START WITH A SIMPLE PREMISE: THE POOR ARE POOR BECAUSE WE CHEAT THEM And how do we cheat them? One of the ugliest phrases in the English language is “ The working poor.” Although it is true some work is more important than other work, it is never true that some people are more important than other people. The person who does cancer research is of no more importance than the person who washes dishes (although the work is), and, therefore, has no inherent right to live a more decent life than the person washing. We have become conditioned to determining a person’s worth by the work he or she does, then socially and economically catorgorizing that person accordingly, thereby, grouping and isolating segements of the population into a class system. This soci-economic hierarchy forces millions of working people and their families into the depair of poverty. In other words, we cheat them. Our social, economic and political institutions are designed to cheat them and to maintain a deadly hierachy that protects those who sit atop it. Therefore, we cannot expect any meaningful solution to the terrble inequalities that exist by using, or trying to change, these institutions. We must look else where for meainingful change. And that elsewhere is to the individual. The total yearly income in this country is around $13.5 trillion and the total number of employed people is around 195 million. If we divide this income by the number of employed people, we find that each employed person, if all were treated equitably, would receive a yearly salary of approximately $70,000, not determined by the work they do, but rather, by the simple fact that they work, each having the same right to live a decent life. Clearly, a nice balance. It would seem that, even in the current economic environment where the average 1%er yearly income is $1.9 million while millions work for poverty-level wages, there exists an inherent natural balance for the taking. However, be cause our institutions are designed to support and protect the 1%ers, this balance remains locked away. How can we open up our society to this balance? Simply, by collapsing the hierarchy. First, we must redefine what it means to live a decent life and to incorporate into that definition the fundamental idea that no one life cannot be truly decent life as long as another life suffers poverty. Each individual with the economic resources to do so must adopt a family. Each individual with the resources must share, directly with the poor (not through institution-based agencies) part of his/her yearly income. The individual must take responsibity for him/herself as a member of a social group. Being the genetically wired social primates that we are, this is as it should be, the individual working for the good of the whole. This is the only way the individual can experience true well-being. The only revolution is the revolution of the individual* * “African American Poverty”: https://youtube/watch?v=s_riTnTZX2A THE FUNADMENTAL DIFFERENCE: Socialism is designed to support the individual as an equal member of society. Whereas, capitalisim is designed to use the individual as an unequal memember of society. For example, in 2012 the total income in this country was approximately $13.5 trillion and the total number of people employed, 195 million. If the total income were shared equally, each working member of society would have received approximately $70,000 per year--- clealy, a nice balance. Yet, as of 2013, the average yearly income for the one percenters was $1.9 million* * see statement by Phil DeLuth at: forbes/sites/phildemuth/2013/11/25/are-you-rich-enough-the-terrible-tragedy-of-income-inequality-among-the-1/ CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY [ THE WORLD-WIDE SYSTEM OF SLAVERY AND MIDDLE CLASS CUPABILITY] In this country we have laws making slavery a crime, laws embraced by Americans and yet everyday the middle class A merican consumer buys products made by children enslaved, wasting away their lives in a world-wide system of sweatshop factories. Sweatshop factories are death camps. The middle class American consumer, when buying a product made in a sweatshop factory, is buying a product most probably made by a young teenage girl, making the purchase a crime against humanity. Ours remains a slaved-based economy, only out-sourced. It is time that the middle class consumer is held accountable for their crimes against humanity, crimes they commit, daily, against the 240 million children world-wide trapped in these monstrous sweatshop/death camps. Much of middle class affluence is carried on the backs of these 240 million children enslaved in sweatshop factories. Is that not a crime against humanity? However, most people don’t want to be takers. They are scared into it. For this reason, this system of slavery can only be dismantled by a change in the individual by boycotting his or her own greed for things. There are three major consequences of middle class buying of products made in sweatshop factories. Firstly, by doing so, the middle class consumer encourages corporate America to continue and to expand its use of sweatshop factories there by keeping approximately 3 billion people working in slave conditions, 240 million of them being children. Secondly, a continuation and increase in global warming from the pollutions generated making products mostly bought by middle class discretionary moneys. Thirdly, the continuation of the flow of money, through the grotesque profits coming out of these factories, into the hands of the “one percenters”* away from earth-sustaining projects and direct economic help for the poor. The middle class American consumer must ask him/herself two questions: “Is my money doing more harm than my work does good?” And, when looking in the mirror wearing that new set of clothing or those new cool shades made in one of these sweatshop factories, “Am I really looking that good?” * in the last five years the income of the one percenters has grown 31% while for the rest of us only by .4% ______________________________________________________ interview with11 year old child laborer: https://youtube/watch?v=pTIfY9SmJdA _________________________________________ website of the Institute for Labour and Human rights: https://youtube/user/nlcnet ______________________________________________ Zone for Slavery: https://youtube/watch?v=1XtYhfcEZ9A&index=13&list=PL23659FF6B7319AD5 part 2: https://youtube/watch?v=2QOwNHeAqBE&list=PL23659FF6B7319AD5&index=14 part 3: https://youtube/watch?v=klSngDpTlM4&index=15&list=PL23659FF6B7319AD5 ___________________________________________ Sweatshop factory documentary: (very powerful statement) https://youtube/watch?v=noL8nFSzsDc&list=PL23659FF6B7319AD5 Jack London on the Democratic and Republican parties: You have no soul to be influenced. You are spineless, flacid things. You pompously call yourselves Republicans and Democrats. There is no Republican Party. There is no Democratic Party. There are no Republicans or Democrats.......You are lick-spittlers and panderers, the creatures of the Plutocracy. You talk verbosely in antiquated terminology of your love of liberty, and all the while you wear the scarlet livery of the Iron Heel. ..........Listen to the bellowing of the well-fed beasts. from: The Iron Heel The Plutocracy [currently referred to as the one percenters] has all power in its hands today. It today makes the laws, for it owns the Senate, Congress, the courts, and the state legislatures. And not only that. Behind the law must be force to execute the law. Today the Plutocracy makes the laws, and to enforce the law it has at its beck and call the police, the army, the navy, and lastly, th... See More the militia [ now referred to as the national guard] which is you and me, and all of us.”* Jack London from: the Iron Heel”* * Suggests our will participation in a system of self-regulation in which we are willing to punish ourselves when we run a fowl of the laws designed to protect those in power,,.,conditioning can be a very power and destructive tool. WHY MUST SOCIALIST PLAY THE STOCK MARKET Because in the stock market there is money for the taking which would eventually end up in the hands of the greedy middle class consumer or, more likely , be applied toward the continuation of the one percenters’ strangle hold over society, moneys which a socialist could otherwise control and redirect into the hands of the poor or into earth-sustaining projects. If the money in the stock market is not redirected in such a way, no movement, no political policy, no visionary economic plan can produce any equitable change. Although some jobs are more important than others, that does not apply to people. For this reason, everyone, whether working on or under the streets of our cities, doing surgery in a major hospital, running a major corporation or leading the country as its president, must all live the same equitable lives. To accomplish this, there must be a single, universal wage that holds for all jobs. For ... A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. John C. Calhoun I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country......Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, the money-power of the country will endeaver to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed. Abraham Lincoln FALSE ADVERTISING: Give me your tired, your poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door! Wherever there is an ascendant class, a large proportion of the morality emanates from its class interests and its class feelings of superiority. John Stuart Mills from: On Liberty SOCIALISM: a return to our roots BY OUR VERY NATURE, WE ARE ALL SOCIALISTS Being genetically wired to be social primates, it is in our nature to work for the good of the group and for the well-being of each member of the group. We are compelled then, by our genetic code, to be socialists. Enlightened self-interest is a myth most have been conditioned to believe in and live by designed to maintain the upper one percent and steer us away from our natural impulse to work for the good of the group. July 20 the only way to rid ourselves of the hierarchy which supports and maintains the one percenters is for the middle to redirect descretionary moneys away from products whose profits go to the one percenters and either directly into the hands of the poor or into earth-sustaining projects. this will stem the flow of money upwards thereby lessening the control the one percenters have over us. only the individual can make this change, not governments or movements. there must be a sea-change in how the middle class, individually takes control of and uses its money to define living a decent life. for every one dollar we spend on products made in off shore sweatshop factories, the worker, often a young teen age girl, receives less than one penny, and we pride ourselves on having abolished slavery. We have simply out-sourced it. This is not a political or economic issue. Its about individual ethics and responsibility. We cannot blame the one percenters since it is our willingness to buy their products made in these sweatshop factories that keeps them in power. They are simply a terrible consequence of our own greed for things. Corporate greed feeds off middle class greed. The ending to this terrible world-wide system of slavery is quite simple and yet is seemly so hard to accomplish.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 18:43:17 +0000
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