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Thursday, April 10, 2008
Quote of the Day: They're Attacking Us
We say, "There’s something wrong with the economy," rather than, "I’m getting screwed by the oil companies, the banks, and my employer." Things get mystified and depersonalized. We say there’s a "recession," as if were some sort of bad weather, rather than pointing our fingers at the people who brought it down on us and who are, for the most part, profiting still. Maybe, instead of talking about "the economy" and "the recession" we should be talking about the ongoing looting and concerted attack on our standard of living --which will likely end only when there’s nothing left to squeeze out of us.
This isn’t just semantics. If there’s something wrong with "the economy," we call in the economists, we think about intervention by the Fed, and things on that level. But if someone is actually attacking us, we’re more likely to focus on how we can start working for change right now, with whatever tools are at hand.
-- , TPM Cafe
Technorati Tags:Barbara Ehrenreich, TPM Cafe, working class, economy, recession
April 10, 2008 at 06:24 PM in Corporatism, Economy, Populism, Labor | Permalink
Comments
When people rob banks, they go to prison. When banks rob people, finance executives get multi-million dollar bonuses.
I drive by the huge mansions but I don't feel envy. I feel disgust knowing that most of the people living in such excess don't really deserve their ill begotten wealth. So many in this country have gained by means of predation upon the true producers and creative people in our society. It is not the craftsman or inventor that reaps the reward of their effort. It is the embezzler and thief that takes credit for the work of others. It is not the healers and the care takers that live in those big houses, it is the insurance company executives and health industry bureaucrats driving the luxury cars.
The ones that reap the material wealth are those that are adept at taking credit for ideas not their own while the true creators are busy actually creating. The manipulators of goods are making the money while never actually producing or creating any goods.
Take tomatoes for example. The guys growing the tomatoes aren't making much money and neither is the guy that trucks the tomatoes to the grocery store and the grocer is just making a living. It is the guy in between that buys the tomatoes from the producer, then sells the tomatoes to the grocer that sucks all the wealth from the production of the tomatoes. Does the intermediate person that handles the money transaction but never touches a tomato produce anything of true value? Why does this person deserve to pay himself say 500 times the rate of someone else in the tomato production line?
Each process in our provision contains such a predatory parasite that is sucking blood out of our system in an unsustainable manner.
Posted by: qofdisks | Apr 10, 2008 9:47:39 PM
