Abused by Business and Industry?

“One of the things business wants to do in pursuit of forcing wages down and eliminating fringe benefits entirely is to increase the number of people looking for work, even as they do everything possible to decrease the number of jobs available to American workers.” (a liberal blogger)


This conclusion ignores two major factors that need to be considered, (1) that government has been far and away one of the MOST abusive AND least productive employers in existence and (2) that the current economic climate was caused by a veritable criminal act by government, litigating and otherwise coercing privately owned and publicly traded banks and financial institutions to “expand more credit to more low income Americans.”

One of the things we should ALL have had a huge problem with G W Bush over was his making “reducing the black/white home ownership gap a primary mission of my administration.” (His wasting $12 BILLION/year on fighting AIDS in Africa was a 2nd one, although there may have been a “good deal” resource-wise” in that for us, though I’m not sure of that) Still, given that slightly over 30% of blacks live in poverty compared to about 11% of whites, that “mission” is impossible without first addressing the underlying cause of the home-ownership differential, to wit the poverty differential.

Bush and other “Moderate” Republicans (Orin Hatch, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, etc.), all bought into the Jack Kemp “Ownership Society.” That turned out to be a misguided canard, based on the hopeful, yet wishful thinking that “homeowners tend to be more goal oriented, more personally responsible, socially Conservative people, the kind who’ll ultimately vote Republican.”

A canard as dangerously ill-conceived as the Democrat’s view that an influx of (traditionally socially Conservative Catholics) from places like Mexico, Honduras and the Philippines will be more likely to vote Democratic once they settle in and become citizens.

The facts showed Kemp’s vision to be wrong-headed, liberal/Utopian thinking. Home ownership itself has no magic powers. Home ownership doesn’t make a person more responsible...it’s quite the reverse! More responsible people tend toward the responsibilities of home ownership.

At any rate the “cheap money” program that brought such odd bedfellows as G W Bush, Barney Frank, John McCain and Chris Dodd together also tanked the economy.

Today America’s businesses are looking at a very unstable domestic future, one in which they can’t accurately estimate their expenses, because they can’t estimate what government is going to do going forward.

As for the plight of the American workers, it’s virtually ALL of our own doing. You ever hear the phrase “You can’t get rich working for someone else,” well it’s not only true, but you can substitute “comfortable” for “rich” and it’s equally accurate.

When workers demand cheaper goods (as consumers) that begets both a burgeoning trade imbalance AND outsourcing our manufacturing, as we buy cheaper goods from places with much lower standards of living and much lower worker costs, generally overseas. Those cheaper goods make life a little easier, but then the worker (as an employee) wants more money for an even better life…that, in turn ratchets up all the domestic costs of production, making the things we produce here (housing, services, etc) much more expensive.

There seems to be no way for the worker to escape the matrix that higher wages bring about much higher across the board costs that plummet his standard of living, while calls for cheaper goods and services results in massive trade imbalances and outsourcing as business and industry responds to that consumer demand. The best thing any worker can do is to constantly improve and expand their skill base.

One of America’s major problems right now is “structural unemployment.” There are plenty of jobs for physicists, accountants, geologists, petroleum, electrical and chemical engineers, etc. but far fewer decent paying low-skilled factory jobs.

My wife (an accountant) has a saying, “You should not try to make a “career” out of a job anyone else can walk off the street and do within ten minutes.”

An example of that is the cashier job…the fact that self-checkouts are so popular is a testament to both the inefficiency (and probably the discourtesy) of the “cashier-class” AND the ease of doing that “job.” If I can walk in off the street and do myself, what someone else is paying someone $10/hour for, that worker is a dinosaur approaching extinction, whether that “worker” is aware of that or not.

The Anti-Business Ethos...

A fine blogger (Don @ AttorneyMom - pictured right) posted this humorous email and I had to remark on it and have since decided to post that email and my reply, as well. NOTE: the email wasn't Don's thoughts and they ARE indeed humorous. My response is about the underlying theme of the email and not Don's reposting of it. These are NOT Don's ideas, it's merely his posting of this humorous email that made me think....and I'm glad it did.

Often, many misanthropic ideas are spread through humor and there’s few ideas that are more misanthropic in nature than the anti-freedom, anti-business, anti-private sector viewpoint that is much the rage today.

In a bygone era, when I was in College, anti-freedom misanthropes were a little more direct and upfront in their assault on freedom and liberty, as was the case with the noted author and behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner who wrote, Beyond Freedom and Dignity in the early 1970s.

Today such ideas are passed on in humor.



Budget Cuts (author unknown)


EFFECTIVE SEPTEMBER 1, 2008 NEW OFFICE POLICY

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Dress Code:
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1) You are advised to come to work dressed according to your salary.
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2) If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we will assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.
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3) If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you may buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.
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4) If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.
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Sick Days:
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We will no longer accept a doctor's statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

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Personal Days:
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Each employee will receive 104 personal days a year. They are called Saturdays & Sundays.

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Bereavement Leave:
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This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers. Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend the funeral arrangements in your place. In rare cases where employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon. We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

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Bathroom Breaks:
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Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract,the stall door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offense,your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the 'Chronic Offenders' category. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sectioned under the company's mental health policy.

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Lunch Break:
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Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat more, so that they can look healthy.
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Normal size people get 15 minutes for lunch to get balanced meal to maintain their average figure.
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Chubby people get 5 minutes for lunch, because that's all the time needed to drink a Slim-Fast.

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Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

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The Management

(posted by Don @ Character Corner Blog on Monday, August 25th http://charactercorner.blogspot.com/)
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My REPLY:

It really IS indeed a very amusing email Don, BUT think of it, there are still so many people who are all to willing to believe that this is what private sector employment is really all about.

In fact, private sector employment IS indeed "produce or perish," but that's the way of the business world too - it's a competitive world out there.

Ironically enough, not many people associate such abuses with government.

Think about that dichotomy for just a second....

At the dawn of the 20th Century, Henry Ford raised worker's salaries to increase productivity and produce and sell more cars.

Government didn't direct him to do that, in fact, today, other industry leaders would petition the government to reign in a modern-day Henry Ford for "undercutting their ability to compete,” and an army of government officials would assail Mr. Ford for “unfair business practices.”

Moreover, think about the very worst abuses ever conducted throughout man's history.....

It wasn't business and industry that perpetrated those things, it was ALWAYS and EVERYWHERE governments, form Hitler's Germany, to Mao's China, to Stalin's Russia to Pol Pot's Cambodia, the worst abuses the greatest mass murder sprees ever conducted where conducted by governments.

There are others who point to religion as the "cause of most of mankind's woes."

Once again, NOT SO!

In every case of theocratic repression it was government that perverted religion and NOT the reverse.

I don't mean to be a killjoy, but such "jokes" have a very misguided underlying current - "The private sector is abusive and repressive."

IF you want to see REAL abuse, abuse that's not at all funny, look at the history of human government on this earth.