This is infuriating: According to today’s New York Times, most low-wage workers in America are victims of routine theft. The thieves: wealthy employers, who steal on average 15% of their low-wage employees’ pay by routinely underpaying them for their work, according to a new report.
Huge numbers of America’s low-wage workers don’t even earn minimum wage for their work. Only 20% of these wage-slaves dare to complain or consider starting or joining a union–and of those who do, nearly half suffer illegal punishment at the hands of their bosses and/or companies, either suspended or fired. And of course, the companies never worry that the government will do anything to them for illegally stomping on America’s vulnerable, because you know, government is a bad, bad thing.
We live in Dickensian times again, folks, except that ours is a degraded Dickens: our Dickensian victims don’t evince any of the pathos of Dickens’ 19th century characters, because officially, none of this is even happening. And if it is happening, it’s their own damn fault.
So to repeat: the average low-wage worker is the victim of corporate theft every week–his wealthy company steals 15% of his wages as a matter of routine. It happens all the time–most workers say their company robbed them as recently as last week!
I’ve been studying this kind of 21st century Dickensian exploitation in America for several years now, because so many “going postal” shootings over the past 25 years took place in companies where this kind of exploitation is rampant–from the massacre in Alabama earlier this year, where both the shooter and his mother were part of an infuriating class-action lawsuit against Pilgrim’s Pride chicken for stiffing low-wage employees out of their earnings (Pilgrim’s Pride billionaire founder Bo Pilgrim eventually sought and was granted bankruptcy protection), to the very first modern workplace massacre in Louisville, Kentucky, where the shooter was fighting a long, losing battle against management over numerous violations and government warnings which the company casually dismissed–until the day of the massacre.
For me the most incredible moment in today’s New York Times article on how badly low-wage workers get fucked was how surprised the researchers were to learn how often it happens:
“We were all surprised by the high prevalence rate,” said Ruth Milkman, one of the study’s authors and a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the City University of New York.
Reading this article reminded me again of a common meme among the smug “I see through the bullshit” / “I’m neither right nor left” cheeseheads that we at The eXile and eXiled Online always had to hear: before the 2008 crisis, the answer to why there aren’t larger uprisings in America was always, “The working class has been bought off. Everyone just wants a plasma TV.” Now that it’s no longer merely leftwing to recognize how foolishly deluded that kind of thinking was, this meme has morphed into an equally idiotic “they don’t rise up because there’s no way to win!” It’s as though ours is the first generation ever to face bad odds when fighting for our rights.
The problem, as I see it, is that everyone’s looking for a way to avoid looking at this for what it is. Instead everyone’s energy is spent looking for a cheap shortcut around what is really a straight-forward horror story, our horror story. And the cleverest of all keep falling into that safe, comfortable trap of cheap cynicism– the “soporific” that Nietzsche warned of.
To quote Ray Midge in Dog of the South: “We’re worse than our fathers, Dupree. We don’t even look like them.”
Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine.
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61 Comments
Add your own1. mijj | September 1st, 2009 at 11:19 pm
Americans are going to have to learn the correct response to the accusation: “SOCIALIST!” is: “DAMN RIGHT!”.
2. jps3 | September 2nd, 2009 at 12:22 am
So what are we left to do? America’s low wage/working class worker is a stupid slave that worships his master and his master’s interests. What political position does that leave us with? The white American working class are stupid losers, and the oligarchy are evil fucks.
I guess liberal bourgeois comfort is where it’s at. Fuck the workers, because they are stupid and reactionary slave animals, and fuck the oligarchy if they cut into my middle class comfort.
What other option is there? I’m a lawyer, so I’ll be ok, so long as the present horrible system holds up. If the stupid peasants can’t figure out their own interests, why should I give a shit about them? Do I really want a proletarian revolution of stupid hillbillies from West Virginia?
Where do we go? Dolan? Give me the answer!
3. Realist | September 2nd, 2009 at 3:31 am
So why do most workplace shooters kill equally desperate fellow worker drones?
4. Reality | September 2nd, 2009 at 5:09 am
dear #3
it’s like you haven’t been paying attention at all
5. Bourgeois Anarchist Scum | September 2nd, 2009 at 5:49 am
“Do I really want a proletarian revolution of stupid hillbillies from West Virginia?”
Does anyone? What’s worse, a totalitarian capitalist nightmare run by rich scumbags or a totalitarian redneck nightmare run by poor scumbags?
How about we all F off and leave each other alone?
Oh, I know, because anarchism is totally impractical and idealistic.
Sort of like actual functioning capitalist or socialist governments.
All government is tyranny.
6. Aaron | September 2nd, 2009 at 6:03 am
“So why do most workplace shooters kill equally desperate fellow worker drones?”
They largely don’t; the targets are usually management. When they do, it’s often because, workers or no, those were some of the people who made their working life a living hell, and if your whole purpose in being there is payback, why *not* blast those fuckers?
If poor Americans are “stupid losers”, that’s only because the fucking left in this country up and deserted us. Y’all “liberal bourgeois” — as if there were such a thing, you goddamned hypocrite — types better hope like bloody fucking hell that this country doesn’t go all the way to balls-out fascist, because if we do, your worthless, self-satisfied asses are going to be up there hanging naked from the lampposts right next to the oligarchs, and there’s going to be an awful goddam lot of working-class *former* liberals — myself included — in the torches-and-pitchforks brigade.
Sure, they’ll kill us in job lots later, when we’ve outlived our usefulness to the regime, but there’s no difference between that and the way things are now, except the possibility of a much quicker, kinder, and more dignified death. And, hell, I already want to die — if a quick death like that was all I had to accept in exchange for the opportunity to work out on as many of you smug, tiresome, useless fucks as I could catch up with? Shit, how is that *not* worth it?
7. Mads Mikkelsen | September 2nd, 2009 at 7:18 am
Sorry Ames, but when the Roman slaves were exploited by the most powerful empire the world had ever known, there was nothing they could do about it. In the end it was the barbarians that had to come liberate them.
Even the Soviet Union was done in by a bad war, not their own people.
You want to make a difference, join a gang.
8. Artesh | September 2nd, 2009 at 9:39 am
There really wasn’t any need to humiliate the War Nerd like that just to provide an illustrative photo…
9. Sin Froneres | September 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
@5 You are retarded.
10. Sin Froneres | September 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14619269/Bourgeois-Influences-on-Anarchism
11. LIExpressway | September 2nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
The problem with a revolution against the oligarchy in America is that the left are on one hand either educated unarmed upper class liberals who have no illusions as to what such a war would do to their lifestyles, or on the other the poor mass of unorganized minorities who depend on said oligarchy for many fundamental needs.
The only group with the balls to do this would be the white nationalist, religious fundamentalist,anti immigrant nativist, veterans, militias, and the general white middle management demographic. They have the arms and means to do it.
Right now the oligarchy alongside traditionally conservative politicians have made an alliance with the fascist, like they usually do historically in such cases when they feel they could loose control.
The challenge for them is to use them while not letting them get out of control.
Were at about stage 3, if you buy into what Paxton says.
http://www.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf
And Iran/Persia was Romes equal throughout its existence in most ways.
“Do I really want a proletarian revolution of stupid hillbillies from West Virginia?”
No, cause they would shoot you dead in the street.
liberal bourgeois comfort is on borrowed time.
12. Ed | September 2nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Attention proletariat: call a general strike. Stop working, stop shopping, stop making babies.
13. bru-skyline | September 2nd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
The ultimate betrayal of the US people, is actually characters like commenter #2 ‘jps3’ above – it’s the mafia of US lawyers and judges, in conjunction with the corporate media. – Of the many workers abused on the job, millions of them have tried to interest lawyers or the media in their plight, and got no help.
The real taboo subject, the core US fact driving US fascism, is the US legal corruption, the moral breakdown of the US legal profession, who have become the Nazi party members serving the corporate monster. Half the lawyers in the US – nearly a million strong – are in the mafia with the judges, the other half won’t fight that mafia.
The legal organisations (ACLU etc) with money, are frauds which all suck the corporate nipple and do surface media things (‘war crimes accusations against Bush’ and other go-nowhere hokum), while ignoring the real plight of abused workers, and these lawyers and organisations ignore the hundreds of thousands of innocent working class people in the jails and prisons. A few exception cases here and there to superficially distract from the horrors, of course, but most victims are abandoned to their fates, left to rot and die, by the lawyers, after the lawyers milk them for every last dime.
Thus, the real subtext of this abused-workers story, is that the US mafia legal system totally failed these people. Anyone who’s had much contact with the US lawyers knows what I mean – but most idiot middle-class Americans believe that ‘lawyers are there to fight for them’, like in some Hollywood movie, until they get arrested, or get their assets and children robbed from them by some lawyer bribing a judge, then they find out, too, what happens.
If you are in the US and you have proof of legal-judicial crimes, the media won’t cover the story, and no US lawyer will genuinely help you, even if you have hundreds of thousands to spend. That is real life fact most Americans don’t know because the media hides it. Stories too scary for even the Exiled.
Workers come to know and feel, that the whole US legal apparatus is a fraud. The weak government regulation is not the core issue – it’s the fact the US lawyer mafia is so shot through with corruption, that workers can’t get help.
If any lawyer tries to fight the US mafia, he or she gets disbarred or jailed (like the elderly Richard Fine in Los Angeles right now), the media buries the story and the other lawyers refuse to help him, the lawyers don’t hit the streets demonstrating like in other countries.
The media corporations are the handmaiden, but the real US thugs escalating the Nazification of the US, are the legal-judicial mafia. Like other Americans, US lawyers, if not direct crooks, have gotten thoroughly beaten and cowed and trained, and the minority of lawyers with a conscience won’t help victims out of fear.
This is the real taboo topic that even the Exiled would be nervous about covering, if they had to name names, as the Exiled’s lawyers would advise them to shut up, and no lawyer would want to genuinely defend the Exiled as it was sued for a billion by the legal mafia and put out of business and blocked from the web for ‘libel’ against US lawyers and judges.
14. Whatever666 | September 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
I keep seeing the question raised by multiple posters of “what is there to be done” (clearly, a question Ames wanted to provoke here), but the answer is simple: NOTHING.
Since the dawn of civilization, the “low earners”…the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder…have ALWAYS been fucked over. What the NYT coverage of this “study” revealed isn’t news at all – This so-called “study” is just a brief stoplight on the long road of social history, which is traversed through largely unchanging terrain.
As people are fond of saying in the corporate world, “it is what it is.” This handy little tautology is used up and down the chain of command. And it’s a good thing.
Because really, who gives a shit about the working and lower middle classes? As long as they keep quiet, sweep up, pick up the phones courteously, etc…
15. aleke | September 2nd, 2009 at 3:15 pm
Revolution and History: An Interview with Edward Hallett Carr
“Why does the worker in the West today – for I think we must accept the fact – not want revolution? The first answer is ‘Fear’, stimulated in part by the example of 1917. The Russian Revolution, whatever good ultimately came out of it, caused endless misery and devastation. To overthrow the ruling class in the capitalist world today would be a still more desperate enterprise, its costs even higher. The Russian worker in 1917 may have had nothing to lose but his chains. The western worker has far more than that to lose, and does not want to lose it. When this question is raised, I sometimes resort to an analogy. The doctor tells the patient that he has an incurable disease, which will get worse at an unpredictable rate, but that he may hope to carry on somehow for a few years longer. The disease can be cured by an operation, but there is quite a chance that the operation will kill the patient. The patient decides to carry on. Rosa Luxemburg said that the decay of capitalism would end either in socialism or in barbarism. I suspect that most workers today prefer to face the slow decay of capitalism, hoping that it will last out their time, rather than face the surgical knife of revolution, which may or may not produce socialism. It is a tenable point of view.”
We got consumerist society to deal with, something Marx did not foresee. Workers collaborate with their employers in the sense that they must have their goods sold to consumer tastes that have been and are constantly being changed by deceptive marketing strategies in order to be employed. This all rests on the Third World that the United States (and Britain, and the rest) have forced into binding trade pacts.
So, revolutionary action is for these unfair trade practices to be severed in the Third World countries, and to properly proletarianize the First World workers who are little but glorified serfs. It’s possible, but you have to work for it, hard.
Or we’ll just go fascist, which is great and all, but pretty vicious and unsustainable. Plus the vampires get to remain vampires, the class antagonism doesnt get resolved.
16. Padilla | September 2nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
An interesting way to go: bomb on the local stock exchange:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8233054.stm
But of course, only Eurofags seem to be able to do something like that.
It’s not the way things are done in the US: namely, whining endlessly, taking plenty drugs, brutalising your neighbor/co-worker/cellmate/seasonal Axis of Evil/ whoever is at hand.
Sacco & Vanzetti or the Black Panthers were for real… Now we have fangless Amerifags.
17. aleke | September 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Oh and there’s plenty of examples of egalitarian society that existed before capitalism, the San hunter gatherers, Çatalhöyük agricultural village society, even the Tiv of central Nigeria organized close to a million people this way by the end of the nineteenth century. If you want to live like a slave and have a society based on caste, be my guest. But don’t stay in the way of my gun, though, ya filthy degenerate!
18. az | September 2nd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Hey Mark, you gotta read “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” by Robert Tressell. He wrote it in 1910 but almost nothing changed since then, at least taking 1907 when the book takes place and 2009. Same domestic murder-suicides of people who worked all their lives only to have nothing left, same psychotic-sycophantic managers who had the chance to be the boss man but ended up working for him, same idiot proles who read the papers and argue about shit they don’t understand like free trade, protectionism, immigrants, etc., defending the very system that causes their misery, same evangelist nuts who believe that ‘you’ll have pie in the sky when you die,’ you get the point. I think there will be a way out of this though. I mean capital has limits.
19. timmy | September 2nd, 2009 at 4:10 pm
After looking up “dog of the south”
I am wondering if the exile has considered making a little part of the website dedicated to ‘must read/see’ – incorporating the Amazon affiliate program. I know I always make a point to read books and see movies, listen to music, etc that you recommend in the exile. Never been let down yet. Naipaul, Celine, Gogol, The Stooges, The Fall, Joy Division, Coen Bros, David Lynch, etc It’s hard to winnow through the all the shit in this world to find the gems, and maybe there’s other people like me who use the eXile to help.
And maybe you could make money on this?
20. kloak | September 2nd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
I think any attempt to impose a government solution is bound to fail. It’s already been noted by a few commentators that the US working class is more inclined towards fascism than socialism. Add to this the very likely possibility that the oligarchs will continue to exercise some degree of control and you have the recreation of Berlin circa 1932. Instead, why not give the American worker a taste of real capitalism. Remove ALL government regulation and I believe we’ll see one of two things. Either the Austrian economists will be proven right in which case wealth will flow through a self-correcting market to everyone leading to a prosperous paradise or a barbaric, feudal form of capitalism will arise leading to the complete disillusionment of the common worker and socialist revolution. Either way, it’s a win, as I see it.
21. Sin Froneres | September 2nd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
@11 “the poor mass of unorganized minorities who depend on said oligarchy for many fundamental needs.”
The mass of “unorganized” minorities put at least a million feet on the ground in the streets of Los Angeles on May Day 2006. Many of whom are veterans of various Central American civil wars and conflicts themselves.
In between the Black Riders Liberation Party,
the Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, CopWatch LA Guerrilla Chapter, etc… win or lose I know who I will stand with when shit hits the fan, and it ain’t going to be the WN.
22. Mads Mikkelsen | September 2nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Anyone who thinks America is fascist country is completely ignorant of what fascism was and how important it was. Fascism doesn’t mean corporations fuck you and steal from you non-stop. That’s just old-fashioned exploitation and imperialism.
Fascism was about politics as grand opera, with costumes, characters, parades, clubs, parties, art. It was a social movement. It was about gathering the losers and turning them into an army to unleash on the exploiters. It was the anti-Woodstock. America is not nearly cool enough for fascism. If Hitler were alive today he could take over America in a year and you would all have public health care the next day.
23. fajensen | September 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 pm
All you losers need to do to bring down the system is: Stop Shopping.
The financial crisis was set off by a 4% drop in in consumer spending, from 70% of GDP in 2007 to 66% in 2008. You plebs control 40% of the economy, while the 10% rich have the rest
http://seekingalpha.com/article/156321-a-granular-look-at-the-stratified-u-s-consumer
So, you will need to cut back maybe 10% to kill all the bailouts, wipe out the Chinese investments and put egg on Geitners face.
24. Anomynous | September 2nd, 2009 at 10:37 pm
@ 21 the “disorganized minorities” are pretty disarmed thanx to gun control laws. The Democrats they voted for will ironically screw them over by doing all they can to “control” guns. Plus All of America’s core ghetto inner city neighborhood are surrounded by white suburbia and as we all know there are WAY MORE GUNS in suburbia then there are in the ghettos. If you give them guns they will spend more time shooting each other over the most stupidest crap (like he stepped on my shoes, he looked at me funny) more and burning their own communities (<–putting their own people in worse economic shape as we saw in the LA riots when people lost their jobs bussineses were burnt down by stupid monkeys running loose). Plus they don’t know anything about the Constitution and their rights thanx to government run schools public school.
“Rednecks” as people like to call them/working class whites have basic technology skills (machining, farming, gunsmithing) people that are not to be f8cked with, while the leisure class pussy liberals have degrees in liberal arts and are “educated”. They won’t be of any help to anybody but they will squeal to their elected officials for bigger government to control society more when disorder comes and more gun control. Plus gay rights, anti war movements and anti corporations of the yuppie liberals is of no interest of the minority.
As for WN they are no better. What America will have left when these morons take over American streets will be basically third world where These WN militias keep destroying sh8t with all the battles, kinda like what you see in those worn torn African countries except the skin color of the militias will be white.
25. geo8rge | September 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
“Do I really want a proletarian revolution of stupid hillbillies from West Virginia?”
It’s already happened, it was the Bush Presidency. High paid government jobs for Military, Police, Corrections, Airport Screeners(*). Think about it. Who really did well during the Bush years? Who didn’t: anyone college educated, inner city blacks, muslims, unionized auto workers, basically people hillbillies hate.
(*) I still chuckle at the thought of a US Senator on the no fly list. Guess which one it was?
26. Anomynous | September 2nd, 2009 at 11:33 pm
@25
yes they were in control and liberals did nothing about it except gay street protesting that just pisses off everybody and whining.
Now the Dems are in power but are having a hard time, despite being in control, because those “stupid uneducated hill billies” actually do something about it and make WAY MORE NOISE and get more attention then all the gay lib protests of the last 8 years combined.
The federal govt can over-tax the blue states, take their money and give it to GOP states, interfere in their 2nd amendment rights (blue states have strict gun laws), and still the educated libs living in confort won’t do anything to fight for their rights, while the uneducated blacks can’t do much.
27. Sam | September 3rd, 2009 at 1:48 am
You can trust the Communists…
…to be Communists.
This rag is nothing more than Commie propaganda. Yes, there are problems in western society. They sure as HELL are not going to be solved with Communism. Communism has failed. Miserably.
Don’t let these pinko’s fool you into thinking they have the answers. A “Nation of the Proletariat” becomes a fist beating everyone down for eternity real quick under a Communist regime.
28. fodder | September 3rd, 2009 at 1:52 am
Ideally, the underclass would align to do vicious and concentrated physical harm to the plutocrats; and by doing so bring revolution. But I could even do without the revolution part.
29. Anonymous | September 3rd, 2009 at 4:21 am
For reference, I used to work retail, many years ago, at, or just above minimum wage. First off, the survey was only of employees. Most employees who make minimum wage are normally not the cream of the crop. Many are under educated and/or not the sharpest tools in the shed. Are they aware of things like FICA deductions, state, federal and local income tax deductions, and the other types of deductions that almost everyone has. Are they thinking that they are getting less than minimum wage because after all deductions they are?
I would also be willing to bet that the people asking the questions to the employees (or if it was written) were probably not well vetted questions and written with a built in confirmation bias. This is not to say that there is not a problem with off the book hours, and unwillingness of employers to have workers on overtime, just that I would not be surprised to see some loaded questions.
30. Realist | September 3rd, 2009 at 5:31 am
All this drivel about revolution and gunfire…
Nr. 23 is quite right. Restrict consumption, draw as much money as you can from the fractional reserve banking system, strengthen the underground economy. And the plunder machine comes to a sudden halt. You may not have a pension plan to write home about, but (as a class) you have the power to fuck it up for everybody else. Politics is the art of obstruction.
Nota Bene: The foundation funded “community organisers” and philantropists are not there t help you. Quite the contrary.
31. Joe Blow | September 3rd, 2009 at 5:51 am
“CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Gunmen broke into a drug rehabilitation center, lined people against a wall and shot 17 dead ”
wtf is up with that?
oh, and.. “Screw the People!!” if my chicken is 3 cents a pound cheaper its worth it.
32. LIExpressway | September 3rd, 2009 at 7:05 am
17. aleke – Excellent posts.
“The mass of “unorganized” minorities put at least a million feet on the ground in the streets of Los Angeles on May Day 2006. Many of whom are veterans of various Central American civil wars and conflicts themselves.”
It’s a silly stretch to think that those marchers can organize a military force that can go against the millions upon millions of heavily armed native “Rednecks” In fact I think @24 said summed it excellently. It would look like the Balkans without UN intervention(maybe without UN intervention, you know we got tons of nukes lying around)
Mads Mikkelsen – were do I begin.
1) I agree America is not fascist in anyway, nor was GW Bush per say, though some of his policies were fascist like.
2) When you talk of grand opera, costumes ,and clubs you are only describing fascism in its very late stages. Identifying fascism in it’s early stage is much more challenging
3) Your forgetting that public health care for fascist includes work/death camps,bullets to the head, euthanasia, all the great things to help end end your life in a way beneficial to the community. That’s health care we can all support!
http://www.salemstate.edu/~cmauriello/pdfEuropean/Paxton_Five%20Stages%20of%20Fascism.pdf
33. lzzrdgrrl | September 3rd, 2009 at 8:14 am
Your standard lot Americans care neither for freedom nor justice as much as an avoidance of risk……
A successful revolt can be launched for sure, but it still means that someone will probably killed or at least seriously inconvenienced………
Ah…. for socialism for the RIGHT reasons; which doesn’t mean equality in distribution or fairness. It means a certain degree of squalour and want for all is entirely acceptable if that means the filthy assholes that deserve to be killed are butchered and strung up proper ….. 😀 …….
34. Palmer Eldritch | September 3rd, 2009 at 8:31 am
Our fathers toiled, bought on sale and saved, all so that they could leave us this best of all possible worlds. The least we can do is to remember, piously, that all of this was constructed in good faith by men of good intentions who were doing what they thought was right the best way that they knew how.
35. Snarky | September 3rd, 2009 at 9:54 am
I’m going to do myself.
36. RICHARD RALPH ROEHL | September 3rd, 2009 at 1:29 pm
The routine Dickensian exploitation of common wealth workers in capitalist/fascist America does not surprise me. Old Coyote Knose… that America is really 1984 AmeriKa, a violent war-mongering nation $tate, a nation of sheep ruled by wolves… and owned by pigs.
This probably explains why talk hate radio pundits (Redneck Beck, Mr. Oxycontin, $hawn Insanity, et.al.) repeated-lie claim the only solution for health care ‘reform’ in the United $tates of Corp-rat Perpetual War Profiteering in Iraq-nam… is tax cuts for insurance companies! And it further explains why the tail always wags the dog in $ewertown (Washington D.C.) for the $ake of ethno/racist Zionists in the theo-crazy of Israel. Indeed! Israel first! AmeriKa $econd!
37. Sam | September 3rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Richard you’re one crazy Communist. “United $tates of Corp-rat Perpetual War profiteering in Iraq-nam…” Really? What are you 12?
Is this what you have to resort to in order to make a meager attempt at getting some kind of point across? If so, realize that the only people you’re going to sway are the ones wearing tin foil hats as they are reading this in their bomb shelters as they await for the 2012 apocalypse.
Comparing America to Orwell’s 1984 distopia? Really? You do realize that 1984 was a book about the dangers of COMMUNISM, right?
I wonder what you’re really angry about, Richard. I’m sure it can’t just be that you want to bring a form of gov’t. to this country that didn’t even endure in the nation where it was founded.
Perhaps you have a crappy job, or an ugly wife. Perhaps you don’t have a wife, or any woman to speak of. Perhaps after all these years, at age 45 you’re still a virgin because you’re unable to seal the deal with the few women who were brave enough to come check out your basement apt in your mom’s house.
Whatever the real reason for your rage, relax, and get an education.
38. Snarky | September 4th, 2009 at 1:36 am
What the fuck? Snarky of post #35, who the fuck are you? Your momma didn’t spank you enough? You can fuck yourself all you want, but I get laid on a regular basis; so please, little punk, don’t use my fucking nick when announcing your personal shit on this website.
As for the topic, here’s the thing: Americans – if you aren’t getting paid what you are worth, form a union, stop working, beat the shit out of your boss. If a group of workers stampede a boss to death, there would be no one charged with murder. If bosses get the living shit beaten out of them, they will treat you better. You beat the crap out of a high school bully, and viola, he stops picking on you. Bosses are the same way. And when you strike, bear in mind, you co-workers won’t stop you, and most will support you, it’s just that no one has the balls to make the first move.
Our society today is like the Roman Society of Plebians and Patricians. So when the Patricians started to fuck over the Plebes, the Plebes simply left Rome. And the Patricians couldn’t do jack shit about it, so they begged the Plebes to comeback and began fucking slaves instead, until Spartacus came along; and after Spartacus, the relations with slaves started improving.
Of course the Mass Media will tell you it’s hopeless. That’s what they’re paid to tell you. But it’s not. Knock out some windows on your bosses car, late at night, while no one is looking. That carries what, two weeks in jail, if you’re dumb enough to be caught. But imagine the satisfaction. Start it out small, and then the momentum will build up. Revolt!
Also, ignore Sam’s silly post. Sam, you male or female?
39. wardoc | September 4th, 2009 at 5:19 am
#13 above is absolutely correct; Lawyers and judges literally have a captive monopoly in which they have myriad laws that us peons often know nothing about, as well as thousands of regulations and “laws” that serve to squeeze money from the peon (non legal)class. The lawyers and judges pretend to “process justice” via rigged court proceedings, juries that are given instructions by judges as to what they can see hear and think, and supposedly opposing lawyers who pretend to fight for each others client but are, in actuality, drinking buddies at their country clubs. What they are really doing is perpetuating a money transfer business wherein the judges are assured of continued bureaucratic power and money, the lawyers are assured of an endless stream of “cases” from which they can extract fees that allow them to live in the upper economic crusts, and the government bureaucrats are assured of always having a job processing the paper from the lawyers and judges.
The system is totally corrupt and non reformable. Read Adventures in Legal Land.
Wardoc, fed up.
40. Ted E | September 4th, 2009 at 5:33 am
Most of these corporate scumbags are dual passport holders,that should be sent to the place that issued the second passport.
Our country is infested with these characters,right up to highest places in our government and financial institutions.
I am sure I don’t have to point to them,as we all know,who they are.
41. LIExpressway | September 4th, 2009 at 6:40 am
“Comparing America to Orwell’s 1984 distopia? Really? You do realize that 1984 was a book about the dangers of COMMUNISM, right?”
Wrong. The book was actually about the dangers of totalitarianism in general, not just communism.
Orwell was also a socialist until his death.
42. Jojojo | September 4th, 2009 at 7:21 am
Sam is your argument anything other than screeching inane accusations at people? Ur a commie u gots no girlfriend and shiiiiiiiiiit. HErp derp derp. Doesn’t matter if the person behind the little text box is a wondrous fat ass like the War Nerd or a vapid Adonis. And before you say anything I’m a 300 pound black living in a flying communist igloo slapping no less than 5 white wimmen in the face with my carbuncular Negroid manpenis.
George Orwell didn’t know what the hell he wanted and yes authors can be wrong about their own work see Heinlein and Starship Troopers. 1984 comparisons fit more than ever. You have a huge underclass of retarded rednecks defending their ass rape by authority and content to stew at home consuming pornography and you have a system where no one can complain about anything and not “support the troops” or you get labeled a Communist by some faggot.
43. Concerned Citizen | September 4th, 2009 at 8:24 am
Why does no one challenge one of the most central assumptions of Mark’s argument: the notion that there is something inherently WRONG with having a permanent underclass that is continuously abused in a society.
While I would still advocate that they deserve some basic rights (affordable health-care, minimum wage, housing), I only support them having these rights for a simple reason: we need them to be strong and healthy to do the work of dogs.
A permanent underclass is fine. You can escape such conditions if you have the brains, ambition, and the basic conditions I outlined earlier.
But I for one derive much pleasure from watching the filth repair my roads, cook my food, and perform other degrading labor. So long as the shitty system holds up, anyone with a brain should be fine.
44. static | September 4th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Could you please remove the gigantic arse from the main screen? What’s the matter with you?
45. shen | September 4th, 2009 at 9:10 am
It’s not just minimum wage workers. Middle class workers get cheated too. Since I became an RN, I get cheated more than any other job I ever had. Sometimes, just big mistakes, like $800 in the check and they keep putting off fixing it. Also, required to punch in and out for 1/2 lunch, but never get to take it so it is time stolen from my paycheck. Then, many places forbid overtime, but the work must be finished that shift, so people punch out at 3pm, then come back and do two or more hours of free overtime almost every day. It is really rare for a nurse to ever get out of work on time. They also want you there 1/2 early, but aren’t allowed to punch in until 7AM or whatever time your shift starts. One place, where we signed in at the supervisor’s office instead of clocked in, I was asked to stay extra every night as the nightshift was always late. She then lied and never turned in that extra time. The best was a psych facility that had a time clock that didn’t print anything on our cards. They said the night supervisor would have to sign them in order to get paid, to prove we were there. I went to her office, she was drunk and refused. This went on for weeks, no one getting paid right. Management sneared at us. Finally, someone poured coffee in the time clock. It exploded and they had to put in one that worked. So, professionals get cheated, too, just in different way. We also don’t get time & half for mandated shifts anymore, no weekend or holiday bonuses. I have been told to work a Christmas or Thanksgiving, and we would at least be given dinner. Then, nothing. There was no place open to buy anything for anyone who didn’t take a lunch. Some places, the nurses have to buy supplies, such as alcohol, gauze, tylenol–they don’t provide basic things patients need, even meals.
46. LIExpressway | September 4th, 2009 at 10:41 am
Concerned Citizen, what’s the cutoff point for intelligence.
47. ACTION | September 4th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
How about everyone quit crying and stop shopping. Kill the goose that’s laying their golden eggs! Organize and boycott. Make a list of all the evil companies and don’t buy their shit. BOYCOTT!
48. Baldrick | September 4th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
Concerned citizen, any relation to me?
49. antiLeft | September 4th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
@ 42
“You have a huge underclass of retarded rednecks defending their ass rape by authority and content to stew at home consuming pornography” and they are also content with the entertaintment they have on television in the form of Fox News. Lets face it, Fox News IS ENTERTAINING and they have high ratings because of it while left wing news is boring as hell and won’t catch the attention of the retarded right winger. The retarded right wingers are also content and satisfied so as long as the Federal Govt. gives free money to his state so he can build bridges and highways to nowhere and keep his working class white male construction worker job. Which brings up another point: LOWER THE FRIGGIN TAXES and the state/local/municipal government won’t have money for their white male construction worker job then they will beat the asses out of their bosses when they dont have jobs. But the liberal left is too stupid to figuere this out and instead tax to death their own states which ends up supporting them in the first place. LOWER TAXES dumb ass liberal left.
@45
this is a classic case point where #38’s solution of beating the crap out of your bosses will work and they will stop being assholes and form unions. If the local municipal/city/state govt. tries to water hoes the union exercise your 2nd amendment rights that our forefathers gave us and then they will take you seriously. Which brings up another point: STOP PUTTING RESTRICTION ON GUNS and passing gun control laws retarded, dumb ass liberal left wingers.
Gawd liberal left wingers are so stupid and retarded they tax to death their own states and give the money to these dumb asses while at the same time restricting their own right to own a firearm in their own state.
Liberals piss me off.
50. Zhu Bajie | September 5th, 2009 at 12:54 am
In any future revolt, red necks and the various minorities would all fight with each other, and suck up to the oligarchs. The attitude “I may not amount to shit but I’m still better than a nigger (redneck, gook, spic, etc)” is still common. The religious right would probably do the worst atrocities: got to smite the heathen, you know.
51. Concerned Citizen | September 5th, 2009 at 6:21 am
@46
In the ideal world I just articulated, there would be no need to “measure” intelligence and ambition. So long as their basic needs are provided, those who possess such traits will likely rise up to the challenge. The weak will make way for the strong–it is the way of the universe.
52. adolphhitler | September 5th, 2009 at 8:56 am
@36 right on richard!
53. antiLeft | September 5th, 2009 at 11:48 am
@ 50
“The religious right would probably do the worst atrocities” which is why our founding fathers gave us the god given right to bear arms to protect against tyranny, weather it be form out of control government or pig ignorant facist right wingers. Yet the democrats keep putting restrictions on guns and anti-gun people are brainwashed into believing that “guns kill people we should restrict them” while it was It was President George Bush, Sr. who banned the import of “assault weapons” in 1989, and promoted the view that Americans should only be allowed to own weapons suitable for “sporting purposes.” It was It was Governor Ronald Reagan of California who signed the Mulford Act in 1967, “prohibiting the carrying of firearms on one’s person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street.” The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers, but affected all gun owners. Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. “I support the Brady Bill,” he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, “and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay.”
54. Morgan | September 5th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
American liberals are very strange elitists who despise all elitism.
55. adolphhitler | September 5th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
@54..all you commenters decry so called liberals yet every time i ask you what a liberal is you can never define the term except to say jane fonda is one of them. as used by most of you, liberal is just a label used to identify those who you feel are un-american, unchristian, or who want gun control. sorry, but that just doesn’t cut it. i can tell you there are an awful lot of well armed liberals out there that will never give up their guns so long as there are ignorant ,know-nothing assholes who want to force jesus down everyone’s throat.
c’mon everyone, tell me your definition of liberalism.
56. Sin Froneres | September 5th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
@53 “our founding fathers gave us the god given right”
I thought the gods gave us our founding father given rights?
Natural rights are so confusing.
57. cripes | September 6th, 2009 at 5:39 am
Concerned Citizen keeps prattling on with his Darwinist delusions about how the “intelligent” and “strongest” always rise to the top in our society, as it has been throughout history, blah, blah, blah.
Um, except it’s bullshit. The US has one of the most rigid class strucures of western countries, we’re less likely to rise from our parents social class than a typical european, and nepotism rules the heirarchy with prep schools and ivy league sinecures for the progeny of the stupid rich.
How the fuck do you think Bush II got to be Prez. High IQ? The list of incompetant rich assholes is so long, it would break the Google. You’re probably one of them, or wish you were, butt-kisser.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”
– Upton Sinclair
58. Alek | September 7th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
I dont know if it’s common terminology for yanks to call europeans eurofags, but you need to get a bit of perspective.
You can all do with a few lessons on how to protest like the french… you know, riots with a purpose.
Yeah …. purpose, perspective …. come to think of it your all fucked.
Just dont move to Australia, we have enough arseholes here already.
@15 – great post.
59. antiLeft | September 9th, 2009 at 12:30 am
“You can all do with a few lessons on how to protest like the french… you know, riots with a purpose.”
Riots won’t happen because N. Americans live in communities that are suburbanized and there’s no place to assemble or protest. The only places that will have riots will be in the old inner city ghetto centers. But even they won’t have much of an impact and will only frighten the already sheltered their whole lives suburbanites even more into a police state and guns/religion clinging.
Its pretty pathetic actually.
60. Kevin Riley O'Keeffe | September 13th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
In the two months I worked for Safeway in Campbell, California (at the corner of Budd & Winchester), I don’t think they failed to underpay me (missing hours) on a single one of my weekly paychecks. And that wasn’t even one of the major reasons I quit that job in frustrated disgust. I was working my ass off for that $8.70/hour they were paying, by the way, and still not even getting all of it. I hate to say it, but its the damn truth, and the truth needs to stated openly: Some of the Capitalists need to get waxed in this country, in order to put the fear of God into them. I’m not advocating illegal violence; I’m just stating my opinion that its almost inevitable arrival has the distinct potential to be a good thing.
61. Rikard | September 22nd, 2009 at 10:46 am
“So why do most workplace shooters kill equally desperate fellow worker drones?”
– Read the book.
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