More Than Ever True: Americans Will NEVER Get Rich From Work!

 Several years ago I noted how a majority of Americans has been duped by a sustained false consciousness implanted by the elites (including the media and political elite) into believing America is a “classless” society and upward mobility still exists. They keep trying by way of work to "make it" - failing to grasp they never will. Not the way the system is currently structured.

Well, more evidence has since come to the fore, including that the U.S. middle class is no longer the world’s richest. After considering taxes and transfer payments, middle-class incomes in Canada and much of Western Europe are higher than in U.S. The poor in Western Europe earn more than do poor Americans. I can vouch for that, seeing many of these people circulating around the high reach places in Switzerland last September. Money for them was no object.  There is also no big secret to this when you ask them how they manage: Their governments impose higher taxes on the wealthy and redistribute more of it to middle and lower income households. Most of their citizens receive essentially free health care and more generous unemployment benefits than do Americans.

Let's continue with the false consciousness aspect. Here  in the US of A, there is a strongly held conviction that with hard work, anyone can make it into the middle class. This is mostly horse manure, and a merely consistent observer can show it doesn’t hold up and the majority of American workers either tread water where they are (in terms of net wealth, job security) or they go downscale after losing a long held job - to become burger flippers or Walmart greeters.

But despite the evidence, most Americans remain blinded by the work ethic and the pundits' constant yammering it is "the only route up". To fix ideas,  Pew Research  recently found that Americans are far more likely than people in other countries to believe that work determines success, as opposed to other factors beyond an individual’s control. Make no mistake that Pollyannish positivity comes with a negative side:  a tendency to pathologize those living in poverty. Indeed, 60 percent of Americans (compared with 26 percent of Europeans) say that the poor are lazy, and only 29 percent say those living in poverty are trapped in poverty by factors beyond their control (compared with 60 percent of Europeans).

Note that part of this perception also stems from the innate narcissism inherent in too many Americans which douses out their ability to feel any empathy for others. To identify with their travails and setbacks. Reality then usually doesn't rip away the bullshit veneer unless they also hit bottom - whether through layoffs, health crisis or something else. It seems it takes an external 'hammer' to awaken them! 

While a majority of Americans might think that hard work determines success and that it should be relatively simple business to climb and remain out of poverty, the reality is that the United States has a relatively entrenched upper class.  It also has precarious, ever-shifting lower and middle classes. While many Americans might hate welfare, the data suggest they are fairly likely to fall into it at one point or another. Or unemployment and often longer than 6 months.

How do the wealthy get away with sitting pretty while the lower and middle classes pound dirt? Easy! They keep us going at each other's throats, via political divisions ("liberals" vs. "conservatives") or religious divisions - secure that they will prosper so long as the rest of us are too busy fighting with each other. Assisting them in this are stations like FOX which incredibly - according to recent surveys- now sport the largest number of people who say it's the most "trust worthy" news source. This despite having consummate liars like Billo O'Reilly.

SO the hoi polloi remain nicely brainwashed and believing every other factor is responsible for their plight except the elites themselves.

But why don’t Americans get it? Why do they lack the moxie to accept that an Overclass will determine how far they get and nothing else? Several reasons:

1) Americans are obdurate and perennial optimists. Unlike Germans whose native instincts are always to perceive the economic downsides of situations – so they’re more like to detect how they’re being gamed or suckered – Americans typically put the blinkers on. No where is this more evident than in how both sexes approach the stock market. Most American males, raised in hubris and bravado, believe they can beat the market by multiple trades and end up losing most of the time (more than 70%). Women, trained to be more cautious, trade much less and in more conservative outlets and gain more consistently. This same false optimism of most males, especially white, makes them disavow how they’re getting their asses kicked by a gamed economic system. No wonder then, that 63% of white males voted against Obama in 2008. Hell if they were going to buy into a “socialist” equalizer’s “dependency”. But….they bet against their own welfare.

2) Americans are much more poorly educated and informed than their European counterparts. They not only suffer because of deficient secondary (and tertiary) education, but also because of the deficient news offered by the corporate mainstream. This is mainly piffle infused with equal parts PR and propaganda, with little substance. Hence, unless the citizen reads widely he will be susceptible to psychological manipulation and false consciousness.

3) By virtue of (2) Americans more often fall prey to the fundamental attribution error ( which reinforces inequality in society) because of their over-optimism. This error is such that (‘Maxine Baca- Zinn and D. Stanley Eitzen, In Conflict and Order, 1991):

“It tends to credit or blame individuals for their level of failure or success without considering the aspects of the social structure that impel or impede their progress. Thus, it results in praise of the system and condemnation of individuals who are defined as losers.”

Thus, the fundamental attribution error (mostly made by working class whites) works to perfect effect and in favor of the American Overclass because it causes an entire dispossessed electoral segment to screw themselves so the Overclass needn’t fret over their rage. They simply redirect that rage at minorities (immigrants, blacks, or women) while they stick with the political rascals (GOP) that did them in the first time.

This in turn leads to workers who are prepared to tolerate any amount of systematic abuse from a corrupt system, because they lay the blame on their own "lack of ambition" or some other false excuse contrived by the corporate thought controllers to deflect blame from their own greed.

This may well be at the heart and core of why so many of the working and middle classes vote against their own best economic interests.

Meanwhile, the evidence is abundantly around us – for those who have eyes to see- that we are in a society at least three times more unequal than that which existed in the 50s. Back then only one spouse needed to work, bank interest at 4-5% kept passbook savings flush and the middle class had the potential for growth. (Fully supported by Robert Putnam in his new book: 'Our Kids- The American Dream in Crisis')

Now, all of that is inverted: both spouses usually need to work, often at two jobs each, bank passbook interest is near zero percent so people either have next to nothing or chase risky yield in the stock market, and the middle class numbers are crashing as the Gini coefficient and index (the prime measure of inequality) approaches values peculiar to the Philippines and Mexico.

And hold strain because things are about to get a whole lot worse. This will transpire when  the secretive “Trans Pacific Partnership” trade deal  is unleashed.  An outrage on civil society that will show once more that American corporations don’t represent the interests of Americans. They represent the interests of their executives and elite shareholders, who are not only wealthier than most Americans but also reside all over the world.

Don't Like Welfare? Then Demand A Liveable Wage for Workers!

Fast food workers demand higher wages in August.

Question: When was the last year a worker earning $90 a week (net) could live on it? I am talking about food, rent, and transport etc. The answer is 1968, when the dollar was worth approximately 4.5 times what it is now. I can vouch for this because I was such a worker, at an Oil Company in New Orleans, taking a hiatus from university studies. As a geologist's assistant responsible for preparing geological stratum sections (disclosing salt domes), I took home 90 bucks a week, and I also needed no welfare support to make it.

The rent for my efficiency apartment,  located in the upscale Garden District (off St. Charles Avenue, and 3 blocks from Loyola) came to  $75 a month.  My electric bill was usually about $30 a month and groceries came to about $35 a week, and that was being extravagant - with fare such as steaks, shrimp, etc.. Add in going out to eat at the 'Buck Forty Nine' twice a week and food came to around $40 or so a week. Transport was a cinch at 15 bucks a month. It cost one thin dime to get on the St. Charles trolley and go directly to my job on Lee Circle, and one thin dime to get back. Add in the trolley fare for dates, escorting Loyola coeds to the Saenger Orleans downtown on Canal St. for a flick, then dinner, and you had the balance.

Now, fast forward to today's workers earning 90 bucks a week take home. Do they even exist and if so can they make it? Not likely! A fast food worker earning $7.25 an hour today and putting in a 40 hour week will stand to take home just over $246, or more than two and a half times what I earned.  But can he or she afford to live like I did? Hell no! Rents in most urban areas start at around $650 a month if you're lucky. In the same area I lived in New Orleans 44 years ago, they're now $780 a month and more. How is a worker earning only $246 a week going to make it, with also having to shell out at least $100 a week for groceries, and likely $150 a month for utilities (electric, gas, water). Add in cost for transport, even if the worker is lucky enough not to need a car (to which maintenance costs must be added) and you have a small economic nightmare.

"Do the math" as they say, and you find the workers such as those shown will always end up short and without enough to eat, or to pay for medical needs. No surprise then, that they will need additional monetary input which I didn't need in 1968. (And NO, it isn't fair or right to tell them to "work two jobs". That's the response of an asshole.) 

I bring this up because a new study on behalf of the National Employment Law Project has disclosed that "about 52 percent of the fast food workforce receive some kind of public assistance, compared with 25 percent of the general workforce." (Denver Post, 'Fast Food Help Takes A Big Bite Out of Welfare', p. 12A, Oct. 16)

The study also found that California led the country with $717 million spent in welfare for those workers. The study was completed by the University of California- Berkeley Law Center, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Commenting on the dismal stats, Corrine Fowler of the Colorado Progressive Coalition was quoted:

"It's pretty outrageous that workers can't meet their basic necessities even after working 40 hours."

Indeed, and this is why fast food workers in nearly 60 cities had pressed for a living wage - defined as $15 an hour - to help them meet their basic needs, which again, are no where near as extravagant as the welfare haters would have you believe.

Doing the math, as I showed above, indicates that only a totally uninformed putz (or math deficient putz), Tea Party idiot or asshole would bitch about people getting welfare who are working hard - at least 40 hours a week - and can't make it, so need government assistance.

Author Charles Reich is blunt in his book  ‘Opposing the System’, Crown Books, pp. 125-126:

“The claim that government is free to reduce or cut off welfare and other forms of support for people in economic need is totally mistaken. Welfare is not a gift, nor is it, despite frequent assertions, a transfer from those who earn a living to those who are not.  Welfare is rather an obligation from society – and from those who are working- to those who have been deprived of work and the opportunity to earn a living. If we want to speak of transfers, it would be more accurate to say that those with a secure place in the economic system are enjoying a transfer of wealth from those who have been excluded from the economic system. Welfare then is partial compensation for a deprivation of livelihood that allows others to work.”

Clearly, a welfare model then must be based on the premise that welfare is an obligation from society and not a ‘gift’ or Freebie, i.e. reluctant transfer from the working to the non-working.

As Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of 'Nickel and Dimed' , noted, working at Walmart didn't even help her pay both food and rent at a dump motel. She had to go on food stamps to survive. (At least with that one 40 hr. job). There is a real moral problem here too, since without a living wage, economic warfare is all that remains- with each little person fighting and struggling against each other little person for survival.

Predictably, of course, the Employment Policies Institute declared if they paid any such living wage their profit margins would collapse unless they raised prices, and Cheeze Louise, the Customer demands low prices!

Puh-leeze! The Economic  Policy Institute has found the needed increase would be minimal and not kill any fast food addict's budget.  As an example, your bare bones special "dollar burger" from the BK  "Dollar menu" would go up to maybe $1.25. Big freakin' deal! Look, if you can afford a buck you can sure as shit also afford a buck twenty-five. NO one in his right mind is going to argue and tell me that a paltry 25 cents will spell the difference between buying the damned burger and not buying it!

Besides, after you cough up that extra quarter or whatever, you then won't have to bitch about so many getting welfare!