"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast"
-Oscar Wilde		 Brilliant at Breakfast title banner "The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself."
-- Proverbs 11:25
"...you have a choice: be a fighting liberal or sit quietly. I know what I am, what are you?" -- Steve Gilliard, 1964 - 2007

"For straight up monster-stomping goodness, nothing makes smoke shoot out my ears like Brilliant@Breakfast" -- Tata

"...the best bleacher bum since Pete Axthelm" -- Randy K.

"I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum." -- "Rowdy" Roddy Piper (1954-2015), They Live
Sunday, May 01, 2005

Rollerball Nation
Posted by Jill | 9:19 AM

In the original 1975 film Rollerball, countries no longer exist. Instead, global megacorporations field teams to play the ultra-violent game of Rollerball to halls full of jingoistic fans. This structure is designed to annihilate the last vestiges of individual humanity, making people nothing but pawns to corporations.

William Harrison, who wrote both the short story and screenplay, was positively prescient. This diary at Daily Kos shows just how much the United States is becoming a country in which citizens are nothing but drones completely controlled by corporations.

From 2001-2002, the US economy lost a large number of jobs that either make things or require technical knowledge. Notice, how new jobs do not involve new products or technologies. This information is from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

Manufacturing - 1.1 million jobs
The information industry - 225,000 jobs,
Professional, scientific, and technical services - 225,000 jobs,
Computer systems and design - 140,000 jobs
Wholesale Trade - 120,000

And what areas of the economy increased their number of employees from 2002-2003?

Finance and insurance + 22,000
Health Care and Social Assistance + 442,000
Food Service and drinking + 153,000
Education + 93,000
Government + 373,000

Let's move forward 1 year, from 2002-2003, the last full year of information in the BEA's database. The following industries lost jobs.

Manufacturing - 740,000
Information - 185,000
Computer and Electronic Products - 145,000
Professional, scientific and technical -15,000

And the following industries added jobs

Food Service and Drinking Places 151,000
Government + 85,000
Education + 64,000
Health Care and Social Assistance + 345,000

Why does an economy have to make new products to grow? Because in the natural chain of economic events one product naturally leads to new products. Let me use computers as an example. First, there is the actual computer that has to be assembled. This requires parts and labor, creating one group of jobs. The computer needs software, which requires programmers - more jobs. The computers have to be sold, which requires wholesalers, retail outlets and sales people yet more jobs. And lets not forget all of the ancillary products that resulted from computers - networks and the internet.

New products sustain the middle class by providing high-paying jobs. Detroit led the way n the 1950s. The high-tech industry employed millions of workers in the 1990s who benefited from high wages. The information jobs from the 1990s are going away, and we are not replacing them with the next wave of technologically innovative products.

By not creating new products and technologies or products the US is resting on its economic laurels, letting other countries make the products for us. As a result, new jobs on the cutting edge of whatever market are not benefiting the US. Instead, we are importing products we use to make on credit instead of the wages that should result from the "next big thing."

[snip]

Economists generally agree the economy needs to create 150,000/month to keep up with population changes, lost jobs etc.... According to the Bureau of Labor Services, since 2001, there are only 5 months when the economy created more than 150,000 jobs - March, April, May and October 2004 and February 2005. In other words, we are not creating jobs fast enough to absorb new and displaced workers.

This has lead to an increasingly smaller percentage of the population being employed. In 2000, 64.4% of the population was employed. That percentage has dropped to 62.3% in 2004. In other words, the number of people working as a percentage of the total US population is decreasing.

This leads to poor wage growth because employers can essentially say to prospective employees, "I can get someone who will do the job for lower wages." Wages grew 3.1% in 2002, 1.7% in 2003 and 2.3% in 2004. Compare this wage growth to inflation, which increased 1.9% in 2002, 2% in 2003 and 2.3% in 2004. In other words, wages rose below the rate on inflation for the past 2 years. In other words, the average worker is making less money for the last 2 years.


The diarist is correct in that Americans think that when Bush talks about an "ownership society", its one in which they will be invited into the club of owners. But the reality is that it's one in which Americans will be owned even further by corporations. In encouraging people to buy houses they can't afford by making ever-higher mortgages ever more evailable, Americans will be owned by the mortgage companies. In making it impossible to get out from under even debts caused by medical expenses, the government has put Americans into indentured servitude to credit card companies and collection agencies. In refusing to detach the health care system from employment and moving to the economies-of-scale of a single payer system, Administration policies ensure that people will be unable to leave corporate employ to become entrepreneurs. And in the pattern of high-paying jobs being replaced by low-paying, part-time no-benefits jobs, Americans will become little more than servants to corporatists.

The problem is that by the time most Americans realized that they aren't being offered a seat at the table, it'll be too late.
0 comments
Bookmark and Share