Connecting the dots can get a little uncomfortable

Horse with no Name

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Wed Mar-02-11 12:10 PM
Original message

Connecting the dots can get a little uncomfortable

Edited on Wed Mar-02-11 12:14 PM by Horse with no Name

When I was growing up, my mom worked in a UNION grocery store.

In the mid-70's, she made close to $20/hour with excellent benefits. But to make a finer point, there was an entire store full of employees who had the same deal, and nationwide, there were over 100 stores. You get the picture.

My Dad owned his own small business.

I remember we bought a nice little house. I also remember that their payments were $175 month.
My Dad drove a new Ford. He paid close to $8k for it. My mom drove a new Firebird.

We had horses and took vacations. We lived a normal, comfortable, middle class lifestyle.

I don't ever remember NEEDING anything...wanting, yes of course. I was a kid and that's what kids do.

We moved to Texas.

My mom went around to non-union grocery stores. She had extensive experience in management.
The MOST she was offered was $4.25 an hour (minimum wage was $2.65). No benefits. She refused to give anyone her years of grocery experience and was insulted by the offers. She ended up entering another field, but still made less than $8/hour. In 1978.

Talk about a paycut from a UNION job to a NON-UNION job.

This is why they are union busting. In Texas, they have been quietly union busting for years!
And not just in their state. Conditioning people to believe that they are lucky to have jobs that pay $8 an hour--while creating an atmosphere that UNIONS are bad and evil and that they are the reason that THEIR wages are lower.

Now, there is at least a generation that has grown up believing this is the best there is.

But watching as things unfold, it is starting to get a little uncomfortable.

This morning, I watched the gas go up another .05 a gallon. It made me cringe. This makes an increase of .30 in the last 4 days.

At the grocery store, I am spending more and getting less.

My health insurance just went up--although not nearly as much as I expected. An extra $100 a month.

High energy bills are up...higher.

There is a concerted attempt across the country to bust the unions. They want to take those jobs making living wages down and turn them into $8 an hour jobs.

Corporations are getting richer by the second. The rich are getting richer by the second. But it isn't enough. They want MORE and MORE and MORE.

Shared sacrifice is a joke. There is NO sharing here. Our President needs to understand that. Instead, the workers who have been beat down since the Reagan era want to pull the workers down that have been fortunate enough to make a decent living to their level because of spite and pure jealousy. Mr. President...sacrifice will be noticeable when the profit margins start decreasing instead of increasing to record levels each year. It doesn't take an economist to figure that out.
Quit telling us there is shared sacrifice because it simply does not exist.

It is a race to the bottom.

But, the ingredient for the PERFECT STORM is taking away the social safety net.

It's happening as we speak. Thread by thread by thread.

It won't be long until we find out what hell has been wrought. It is on the near horizon.

People are going to die in the streets. It really is that simple.

But, with world resources diminishing, is that the end game anyway? To get rid of US by instigating us to fight each other, while they sit back and smoke their Black Dragon cigars?

To put it even more simply, we are in the way. The healthiest of us will survive and they will be the worker class. The sick and weak ones will die off because to the rich, they are just money pits anyway.

Wake up America. We are a stones throw from hell and you are carrying the handbasket.