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Max w.
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Max commented on the article |The unsaid conclusion that I think you're missing is that this situation is drastically different than the United States of yesteryear. Furthermore, the United States is beginning to lag behind other developed nations. The Slate article referenced also mentioned how several South American nations have, incredibly, less wealth inequality than the United States.
Contrast the current situation to postwar America: back then, the minimum wage was intended to be high enough such that one person, working full-time, could support a family of four (with no other family member working). Contrast with your situation: Things have changed, haven't they?
Wealth inequality can wreak some pretty serious havoc on a society, fostering resentment between classes, increased poverty and eventually widespread oligarchy. Mexico is a good example of a highly unequal, top-heavy society, a majority of peasants living under the few oligarchical upper-class.
In the 1930s, wealth inequality led to a series of drastic reforms, including income tax, increased regulation of financial markets and the beginning of social security and welfare. Roosevelt was actually afraid there would be a worker-led revolution, like there had been in Russia and Germany, if he didn't concede and help the underclass survive with things like welfare and social security.
Nowadays, we have a very different society. A nationalistic belief in the fictional American Dream propels the underclass to cheer on their wealthy exploiters, even as their own situation erodes as a result of the capitalist class. The poor, rather than the wealthy, are the primary scapegoat, particularly for the right, which has also taken to attacking unions, immigrants and Muslims as additional scapegoats for a wealthy-led ransacking of government, worker's rights and the underpinnings of the debt-ridden economy. It remains to be see whether we can snap out of it and recognize our oppressors, or if the ruling class has too firm a grip on the American mind...
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Max commented on the article |Presumably, Stephen, you pay taxes, at least partly, to help the less fortunate. The US gov't gives billions in aid each to foreign governments of developing nations, and plenty of food to countries in famine. Is this less offensive to you simply because Haitians don't pull out an EBT card when they go down to the marché? Or is it that the "immigrant" you saw in line just happened to be of a different color than your ancestral Irish immigrant family (Moore, after all, is an Irish surname--NOT an "American" surname, like "Squatting Bull" is. By the way, I'm sure Squatting Bull thinks the same of you when he sees you in Wal-Mart.)
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Max commented on the article |Trader Joe's is a privately held, traditional corporation. Like all companies, it is interested in only one thing: profit, which is filtered to the top (the CEOs are some of the wealthiest individuals in the world). If a widespread consumer boycott cuts into that profit to a greater degree than would adopting a demanded expense, they will change their model.
Yet this is an inherently foolish way of consuming; Trader Joe's, like all corporations, is moralless. There are probably all kinds of worker abuses and exploitations they are supporting, indirectly or directly, like any corporation. We may never know about some. They have no interest in telling us. Their "image" is nothing more than a complex marketing scheme whose moral basis is rooted only in the consumers' perception, which they actively manipulate through advertising and branding.
This issue is probably barely even worth fighting for. Why not destroy capitalism itself and rebuild our grocers and our society with a model based on love and mutual respect for human and workers' rights, rather than the insiduous profit-oriented scheme we have now? These kind of minor issues are what distracts the left from capitulating a cohesive fight against capitalism, the real perpetrator. Capitalism creates all the monstrosities of our society, the slavery (real or mental) and low wages and unemployment and xenophobia. Small fights like this actually play into the hands of the capitalists as they distract us from greater, real fights, like dismantling the underpinnings of the oppressive institution itself.
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Max commented on the article |Just a minor syntactical error--one of the men indicted is the postmaster general of the town of Nevada, Missouri. Not the state of Nevada, which it could be interpreted as.
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Max commented on the article |Thanks for your advice Meghan... you know, ultimately it wasn't my supervisor's fault, it was more that this was absolutely not what I wanted to be doing with my life--I am a creative person, and I wilt and die in environments that are uncreative, as was my nonprofit. What ended up happening was that I told my supervisors I had health issues, which was a lie but a much better way to bow out, plus I got to keep a pro-rated stipend. It's a wonderful loophole, I encourage more people to figure it out. Anyway, now I am working freelance part-time in Baltimore, yet making more money and with more free time, and I am so much happier--it's like I went from hell to heaven.
I would suggest Joe do the same--if you say you are ill, you can get your stipend pro-rated, which should be about $4500 at this point. You might as well take the new job and keep the stipe, I imagine you'll be much happier this way.
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Max commented on the article |
What if your Americorps "job" makes you so miserable, so unhappy, so depressed that some days you come home thinking that everything is hopeless, you're in the wrong place and you'll never be happy again; furthermore, your supervisor is inane, your work is infused with so much bureaucracy it's almost impossible and your organization is extremely hypocritical and greenwashy? Is that a good reason?
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