On Why We Need To End Campaign Contributions

Reads like Marx, not Einstein.

Something we need more of in the US

There was an interesting article yesterday, at the Reuters news site on a corporate development of late.

The article:

Retooling capitalism for the social good

And here's what's happening, at least in one state:

This week, the state of Delaware, which has made corporate governance its regional cuisine, approved a new form of incorporation, the B-corp, or benefit corporation. These are companies explicitly charged with a dual mission: to earn profits for shareholders, the traditional businessgoal, and also to pursue the social good in other ways, ranging from protecting employees to safeguarding the environment — even if these goals come at the cost of short-term financial gain.

Here's hoping it catches.

And spreads, widely, quickly and wildly.

I could see these being very well invested in, should it spread. People would like that the companies are based on both profit and on doing what's best for the environment and otherwise. With man-made climate change, it becomes more and more obvious and necessary, I think.

Here's hoping.

Short-sighted, Greedy Corporate America is Robbing Us of Our Middle-Class: Happy May Day

For anyone who's been paying attention the last several years, we know the companies across the country are hiring more and more part-time positions instead of hiring full-time people and work. Instead of hiring one 40 hour person, they hire two 20 hour people.

Why?

Well, first, it gives the company more flexibility in the work schedule but second, and more important to the company, they don't want to pay benefits.

Health care, health insurance, dental insurance, vision, 401k, any and all of it, forget it, it's out the window.

How great for the companies, eh?

And with our health care system being the most expensive in the world and going ever higher, it's all the better for them.

To a point.

In the meantime, the people hired can't make a living wage.

How do you pay for rent and food and car and health and life insurance and, oh, take care of your children and pay for a car on a part-time wage?

We all know it's not possible.

And those expenses, I list above, are all without the additional need and yes, expenses of having a family.

So the middle class suffers. And shrinks.  And more people get kicked down to a lower class status. Or, worst yet, become homeless.

But what the companies and corporations don't take into consideration is that this hurts them, too.

How do you get committed, intelligent, familiar, hard-working employees and associates unless or until you pay them fairly--and commit to them--with full-time work?

How do you get someone who's truly familiar with your products and/or services unless they're there long-term---years---and dedicated to those products and services and company?

The answer is, of course, you don't.

So your sales and/or profits naturally suffer.  This is a matter of the old, old, very familiar situation of getting what you pay for.

Yet it's a spreading concept and situation in our nation.

This is no way to build and keep a middle class, ladies and gentlemen. This is no way to keep a functioning nation.

Henry Ford, the car magnate from early in the last century knew this. Fortunately, some companies, rather famously, like Costco, know this and for it they are rewarded with growth and profit.

We have to somehow stop this trend but with "free market Capitalism", it likely can't be stopped.

Here's hoping it's a short-term experiment, of sorts, that is shown to fail quickly so we can turn this around.  Part of the way we do that, part of the way we get this changed back is to solve our health care system's problems and situations of being so obscenely expensive that it wrecks not just household budgets but whole states and our nation's economy.  And that's what is happening, to all of us.

The Walmarts and 24 Hour Fitnesses and restaurant chains that are doing this must be stopped. They must be changed. They have to learn the error of these ways.

It makes for a very mean culture and society that can and would take advantage of its people and staff this way.

Workers of the world, unite, indeed.

If anyone thinks we--America--the working class and the lower and middle class don't need Unions and that solidarity and strength in numbers and organization, they need only look at this example, this situation to prove otherwise.

Otherwise, it's "God help us."

Because the wealthy and corporations surely won't.

Link to a list of articles on this topic:

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&gs_rn=11&gs_ri=psy-ab&cp=14&gs_id=1k&xhr=t&q=companies+cut+hours&es_nrs=true&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=companies+cut+&gs_l=&pbx=1&fp=1&biw=1366&bih=668&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&cad=b

True then, true now, Part II

"The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern peoples is their national debt ... The national debt has given rise to joint-stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy."

~ Karl Marx, Capital Vol. 1 (1867)

One day, when we get away from all the patriotism in this country and confusion of Capitalism with 

patriotism, Karl Marx will be viewed with the respect he more rightly deserves.

Link:

Karl Marx - Wikipedia

Quote of the day--on Glenn Beck's big day

It’s hard to ignore the fact that Jesus chose to be born poor; he worked as what many scholars now say was not simply a carpenter, but what might be called a day laborer; he spent his days and nights with the poor; he and his disciples lived with few if any possessions; he advocated tirelessly for the poor in a time when poverty was widely considered to be a curse; he placed the poor in many of his parables as over and above the rich; and he died an utterly poor man with only a single seamless garment to his name. Jesus lived and died as a poor man. Why is this so hard for modern-day Christians to see? Liberation theology is not Marxism disguised as religion. It is Christianity presented in all its disturbing fullness. --James Martin, SJ Link to original post: http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&entry_id=3224