Blog.MrHacks.com

Compainies firing workers to boost their corporate profits, executive bonuses

It is as if the executives in corporate America think we have “stupid” tatooed on our foreheads.

About a year ago, InBev bought Anheuser Busch to form AB InBev. InBev stated they woud save jobs, which they didn’t. InBev laid off workers while at the same time sheding Busch Theme Parks. And while beer sales are slumping and jobs are being cut, AB InBev reported they made a better profit this year.

But it is not just the world wide distributor of beer that has reported that they’ve made a better profit this year and that the guys on top get to keep their jobs and get a larger than average bonus this year while sacking workers. Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG, GM and Crystler, all reporting an increase in profit, while service, products, and employees all get cut out.

In other words, the guys on top save their own ass, and tell everyone else “your on your own”.

As unemployment spills over 10.2%, the rich get richer, the middle class is being pushed into the lower class, and the lower class have no where to go.

Chances are if you have graduated college in the past couple of years, you are unemployed or working in a low paying job. Although it may seem like the military looks like a way to make money, if you have no interest in fighting in combat or are not physically able to give the military 20 years of your time to serve your country, then DON’T! You can serve your country in other ways, but at this time thouse government agencies are not hiring anyone with a short resume.

It is quite clear that the country is run by a very small, wealthy minority. The private sector continues to show that at this current time, their only interest is to look out for themselves.

We see this when the best military in the world can’t get the manpower or functioning equipment they need to complete a war that has lasted for far too long. The president can send as may troops the generals need, but as long as the private sector sells the same weapons to our enemies as they do with our allies, the war continues at the expense of the people and the families that suffer. But it is no problem for the executives at the top that are double dealing. To them, War is money. The longer the war goes on, the more money they can take from the government.

We see this when not just manufacturing, but white collar work, is outsourced overseas. The free trade model has moved our jobs to China. America is not the only country where jobs are moving to China. Japan, Austraila, Europe, Canada, even Mexico have seen jobs move to China.

Ah, but now China wants total control over foreign patents. Foreign companies now must decide if they still want stay in China, where there is abundant cheap labor and laxed environmental regulations, or go back home an restart manufacturing here. If you are an coporate executive, you don’t care about ideas, labor issues, or the environment. Your interest is to sell whatever you can and build them as cheap as possible and still make a profit even if the product or service sucks.

The Chinese will soon be showing us the hubris of these executives.

Finally, to futher the madness of corporate America’s irrational behavior, there is the issue of healthcare. If your job can provide you with adequate private insurance, and the insurance company is not in the business of finding some way to prove that whatever is ailing you is benign, then more power to you.

However, for the rest of us, especially the unemployed, recently unempolyed, and those in poverty, we don’t have such good fortune to have a doctor on call who will actually look at what is wrong and not pretend there is nothing wrong because you have no medical coverage or the insurance company tells the doctor to ignore it.

It would be great to have a job. It would be great to have insurance. It would be great to let the capitalist system of government leave the private sector alone so that the private sector could do whatever it likes. However, we can’t. Not when people can’t tell the difference between consumerism and capitalism. Not when people can’t tell the difference between socialism and communism. Not when corporations distort the defintions of these words during a time when unemployment is high, wars seem everlasting, and a pandemic is infecting the world but the sick can’t see a doctor because they can’t afford it. And especially when corporations free themselves of being responble for any bad behavior they do.

When the capitalist system fails because it has perverted the idea that consumerism (in which people buy things) not capitalism (in which people save up for things) jumpstarts the economy, then defends this faux capitalism that only serve the people on the top by excluding everyone not just at the bottom but all people that are not at the top, then tells the people who have lost their jobs and benefits “don’t go to the big bad government” and “government run programs are bad and are socialism” (where they use socialism not as the intended word of a system serving the people, but as a synonym for communism), then continue to operate this system for a very long time, people will ultimately become stressed. They will comit crimes, unaware that it is OK to ask for assitance until it is too late. That if several people in the same predicimate can’t convince the government to help them because some corporate lobbyist made an exception to the rules or put in something to kill the bill to provide relief during a time of suffering and recession, they can do this instead of hurt other people.

The corporate system is based on greed and jealousy. Why should you suffer because you were fired so your employer could get a raise especially if you did a good job and didn’t have a poor performance record? Why should the next genereation of the workforce be paid less than there parents if they’ve recieved a better education and have worked to live a better life than their folks have?

We’ve been told that “hey, you shouldn’t pay you taxes” while at the same time accept the cost of rising fuel prices, the loss of alternatives when it comes to shopping, cheap breakable goods from big box stores, diminishing water, food, and environment quality, failing schools, high health cost, and small government, all so that small minority can preserve their way of life.

To call these feeling “raging against the machine” or to say “there is nothing you can do about it” and to actually do nothing about it endorses the continuity of the status quo, no mater who you vote for.

We have a great, intellegent leader as president right now. And everyone who has stalled or shotdown any of his plans to do something or to save jobs, lives, and property has done this because they have everything they need and people to provide it for them until suddenly they are themselves inconvienced either by their own family or someone they know needs something done. Suddenly, autism is a big deal because some senator or corporate excutive has a child with autism. Military spending becomes a big deal because someone’s best friend is joining the military. Automobile safe becomes a big issue because they were in a car accident recently. The environment becomes an issue because they suck at hunting or fishing and wonder where are all the wild critters they saw as a child.

Things shouldn’t be done because the lawmakers are affected by them. They should be done because at some point everyone is going to need something they want that the government can help them with, no strings attatched.

Yet, people feel threatened when the president gives a speech to school children. They feel threatened by his endorsement of public healthcare. They feel threatened that he might not provide more than enough or less than enough (in that they want the exact number, nothing more or less) troops to end our wars, apprehend terrorists, and secure our country. They feel threatened by fair trade, efficent cars, workers with benefits and insurance. They feel threatend because some uberliberal California law maker created a federal madate to preserve some turtles living in farmland that needs water for irrigation. (A more moderate liberal would have provided an alternative to support the farmers and the turtles…like rerouting where the water comes from.) And they feel threaten that they have to pay more on taxes which mathematics–which is NOT partisan–says they have to anyway.

And these people have hired voices to tell those without “don’t seek out, stay where you are!” And they are concerned that the country is falling apart.

If the healthcare bill fails in the Senate–or is thwarted by some partisan action to preserve the status quo–expect a new group of individuals to come out of the wood work to take down the fearmongers that preserve the stats quo. Because after a while, people will realizes that yes they have had enough and it is not the fault of the guy in the Oval Office. It is the guys in the high rise office buildings who right now are worried for their lives that some angry mob will try to harm them because they now have more than anybody else because they have take more than they deserve.

The TEA Party is misguided or they are misguiding. They are standing up for the rich minority either because they are the rich minority or they are to ignorant to realize they are supporting their oppressors. You will find that many of the TEA Party supporters still are employed, still are better off than the majority of this country that is suffering, and rarely–if in any case–part of or wish to identify themselves as part of the 10.2% that is unemployed.

You will not go to jail for not buying health insurance or using public healthcare. The country is not headed towards communism, it is headed toward oligarchy, to which to stave off the oligarchs, social programs need to be reinstated or installed.

America is hungry for the change that they asked for, and the president wants to deliver, but it is the status quo that continues to deny the things that we have worked hard for.