Before the Civil War, Abolitionists won over many other supporters by pointing out the stark contrast between that the free states had much greater general prosperity than the slave states. Evidently the difference was visible from a moving carriage and much worse in the deeply slave states than in those less dominated by slave-owners.

They are traitors to the country, all they care about is getting rich. They want war all the time because that helps them steal the money quicker and helps keep their chosen pawns in power. They want all their workers to be paid slave wages and have no opportunity at a good education so this is all they can ever hope for. They want abortion banned and no effective birth control so women have lots of slave babies to work for them. They don't give a shit about God or religion or even country - it's all about what makes them richer and nothing else.

+1,000,000%

You hit it bang on the head. Absolutely correct.

This is partly what the war on women's rights is about: they want us to be forced to produce more cannon fodder for their wars (which are ALWAYS about lining their pockets) and producing more slave labor for their under-paid and no benefits jobs.

They would pay us NOTHING if they could get away with it.

I wish more people would WTFU and see that this is what the agenda of the robber barons is about. They want it ALL.

The constant propaganda of hate and fear that they sow is aimed at getting people to goose step to their horrid agenda. Their methods are distraction, and divide and conquer, as well as brainwash. Their ultimate purpose is all too clear. They want to destroy our freedom and install themselves as complete dictators so they can proceed to rob us of anything that has any worth at all: our sovereignty, our dignity, our education, our property, our jobs.

It is so blatant. WTFU people, please!

...that Poppa Johns prick promoting the hell out of 'free pizzas', while complaining about the .14 cents per that offering his people health-care coverage would cost, why the hell doesn't he divert some of his hundreds of millions of promotion/advertising dollars toward 'doing the right thing' for his employees? Then he could promote that 'Poppa Johns believes that happy, and healthy, employees make better pizzas...try one and find out'. But noooo...he'll keep featuring himself in his advertising and giving away his sorry-ass crap...the narcissistic SOB.

Really need that 40,000 square foot house and the 27 car garage??? So his unfortunate employees don't have health care or a decent wage? Disgusting.

They're just as bad. They're all worth billions and rake in hundreds of millions every year and they won't pay their workers enough to do without food stamps. Disgraceful.

I have to say though, a big part of the country and it's fortune was built on slavery (when you don't pay wages for 300 years to a very large group of workers your country can get very rich) and now unfortunately, it's coming back to haunt all of us.

what an ass. It seems like I've seen more commercials so maybe he is trying some damage control.

"In pre-capitalist economies, exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion. In the capitalist mode of production, that result is more subtly achieved; because the worker does not own the means of production, he or she must voluntarily enter into an exploitive work relationship with a capitalist in order to earn the necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary in that he or she chooses which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the "voluntary" nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory."

Let the revolution....begin.

When the industrial revolution started, the people flowed into the cities and factories. Life on the farm was VERY hard, especially subsistence farming. Failures were VERY common.

The prospect of getting a "days pay for a days work" was very enticing. The problem was basically once there were enough workers, they began to "compete" with each other for work. In a subsitence farming model, there is no competition. In the industrialized society, it is structured to foster competition, and demand failures.

Labor unions were designed to create a "barganing power" to compete with that of the employers. They employers were in a superior barganing position for wages and working conditions and so you had the predictable result. Unions could and did give the workers a commensurate barganing position with the employer and were able to get wages appropriate to the labor produced.

the classic text from Marx was comparing slavery with capitalism. Your brief analysis missed that point. You weren't completely wrong, you just went in a different direction. The point is, we still get the benefits of lots of cheap stuff from low wage economies such as China where people live without basic necessities. We didn't end slavery, we just exported it.

I've just never thought that history supported Marx's characterization. The people weren't forced into factories. They flocked to them. Life on the farm was hard, and failures were very common. Factory life was seen by people on farms to be a "good deal". That doesn't really compare to slavery at all.

Now, once a person realizes how much the factory is making off of their labor, it doesn't seem like such a good deal anymore. But it still is an improvement over the subsistence farm (and to a great degree over the commercial farm as well).

Truth is, the factory is a communal structure, even a cooperative in many ways. (And by factory I really mean and commercial structure of multiple disciplines). The problem that Marx is describing as "slavery" is merely that the profits of the cooperative are not equitably distributed. Unions can help with that. Changing our corporate governance laws could too. Most of us aren't cut out to "control the means of production" nor be "subsitence capitalists". Most of us will thrive in the cooperative model. (Subsistence farmers tended to be VERY cooperative on many issues, including water and grazing lands).

Respectfully, you need to revisit this. The industrial revolution was called a "revolution" for a reason. There is no evidence that people flocked to the factories because they thought it was better. Couldn't be further from the truth. Marx's analysis on capital was pretty close to "right on the money", to use a play on words. People didn't leave the farm for the factory, at least not 300 years ago. They left their craft. A lone craftsman cannot compete with the accumulated capital of an industrialist who employees hundreds on an assembly line. A craftsman cannot compete with cheap labor.

The Industrial Revolution was called that because the advent of machine powered industry destroyed the cottage industry/small craftsman model that had been the European norm for centuries. No small craftsman who took 2 weeks to make a single iteration of his product could compete with a factory making hundreds a day.
We also need to remember that since successful business men were allowed to do pretty much anything they wanted with their labor pool, we had highly exploitive child labor, incredibly poor working conditions, sweat shops, and a 6-day, 12-hour a day work weeks that paid pennies. Labor will ALWAYS be exploited by business in the pursuit of profits and personal wealth. If you think that it can't happen today just look at China and Apple.

Labor has been and always will be seen by exploitive business as an expendable resourse, and one that must be aquired and used as cheaply as possible in order to maximize profit.

Classic text from Herr Marx, but I'm certain you added the "he or She." Even revolutionaries weren't gender progressive in the 19th century. Love it though.

good eyes

Fantastic quote there.

"your boss is telling you "if I could pay you less, I would!"
We'll said, ZRT!

of his working under contract for Warner Bros. in his salad days, "$125 a week and all the respect that implies."

... even provides transportation back and forth to RoJo's factory (Pacur) in Oshkosh.

Better than slaves!

That's what I say to anyone that complains that raising the minimum wage will force businesses to close or whatever. I don't care what the excuse is. I've worked minimum wage jobs and back in the 80s, you could actually survive on it. But now, forgetaboutit. Nobody can live on minimum wage. Nobody. Especially seniors or those over 50 like a few of my friends that can't find jobs.

The American Public has been subjected to years of propaganda that has conditioned them to expect less and less as they work more and more.

The worse of this is when we are told to "take pride in how hard we work".

I say, "Keep the fuckin "pride" shit and PAY US!!!"

we didn't end it, we just exported it.

and well said. Am going to share this!

Great comments by all...although, the person who said "not consistent with history...", the picture is more complicated than you are depicting. In Europe, many factors forced the people off the land and into the cities for work: enclosure of common land, which prevented the common people from being able to gather food or graze their animals; inflation, combined with subdividing of land and rack rents; wars, both religious and political; plagues, which sometimes depopulated whole districts; bad weather, which led to failed crops and reduced harvests; and the same accusations of the rich against the poor that we hear now - that the poor were idle (read refused to work endlessly for the rich), that they should be paid less so they would be forced to work more, etc.

From what I can read, many of the peasants had been able to live off what they could raise, what they could gather or grow on common land, which belonged to all of them, and what they could earn at various kinds of jobs. The many upheavals in Europe - political, religious, social, and climate problems forced many of the peasants off of their land (which many of the wealthy outright stole) and into the cities in an effort to survive.

The next book for our local public library which I am waiting to read is about the Irish potato famine, and how wealthy British landowners created the conditions in which over one million Irish people starved to death or died from related causes.

When the issues we are having in our times, with class warfare by the robber barons against the middle class and poor, with the war on women's rights and the attacks against workers in union busting and devious misnamed 'right to work' legislation, in the cruel attitudes of the robber barons towards everyone else, I hear the echoes of the past.

Companies need to figure that out again.

n/t

I got fired from my job 3 weeks ago. I got paid $32,000 last year. I sometimes would work 16+ hours in one shift. Never knowing when I would work again. Sometimes it would be for 3 hours, sometimes 12+. I got no benefits. Then I got fired for calling in sick two days and missing a day when my grandfather died.

when all the slaves are free?

These businesses aren't mom and pop stores, they're multi national assholes that devour cash and tax credits left and right. They owe allegiance to no one except their stock holders and the bottom line. Jeeezuz, how do we try to explain to someone that wants to feed their family that working for less than a living wage just isn't right?

Thomas Carlyle said he couldn't understand the American Civil War. The South wants own their slaves and the North wants to rent them by the hour.

I love that quote!!!

Costco business model for everyone! As a matter of fact, this is the way it USED to be. I'm going to give my age away here, but I was a single mom back in the early '70s in a big city. I waited tables at a big hotel. Didn't make much in salary, but I had a load of benefits, plus I made mucho tips. Full health care, shares in the company stock, life insurance, two weeks paid vacation with two free weeks stay in any company hotel in the USA, huge party for the kids in the ball room at Christmas in which each child went home with at least 2-3 very nice gifts.

Then I ended up in the early-mid 80s in a medical field job where I was paid $5 above minimum wage, with full benefits. Had two more children and my insurance paid for every bit of my hospital bills. And these were the days when benefits were still fully paid by the employer.

Now days, if you tell that to people, they think you are lying through your teeth. NOT! That is how much this country has changed since Ronald Reagan came in.

A good place to learn how this all changed is a documentary by the name of "Heist", which informs us of a man by the name of Lewis Powell, who wrote a business manifesto that is loosely called "The Powell Memo." That is where the train jumped the tracks in America. Everything's gone downhill for the 99% since then.

Peons and/or indentured servants is a more accurate description of what we have/are now.

Employment-tied health insurance is the worst idea on the planet. It keeps people in jobs they hate, allows employers to offer far less in terms of real compensation, and makes American businesses ship jobs overseas to hire workers with a lower standard of living and no demand for health benefits. I have never understood why business would not make a huge push for Medicare for all to save on those costs, and must be because they can make you a virtual slave by "contributing" to your outrageous health care costs (with backend discounts for larger companies) and then you are beholden to them until you find another crappy job with benefits.

The fault also lies with consumers. People have become so addicted to cheap goods, their barometer for what things cost is completely broken. They are not willing to pay the price for an item that includes good wages and health care for workers. People can tout how awesome Costco is because they pay better than minimum wage and then in the same breath talk about how great the prices are too. Well, the membership fee helps to supply some of the money for workers, but the rest comes from FOREIGN-made slave labor goods that have such huge markups they can sell them a little cheaper and still make a fortune.

Look in the mirror people, it's up to ALL of us.

What gives them the right? What makes them more powerful than us? And when did we start putting corporate billions above people??