Class War: It's Investors vs. Everyone Who Works for a Living |
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Columnists and management professionals used to write about “management and workers,” “professionals and laborers,” and “hourly and salaried.” These terms distinguished between different categories of corporate personnel and they had implications for a person’s position in the organizational hierarchy, as well as for income level, job security, and position in society. Professionals, managers, and salaried persons tended not to identify with the interests of workers and laborers. When bad things started happening to workers, the elite considered it as a sad result of poor education or unfortunate circumstance. Too bad. What has been happening to workers is the result of a planned strategy, and that strategy is now being applied to everyone who does the hands-on work of our country. We’d better start thinking in terms of “wealthy investors” (people who don’t work, yet make huge amounts of money) and “everyone else” (people who work because they have to make a living). Worldwide, wealthy investors are increasing their power to control the incomes of virtually everyone who has to work to support his family, whether at the poverty level or the luxury level. Regardless of his category—scientist, truck driver, assembly line worker, doctor, engineer, teacher, or what have you—every worker had better inherit money to invest, or have some strategy in mind to get large sums of money to invest. If he doesn’t, he’s going to find it increasingly difficult to have a decent future in the United States—a country whose leaders believe that actual work deserves no more than a marginal income. For documentation of these statements, just read how our most prestigious financial publications describe what is happening to America's skilled workers and professionals. See files from "Previous week's conservative press" on the home page. Those who hope that this situation will change soon should heed Alan Greenspan’s words. The Wall Street Journal, in “Notable & Quotable,” quoted his testimony before House Banking Committee on July 22, 1999: I’ve always thought that under conditions that we now confront, we should be very carefully focused on the contribution which skilled people from abroad [as well as] unskilled people from abroad…can contribute to the country, as they have for generation after generation…. Translation:
Americans, by and large, already realize that conservatives have used unmanaged world trade to destroy working class incomes. However, only a relatively few realize the extent to which the same strategy is now being applied to professionals and skilled workers. So far, it has only affected:
It will probably take a major economic downturn to make believers out of the rest of our presently well-paid skilled workers. But it is surely going to happen. Conservatives have bloated our population with far too many people chasing too much economic growth in a finite world. Just what are our politicians going to do when multiple levels of our citizens—and millions of new immigrants—suddenly discover they cannot maintain their present lifestyles within our nation’s borders? It took conservatives at least 20 years to create this kind of political and economic system, although they've been working at it and making slow progress for the entire century. It also will take at least 20 years to reverse. It will be a long and difficult task, but it can be done.
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