et al"
In a real sense it seems to me these CEOs are not as much "removing the wealth" of the nation as they are maintaining, and being rewarded for keeping, control.
_
"Fairness plays no role in this system. The corporate elite control it, and they have turned it to their ends."
I do not even see so-called "productivity gains" of past decades as having been "beneficial" to American workers, who now are caught in a no-win position of sustaining a "consumer society" in order to have income even though they can hardly afford necessities.
The "work" of the Federal Reserve is just about finished.
"The pervasive unfairness in the way the great wealth of the United States is distributed should be seen for what it is, an insidious disease eating away at the structure of the society and undermining its future. The middle class is hurting, propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt. The safety net, not just for the poor, but for the middle class as well, is disappearing. The savings rate has dropped to below zero, and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than for divorce."
... misses the reality that "the structure of the society" is already demolished, the "middle class" is essentially extinct, so that the only "present truth" is that our society is "propped up by the wobbly crutches of personal debt" without which there would be no economy, because there would be no money.
What "safety net" is there ?
Only the smoke and mirrors of our *debt-based* (unsustainable) economy keeps our government from bankruptcy - it IS bankrupt, impossibly in debt to Bear Stearns et al who, in just almost a hundred years, have reduced the value of the American dollar to nothing.
Making reference to a view of "enlightened" America:
- http://www.ebaumsworld.com/2006/02/invade.html
Someone who cannot distinguish between Iran and Australia on a map who still thinks the dollar in his pocket, which he does not own and can be taken away at any time, cannot buy a sustainable meal anywhere, likely has no place to grow one, and even if he did would be hard pressed to make one grow.
He is for all practical purposes a dead man walking.
.
posted by JamesB at 11:11 PM
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