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Learned Social Classism, Is Working Even Ethical?

November 25, 2012 by 6 Comments

As explained in the article Learning Careerism As A Moral Reward System; our society, specifically our education system teaches and prepared us for a careerist lifestyle.  Or simply put, working for money is considered success in our societies.

But not only does it teach us to work for currency.  Just as we are put down in school for having poor grades, in society we are put down and even ridiculed, almost as criminals, for having low paid jobs, and even more so for having no paid job at all.

This video shows how people are eager to help someone until people assume they are homeless, and that the homeless are also more eager to help people in need:

We live in a society where those with the most important jobs to our survival work long hours, often physically tiring and are not paid very much. There are only a few kinds of workers that we really need, farmers/food producers, construction/manufacturers, delivery, maintenance/repair, and public services such as hospital workers and good police.

As time goes on there is more automation, so there are less jobs available but more people and so more food, building, maintenance, healthcare, and so on is required.  However farmers are being paid less as time goes on, many selling their farms to get a different job, as their valuable work doesn’t even pay the bills.  Construction workers, store workers, repair services and delivery are often paid low or minimum wage.  Construction or farm work is much physically harder than sitting in an office trading stocks, yet those people are praised because they make more money.

There are often stories of fire-fighters and medical workers on strike because they are on a low wage or have poor quality working conditions, but these are the true heroes of our society, these people save us from death.  Farmers, medical workers and fire-fighters should be the highest rewarded and praised workers of society, not some of the least.

We should also give more credit to those who are building and maintaining places for us to live comfortably in.

It is shameful that the harder a job is, the less money the workers will make, and those who make the most money in society actually have the easier jobs and often work the least.

In our society even these workers that we require for survival are not made a priority, money is.  We are taught that if we work hard we can get a good job, and a good job pays well, most people still believe this and look up to those with ‘well-paid’ jobs and look down on those with a low paid job or those who are considered poor.

The truth is that in almost all cases the LESS-ethical the persons job, the more money they will earn.  We could consider the most ethical of all work to be charity work, helping those with less, yet most of this work is either volunteer work or paid minimum wage.  Those without jobs at all are looked down on, even when they volunteer to do charity work.  Looked down on by those who mess around with numbers to make bigger numbers (trading stocks and shares), or managers; people who make sure that other people work so that they can take a larger cut.

Our parents tried to teach us good ethics and morals, but then they told us to obey at school, which taught us that these twisted careerist ideologies were moral and ethical.

Those without any paid employment, often also without any debt are sometimes homeless, and our society also tells us that they are homeless because they are drug addicts or alcoholics, and therefore we should not help them, even though many of these people are not drug-addicts or alcoholics, and if they are, it is often a sickness that is created by the world they live in, they simply didn’t have enough money or got kicked out by an ex-partner.  Relationship breakdown and illness can happen to anyone.

So we have those who work very unethical jobs making ridiculously high amounts of money, those looked down on for having low paid work, even though it is physically more productive, those who are ridiculed for not having a ‘paid’ job or claiming some kind of state benefit, and then the homeless who cannot even apply for many kinds of state benefits or most jobs because they cannot complete the forms without a valid address, and often an email address or phone number; sometimes even the phone number must be a landline number, and of course to apply for a job most of the time these days a printed Résumé/CV is required.

Amnesty international reported that approximately 3.5 million people in the U.S. are homeless, many of them veterans.  It is worth noting that, at the same time, there are 18.5 million vacant homes in the country.

AP also reports that nearly 1 in 2 Americans have fallen into poverty.

CBS News reports that “According to a new report out this past week, poverty in America has reached its highest level since 1965″.

So as a whole this brings up a question, apart from a few specific careers, is paid work ethical?  How many ethical jobs do you know that are helping people to survive or live comfortably and are not profiting some corporation, or share holders, sat back, relaxing, watching the money you make entering their bank accounts.

When we do get paid, a high percentage of that money gets cut to go to government as income tax, however we give them another chunk of money from VAT, another tax, then depending on where you live there are multiple other taxes such as state tax, council tax, road tax, import tax, property tax, inheritance tax, and so on…

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Filed Under: Banks, Consumerism, Corporations, Economy, Employment, Equality, Featured, Financial Crisis, Housing, Income Inequality, Money, Poverty, Safety, Taxes, Unions, Welfare Benefits

Not Hiring Until Obama Is Gone Is A Symptom Of Broader GOP Ignorance

November 26, 2011 by Leave a Comment

There are occasions that the level of ignorance some people exhibit should cause Americans to be ashamed to live in this country. Republicans have perpetuated a lie that America’s economic malaise is solely the fault of the Obama Administration and their solution is to return to the Bush-Republican policies of deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and allegiance to Wall Street’s financial corporate agenda that sent the economy perilously close to total collapse. One businessman’s ignorance epitomizes why economic pain and suffering caused by Republican policies continues and why it should engender ire in all Americans. 

Last Monday, a photo of a sign posted on a Georgia man’s company trucks went viral on the Internet, and it exemplified ignorance, vindictiveness, and contempt typical of Republican economic policies that many Americans support. The sign read, “New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone.”  The company owner, Bill Looman, said his message was not political, but representative of his belief that he cannot hire anyone because of the economy; he blames President Obama. In an interview Looman said, “The way the economy’s running, and the way my business has been hampered by the economy, and the policies of the people in power, I felt that it was necessary to voice my opinion, and predict that I wouldn’t be able to do any hiring.” Apparently, Looman subscribes to Republican rhetoric as a matter-of-course and is ignorant of why the economy is stagnate.

Without going into the stupidity inherent in Republican economic policies and to avoid portraying men like Looman as cognitively deficient conservative sycophants, there are a couple of points to make on why Looman is wrong and why the Obama Administration’s jobs plan would benefit moronic dolts like the Georgia business owner.

Looman’s business is U.S. Cranes, LLC., and he said, “Can’t afford it. I’ve got people that I want to hire now, but I just can’t afford it. And I don’t foresee that I’ll be able to afford it unless some things change in D.C.” The President’s jobs plan called for a tiny tax increase on millionaires and billionaires to fund infrastructure improvements that Looman would certainly have benefited from, but Republicans blocked job creation because of their policy of not increasing taxes for the richest 1% of Americans. Looman must suffer from amnesia besides being stupid, because the economic scene was created during the Bush years mainly through deregulation of the financial industry as well as the wealthy’s tax cuts. The economic crash of 2007-2008 was well underway before Obama was elected, and the only recovery since then was the Obama stimulus that saved the auto industry and put millions of Americans back to work.

Republicans claim the economy is not booming because taxes are too high and regulations are burdensome to business, but surveys and polls show that business owners claim it is lack of consumer spending that prevents them from hiring. In fact, taxes are at their lowest rates in sixty years and environmental regulations passed during President Obama’s first two years have not yet come into effect.  Looman said unless things change in Washington, he cannot foresee being able to afford to hire new employees. Does he seriously believe that giving the wealthy and corporations more tax cuts will encourage Americans who are losing their jobs, buying power, and their homes to begin spending money they do not have? Either Mr. Looman is a fool, or he has bought into the Republican lies that began during the Reagan administration and have finally borne the fruit conservatives planned thirty years ago.

The changes Republicans have in store if they win the White House and Congress will further enrich the wealthy and remove the last vestiges of the middle class that drive the economy, but the foolish Looman thinks GOP economic plans will drive consumer spending and fill his coffers with untold wealth and treasure. Looman should keep in mind that America has tried the Republican economic disaster for ten years and except for Obama’s stimulus, there has been a steady decline in income and spending for the sector that drives the economy; the middle class. Willard Romney’s grand economic scheme is giving $6.7 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans who have not shown any interest in creating jobs…in America.

The other point is; who is Looman punishing by not hiring new employees? Obviously, he follows the lead of vile Republicans who are hell-bent on sending more Americans into poverty to protect the wealthy and corporations. A change in Washington will finally send the economy into depression that Republicans have worked tirelessly to achieve for the past two-and-a-half years and unless Looman is part of the 1%, he will lose his business to the policies he supports. It is possible that Looman is just an ignorant dolt who regurgitates Republican and Koch brothers’ rhetoric, because he did not articulate how or why President Obama has caused slow economic growth. Whatever Looman’s reasons for blaming the economy on President Obama, they are wrong. It is still unbelievable that a company that operates cranes used in infrastructure projects blames his business’s slowdown on the President who has tried to put Americans to work rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure.

It is impossible to feel anything other than abject contempt for men, like Looman, who blindly follow Republican talking points as if they are the word of god. Reality and economic experts have verified over and over again that the economy is in shambles because of Bush-Republican policies of financial deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It is unlikely that Looman and his ilk will ever achieve a level of economic understanding of why the economy is making a slow recovery, and it is further proof that many conservative business owners are just as stupid and contemptible as the Republicans who caused the economic disaster in the first place.

Mr. Looman is entitled to his opinion, but he is not entitled to perpetuate lies and misinformation he gleaned from the Heritage Foundation and the RNC. The message Looman is really spreading is that he is a foolish moron without the slightest hint of economic understanding and almost certainly a Republican sycophant. Like nearly all Republicans, instead of thinking or observing for himself, Looman depends on other ignoramuses to do his thinking and it informs why conservatives repeat the same economic errors at their own peril and are the reason economic recovery cannot proceed. If the change he desires comes to pass, Looman’s business will come to a screeching halt and he will have no-one to blame but himself and his inability to think or remember that Republicans crashed the economy between 2001 and 2008; eight years before President Obama took the oath of office.

Source: http://www.politicususa.com/en/not-hiring-obama-gone

Filed Under: Employment, Financial Crisis, Politicians, USA

Worldwide Downturn in Employment, Social Unrest

November 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, released a report Monday pointing to a disastrous global jobs situation and a “vicious cycle” sending the world economy into a new downturn.

“The next few months will be crucial for avoiding a dramatic downturn in employment and a further significant aggravation of social unrest,” warns the opening editorial to the World of Work report, released ahead of a G20 meeting later this week.

In addition to documenting the employment situation, affecting both advanced and “developing” countries, the reports presents a damning portrait of contemporary world capitalism: growing financialization, declining taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and a collapse in the share of income going to the working class.

Three years after the crash of 2008, “economic growth in major advanced economies has come to a halt and some countries have re-entered recession, notably in Europe,” the ILO notes. “Growth has also slowed down in large emerging and developing countries.”

The vast majority of countries categorized as having advanced economies—mainly in the United States and Europe—have seen a slowdown in employment growth in the most recent quarter, and more than half have seen employment declines. At the same time, about half of those countries categorized as “emerging or developing” have seen declines in employment, including Russia and Mexico.

The advanced economies have 13 million fewer jobs today than in 2007, with the United States (6.7 million) and Spain (2.3 million) accounting for more than half of this figure. Due to the growth in the labor force, to restore pre-crisis employment rates, 27 million jobs would have to be added in advanced countries, and 80 million globally, over the next two years.

The jobs situation is particularly bleak for young people, and this holds true in almost all parts of the world. “Among countries with recently available data, more than one in five youth [aged 15-24], i.e. 20 per cent, were unemployed as of the first quarter of 2011—against total unemployment of 9.6 per cent.”

According to the ILO’s projections, which are predicated on the assumption that there will not be renewed decline in global growth, the global employment rate in advanced countries is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels until far past 2016.

The prospects of a recovery in employment and economic growth are undermined by a number of factors, including a renewed financial crisis in Europe and a turn by governments throughout the world to fiscal austerity. Sharply declining wages for workers, particularly in advanced countries, is leading to a fall-off in consumption.

“In short,” the ILO writes, “there is a vicious cycle of a weaker economy affecting jobs and society, in turn depressing real investment and consumption, thus the economy and so on.”

Any prospect of a return to growth is also undermined by increasingly bitter national conflicts between the different capitalist powers. “While in 2008-2009 there was an attempt to coordinate policies, especially among G20 countries, there is evidence that countries are now acting in isolation,” the report states.

The ILO expresses the hope that governments will institute job-creation programs to resolve the crisis. However, the impossibility of this happening is highlighted by the fact that the report cites the United States as the only major advanced country to advance a “national jobs plan.” In fact, the Obama administration’s proposal, even if enacted in full, would be no more than a drop in the bucket. Since it was announced in September, it has already been scaled down significantly. Whatever is passed will consist largely of tax cuts for corporations.

The economic crisis is, predictably, producing a sharp increase in social discontent. The year 2011 has already seen a significant growth of the class struggle, beginning with the revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa. They have since expanded to Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including in the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in September.

According to a metric of “social unrest” based on various indicators, including unemployment, the ILO calculates that 40 percent of the countries surveyed have seen a significant increase in the prospect of unrest. The likelihood of social unrest has increased particularly sharply in advanced countries. Moreover, the majority of countries worldwide reported a collapse of public confidence in national governments.

Dissatisfaction over the availability of quality jobs is over 80 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and over 70 percent in Central and Eastern Europe. It is over 60 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, though significantly higher in some countries, including Egypt.

Anger over the jobs situation is higher than 70 percent in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain—countries that are currently at the center of the European-wide drive to slash social programs and eliminate all previous gains of the working class.

The financialization of the world economy

Global social conditions have deteriorated sharply since the Crash of 2008, precipitated by the collapse of a massive speculative bubble inflated over the previous decade. While the fall of global stock markets led to an immediate decline in the wealth of the financial aristocracy, the actions of governments, led by the United States, have served to quickly reverse this trend.

In addition to documenting global labor conditions, the ILO report includes some important data on the financialization of the world economy, and the parallel process of wealth transfer—both before and after the 2008 crash.

It notes, disapprovingly, that in the aftermath of the crash “countries have increasingly focused on appeasing financial markets” rather than restoring employment, and that this “has often centered on fiscal austerity and how to help the banks—without necessarily reforming the bank practices that led to the crisis, or providing a vision for how the real economy will recover.”

In 2008, the capital share among financial corporations worldwide fell by more than 25 percent, after a decade of steady growth. Only a year later, however, shares were back to pre-crisis levels, a direct product of the various bank bailout schemes.

“On the other hand,” the ILO noted, “the decline in the non-financial sector has been more gradual, but capital shares for this group—which account for 87 percent of employment in advanced countries—continue to decline.”

This has produced what the report refers to as a “paradox”: “The impact of the global economic crisis of 2007-08 on the financial sector was short-lived initially—despite it being at the very origin of the downturn.”

The growth of corporate profits since the crash have accrued largely to financial corporations. Non-financial corporations, moreover, instead of investing have funneled money into the stock market. “In 2009, more than 36 per cent of profits were distributed in terms of dividends, compared with less than 35 per cent in 2007 and less than 29 per cent in 2000…”

This process of financialization is part of a longer-term trend, in which wealth accumulation through speculation has increasingly replaced productive investment. Far from reversing this trend, the economic crisis has only exacerbated it.

At the same time, an ever smaller share of income has gone to the working class. According to the ILO, “the wage share—the share of domestic income that goes to labor—has declined in almost three quarters of the 69 countries for which data is available.” This is also a long-term trend.

In addition to direct infusions of money into the banks, the transfer of wealth to the corporate and financial aristocracy has been facilitated by a tax policy that places an ever greater share of the tax burden on the working class.

Between 2000 and 2008, 43 percent of countries decreased their top income tax rate, while 70 percent of countries decreased their corporate profit tax rate. During the same period, 30 percent of countries increased value added taxes or consumption taxes, which disproportionately target the working class.

Overall, the top personal income tax rate globally fell from 31.4 percent in 2003 to 29.1 percent in 2009. Corporate taxes have fallen from 29.5 percent to 25 percent in the same period.

Again, this trend has only continued since the 2008 crisis. The proportion of government revenue from regressive consumption taxes has increased, while the income and corporate taxes have declined.

The ILO’s policy recommendations, on the other hand, are both grossly insufficient and utterly incapable of realization within the framework of capitalism. In addition to a jobs program, it hopes that governments will cooperate to increase the share of income going to the workers, while placing greater constraints on the financial system.

What the report in fact demonstrates, however, is that any attempt to resolve the crisis in the interests of the working class runs into direct conflict with the capitalist system and the financial aristocracy that controls it.

Source:

Joseph Kishore is a staff writer for WSWS.org

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27406

Filed Under: Employment, Featured

American Taxpayers’ Money Is Being Used By Our Government To Put Americans Out Of Work

October 12, 2011 by 1 Comment

America, you’re being destroyed from within. And you don’t even know it. If you want to know why you lost your job, you better pay attention to what OUR government is doing to you… but not just to the poor American who is now unemployed, you Americans working are FUNDING the literal destruction of your fellow Americans’ jobs. If you’re paying Medicare taxes (and all of us who are working are doing that), then you are directly kicking a fellow American out of his job. How the hell can this be? Well…

Medicare and Medicaid money have been used to outsource American jobs, and US workers say they were fired and discriminated against by a healthcare insurance company funded solely by federal funds, according to a suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“By way of Molina, several billion of US taxpayer’s dollars have gone directly to India without any benefit to the American company or the US taxpayer,” the suit states.

The suit, filed on behalf of more than 50 employees, alleges Molina Healthcare Inc. used federal money, defrauded the federal government, failed to pay overtime, discriminated, terminated and violated numerous federal and state labor codes. Molina collected over $9 billion in federal funds in the last three years, the suit states.

‘Since 2006, Molina has spent a large portion of the taxpayer’s money to fire American workers and to hire an abundance of workers brought in from India.

The suit further claims:

… in or around 2007 and 2008, Molina terminated approximately 100 American workers in various states to make room for 100 laborers from India to handle all Molina’s US business operations involving Medicare and Medicaid claims… Molina then billed the US government for the cost it incurred by importing workers from India.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior, alleges Molina used a H1-B visas to bring the workers into the US. “This case is not about illegal or undocumented workers,” the suit states.

To bring in workers from India, the suit alleges Molina used a Cognizant Technology Solutions, a California-based recruiting company, and further claims Cognizant “had to provide false statements to the federal government because Cognizant had to certify there were ‘no qualified United States citizens.” On Jan. 13, 2010, the US Dept. of Labor approved Cognizant’s application for 40 H1-B visa holders from India to work for Molina, in the middle of a recession when many American workers were seeking jobs.

Cognizant imports H1-B employees almost exclusively for India and leases said employees to United States employers… Cognizant has received billions of dollars through it’s business practices… and has displaced millions of of competent US workers from their jobs.

“The recession in the United States made it a virtual certainty that there were US workers available,” the claim states. They were hired at $50,000 a year without benefits. To file the federal government claim, Cognizant certified that it searched and could find no qualified American applicants (or green card holders) to fill job openings for programmers and security analysts for the same pay.

On Jan. 14, the day after the application was approved by the Labor Department, Molina fired 40 workers – programmers, managers and security analysts, the suit states. Most fired employees earned between $75,000 and $100,000 a year with benefits. Employees listed in the lawsuit also claim the Indian managers allowed the celebration of India’s holidays, but not US holidays and “actively discouraged US workers from celebrating US holidays and traditions,” such as Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas, by assigning mandatory work that required working holidays.

The suit seeks unspecified damages against Cognizant, Molina and several Indian managers.

Your government is intentionally destroying American jobs to enrich certain preferential corporations and using taxpayer money to do so. Are you beginning to understand WHO the criminals are? And just to be clear, the politicians involved are both Republican and Democrat.

Source:
http://www.fedupusa.org/2011/10/american-taxpayers-money-is-being-used-by-our-government-to-put-americans-out-of-work/

Filed Under: Employment