General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: A Warning to America [View all]I am 71 years old, retired. I was the only wage earner in my family while my wife worked being a home maker. I get a pension, I also enrolled in my companies 401k, I get SS and Medicare. I retired after 42 years at age 63 because I had union health insurance to bridge the gap to my turning 65.
I worked in a factory that made glass bottles then worked in a shop that built the bottle making machines. The company's headquarters was in our small town of 2,000 people. It would not be uncommon for the president of the company to stop in to our factory to say hello to our workers.
Something changed; companies turned into corporations, our headquarters moved to Jacksonville so that our CEO could be close to a nice golf course. When we were a company our workers were looked upon as assets, when we became a corporation our workers became a liability to the corporate bottom line.
I asked a question in a local home town blog a couple of years ago; who are more important, workers or shareholders, the majority answered shareholders. I live in central Pa. in the middle of Trump country, my friends have been brainwashed and I believe it started with Reagan. Private sector union membership is down to like 6%, the greenskeeper at our local golf course calls me a Socialist. I worked at a grocery store while going to high school, I worked my way through college, I took any job I could until I found a good job and worked there for 42 years. My friends call me a Socialist because I'm a Democrat. The benefits that I got and still get today are because I was a Democrat. My younger Trump friends will never see a pension, will never see union provided health insurance, will have to work longer than I did to get Medicare and Social Security if those programs are even still around when they retire. Ronald Reagan convinced the unwashed to vote against their own best interests. A big part of the blame lies with the corporate controlled M$M, it pushes the far right corporate narrative.
One of the main topics at Davos this past year was doing away with the unwashed, was going to robots and AI. The super rich are looking for ways to eliminate millions of workers, to eliminate workers altogether.
I told my golf course buddy my definition of Socialism. Giving tax dollars to the poor is Socialism while giving tax dollars to the rich is Capitalism. He said I was wrong. I asked him what it was called when Trump gave billions of taxpayer dollars to soy bean farmers because they lost their markets because of Trump's tariffs. He did agree that that was wrong. Hey, one small step to un-brainwashing a Trumper.