Homestead mailing list

["Lynda" <lurine AT softcom.net>]

If you want to fix "part" of the problem, then someone is going to have to 
tackle the unions!  Their philosphy seems to be based on "cut off your nose 
to spite your face."  Logic dictates that people cannot continue to expect 
to have unions protecting gold bricks nor can people continue to expect to 
be paid more than their actual worth.  Unions just about killed off piece 
work.  Consequently, that work is off-shored.  DH's father worked piece work 
in Brockton.  He loved it because he was paid a base and then what he earned 
was based strickly on what he produced.  He hated later in life having to 
"accept" the same wage as folks who didn't work as hard or produce as much 
as he did.  I worked one summer back in the days when I was a mere child <g> 
for Electro Vector who made the guts for the IBM color copiers.  I loved it! 
I could bust out my quota and then some and still remain well below the 
reject rate.  I made buckets of money.

The same with unions and firing teachers who are failures.  Tenure used to 
mean something you *earned* not an excuse to not get fired simply because 
you managed to somehow last a year in a job.

Davis-Bacon is another rip off.

However, until someone figures out a way to undo the p.s. mentality (I'm 
owed) and the throw-away society we live in, we can talk till the cows come 
home and nothing is going to happen.  WTSHTF, be it an imploding economy or 
McNasty and WWIII, people are going to go on doing what the Nanny State 
tells them and driving their SUVs to the grocery store daily and expecting 
someone else to "fix it."

As an example of our throw-away society, we all headed to the "big city" 
Saturday for a day of thrift store wandering.  I need canning "stuff," 
youngest likes retro clothes and DH is always, typical guy <g>, looking for 
that tool he just knows he needs.  I found a brand new, never used German 
made madoline which sells for $50 or more.  I paid $6 less youngest's 20% 
student discount (my favorite thrift store <g>).  I never could justify $50 
to slice cucumbers for pickles and to julienne beets to pickle but for 
$4.80, that saves me time and carpel tunnel pain.

I also got a lovely strainer for making tomato and applesauces for $7. 
Again, something that normally sells for $60 and brand new.  Guess someone 
didn't want to spend the time and energy to use it.

A nanny state, the world owes me, throw-away society.  Is it any wonder that 
there is 1% with the money.  I'd say the current housing bubble and 
foreclosures are a prime example.

Lynda
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com>
> I would submit that this is the very sort of thinking that created the 
> mess
> we are in.  Since the US dollar became the world's reserver currency in 
> 1944
> (Breton Woods) and especially sine the creation of the petrodollar in the 
> early
> 1970's, the US economy has had an increasing free ride in the world market
> place.  Because our currency must needs be used by other economies and we 
> could
> dip our finger in the pie as we chose, we were not strictly under the onus 
> of
> making things of any real value to the folk.   Remember I said 
> "increasingly"
> because we certainly did in the late 40's and 50's.  But because of our 
> pie
> dipping we could afford to give wages and salaries to an increasingly 
> large
> number of drones who produce nothing.
>
> We have come to view a job as Coordinator of Pontification or Supervisor 
> of
> Sidewalk Coloring as if they were the same as jobs that produce food,
> machinery, buildings.  We are suffering from extreme economic 
> ostioporosis.  There are
> a few real jobs that produce real goods and services for the folk (and 
> some
> for export) but by far most jobs are fluff, passing about bags of air to 
> one
> another, shuffling papers from one side of the desk to the other, under an
> unassailable indoctrinated belief that they are as real as jobs which 
> directly
> produce things useful to the folk.
>
> Having just done 2007's income taxes, I needed to looke up on the table 
> for
> my and Herself's Schedule C's the number to indicate the nature of our
> businesses.  There was column after column of numbers for servicing this, 
> coordianting
> that, supervising the other .... and a very scant few entries 
> corresponding
> to making anything.  True enough that most people involved in 
> manufacturing do
> not them selves file a schedule C, all the more the pity, says I.
>
> Another indication, more amusing perhaps that accurate, but I am not on 
> the
> 'do not call' list.  The calls are down to two or three daily, and what 
> are
> they selling?  Tools?  Food?  Fuel?  Building materials?  Even clothing? 
> No.
> Never.  It's warranties, travel discounts, supplemental insurance 
> policies. time
> shares, discounts on cable, credit card offers, .... all fluff and air and
> not a dram of marrow amongst it.
>
> We import the majority of things we sell in the Marts and hardware stores
> from China, we import 17 million barrels of oil a day (at $117 a pop as of
> today), and what do we send them in exchange?    We are in the unenviable 
> position
> of having an economy based on other countries shipping us stuff out of 
> habit
> while we have forgotten how to make anything and working as hard as we can 
> to
> decieve ourselves (as in Gene's original article) that it isn't so.
>
> The very last thing we want to do is to talk about jobs irregardless of
> whether it is a bag of air jog or not. When you find yourself in a hole, 
> stop
> digging .... else you will end up in China!
>   </HTML>
> _______________________________________________
> Homestead list and subscription:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/homestead
> Change your homestead list member options:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/homestead/lurine%40softcom.net
> View the archives at:
> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/homestead