Unfocused...

Greetings good citizen,

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I am seeing some of my more dire predictions come true; they are simply not as ‘spectacular’ as most of you may have imagined them.

I have been warning for years now that a time would come when a vast number of people would find themselves with paychecks that didn’t cover their living expenses.

Is there an outcry from these desperate individuals? There sure is…but if you aren’t within earshot of these pleas you won’t hear them.

Worse good citizen, this variety of ‘desperation’ has struck close to home, one of my siblings is a ‘victim’ of these terrible times. As a $5 an hour part-time driver, I’m not in a position to do much about it.

I use this personal example as a mirror to larger society; none of my other siblings are in a position to ‘help’ either. This has left my sibling living out of a car in a friend’s driveway (even this charitable ‘non-relative’ can’t afford them house space!)

I share this only to demonstrate how ‘common’ this woeful set of circumstances is. I’m sure many of you could share tales that make this one look like the lap of luxury.

There were two recent news items that gave me pause over the weekend although one of them is from today’s NY Times…the other is from Saturday’s edition of the same paper.

Saturday’s story was about how the rich were, er, ‘letting down’ the budding (but otherwise invisible) ‘economic recovery’ by reining in their spending at high end retailers. Is this another stunning example of MSM cluelessness or is it ‘reality’ as the owner class sees it?

Because today’s, er, ‘belabor the obvious’ news story centered on the ‘fruitlessness’ of jobs programs.

Should you read the article, accept the truth on the ground from someone who knows, there are NO JOBS in Boston that are going unfilled due to a lack of ‘qualified applicants’, that is total bullshit! (Because the article claims otherwise.)

Flip that rock over, every company trains you to do what you do ‘their way’, bar none. In that respect there is no such thing as a ‘qualified applicant’ anywhere!

So we arrive full circle at the ‘more education will solve all of our problems’ canard! Six months of ‘skill enhancement’ training is, as you would expect, worthless if the applicant is 50.

Our profit driven social model ignores the needs of society while favoring the, er, bottom line of the owners.

In fact, it is this ‘mercenary tendency of owners’ that has placed us in today’s untenable economic environment.

Thing won’t ‘get better’ until the interests of society are made superior to individual greed. If anything, this, above all else, scares the hell out of modern day capitalists. The market niches that provide them with their income streams will be forcefully taken away from them, and they will have to work for paychecks, just like their (former) employees do…

BUT, this ain’t gonna happen all by itself.

Just saying, you know?

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner