American capitalism needs a laboring underclass to survive. It requires that all participants be wage slaves. At the present, American capitalism has little to fear. Americans are convinced that jobs are the object of the game, especially well paying jobs, are that jobs are the answer to all economic problems and moreover, the purpose of life. Oh sure, working class Americans’ outrage over such things as $55 million CEO salaries has more to do with the fact that their corporations went bankrupt than that the CEOs looted the companies. Regular working class folks are pissed at them not because of their greed and criminality, but because, as my friend Eddie said yesterday at the Twilight Zone Cafe here in Winchester, “The CEO’s didn’t do their jobs, and so other people lost their jobs.” They see corporations as the great givers of jobs. Jobs are everything.
Joe Bageant (via azspot)
Regular working class folks are pissed at them not because of their greed and criminality, but because, as my friend Eddie said yesterday at the Twilight Zone Cafe here in Winchester, “The CEO’s didn’t do their jobs, and so other people lost their jobs.
Probably true.
07/27/09 at 7:13pm
