Forum Post: The Safety Net Deal
Posted 9 years ago on May 25, 2015, 6:14 p.m. EST by windyacres
(1197)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
I wonder how much, "The New Deal" was trusted when it was announced during very hard times with much suffering. Did the masses trust that their government would keep it's word and remove from their shoulders the stress of living day to day? Woe to those elderly who didn't have family during that time, they were too worn out to work, and I suppose each has their own story but they all died. Did some die too early?
When my Dad died at the age of 45 from a heart attack in 1974, my 62 year old grandaddy recognized it was necessary for him alone to care for the family. Later that year an event occurred that I will always remember. My granddaddy got his first Social Security check, and for a man who was the son of a sharecropper, happy to get a job at 15 yrs old working 6 days a week morning to night at a, "fillin station", because it was more pay and an escape from the cotton fields, stared at the check and kept staring as a weight lifted from his shoulders. He relaxed into his chair looking at the check and Trusted that it would come to him every month. He had trusted, and he still did.
For years now, there are comments made about SS running out of money, and the young are to expect the money to run out well before they get old enough to receive it. The young should be promised, guaranteed, and allowed to know they indeed will receive it whether anyone can afford a yacht or not. A strong Political message should be made to ease the burden of young people's shoulders, remove their stress about the future. Maybe they might actually feel like voting.
Poverty is genocide. "Scientists Find Alarming Deterioration In DNA Of The Urban Poor"
"Researchers analyzed telomeres of poor and lower middle-class black, white, and Mexican residents of Detroit. Telomeres are tiny caps at the ends of DNA strands, akin to the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces, that protect cells from aging prematurely. Telomeres naturally shorten as people age. But various types of intense chronic stress are believed to cause telomeres to shorten, and short telomeres are associated with an array of serious ailments including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Evidence increasingly points to telomere length being highly predictive of healthy life expectancy. Put simply, "the shorter your telomeres, the greater your chance of dying."
The new study found that low-income residents of Detroit, regardless of race, have significantly shorter telomeres than the national average. "There are effects of living in high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods -- the life experiences people have, the physical exposures, a whole range of things -- that are just not good for your health.."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/08/poverty-race-ethnicity-dna-telomeres_n_7228530.html
I had a female supervisor bully me for 3 years ...a chronic knot in my chest just couldn't even breathe normally by the time she forced me out...my body suffered for it I used to be active and could run ten miles now every time I jog just a mile I'm nearly bed ridden the next day my body just rebelled when my mind was convincing me I could handle it just shut down and sensitized to everything ...and yet she goes on to bully another victim ...there is no recourse for me. And I'm sure many others have the same experience...I'm sure it made me infertile and shortened my life span as well as cut off my income...i chose to quit rather than further navigate the minefield laid out by a pure sociopath. I find it maddening all the ways we are just powerless within this system...there are just so many hurdles. Thanks to Nafta and cost of college which has cut off my mobility/ access to education... the competition for jobs has left too many of us enduring things we should not have to put up with. I had a job...it wasn't saving me. People need to be able to empower themselves. I haven't been prepared to live in a lord of the flies country...I am trying to change that now by addressing the source of this problem and learning how sociopaths think...( including ws and gov) I was naive before ( my generation was taught there is an American dream that this country is philanthropic and that we have a pay it forward society) I learned we don't ...not really aware your supervisor could or would break laws...violate you, try to get you fired with lies...and that as a worker you have no rights . Our culture has drastically changed during my working years....So to all the young kids prepare yourselves for the new work world...learn how to steal lie manipulate cheat step on throats or prepare to be out in the cold. I'm apparently not well adapted for abuse..even if your mind is strong...the body breaks. Its an autonomic response to something so un- natural. Nature has laws...even if we don't.
Geez, elf, I'll say this: One of the biggest problems in this country is the drawback of our workers' rights. OSHA, EEO, FLSA, Collective Bargaining, etc. All of these things have not been enforced in recent years as the corporation has had freewheeling "employment at will" leaving workers vulnerable and in many cases, leaving them to suffer the vagaries of a workplace that has absolutely zero loyalty to them.
When you have an economic system that works for corporations (who are not people, btw) and not human beings, this is what you get. Nearly Dickensian conditions for most people. Yes, some work for these big corporations and those people can manage their debts, etc, but they've sold their souls.
Hang in there. You are not alone. We have to collectively demand more of the workplace and the enforcement of labor laws. And, yes, even our natural laws, evidently the entire social contract has been broken and getting it back is a struggle. Solidarity, elf.
Thanks bw you hit the nail on the head. Jobs has become this one track mind answer to all of these problems. I've been in enough companies large and small to tell the tale this problem is much deeper and that having a lousy paying job with no power or security doesn't solve everything. The general attitude has become to "suck it up/ toughen up". One can't exactly be tough when all power has been stripped away. Not only do corporations know this ...their minion middle managers do as well. Sad part is most of them are three to five years from their pensions and sitting on bloated salaries that will never get that high again (something my generation (x) knows is extinct for us and future gens) if we can manage to stay longer than 3-5 years before a downsize or they push you out to reset to entry level pay with a new hire..or worse unpaid intern... so what was hard for me was that she was doing this for entertainment to keep herself from boredom until she gets on her own dock. She was holding all the cards and keys to my life. I suffered financial damages that will keep me looking over my shoulder forever. Because yes...they have access to all of your personal information and -little known fact- the vast majority of id thefts happens at work. We have to trust the people holding it won't abuse your personal info/ give it out, or use it as retaliation which she did when I finally worked up the balls to go over her head. Not only did she want me out, she wanted to ensure my credit would be bad enough that i couldn't get rehired elsewhere or take out loans to survive or advance after she got rid of me ( i guess holding my reference wasn't bad enough)Thanks to lack of government will to go after this type of amorphous crime and investigate i had to go it alone even when i connected the trail of dots/ proof for law enforcement. I was stuck because competition for jobs was insane... it took 4 months and 25 interviews to land that crappy position. Shit does roll down hill...when corporations view employees as disposable...their managers do too. It poisons the culture. I think of that prison experiment where the "guards" begin to abuse their power. And yes work is like prison for far too many of us. Sure we can stand up for ourselves...and possibly cause our families to be homeless and lose everything after we get fired. But generally that isn't an option. This particular "mom and pop" is a major player in a major industry with major clients. They pretended it was beyond their ability to know how to handle it but i know at best it was a lack of will and at worst ( and most probable) exactly how they wanted to run things. I find it funny that companies making multi-millions can claim not to know how to organize or have no knowledge of employee relations while they seem to manage international dealings and wheelings just fine. Or perhaps it is that Employee Lives Don't Matter. I know I'm not alone in this problem...and to those out there dealing with this reality ...Occupy is a source of hope. It has to succeed. Occupy is the only real safety net now.
"Employee Lives Don't Matter" That sounds like a good twitter hashtag #EmployeeLivesDontMatter. Look, we're fighting the fight of our lives. If we don't change this system from the bottom up, from outside the existing bought out system, things will only get worse for our children.
In terms of workers having any freedom at all, I'm for a Basic Living Income:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
There is enough money, more than enough, for every human being on earth to have enough money to live decently. It's just that money is being hoarded at the top by a few greedy people.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/meet-the-80-people-who-are-as-rich-as-half-the-world/
And, yes, I agree, that sometimes the life of the worker can feel like a life of imprisonment. But our minds are free and we can fight like hell for what we believe in.
http://www.prisonexp.org
Stanford Prison Experiment
And on a societal scale does the Stanford Prison Experiment represent what is happening now as it becomes harder to escape a system with ever tightening control? Will those with power become the guards as we become more submissive to them? Hmm
Good post. Many people today once lived in thriving communities where they could earn a decent living. Those regions today (e.g, Baltimore, the Hudson River Valley, etc.) have been devastated by the corrupt elite who have outsourced our jobs to the countries with not only the lowest production costs, but the fewest, if any environmental regulations. One trickle down effect here is where once a person could afford to send his kids to university, they can't anymore. The despair that you can see in some of these places is palpable
If raising the minimum wage to $15 by 2020 in Los Angeles will help 40% of workers there, we can totally see how bad things are. I mean really? 40%! I think the poverty numbers are much worse across the nation than are reported and I think people are surviving on debt and they are suffering in fear and worry and stress. We have lost our quality of life to rich, greedy grubbing oligarchs and those who benefit from them and hence, support them, such as bankers and politicians.
Yes, we have lost much of our .."quality of life to to rich, greedy grubbing oligarchs and those that benefit from them." We should be encouraged though that we are amongst many good people who are at the vanguard of righting these injustices. It is an honor for me to be just an inignificant cog in our revolution.
It is the duty of every member of the 99% to fight as best they can against injustice. Some will have more passion and knowledge and time than others, but all are needed.
And there are those effected living invisibly as well. Just because you can't see the struggle doesn't mean there isn't one. Some hide it while their lives quietly disintegrate. Some barely keep heads above water. Some sacrifice so much while the family unit just falls apart under the weight...life in America is getting tough on all of us.
I agree, the facade that you see of well maintained properties, as you go through residential neighborhoods belies the many stories of hardships that many of those people are going through. When you go to your next yard sale, start striking up converstions with people, and you will get a good feel of the pulse of the average person, and of the despair in their lives. I also think that you will find, that people just don't know what to do.
There's many more of them than I was aware. I learned seven years ago.
moneys is fictional
useful for circulation for good and services
the people that own the means only do so on the compliance off the people
Well, down at the store where these people never go to internet forums, worked for me and money was not a fictional thing. They didn't have bank accounts and every Wednesday they were out of money when the checks arrived. Stress, weight on their shoulders, car repairs, etc,. These people had no insurance and never went to the dentist until problems surfaced. I asked every one and not even one was aware that a person could make enough money that they didn't have to pay any payroll taxes any more. These people, some in their sixties, had paid payroll taxes on every dollar they earned. Inequality example.
the market is a reaction to money being pumped into the society foe some other reason