When do the riots begin?

If you don't have a college degree or own your own business, I'm wondering how the country can survive without a middle class.

There used to be jobs in the private sector that paid a wage that enabled you to live a middle class lifestyle. Those wages were paid because of labor unions or the threat of employees unionizing.

Most government jobs ARE unionized and pay a livable wage. Not everyone works for the government.

How can this society continue to exist when most people are working jobs that don't pay enough to live off of?

stock brokers and other scum suckers.

John Allemang, Globe& Mail: Were you surprised that an ideology like positive thinking has persisted in the face of massive layoffs and corporate downsizing? Instead of rioting in the streets, all those eternally optimistic people went out and bought houses they couldn’t afford with money they didn’t have.

BARBARA EHRENREICH: Yeah, that really puzzled me. I was doing a project on white-collar unemployment, and I was seeing people being churned out of their jobs. Here’s a constituency that should be furious. And yet you’d go to these networking meetings that unemployed white-collar people go to, and all you’d get is this positive-thinking message: It’s your attitude that determines everything that happens to you.



http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/barbara-ehrenreich-why-positive-thinking-is-neither/article1319863/

But people are clinging to it the way they used to cling to prayer or witchcraft...for the illusion of control.

I've always thought people engaged in it just to improve their mood. Do you think the illusion of control is created to con others or themselves?

It's something to do to make you feel that you are NOT completely powerless. And it does convince others who need someone else's confidence to support their own beliefs and decisions. (Which most of us do.)

on some situations and people I've encountered that have left me totally baffled. :wow:

you're the 5-10% out of work, to whine about your situation is frowned on, & to cast blame outside yourself paints "loser" on your forehead. after all, 90% of your peers still have jobs, right?

My goose is cooked. I love whining. I hate it went I don't have an opportunity to vent. This is not to say that I don't look for the good in things and be just as vocal in my praise when I think its warranted.

In my opinion people who don't whine in situations that are intolerable are brain dead.

I think the secret to whining and complaining is not to do in the presence of managers, it should be done with people who share the same passion.

no, i didn't miss it. it just has nothing to do with what i said.

Trust me.

that all of the 'positive thinking' BS has been nothing but a psychological warfare program unleashed on the people to keep them in line.

"In the 1980s, big companies began bringing in motivational speakers and buying up motivational books to distribute to their workers.

This was the beginning of the age of layoffs, and so you needed these motivational speakers and all their products for two reasons. First, to stop discontent among those being laid off: Just as with cancer, you tell them, “Hey, this is a wonderful opportunity, embrace your transition, it’s a gift to you.” And second, to squeeze more and more work out of the employees who survive the layoffs by providing the message that we can’t have whiners around who are dragging everybody down with their questions and their doubts."




http://www.theglobeandmail.com/books/barbara-ehrenreich-why-positive-thinking-is-neither/article1319863/

Who never bought into the bullshit of positive thinking, I can explain it to you real simply. They are sent to management training programs on a consistent basis that spin that crap. The reason is simple. It makes them more compliant to follow through with orders and feel empowered.

blame yourself and don't demand that the motherfuckers stop or be stopped. It's about the material power status quo after all and that can't be challenged - GHWB 1990

MADE IN CHINA EXPLOITATION PRIVATIZATION SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where've ya'll BEEN for the past 15-20-30 FUCKING YEARS!? :evilfrown:

When THAT happens, I don't know. This is a resilient country.

--d!

:(

both of my sons.. :(

The American people won't protest a lack of jobs, healthcare or education...as long as they have their "reality" TV.

Brilliant. :thumbsup:

Lead by example or don't bother to lead.

Wait a mo: You're not Michael Moore, so I can't be as brash toward you...

Sad to say, but I think the pain is going to have to reach a critical mass before Americans rise up. Too many still have too much to lose & many others believe it will never happen to them. Call it the Jane Harman effect - I don't care until it happens to my family.

sounds like this coming winter

:hug:

Our country has embraced the 'rugged individualist' mentality to the point that we no longer care or support our communities.

I somehow still have my $9 job and rent a room from a friend,
but there are lots of homeless ppl in my community, and our foods banks are bottoming out..

... the flood of government money to appease the destitute runs out. Which is pretty soon.

Perhaps it's just part of their anti-immigration strategy. When the middle class is destroyed, immigrants will self-deport in search of a lower cost of living and more opportunities in the drug trade.

you really have no clue.

Hell marches down reforma are part of the traffic report every day.

As to immigration policy. Mexico has a hell of a problem with immigration from Central America. And also quite a few LEGAL immigrants.

:banghead: at the ignorance.

Oh and sh... there is a middle class too.

If I wasn't clear enough, that's not your fault.

and we do fairly well?

Unions aren't a fix all

Some unions are great...some suck ass.

whether you are in one or not.

The 5 day workweek, the 8 hour day, overtime pay, break time, OSHA, end of child labor--- unions forced these issues. Thank goodness for the labor unions, the political muscle behind much of the federal labor laws.

Corporations, which have greater tabs on EVERYONE more than ever, know this. An arrest even for civil disobedience, sad as it is to say, will close a lot of doors for a person. Trust me, they WILL find out later if not sooner. There's no privacy anymore.

Revolution against corporations will never happen because people plain and simple fear getting arrested. They wouldn't put their lives on the line because there's far too much for them to lose. There'd never be a "CHAAARRGE" because you'd have a whole lot of people going "errrr . . . you first."

The police will protect the wealthy and beat and arrest us. Same goes for the military. They regard THEM as "the good guys" and THEM as the "victims", NOT us.

Get fired? Where are you going to work? What are you going to do for money? The "Dole" might as well BE a damned pineapple for all it's worth. What about health care? Like Mike Moore said, "This ain't Sweden you live in". You need that job for a LOT of things in life. Lose it and you're screwn.

Even if there were thousands upon thousands at the foot of riot police, they'd stop us because livelihood is not worth throwing away. Putting things in the "Life Sucks" file and moving on while we get the shit end of the stick on a continuous basis is the 21st Century American way of life.

Also, the whole "when life gives you lemons" bullshit IS the second largest crock of bulldroppings next to the Libertarian/Republican poison of choice known as "Horatio Alger". It's merely another stupid cliché designed to absolve crappy political and corporate “leadership” from blame when the “boom . . .bubble . . . CRASH” economies they preside over and the businesses/corporations they run take Hindenburg joyrides.

And it's apparently effective too, because more than a few dozen million people have been convinced to buy into the notion that, no matter how hard they work, how many resumes they distribute or how effectively they think their networking skills are, it's somehow THEIR fault that they got laid off or aren't as far ahead in life as they are.

What's more the culprit is horrible (often bordering on or straight crossing the path into illegal) corporate leadership, governmental aid and abettance and just plain ol' bad LUCK. Not all of us can run a business and it's absolutely silly to think such a crapshoot is possible for the 9 out of 10 people that would fail at doing this. We're not fortune tellers. These "green jobs" we're supposed to be training for are already taking root in third-world serfdoms, thanks to little investment in anything that can directly help us and more emphasis on blowing up entire ethnic groups because they don't "wershup JAYsus!".

If people cannot stand up for themselves and see how badly they're getting sodomized by the authoritarian entities they work for, then really, is this mass of land even worth saving?

this won't get near as many readers as it would if it were a thread and that would be a down right crime. And your remark that "Dole" might as well BE a damned pineapple for all it's worth"s" is priceless. If its not already a bumber sticker it should be.








:applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause: :applause:

Look through my journal. Very few OPs I do actually make it to 12 replies, and at least 1/4 of them will be me doing some kicking.

I think the problem lies in either two things - the novel lengths or the overall "preach to the choir" overtones. "Preaching to the choir" apparently doesn't put asses in the seats. I'm beginning to think most posters look at my name in OPs and think ":eyes: Oh Christ, it's Hugh Foster Wallace Beaumont again with his latest rant on why corporations/Republicans/free trade sucks" - down into the drink it goes.

I see how it can be tiresome to read about post after post, but think of how tiresome it is to experience this carrot-chasing treadmill we're all going through and not only is absolutely nothing done about it, but the situation for the proles stuck in corporate America gets worse and worse every year.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6801842

Oh and the huevos are gone for more than the reasons you listed.

Lets just say forty years of propaganda have had a wonderful effect.

To mobilize the lower classes against themselves.

Look at the G-20 in Pittsburgh.

What happened there pissed me off so much that I actually told a right-wing friend of several years to f*** off after an inconsiderate, pro-rich comment she made about that.

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union manufacturing jobs.

Look around friend, lazy, fat and in a stupor--if you're looking to the American people to get off their fat asses and make things happen you are in for disappointment.

Julie

It will just get worse and worse without any resistance from Americans.

so forget it...

Actually let me modify that, they will come... but not in a unified way or as part of a movement, aka riots... not strikes.