The Whacko from Waco

Hey Folks,

How many times have I said that everything is described and evaluated from the perspective of the few most powerful and wealthy at the very top of the social food chain (e.g. Wall street celebrating massive lay-offs and pension slashing)?

As far as I know, until now this practice has proceeded blandly, seemingly secure in the belief that the people were too stupid to notice what was really going on. The “facts” were just presented – without argument or support – since “everyone knows” that hurting the people helps the people and the country.

Well, things are changing. Apparently, so much of what Americans have come to see as integral to life in America is being clawed away, that gink-headquarters has put out the word to start JUSTIFYING the degradation of the people.

The column below made me crazy. It is so cavalier, so condescending, so priggish, so unconcerned about the destruction it praises as to put in doubt either the soundness of the pundit’s mind or the quality of his humanity.

I have highlighted/commented-upon those parts of his column which, at least for me, can be explained only as utter stupidity or as a new, more heartless and conniving attempt to sell the people on their own degradation.

Time will tell whether the vampires can pull it off or whether the people will stand up.

- Uke Man


American middle class is losing its work ethic
Friday, August 04, 2006
ROWLAND NETHAWAY

The United States does not suffer from a lack of jobs. Quite the opposite. It suffers from the lack of willing workers. Yep, WAL-MART is building new stores every day; and the tightening borders have opened up a lot of itinerant picking opportunities.

Sure, jobs have been lost to foreign competition and globalization. Better get used to it. As if there were no way around it - as if anything else is impossible.
At the same time, however, the powerful U.S. economy keeps generating new jobs. Some are better. Some are worse. Most are worse if measured by what they pay.

High-paying (Compared to what? CEO's? or nursing home workers?)manufacturing jobs in union shops that offer blue-collar workers fat ("fat" compared to whose pensions? CEO's? or nursing home workers?) benefit pensions with full family medical coverage are rapidly disappearing. They likely will never return. But not because workers don't deserve them or because the country can't afford them.

Today’s workers are much more likely to jump from job to job throughout their working years (Don't you think the way he puts this implies workers WANT to "jump" from job to job, when actually they are forced to?) , unlike their parents and grandparents who often worked for a single company until they retired.

The concept of retirement is rapidly changing (or is it being attacked?). It (retirement) may disappear entirely (think about that statement!!!) except for the fortunate few with the personal initiative to save and invest wisely over a decades long working career. Two things here: notice that the "fortunate few" are the ones with "personal initiative." It obviously follows that everyone other than the few will suffer through their own fault - i.e. their lack of personal initiative - simple as that.

Also, I guess low paid workers MIGHT have a little more trouble than middle managers saving money, no matter how much personal initiative they exercise.

Unfortunately, modern Americans are terrible when it comes to saving for the future. Can you believe that shit!!! Wages are - and have been - stagnant compared to inflation! Gasoline is through the roof! The economic system pushes credit and rampant consuming on the nation, and then claims the people are terrible when it comes to saving. The national savings rate is at an all-time low.

Actually, I’ve read that the national savings rate is now a negative number. Our federal government isn’t doing any better. It makes you wonder if someday the whole thing will come crashing down. It's already crashed on millions. He means is: will it someday crash down on HIM.

This should motivate workers to better prepare to take care of themselves, since they may not be able to count on their employers or their government to do it for them. Yeah, how are they going to save when they don't have enough to live? Maybe they ought to rob a bank or start selling oxicontin to rich fucks like Rush.

Instead, Americans in general are spending and charging themselves deeper into debt. Perhaps they realize that life is uncertain and they had better grab all the gusto they can now and worry about the consequences later.

History may record the half century period following World War II as an anomaly. Yeah, third world, here we come! Just like that - no outrage, no intensity, no BFD !!!

Not only did the Greatest Generation fight and win World War II, it returned to go to college in record numbers and then produced an unparalleled economy that buried its Cold War enemies and caused defined-benefit pension plans and comfortable retirements to flourish.

Members of the Greatest Generation also had a powerful work ethic. Ah, so. It's not only a lack of personal initiative, but also a lack of a strong work ethic that's causing the problem!! They were born in the Great Depression and grew up watching their parents and grandparents take any job that came along just to put bread on the table. There he goes again: not a shortage of jobs, just a shortage of Americans willing to work demanding jobs for unlivable wages. Shame!! Tyson chicken factories (check THEM out) are begging for workers.

The idea of retirement — a period of 20 years or so outside of the work force where people lived out their "golden years" pursuing personal interests — is not the norm (he says that as if it would justify eliminating the "ab-norm-al" Golden Years) .

Throughout history, most people understood that they would work until they died (Oh well, if that's the case, then it's good enough for me and all the other Americans lacking in personal initiative and work-ethicness - i.e. just about all of us, I guess) or had to be cared for by younger family members.

We might be going back to that tradition except for the fracturing of nuclear families, the unwillingness to plan for the future and the erosion of the work ethic. Oh, damn!!! Just because the nookular family is "fractured," we don't save any money, and we're all a bunch of lazy bums - just because of THAT, we can't make Grandma work until she dies!!! Damn!! damn!!! damn!!!!

An interesting July 31 news story in The New York Times by Louis Uchitelle and David Leonhardt tells how a growing number of American men in their prime working years have opted out of the work force.

Millions of men, according to the article, "have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work." Duh!!! The people who "dropped out of regular work" and are "turning down jobs they think beneath them" have MONEY!!! The jobs they lost paid BIG bucks; these guys made in one year 3, 4, 5, X times more in a month than many teachers make in a year!! These guys WERE able to save (superior "personal initiative"??), and they can live quite a while on that and the equity in their manse before they are beaten down enough to become a greeter at Wally World.

About 400,000 illegal immigrants pour into the United States each year finding jobs Americans feel are beneath them. There’s no getting around that fact. It’s being demonstrated every day across the nation.Yeah!! these deadbeat Americans feel that jobs they used to do for a living wage and health care coverage but now - via exploitation of immigrants - offer slave-labor wages and no benefits are beneath them.

Experts report that even many ex-cons refuse to take jobs they feel beneath them. Yeah, those lousy ex-cons should be even more desperate than illegals!!

The longer the missing American work force chooses to stay unemployed, the more these citizens lose the discipline and the will to work (Yeah, it takes discipline and will to work until you die - at meaningless jobs that make even subsistence difficult - even without and health or injury complications). Eventually, they are no longer counted in official unemployment figures. Which is a gimmick designed to make unemployment figures look smaller and less embarrassing to the ginks and less likely to press their political flunkies into addressing worklessness.

At the same time that goodpaying U.S. jobs are requiring higher levels of education, U.S. dropout rates are on the rise. I could write a book on the bullshit embedded in just this one sentence!! I'll save it for another time.

Eventually, hard-working Americans will pay for the sloth of their fellow citizens. This is what it's all about! Yes, sir!! Old Rowland of the Waco Tribune Herald is scared shitless that one way or another, he and his brother "hard-working Americans" will have to cut back a little on their consumption.

Damn, they work out this perfectly sensible scheme to cut labor costs to increase profit, and the damned people are too lazy, uppity, ignorant, and irresponsible to work until they die (in the street rather than the hospital) at whatever dead-end job the Man offers them.

What's a fellow like Rowland to do?

Oscar Wilde, I believe, said that the poor can't sleep for worrying over their next meal; and the rich can't sleep for worrying that somebody will steal something of theirs.

- Uke Man

Rowland Nethaway is senior editor of the Waco (Texas) Tribune-Herald.
rnethaway@wacotrib.com