NATION OF WHINERS GO ON SUICIDE BINGE !

Get a third job ! Sell a vital organ ! Move in a card box by the river ! …but stop your whining any old way you can buba ! You are but a victim of your own imagination, you suffer from a severe case of "mental recession" !

 

Now get over it, will ya !

 

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Suicide Spreads as One Solution to the Debt Crisis

In a culture where credit rating is the key measure of self-worth, the increasing response to huge debts is "Just shoot me!" http://www.alternet.org/workplace/93077/

 

Now that’s a definitive way to shut up indeed !

 

You know what ? America is NOT a nation of whiners !

 

I think it is exactly the opposite. American’s are way over the top indulgent & naive and good hearthed for they have been used, abused & oh so confused by their so-called leaders, big media and this one-sided economic system where 1% of the happy fews control 80% of the whole pie. Proof abound of this sad but true reality…

 

Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had. - Chris Hedges

The Big Squeeze: Steven Greenhouse on Tough Times for the American Worker

A new book by New York Times labor reporter Steven Greenhouse examines how much of the American workforce is working more but earning less. Wages have stagnated, health and pension benefits have grown stingier, and job security has shriveled.

STEVEN GREENHOUSE explains a few things on DEMOCRACY NOW…

There’s this big squeeze on the nation’s workers,  wages have been flat, health and pension benefits are getting worse, at the same time corporate profits have gone up very, very nicely. Employee productivity has gone up 15, 20 percent, yet wages have been flat, plus companies are pressuring workers, you know, to work harder and harder.

And that’s part of a broader health crisis in the nation, where, since the year 2000, even though we’ve had pretty good economic times until the last few months, nine million more Americans are out of work than was the case in 2000. So now, almost 50 million Americans, nearly one-sixth of the workforce, is uninsured. And you think how crazy that is, in ways. You know, we’re the world’s wealthiest nation, yet one-in-six workers are out of work.

And another, you know, health statistic that surprised me when I was researching the book was, United States spends about $6,500 per person for health coverage, which is more than twice what France and Germany spent, about two-and-a-half times what Japan spent, yet, you know, they have universal health coverage. They have longer life spans than Americans. Yet, you know, we spend twice as much, and one-in-six people are uninsured. So something is badly broken in the health system.

Things are out of whack, out of balance in the workplace, that corporate profits have hit record levels, employee productivity has really zoomed upward 15, 20 percent over the past six, seven years, yet, you know, wages have gone nowhere. Corporate profits, as a percentage of overall national income, have hit record levels, and wages, as a percentage of income, national income, have fallen to the lowest level since basically the Depression.

So, what’s wrong here? That’s a good question. I think part of it is that employees unions have much less bargaining power, much less power vis-a-vis corporations than was the case thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Part of that is weaker unions. Part of that is globalization has really increased corporate power over workers, because corporations can tell employees, “Look, if you don’t accept a wage freeze, we’ll just move your job to China or India. If you’re too vocal in demanding wage increases, raises, well, maybe you’ll be caught up in the next round of downsizing.” So I think

Wall Street, since the 1980s and the rise of the institutional investor, the rise of mutual funds, hedge funds, pension funds, Wall Street is exerting much more pressure on corporations to maximize their share prices, as you know, which means maximize profits, which often translates into lowering costs and especially lowering payroll costs. So a lot of managers will say, you know, the area where they have most flexibility to reduce cost and increase profits is on payroll. So that’s why we’re seeing all these waves of downsizing.

You know, in researching the book, I was kind of surprised, even shocked, that the United States is the only industrial nation without universal health coverage. We’re the only industrial nation without – actually, one of the very few nations in the world, one of four nations of the world, without paid maternity leave. We’re the only industrialized nation without a law saying everyone gets x number of vacation days. In the European Union, the twenty-seven nations, every worker is guaranteed four weeks’ vacation. And also, we’re the only industrialized nation where workers are not by law guaranteed a set number of paid sick days. So, you know, I think we still have a lot to learn from the so-called social democracies of Europe, in terms of their model versus our model.

A second thing, I think the nation, by and large, hasn’t paid enough respect to workers as workers. You know, all the attention is about, you know, the Bill Gateses, the Warren Buffetts, the A-Rods, the Paris Hiltons, and not enough about workers. I think workers, in many ways, have become invisible as workers. They’re seen as Bud drinkers or Oprah watchers, but they’re not really seen as workers who, you know, bust their derrieres day in and day out, you know, making the trains run on time, you know, cleaning hotel rooms. And I think if the news media or if politicians really started paying more attention, more respect to workers, that might discourage corporations’ CEOs from squeezing their workers so much.

Meanwhile, back to where we never left…

 

"We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out .... We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary" - lawyer/agitator Mary Lease stirred crowds with this spirited response to the depression of the 1890s

 

Suicide is becoming an increasingly popular response to debt. James Scurlock's brilliant documentary, Maxed Out, features the families of two college students who killed themselves after being overwhelmed by credit card debt. "All the people we talked to had considered suicide at least once," Scurlock told a gathering of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in 2007. According to the Los Angeles Times, lawyers in the audience backed him up, "describing clients who showed up at their offices with cyanide, or threatened, 'If you don't help me, I've got a gun in my car.'

India may be the trend-setter here, with an estimated 150,000 debt-ridden farmers succumbing to suicide since 1997. With guns in short supply in rural India, the desperate farmers have taken to drinking the pesticides meant for their crops.

Dry your eyes, already: Death is an effective remedy for debt, along with anything else that may be bothering you too. And try to think of it too from a lofty, corner-office, perspective: If you can't pay your debts or afford to play your role as a consumer, and if, in addition -- like an ever-rising number of Americans -- you're no longer needed at the workplace, then there's no further point to your existence. I'm not saying that the creditors, the bankers and the mortgage companies actually want you dead, but in a culture where one's credit rating is routinely held up as a three-digit measure of personal self-worth, the correct response to insoluble debt is in fact, "Just shoot me!"

GOING UP !
Top 1% share of total income
Income gap between rich and poor
Foreign debt as a percent of GDP
Age at which one can receive Social Security
Hunger
Consumer credit debt
Housing foreclosures
Severe poverty rate

GOING DOWN !
Real income
Real manufacturing wages
Percent of single women and mothers in the workforce
The bottom 40%'s share of national wealth
Older families with pensions.
Workers covered by defined benefit pensions.
The savings rate
US manufacturing jobs

ALSO...

Protest restricted/ignored
Dissenter labeled terrorist/traitor
False-flags
Elections suspect
Leaders benefit from wars/disasters
Use of propaganda/lies & partisan mass-media
Claims that War is needed for everchanging false reasons
Secret/extrajudicial/torture camps
Curtailed/suspended civil rights/liberties
Wiretap/intercept/surveillance net
Stealthily expands int'nl influence/power
Judiciary/Opposition ineffective/ignored
Legislation to defy Constitution

BTW, have you noticed that the good guys always win execpt on the news ?

"The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life ... A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors... Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.": George Orwell, 1984