It's time for the end of the FREE RIDE

[annabanana]

When you hear the "free market" radicals drone on about the beauties of the marketplace, and the ability of the "free market" to right all wrongs in time, an actual Free Market is NOT what they're talking about. They are talking about a free ride. The people who do the least work, harvest the greatest reward.

A stockholder does nothing, really, except move numbers from one column to another, and yet, keeping the returns on their investment bright and shiny is the number one priority of the board, and the CEO. The justification they make is that the investor has taken the greatest "risk". If you take an honest look at that "risk" however, does it look so big? What kind of a risk has the long time employee taken? Who REALLY stands to lose the most, in real life-as-she-is-lived terms, if the whole thing goes south?

The investor gets to write the loss off. The guy whose pension has tanked is hangin' in the wind. The richest have a FREE RIDE.

And, yet, as is usual with this crowd, they make it look like the most vulnerable have it cushy, with welfare, and medicaid, and subsidized housing (you know, all that first class accommodation at the public expense that they prattle on about)... But how much of that comes out of THEIR POCKETS? With the gold-plated tax breaks that their favorite son has pushed through... precious little.

I sure would like to see a little progress here. (The Living Wage movement is an example). I sure would like to see some of these Most Favored Corporations pull a little weight. I would like these pudding-bottomed trust funders to stop crying about how tough the marketplace is and do some fair recompensing for their great advantages.

:rant:

[davsand]

1. This sounds dangerously like SOCIALISM, I'm calling Rove right now!

You are gonna freak a lot of people out with ideas like these. The mere suggestion that the people doing the actual WORK should benefit in any significant way is just gonna cost too much...

Don't you care about "The PROFITS"???? (You need to read that with a lot of reverb and some thunder rumbling in the background.)

All joking aside, what you are saying is exactly what the Labor movement was saying a long time ago, and parts of it are still saying today. While I am an active Democrat, I am also an ardent supporter of organized labor.

Have you read anything about Eugene Debs? I would strongly urge you to take a look at his writings and speeches. He did not promote violence but he sure did talk a lot about the idea that the people who do the actual work deserve better.

I carried this banner as a sig line for a long time:



One of the most uplifting things I have ever done was to attend the annual dinner for the Debs Foundation. They recite that statement before the dinner, and that spirit carried thru the entire evening.

Here is the website addy for the Foundation:

http://www.eugenevdebs.com/


Regards!


Laura

[annabanana]

2. Well....

maybe we could use a little today..

The whole shebang has tipped way to far the wrong way.

[davsand]

3. I understand the corporations provide jobs, thus they need to survive.

Corporate survival depends on them turning a profit. I think we all understand that basic reality. What I have never understood is how corporations are entitled to the same "rights" that the individual citizens are afforded in the Constitution.

I doubt that most folks would tell you that they want to see any company go broke. Seriously--broke companies are bad news for our economy. Somehow, we have come back to a point that the companies are seen as above the basic philosophy that the workers are important to them.

We have "right to work" states that prevent workers from collective bargaining. We have a federal government that views unions as a "security threat." We have companies the neglect workplace safety and workers are dying as a result. Those are all the same things that led to the growth of organized labor in the first place.

On any level, we are at a point where something has got to change if the working person is gonna survive.

I'm not a "Socialist" per se, but I have to tell you, I honestly think some of the ideals behind that political philosophy have some very real merit today.



Laura

[Odin2005]

4. Companies should be run by employees, not investors.

A democracy is not truely a democracy if the workplace is not democratic. Company management should be elected by the employees, not picked by a handfull of rich people who own most of the shares.