I don't think...

[SciFiFisher]

This is what they had in mind when everybody was talking about equality.

[FZR1KG]

"They are just lazy good for nothing trailer trash.", the one percent.

"In a true free market monopo...economy, all these people would have jobs at fair rates equal to their worth as compared to the labour rates in China. Surely you wouldn't want us to pay more than we pay the Chinese workers. Its free market economy, the US of dream. Workers should be thankful they have a job. Lazy bums.", Corporate America.

"What's a worker? We make billions every year and we don't need no stinking workers. Oh, what's this tax thingy people keep going on about?", dot net companies.

[Cyborg Girl]

Between this and panopticon surveillance, can you see why I'm scared?

We are looking at a hugely unbalanced, oligarchic society with government eyes everywhere - and the government bought out by the upper class.

We are looking at the image of a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

A commune in the Rockies is looking awfully good right about now; too bad that stopped being an option for me a while ago.

[SciFiFisher]

Between this and panopticon surveillance, can you see why I'm scared?

We are looking at a hugely unbalanced, oligarchic society with government eyes everywhere - and the government bought out by the upper class.

We are looking at the image of a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

A commune in the Rockies is looking awfully good right about now; too bad that stopped being an option for me a while ago.

What you forget about is that when a large majority of the people no longer feel they have any vested interest in the status quo then the system will change. Violently or otherwise the pendulum swings. Even the most repressive of regimes with a myriad of tools to keep people in line will fall if enough people have decided they have nothing left to lose.

The system worked for the most part as long as people could at least achieve middle class socio-economic security. The Corporation has corrupted what the free market was designed to achieve. A free market is only truly free when all parties are equal and willing partners in the exchange. When one side has more leverage and bargaining power than the other then the market is no longer truly operating in a free and efficient manner.

[FZR1KG]

Free market ideal: All corporations are created equal.
Communist ideal: All people are created equal.

Both work as well as each other.

[brite]

Just wait...

Until the corporations don't have any customers in the US to buy goods and services....

Of course... by then... we'll all be speaking either Japanese or Chinese....

[SciFiFisher]

Just wait...

Until the corporations don't have any customers in the US to buy goods and services....

Of course... by then... we'll all be speaking either Japanese or Chinese....

Why do you think so many US corporations are so eager to expand overseas and participate in the global economy. They are chasing the affluent buyer.

[Sigma_Orionis]

They're going to have to do more than that I'm afraid.

The US is one of the biggest markets in the world, so much that many foreign corporations from all over the world set up shop there, if the US market collapses, so will plenty of those corporations and THEIR EMPLOYEES IN THEIR HOME COUNTRIES, so the number of people with disposable income would drop dramatically. I don't think the remaining ones would pick up the slack, not to mention that international trade would probably become extremely restricted (Sure, evil corporations have goverment in their back pocket, just wait till you have enough people pissed off and we'll see how well that goes). So US corporations (and foreign as well) would have nobody left anywhere to sell anything to (except in countries like mine, where the top 20% consumes much more than the greasy swarthy underclass, but somehow I don't think that will scale much...)

Of course it wouldn't happen for the end of the fiscal year, and since that's how far corporations plan these days.......

[brite]

A perfect example of what I'm talking about...

http://www.businessinsider.com/caterpillar-ceo-quote-on-workers-2013-5 the company (Caterpiller, one of the largest manufacturers of farm equipment) wanted their union workers to take a 50% pay cut... and the CEO got a 60% PAY raise...

Nice work if you can get it...

[Swift]

Unfortunately, this is nothing new, has been a steady downward trend for a long time, and something we've talked about here before. And I have no belief that it will change any time soon.

And among the linked stories on that page was this about McDonalds

McDonald's can afford to pay its workers a living wage without sacrificing any of its low menu prices, according to a new study provided to The Huffington Post by a University of Kansas researcher.

Doubling the salaries and benefits of all McDonald's employees -- from workers earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour to CEO Donald Thompson, whose 2012 compensation totaled $8.75 million -- would cause the price of a Big Mac to increase just 68 cents, from $3.99 to $4.67, University of Kansas research assistant Arnobio Morelix told HuffPost. In addition, every item on the Dollar Menu would go up by 17 cents.

Morelix's research comes as fast-food workers across the country strike for a $15 per hour minimum wage. Workers are also protesting for the right to unionize without fear of retaliation. Protesters are holding strikes in seven cities over a four-day period, according to Salon.

Morelix looked at McDonald's 2012 annual report and discovered that only 17.1 percent of the fast-food giant's revenue goes toward salaries and benefits. In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its more than 500,000 U.S. employees.

Thus, if McDonald's executives wanted to double the salaries of all of its employees and keep profits and other expenses the same, it would need to increase prices by just 17 cents per dollar, according to Morelix.

[Sigma_Orionis]

A perfect example of what I'm talking about...

http://www.businessinsider.com/caterpillar-ceo-quote-on-workers-2013-5 the company (Caterpiller, one of the largest manufacturers of farm equipment) wanted their union workers to take a 50% pay cut... and the CEO got a 60% PAY raise...

Nice work if you can get it...

An article on the CEO of Caterpillar on that same magazine had this quote:

When will workers’ wages rise? Oberhelman exhales sharply. “The answer to that is: when we start to see economic growth through GDP,” he says. “Part of the reason we’re seeing no inflation is because there’s no growth. Inflation was driven by higher labor costs, not higher goods costs. Frankly, I’d love to see a little bit of that. Because I’d love to pay people more. I’d love to see rising wages for everybody.”

Funny, he sounds like Mitt Romney.

[Rommie]

Had an interesting conversation w the bro a few nights back, as he's starting work in a month or so at a start-up company in Florida and he idly said he'd never go back to banking (where he worked two years). I asked why and he said everyone there hated their jobs, they were just in it for the money and counting the days to early retirement, which made it a beyond awful environment to work in.

I think his point was also sure a lot of people do jobs they don't necessarily love to pay bills, but everyone there hated it and was looking for a way to make a buck (read: screw a client over), rather than if salaries were more normal you might have a few George Baileys in the mix instead of a bunch of Potters.

Then we had a bit of fun discussing what the next giant bubble will be to burst, as nothing has changed since the housing crisis so it's only a matter of time (probably will take a decade or so tho). Bro chose the auto industry as right now there are a lot of cheap mortgages out there to get a car and the auto industry is booming, I chose student loans. One of those games where we both hope we'll be wrong.