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: : : ---But what about all the other anecdotes? You know, the other some 200 million Americans, most of whom drudge entire lives through jobs that are a static horror of ingemination, that pay barely enough to feed their children and satisfy their many creditors? What about those vast masses? Where are their stories?: : Gosh, 200 million? My spider-senses are screaming "hyperbole!"
: 75% of the population work jobs that do not require a high school level of skill or intelligence.(1) 75% of the population---roughly 261 million---is about 200 million people. Their jobs pay about $32,000 per household.(2)
: How are those spider senses now?
They have been placed on "yellow alert" and are now waiting for more information such as whether that $32,000 is per capita, the average family size, the average cost of maintaing the average family, by what standards do we hold "drudgery," and lastly, how does the per capita income vary between countries (buying power also needs to be taken into consideration). I do not expect you to provide these for me, I have my own almanac and I can always go to the public library to check out statistical abstracts. I just think that those points also need to be taken into consideration.
Sort of reminds me of how last year Reform party(of Canada) leader was carrying on about how something like 42,000 Canadians went to work in the U.S. The liberals pointed out the fact that 45,000 (or thereabouts) Americans similarly moved to Canada to work. Then, the real kicker, the Reform showed that the Canadians that left were more highly skilled than the Americans that entered. It just shows how omitted facts can really make a difference.
: : I am not sure where you live, but every place that I have lived in the U.S. there has been computers in every library available to the public. Do you know what made this possible? Hefty grants from Bill Gates. Do you know where those libraries came from? Andrew Carnegie.
: Good points, well worth discussion.
: Firstly, I advocate libraries and other public institutions. They show the potential for socialism!
: Secondly. At this time, libraries and other public institutions are conspicuously underfunded. To research and write consistently on a public library computer at this time is a near impossibility. Try to regularly contribute to this board on a library computer. It will remind you of...public transportation---a strong incentive to buy your own!
Do you mind if I quote you next time I attack public works and public funded institutions?
: Lastly---the charitable deeds of megacapitalists. The objectionable thing about such acts is that these 'public gifts' are created out of the unpaid surplus labor of the working people who make the Carnegies and the Gates' of the world rich in the first place. However benevolent the charity might be, they redistribute the surplus of the proletariat to other proletarians---but without consulting them!
I disagree with you on this point. There is nothing wrong with the contracting of labor. The workers were paid accordingly for their services by the company. Now, you would of course call this wage slavery. It seems that you think that the worker should be paid every single penny of profit earned because it is they who contribute the labor. What then, should those the provide the machinery and risk be paid? Obviously without factory with the proper machinery a worker cannot produce a car efficiently, no matter how skilled.
