US: From highest wages/longest hours to lowest wages/longest hours

[Karmadillo]

In the industrial world, that is. The excerpt below comes from an interview with Noam Chomsky in Ha'aretz. Covers a number of issues and is well worth reading. A good reminder the world is becoming increasingly anti-democratic by design, not by accident.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=9121

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"There's an important book called 'The Crisis of Democracy' ... came out in 1974 and was about a crisis that had arisen all through the industrial democracies, namely they were becoming too democratic - literally. It said people who were usually passive and apathetic are beginning to enter the political arena. Of course, they're demanding interests, and so on, that can't be tolerated. That's what they call an excess of democracy ... Right at that time you find a sharp increase in lobbying in Washington - lobbies for corporations, to try to ensure that they could control the legislative agenda more than before ... That's the period in which the neoliberal principles were instituted ...

"In fact just about every part of the neoliberal package is anti-democratic. The big pressure of the last 10 years or so is about privatization of services. What are services? Well, services are anything that human beings could be interested in. Education, health, water, whatever. Well, if you privatize services, that is, put them in the hands of totalitarian institutions that are unaccountable to the public, then you can have a democracy and it won't have any decisions to make. Because they've all been taken out of hands ...

"The neoliberal world programs have been an economic disaster wherever they have been followed. Now this is well-established. This is muddled by the World Bank and others because they mix together growth and keeping to the neoliberal rules. China has grown very fast, but by violating the rules. So if you show those numbers together, you can produce some fake statistics about how the world's poverty is decreasing ... In the that are following the rules, growth has declined, other macroeconomic indices have declined, social benefits have declined, and so on, and inequality has grown. And the ones that haven't followed the rules, like in East Asia - they did fine."

Chomsky cites the United States in the 1980s, which had "the highest wages and the longest working hours in the industrial world. Now there is the highest working hours and the lowest wages. Well, that means that a family with a couple working 50 hours a week to put food on the table - they don't have much time to think about anything else. Meanwhile they're being dazed with massive propaganda to get them to consume more and more and more. So they go deeply into debt."

more...

[Tuesday_Morning]

1. I had a friend from Japan visit not too long ago.

She was amazed by our workload. Even the Japanese don't work this hard, she said.

[JHB]

8. Now ain't THAT a kick in the head...

...considering the "hardworking Japanese vs. slovenly Americans" stereotype that was the common wisdome back in the go-go 80s.

[Art_from_Ark]

11. I work for a Japanese company

When the workers come to the office, they arrive at 9:00 and stay until 7:00 if not later. Then they might go to the employee lounge for some socializing. Male workers are never the first to go home for the night. At any one time, there are several workers who are on assignment elsewhere in Japan or overseas, and they put in long hours. In these days of restructuring, it is especially imperative in the minds of many workers to not be seen as "clock watchers".

I think what that Japanese lady was referring to was the fact that most Japanese workers do not take second jobs to make ends meet, as they are still paid a decent wage (keeping my fingers crossed here).

[phusion]

2. Thanks

excellent interview...Chomsky is the man!

What is your worst nightmare?

"I think there are two major catastrophes that are pretty close. The one is nuclear war ... but the public doesn't know. I mean the general public is unaware. Professional literature is very clear that the threat is high and growing, not only because of the Bush administration, which is increasing the threat of nuclear war. And the other is environmental catastrophe, which will come. We don't know when, but you can already see the signs."

[tatertop]

3. How very true

[mb7588a]

5. I've always loved chomsky,

and if he could speak and write in a more intelligible manner, people would get what he's trying to say.

[Sven77]

4. chomsky is a gatekeeper

you will never hear him talk about 9-11 being an inside job. he is funded by the pentagon.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47174

[mb7588a]

6. He doesn't make bombs,

he's a a logician/linguist and left-wing nut just like us.

His book "Profit Over People" had so much foresight in it, I think the man may have some psychic powers. There's an amazing account there of a coming war between the classes in America. We're now seeing that war crop up all over the U.S. and the world.

There's a difference between having your language studies used for computer programs etc. and making bombs. He's the kind of guy WE DO want working for the pentagon.

[400Years]

7. worldnutdaily is your "source"?

[Karmadillo]

9. He killed my dog, too.

nt

[tlsmith1963]

10. And This is Why I Cannot Understand Why Working-Class People...

...vote Republican. They have been taking away workers' rights for years. And the minimum wage has stayed flat. I was shocked to find out the national minimum wage is *still* $5.15! I thought it had gone up. I make $10 an hour & it's hard (in California, everything is so expensive that even what I make isn't that great). I just cannot imagine that anyone could make it on $5.15 an hour. It's just sick to make people live that way. But they vote for the people who do this to them...weird.

Tammy

[Karmadillo]

12. Did you ever read "What's the Matter with Kansas?"

Tries to explain the issue you raise.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/080507774X/qid=1132169394/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-2738783-9308059?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically. To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas.