Bread and Circuses 2006 — or Where's the Panic? I had a very disturbing conversation with someone at the law office I am temping at in word-processing. He reported that one of the largest law firms in New York (and thus the Nation), has pretty much shut down its word-processing center and outsourced everything to India. These are dozens of very good jobs stolen from Americans and given to foreigners thousands of miles away, at the cost of quality and convenience to the attorneys, who cannot work side-by-side with the person helping them, as to answer questions about handwriting, grammar, where moved passages go, etc. Instead, the handwritten markup is fotocopied into a .PDF file and emailed to India, where someone who learned English as a Second Language (with British spellings and both British and Indian idiomatic expressions), and who grew up with a script that isn't even the roman alphabet, tries to make sense out of markings that can be very complicated and which make reference to a legal system that isn't even his or her own.
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Surely this cannot really be efficient, but that firm apparently thinks that having to go thru a few more rounds of corrections is worthwhile in terms of financial cost, because they can save several thousand dollars on each American they fire.
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It gets worse. Indians are even drafting legal papers for American law firms. Surely that violates American laws against people practicing law without a license. Why is this permitted?
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Similarly, Indian and other foreigners are practicing medicine without an American license, taking over tasks like reading X-rays and doing diagnoses remotely. Why is that permitted?
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The guy I was talking to is going to nursing school on the understanding that nursing is a job that can't be outsourced. Ah, but the rich can bring in outsiders who will work cheap. So no job is safe in a world where the great preponderance of people are desperately poor. Besides, with as many uninsured people as this country has, how secure is a good income in healthcare?
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There are a minimum of 12 million illegal aliens taking jobs in all low- and middle-income segments of our economy, and foreigners by the boatload are being brought over to take jobs at every level of the economy, including the very highest, CEO's of major corporations. The time to panic is now, before our civilization, our economy, our culture are all gone. But there's no panic. Why not?
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The rich, who are the only people profiting from the extinction of the American dream of universal prosperity and social equality, are able to calm the fears in part by producing false statistics that the economy is booming — even tho the bulk of new jobs pay less than old jobs now lost — by averaging in the obscene wealth of the few with the falling incomes of the many. And the statistics they cite of a booming economy make no mention of the cost of the consumer credit that most Americans live on.
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Of what value is an increase in earnings of 2.3% when the Consumer Price Index goes up 4.7%?* — minus 2.4%, that's what: a negative value! The typical American is worse off today than a year ago, was worse off a year ago than a year before that, and will be worse off a year from now than s/he is now, just in terms of income-to-inflation, without anything else being factored in. But you have to factor in the cost of credit, which for most families is on the order of 18%, and for many, over 26%. Being able to pay only a portion, and sometimes just barely the minimum on their credit cards each month, the typical family owes more at the end of each year than at its start. So not only are current expenses not being met, but families (and single individuals) are falling further and further into debt.
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That makes them desperate not to lose the tiny bit of security they have in being employed, even in a crappy job that pays less than a job they used to have. So if the company cuts back raises or its contribution to health insurance (which the employee then has to make up, further reducing useful income), the employee just has to take the abuse and shut up, because the cost of demanding more is to lose your job. And there's no such thing as escaping debts thru bankruptcy anymore (except for major corporations, of course). If you lose your job, you will still be required to pay all your debts, even if you have to sell your house to do so. If the sale of your house does not cover your debts, you will still be held to your debts until they are all paid off — or you are dead. And then they will try to collect from your kids.
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All the while these terrible things are happening, the rich blame us! We're not educated enuf. We don't work hard enuf. We don't work smart enuf. (We don't work cheap enuf.)
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This is Republican America: government over the people, by the rich, for the rich.
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How do they get away with it? "Bread and circuses".
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The phrase "bread and circuses" is a reference to the means the Roman emperors employed to keep the poor from rebelling. They gave out free bread so emptiness in the belly would not move them to action, and gave free admission to chariot races and gladiatorial combats to keep the people busy and entertained.
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Today's "bread" is employment at low-wage jobs that cover almost all expenses, but not quite. If you don't get sick or have an accident, you will live a life of "quiet desperation", never getting ahead but not being so agitated that you have to take up arms to end the misery.
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To keep people from realizing that everything is getting worse every year, the Republicans offer a combination of distractions.
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- The "you can be rich too" scam: sure, the rich live better than you, right now, but you too can be rich, and then you'll be glad we don't tax the rich, because you won't be taxed either. All you have to do is work hard and save your money (as tho you have any money left over at the end of the month to save), or win the lottery or a jackpot at a casino. Or attend one of those get-rich-quick seminars in real estate or day-trading via the Internet. Work at home, in your spare time for a huge extra income, thousands of dollars a month! Or come up with the next big invention. We'll help you patent it! You can buy real estate with no money down, make minor, mainly cosmetic improvements — we'll help with low-interest loans — and "flip" the property for a quick resale at huge profit! You can sign up for a reality show and win a million dollars, or a record contract, or a comedy contract. You can win an athletic scholarship and then go on to the pros after graduation with a college degree (tho no college education, of course; you'll be too busy on the field to study, and the professors will pass you along without your ever having to learn a thing) — or you'll be drafted right out of high school. You'll get a million-dollar signing bonus and $7 million your first year, endorsement deals for millions more, and be sitting pretty for the rest of your life! Or maybe you'll be discovered by a music promoter, become a rock star, sell millions of CD's — and the money will just come pouring in. Or you can make it as an actor or actress and pull down $8 million per movie or $700,000 per episode of a sitcom or evening drama, and be famous as well as rich!
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Never mind that none of those things will ever happen to any but the tiniest fraction of the population, a fraction so tiny as not to be worth mentioning, much less wasting two minutes of daydream time on,
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Meanwhile, the taxes on the rich that could be used to even the playing field for the rest of us, pay for universal healthcare and higher education for everyone with the ability, will never be levied, because morons think they're going to be rich someday. Where are the politicians with the guts to say, plainly, "You will never be rich. You will always be poor. You are being played for a fool. Wise up!"
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- The entertainment distraction. Never before in human history has there been so much entertainment: music everywhere, at all hours of the day and nite, as plain sound and video-illustrated sound; sports, sports, sports — hour after mind-numbing hour of baseball, football, basketball, NASCAR, all played by pros who make millions, feeding the fantasy that you too can be rich; Internet porn; TV comedies and dramas, visual fantasies of every description "free" in your very own home (never mind that you really do pay for "free" TV, in higher prices for goods advertised, and for the goods of companies that don't advertise but can charge higher prices because they can still undercut the companies that do advertise, and most people pay for cable. Instead of having to sit in a still, empty room and confront your problems, you can turn on noise and pictures with the press of a button from your recliner, and put off thinking about your problems forever. That doesn't solve the problems, of course. If anything, it only makes them worse. But as they get worse, you just pump up the volume of distractions.
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- Religion. The meek shall inherit the Earth. Virtue is its own reward. God helps those who help themselves. God is testing us here on Earth to determine our fitness to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Christianity). This present life is just one of many, and the karma we acquire in this life carries over into the next (Buddhism). In the end, the rich will be punished and the poor rewarded, if not in this life, then the next, or the next, or the next after that. Trust in divine justice and be not proud nor wrathful. Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.
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- Scapegoating. It's "the gays". They're responsible for everything that's wrong with society. It's because of the homosexuals that God struck the World Trade Center and is killing our soldiers in Iraq. The drive to extend marriage to "gays" is causing the collapse of society. Never mind that homosexuality has nothing to do with any of the problems of heterosexuals. Gay this and gay that are shiny keys that the Republicans jingle over the crib in which they keep the American public to distract them from their imprisonment in a life of hardship and debt slavery.
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- Tobacco. Tobacco is a New World crop, unknown to the Romans. It has a pacifying effect on tens of millions, which is why it is kept legal despite the obvious fact that it kills millions. And Government gets to levy regressive taxes on it, which rob the poor and stupid so the rich and (think they're) smart don't have to pay more in tax.
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- Alcohol. The Romans had wine and beer. We have wine, beer, fortified wine, fortified malt liquor, and booze of many different tastes and proofs, enuf to drug a hundred million people into complacency and keep them from thinking clearly about their problems.
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- Drugs. Government pretends to disapprove of drug abuse, but actually loves it, because a citizen zonked out on drugs is incapable of analyzing the real causes of his or her problems, then devising and carrying out a plan of action to get back at the people who are making life hideously desperate, so desperate that a person is willing to ram a needle into his arm to get relief. There will never be a solution to the drug problem as long as the rich understand that drugs are extremely effective in destroying the people who would destroy the rich — if they could think clearly. The rich have no desire to bring the problem under control, because drugs keep the poor at each other's throats and away from the rich. No solution can work as long as the rich benefit from the distraction drugs constitute. No "medicalization" can work in a society where over 40 million people, including essentially the entire most vulnerable population, have no medical coverage.
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And as long as the bulk of Americans are hopped up on tobacco, alcohol, drugs, religion, and/or entertainment every waking moment of the day, and made to think that current difficulties will pass and they will be rich someday, they will put up with any abuse.
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Have a nice day.
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* Source: "It's Your Money" segment on News 12 New Jersey, April 7, 2006.
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,447.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:18 PM