More Anti-American Hoo-Ha...

Pure capitalism does not work. If you think this statement is wrong, or unpatriotic or the ramblings of a lazy bastard, then you are either an idiot, in upper management, or more likely both.

I bring this up because as more and more people are forced out of jobs with small businesses and have to go work for Wal-Mart or Honeywell or whatever, they wind up buying into the complete and total 'hooray corporate America' bullshit that they are fed day after day after day. And then, after years of being brainwashed into thinking that their laughably small stock buy-in is going to enable them to retire rich, they vote republican in a completely misguided attempt to make their .0001% into .0002%.

Every single day, hundreds more people are thrust into this environment which is nothing more than a culture of fear. Total panic, combined with the natural human instinct to 'belong to something' turns these formerly independent thinkers into mindless drones that half-heartedly convince themselves that they're still rebellious because they go nuts on Smirnoff Ice's every weekend with their fellow scared-as-hell coworkers. Even people who hate their boss and complain about him/her constantly maintain the mistaken belief that they're 'lucky to have a job' and that eventually the company will reward their efforts.

Large corporations employ huge Human Resources departments whose main job is to sell the employees the absolute lie that the corporate machine gives two shits about their workers. Corporations want two things from every single person they employ; Work harder and accept less money than you deserve. If there was any way to do it, most corporations would pay their non-management workers $5 in cafeteria food credits per day and require that everyone sleep in the warehouse. If you disagree, tell me how it's much more humane for a company to close their American plant entirely and move overseas where they can get away with $5 a day and don't even have to let people in the warehouse at all.

This is what infuriated me about George W Bush during last night's debate. When answering the question of companies shipping jobs abroad, he said, "We need to educate people for the 21st century jobs", he then repeated this simple notion chimp-like for 2 minutes. So what do you tell the computer programmer that just lost his job to someone in India? Does computer programming not count as a 21st century job? I think by 21st century job, Bush probably means pool cleaner and BMW mechanic. And this is all on purpose, because if everyone thinks that there's rapidly becoming no middle class at all, they're going to work like dogs for next to nothing to try and get on the right side of the 'everything/nothing' careerpath. Later in the debate, Bush answered a question on minimum wage with the same stupid education mantra, basically saying that if your company is fucking you over by paying you $6/hour or moves their whole operation to Bangladesh, it's your fault for being so damn stupid. Welcome to C-student Bush's 'new age of responsibility'.

One thing's for sure, when you remove any and all restrictions from big business, as is the neo-con battle cry, you wind up with sweatshops. You wind up with garment factories like there were in New York in the early 1900s, where everyone is locked in, bathroom breaks are forbidden and fire exits are sealed shut. People act as though sweatshops and horrible working conditions can only occur in third world dictatorships, but unchecked capitalism can create them just as easily.

So the next time President Bush or some other Neo-con asshole talks about 'trickle down economics' or corporations being able to 'self-regulate' themselves on environmental policy if they could only make more profits, remember that it's a complete lie. A lie devised and perfected by teams of former frat-boy salesmen who've never had anything close to a personality no matter what the personalized plate on their Corvette says. We've been down this road before. Unions and regulations were created for a reason, and the reason is that corporations cannot ever, ever, EVER be trusted to self-govern.