The Professor has been busy with many projects lately and the neglected personal life has also cut into what little time the Professor has to jabber on blogs like this. However a few stories have crossed the internet transom that have attracted my attention.
The first one was where JPMorgan Chase – recent beneficiary of a plea bargain deal that let them keep most of the money they stole -it’s moments like this that I remember the quote ‘The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” – anyway JPMorgan Chase decided to have a ‘ask an important person twitter event’ this backfired in a major way as word got out and folks did their damnest to be rude and insulting and downright nasty in less than 144 words – or whatever – the professor does not have a twitter account as getting to the point takes me about 3 paragraphs. The idea was quickly shelved but not before they had been exposed to the one thing these folks cannot bear – mockery. Although in his dark heart the professor thinks some of these folk’s heads are begging for the business end of a pike.
Meantime – McDonald’s in an effort to prove that they have their share of clueless idiots as well has been caught - on an employee website in the advice section no less – that a way to deal with stress is not to complain about it was that makes your stress level go up; they also suggested getting food stamps so you shouldn’t starve on the shit wages being paid – the mind wanders again to an early Bob Newheart routine – the retirement party where the fellow retiring (an accountant), as part of his farewell speech mentions that if it wasn’t for the ‘fifty bucks a week I glommed out of petty cash I wouldn’t have made it on the lousy salary…’ - back to McDonalds - they also suggested taking a couple of vacations a year; and – and that singing is a way to reduce stress. The professor has a fantasy of one day walking by a McDonalds and hearing the strains of ‘The International’ or perhaps Moorhead’s “Eat the Rich” from the happy workers.
We have noted on our travels though the internet that these stories always bring out – folks who write why are you so angry and hostile to the rich. Followed up typically with a back in the day story and then a rant against their pet peeve as in this case probably the minim wage which they blame for well everything – One fellow was going on abut how back in the day he worked for 75 cents an hour at a soda fountain. Seeing as the minimum wage law is 70 years old now either the fellow was lying or at least 113 years old. And just to note in constant dollars the minimum wage was at its highest in 1968 a year lousy for a bunch of reasons The Tet Offensive, RFK and MLK being killed, riots and Nixon (who has proved worse than we thought more on that some other time) at least unemployment was a 3.6 percent. (Granted there were some 500,000 young men overseas getting shot at but still it’s a lot better than the 71/2% that is regarded as good these days.)
Meantime the other great monolith of modern capitalism Wal-Mart again has found itself behind the 8 ball as in Ohio a store had bins set up for people to donate food for to help ‘associates’ over thanksgiving as some are having a hard time making ends meet. The professor wonders gee if only they could earn more money or perhaps someone with a lot of money – at last count the Walton family was worth 150 BILLION dollars – could give them oh a bonus or perhaps pay them better? But no – that would cut into profit.
The sick thing is that both of these firms hideously low pay forces their employees to go on food stamps and other programs to get by. These folks aren’t sitting in a hammock; they are trying to do the right thing and are getting screwed by it. These are programs paid for by tax dollars – our tax dollars which are making Wal-Mart’s bottom line better.
The Professor has a modest proposal – no it does not having the Walton family beaten with sticks and being driven from the land before burning their mansions down – temping as that fantasy maybe – simply set up a law where in if an employer is underpaying folks to the point where they need government assistance – that money comes out of their profits – and to make it sting – as this really is stealing from the government – they get to pay 3 times the amount that goes to their employees in assistance.
I’d suspect the situation would change a bit after that passed. Not that it would because freedom!
