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Maraya1969

(22,441 posts)
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:10 PM Sep 2012

Why is no one talking about the real class warfare in our society?

Why aren't people talking about the class warfare that is going on constantly, in practically every corporation in America? I watched Bill Mahar last night and I was jumping out of my skin because everyone was talking about people getting food stamps and government assistance but no one mentioned that most of these people are actually working for companies who use the government to assist them in paying their employees!

I have friends at Walgreens who collect food stamps because Walgreens does not pay them a living wage; rather they get around $10/hour after working there for years. Meanwhile the CEO got a total compensation of $7,847,000 in 2010 according to the Wall Street Journal. It is common knowledge that people at Walmart need public assistance to survive. If employers’ salaries had advanced at the same rate that top executives have in the last 40 years the poorest people would be making $23/hour. It is a disgrace what we in America pay our workers.

So who is really taking from the government? I say it is the big CEO’S and executives who skim the profits from their companies right off the top and let THE GOVERNMENT TAKE CARE OF THEIR EMPLOYEES.

They are the real welfare queens.

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Cleita

(75,480 posts)
1. You are so right.
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:22 PM
Sep 2012

If companies can't pay their employees a living wage, and have to rely on government subsidies to operate, then they have a failed business model. We need to pass a living wage law ASAP and if these companies can't pay it, then they should be forced to declare bankruptcy in order to restructure their operations. Betcha those overcompensated executives might find their salaries drastically reduced. Also, raising their taxes would help accomplish much of that too.

Maraya1969

(22,441 posts)
5. And some of them are the ones that have the nerve to look down on the "lower class"
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:44 PM
Sep 2012

Like Romney who "saved", (or whatever he did) Staples. Can anyone with a regular cashier's job a Staples afford an apartment by themselves or do they have to have a roommate?

I just looked at Starbucks and their CEO makes $21,733,000 and they have a tip jar out for their employees. So they not only want the government to pay their employees salaries they want YOU to pay their employees salaries also! They made 6.28 billion in 2010. You're telling me they have to beg their clients to pay their employees?

PD Turk

(1,289 posts)
3. I've been saying this for years
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:39 PM
Sep 2012

All welfare is corporate welfare. They may piss and moan about it every election cycle but I doubt they'll ever get rid of it because it keeps the torches and pitchforks at bay.

Freddie

(9,232 posts)
4. 100% correct
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:40 PM
Sep 2012

This is why the "47% Speech" hit such a nerve. Mitt & pals close the factories and millions lost good jobs. They had to take jobs at places like Walmart that are in cahoots with other huge corporations to keep wages low and unions out. Then the Repugs have the f*cking nerve to tell these hard working people they "will never take personal responsibility for their lives" and to call Obama the "food stamp president."
Low wages are a HUGE problem that must be addressed in the near future.
And if there was true universal health care, many of these issues would be solved.

upi402

(16,854 posts)
7. there is NO opposition party to corporatism
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:49 PM
Sep 2012

and some of us get flamed even here for stating that fact.

your point is 100% right. keep fighting the good fight.

AnnaLee

(1,023 posts)
9. The unfortunate truth is that people are silent to protect the people.
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 01:54 PM
Sep 2012

Whether it is misguided or not, what do you think would happen if the degree of these subsidies were known and who do you think Americans will blame?

After what I have seen and heard, I hesitate to express opinions on corporate wage subsidies. One of the biggest is EITC which, at the end of the year, is suppose to make up for underpayment of workers. Who underpays workers? Who benefits the most?

Remember the WalMart tells employees to use Medicaid as their health insurance or whatever the headline was? But it is not just WalMart.

I saw this coming for a long time (so did others). Then at the turn of the century I noticed a change in language. For example, Personnel departments were now Human Resources and people were human capital. That language gave me chills when combined with the training I was required to take. Classes that challenged one to look at the human as one of the cogs in a profit maximization function and worse.

Well, I want to see people be able to feed their families and stay warm in the winter. I want young people to have opportunity and the hope it takes to avail themselves of it. So, I am one of the silent because I don't think we will ever see the American culture become one that brings justice to all workers and all people.

GrannyK

(230 posts)
14. Pro and even college football announcers
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 05:31 PM
Sep 2012

use the term "product" in describing a player. i.e. Jim Johnson is a product out of University of Texas.

I'm not sure how long that term has been used. I don't watch sports, but my husband does. I just happened to overhear it once and paid a little more attention for a bit and was actually shocked that people are referred to as products.

And I'm one of those people who believes that nothing shocks me anymore. I'm being proved wrong over and over now.

Tumbulu

(6,267 posts)
12. I talk about it all the time
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 04:05 PM
Sep 2012

just not here. It is one of the big issues that is ignited by the mean parties rhetoric.

 

HiPointDem

(20,729 posts)
13. some people are talking about it, just not the "right" people. the "right" people are the 1% or
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 04:25 PM
Sep 2012

the lapdogs of the 1%.

if they don't talk about it it's not happening or not important.

two reports this week: decline in life expectancy in the lowest income quintle and sucide kills more than car accidents = their class war is killing people.

our lives, to them, are as the casualties of some far-off war are to us.

OSPREYXIV

(74 posts)
15. It's the Context, Stupid
Sat Sep 22, 2012, 05:54 PM
Sep 2012

It is nearly impossible for us to see how very big we are because we're inside it. The USA is just so enormous. Physically, economically, culturally, we are massive compared to the rest of the world. We're on the planet's largest piece of arable land, with unbroken interior lines of communication and two defensible coastlines. As early as the mid-1840's wealthy bankers in Boston and New York saw the chance to become really rich as the British East India Co. began the China trade, our maritime combine piled on sail. The Yankee clippers had no rivals. They never looked back.

So began another chapter in the story of how
New England colonists (who began as privateers in the Caribbean) created what became the world's mightiest navy. Such a colossus could've come about only from tremendous corporate enterprise. It was no accident; it had been their dream from the very beginning and they were merely carrying on, playing their part in an epic
that began even before the momentous year in 1688-1689 that saw the emergence of the first iteration of what has become globalism as we know it today. Welcome aboard.

That is the context. The contiguous oceans have no edges or borders. On it, below it, from the abyssal plain out beyond the cyber-sphere, one nation prevails and others watch and scheme.

Once upon a time, pirates and privateers played by their own rules and ships flew the flags of many nations if needed to escape unwanted attention of their opponents. Naval patrols flew them too. Flags of convenience in a game of cat and mouse at sea.

Today Panamanian and Liberian registered ships fly "flags of convenience" but ultimately they are owned by corporate entities conveniently located in Swiss cantons, Cayman Island alleys, or off Bermudan beaches. Does that sound like...you know who? Someone who's a person and a corporation at the same time? Sophistry and smoke screens. We just don't know who's who anymore...but the game is the same.

What is the point? First, that the politics ultimately is about controlling energy sources essential to operating our various fleets. Secondly, to posit IMHO, corporate social ecologies most resemble the rigid top-down hierarchies of the military or mercantile enterprises of an earlier era gone very, very wrong. When we began, whalers and privateers paid off at the end of a cruise so the ordinary seamen shared a small fraction of the prize money or profits. As owners rationalized, those operations, conditions for the common crew became worse as markets deteriorated.
Things got better as new technologies replaced
outmoded ones. Then got worse, ad nauseam.
So really, Barack is pitching a pretty good game and we'd have loved a no-hitter but he is gonna finish the eight innings. Are we gonna see those long shots into the bleachers? Nope. This is small ball, hit and run, stealing on the bunt and then, if we have to do it, sliding into home, spikes first.
Get with the program, cheer for the home team.

Now corporate pirates fly the Stars and Stripes as
a flag of convenience. We crew members are very nearly enslaved, certainly indentured. How do they get away with it? If a law is inconvenient,
don't break it, remake it. Blind the proles with
their own emotions. Bread and circus. Divide and conquer. "But wait! If you call now, you can get
the steak knives and the memory erasing cream
for only $9.99!!"

We've got an incredible problem right now. The planet is collapsing, a chaotic mess brought about by willful neglect and own ignorance.
Putting as simply as possible, we have to plant enough trees to cover an area the size of North America and convert to an all-electric economy
EVERYwhere, not just here. It'll be a gi antic war time effort and we'll all be on the same side.
There is very little time left. That's what must
happen so make plans: on the first Wednesday in November, we have to make it clear and demand that the US leads in changing the entire world's energy network or guess what?
Our goose is going to be overcooked.

We demand real representation (i.e., the right to be governed by real persons, not corporations
masquerading as people), the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.






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