Americans need to STOP being "thankful" that they have a job

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If you are thankful, or lucky, or fortunate just to “have a job”, you’ve surrendered the ability to fight for better wages, better working conditions and better benefits.

At one time in this country…not too long ago…you could work a full-time job and make it. You may not have gotten rich, but you could sustain a family and place yourself solidly into the Middle-Class. Hell, not only could you have secured housing, you may have even been able to take the family out once or twice a month for dinner and a movie…and the occasional Ice Cream Sunday on a hot summer weekend. You could take a family vacation. Maybe even put enough away to afford to send you kids to college with the help of a few grants or scholarships.

Bottom line is that you could live a somewhat secure and happy existence with one full-time job.

With the advent of “Ray-Gunism”, that secure and happy existence was no longer the “norm”, it became a “luxury”, and it became that almost overnight.

Instead of that happy existence being “expected” and “earned”, it became a luxury and if you wanted it? Well “go out and get a second job you lazy bum.”

Ask any young person today with a full-time job…ANYONE OF THEM…if they can afford an apartment without a roommate?
This is “America”? The land of the “free”?

Ray-Gun with his “awshucks, grandfatherly charm” convinced a majority of American (at least a majority of those that bothered to vote), that the folks that were really getting screwed in our country were those poor CEO’s, Corporations and Idiot-Sons of inheritance. How much they “struggled” under their “tax-burden” to the point they could only afford 2 vacation homes and a boat.

The poor SOB’s working on the factory floor, or scurrying like mice in a cubicle farm, or driving a truck 2,000 miles a day? Those were the “lucky” fuckers. Why they ought to just be “thankful” that they have a job.

You know how many times I hear that shit?

- You should be “thankful”

- You are so “lucky”

- You are so “fortunate”

As if laboring for these fucksticks for crumbs is some kind of “privilege”. Obviously, the pay we earn is “bestowed” on us by the benevolence of the masters.

Soon, an entire cottage industry was created to enforce and convince us that we “should be thankful”. Hate radio described union workers striking for better pay as “lazy, ungrateful slobs” who should “just be thankful” they have a job.

Books were written and promoted to explain to us how if we were just a little more thankful and worked a little harder, we’d see improvement.

I would become apoplectic when middle-class friends would come to me and excitedly ask; “Have you read this book; ‘Who Moved My Cheese’?” "They gave copies to us at the office". Some corporatist screed that condensed living a decent and middle-class life, into a fucking maze where we are all scurrying around like fucking mice looking for cheese? That's Freedom?

I guess it was the corporation’s way of “softening the blow”. See if they eliminated your position so that the CEO could be rewarded with $10 Million in Stock Options (tax-deferred of course), you just had to look a little harder for your “cheese”.

Never mind that “cheese” was essential to the life and death struggle of the mouse, or the fact that sometimes your cheese was precisely where it was supposed to be, change simply became your ability, or inability to find curdled milk. If you couldn't find your cheese, well you just fucking shriveled up and died.

The American worker shouldn’t be “thankful”, they should be marching with pitchforks.

It’s way past time that we valued work more than we value wealth.

Because we don’t just value wealth…we worship it.

It’s why Amazon can extort $3 Billion in tax breaks without even breaking a sweat.

It’s why the Waltons of Walmart can pocket a $153 Million dollar tax “refund”, while the salesman in New York sees his taxes increase $2, $3, or $4 Thousand.

It’s why FOXCON can get $4 Billion in tax breaks while the infrastructure, schools and rural hospitals in Wisconsin crumble.

It’s why Retrumplicans need to get an ass-kicking at the polls in 2020.

Now that would be something to be “thankful” for.