My Wife Believes American Workers Being Positioned To Accept Lower Living Standard.

[jtuck004]

26. The politicians don't think. They just do as they are told by their betters.

And their "betters", our Masters, want us to support the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. They scheme 24x7, (they call what they do "work&quot , devising ways by which we are put into debt, and upon that debt we pay an ever growing tax, partly interest, and partly what they tell us they deserve, which is also growing, as if they get more deserving every day. The Masters collect that tax with our help. Some of us help more than others. The Masters don't really care, the Masters don't really care, what we argue about, whether we kill each other, who we marry, where we ride on the bus, whether the police beat us or we beat the police.

All they care about is their tax. And they mean to have it.

We call ourselves "free" to live this life because we can't see the chains, but they bind us tighter than any metal. (Some say they have no debt, and are thus free, but we are all dependent on one another, so they aren't, not really). We have the key, and we could release ourselves from them anytime we choose by no longer supporting their lifestyle. We would have to walk away from the Master's house, and the bed he gives us (which he took from us in the first place) and the food he lets us keep, and walk into a great unknown, where we would have to learn to rely on one another, learn to do for ourselves what has been done for us for too long.

The unknown part scares us, of course. I wonder how much of that is our understanding that we would have to rely on one another?

So we continue to trust the Master, who is more devious, venal, and evil and dangerous to us than any bigot, pedophile, homophobe, duck-call carver, murderer, misogynist, smoker or devil we have ever known. We talk amongst ourselves of a revolution by people who don't know anything about revolutions. And we dream of a day when we are free.

We is a funny lot.

I read the other day a quote. "“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy "

We aren't forced, though. We follow willingly. What would happen if we took the reins away and held them ourselves? Would we choose a direction, take off and run any old way, or just stand there?

I think your wife is perceptive, and perhaps "they" need to be challenged a bit more on just exactly who these slackers are. Because all I see are people who would love to work, if there were jobs, with the small qualification that they would like to be treated like human beings.

We aren't broke, btw. We are just focusing on the wrong deficit. The one we ought to be taking on is the trade deficit. We could adjust the balance with the people who our jobs were sold to anytime we want, if we worked together. Our prices would go up, our houses would be smaller, we would have less, the retirees would scream, and people like Mi$$ RobMe would scream louder than anyone. (The contract for healthcare.gov would go in the trash, btw, and Accenture would be out on their ass with all their outsourced jobs. Sorry if anyone works there, but you should choose better employers. The upside - if you are not here on an H1-B visa, perhaps you could get a job with a company that cares about the people who live here. After all, you have experience).

Our jobs would come back, and we could rebuild, maybe this time along the model of how the Industrial Unions suggested we start, before they were killed off. It would take $30 or $40 trillion to accomplish it, but we make our own money here, so that isn't as great a problem as one would imagine. For most of us it really wouldn't mean a lot (compared to the horror that lies ahead if we don't), though it would lower the value of the money for those that have a lot of it. But as long as we are worrying about their concerns, we can't lose those chains.

And thank your wife for the heads-up.