I can't give a direct link to the above item. He seems to do one monster post each week or so. So go to the site and search for it.
Let me show you how good things used to be in this country:
[. . .] even minimum wage ($1.60/hour in the late 60s, I know because my wage stub recorded it) bought far more goods (purchasing power) then than minimum wage does now.
Emphasis added by me.
$1.60 an hour. And you could rent a good apartment for that. You could not only rent a good apartment, you could:
- pay for electricity
- pay for cooking gas
- pay for food
- buy clothes for work and leisure
- put away some for savings
Yes: savings! You'd wind up with money left over after simply maintaining your life!
You could in fact work part-time and still have an apartment and meet basic life-support requirements.
Today, working part-time can't even afford homelessness!
Here's a question for all of you to consider:
Meanwhile, in TLCIA circa 2008, obscene "compensation packages" are defended as "free enterprise." Well, what did we have in 1969? Unfree enterprise?
None of you yet understand that the monster levels of compensation we've seen since the 1980s would have been seen as obscene and abnormal before then.
Sure, there had always been stars -- movie, radio, and a few TV ones -- who made money. But in general those people had actual class and didn't flaunt their luck and by and large behaved in accordance with the traditional values of the larger society. For one, they gave generously to charity. Second, they encouraged others to do so too.
Dick Fuld, who pocketed four hundred million dollars in one year -- quick, tell me the charities he recommended and volunteered time to!
Michael Milkin got all charitable and fuzzy-hearted once his prostate came under attack. Before then, he was all puff-chested and the Junk Bond King of Fuck You All.
Society used to work for everyone.
The above post goes into detail how it might devolve to work for no one.
Who wants a society like that?
No comments:
Post a Comment