Month: May 2008

Has your boss become more demanding of late? Have you noticed how business management tries to wring every last ounce from its employees? Perhaps, you may ponder, it’s because of the slowing economy, the need to squeeze more productivity?

Not a bit of it. It’s been going on for much longer than the dwindling economy. It began with the advent of computers in the workplace. Slowly, over time, the employee has shrunk in the mind’s eye of management, until now he or she is just another form of computer.

Only, the human employee is nothing like as efficient as an electronic computer. A human employee has to take meal breaks, go to the bathroom, spend time away from work with family, and to sleep. A computer functions twenty-four seven, has no family ties, and permanent insomnia.

In fact, apart from the energy needed to power its innards, a computer is only reliant on one other piece of equipment: the employee who utilizes it.

Herein lies the great dilemma presently gripping the capitalist world, or at least, the very top bit of it.

Computers can now do so many things a human employee can’t do, or if they could it would take them three years to complete a task done in seconds by the superior electronic version, that employers are desperately working out ways to rid themselves of the less efficient, and infinitely more expensive, inferior model.

Here is just one of myriad examples, noted recently in central Illinois.

A few months ago, the management of a local bus company announced to its employees that all buses were to be fitted with GPS equipment. It was put in such a way that the employees, or at least those more gullible, assumed it was for their benefit.

Of course, nothing was further from the truth. The drivers had nothing to fear as they were union members in a closed shop situation, but recently four lower management employees were told they were being ‘let go’. The company would have GPS equipment to monitor the position of every bus in the fleet at any given time, doing away with the need for those four employees. One had eighteen years service with the company. She was told she will receive $3,000 in severance pay.

This is just one example of what is happening, not only throughout America, but over much of the western world.

How many readers are due to retire in the near future? When you do, instead of visiting your local SSA office and talking to an experienced member of staff, you’ll be asked to file your claim online, from your home computer. If you don’t have one, you’ll be directed to the local public library.

The Social Security Administration has undertaken a mind-bogglingly huge program of automation, designed to achieve one goal: the eradication of the expensive human employee. It’s already begun. Staff levels are falling quickly; it’s one of the main reasons disability claimants wait two years and more for their hearings.

Employers are quick to hone down their workforce once a longterm strategy has been devised. It takes time to surreptitiously cut employee numbers, but the resultant savings in salaries, healthcare payments, etc., help fund the planned automation strategies. Computers are improving in leaps and bounds. The number of human employees required to service and program these electronic brains is dropping almost daily. It is expected that within a few years computers will take over the job of maintaining and programming other computers, or to put it another way, they’ll be self-repairing and self-programming.

It begs the brief question: where will all the jobs go?

The answer is equally concise: there won’t be any. Except for lowly service industry jobs – it’s not expected McDonalds will be serving computerized French Fries in the foreseeable future – and a few specialist occupations, much of the work done in offices, business houses, and government departments will no longer be the province of the human employee.

In a relatively short period of time, much of the monies paid out today in salaries will be siphoned back into the coffers of the corporates, as profit. Computers don’t require an income.

Of course, it would be inhumane to allow middle class America to starve to death. The Social Security system would have to be expanded and a new system of hand-outs devised. It will all have to be paid for out of corporate profit, for the income from taxes is bound to decrease drastically with so many out of work.

What then, you may ask, is the benefit to corporations if the additional profit is to be used to fund social services?

The answer is: control.

At present, the corporations pay wages, of which a percentage goes to the government in taxes, and the government decides how it is best spent. While corporate America has a hand in government, it is restricted by the election process. The people still have a say, albeit a somewhat feeble one.

Under the new automated system, corporate America will be the government. It will have total financial control. Without taxes a government cannot function, and will be taken over by whatever institution is holding the power of money.

He who has wealth holds power, and he who has power wields control. Total control is the great ambition of corporate America. It’s the reason one hundred and fifty thousand US troops squat in Iraq. Oil is now secondary in the great plan for the Middle East. Control of that region is number one on the agenda.

Corporate America is becoming the Great Dictator.

A fanciful idea? It’s happening already.

Has your boss become more demanding of late? Have you noticed how business management tries to wring every last ounce from its employees?

SSA employees are working themselves into the ground right now. Staffing has been cut so drastically each employee is forced to handle the work of two, or sometimes three. Added to the problem are constantly changing computer programs, new “improved” versions rushed out and full of bugs, but all designed to one day replace the employees desperately trying to make them work, against a backlog of mounting social security claims.

It’s chaos, but out of chaos comes control.

It will come to pass, if the workers don’t do something to stop it. Loyalty to the company has been a slogan rammed down the throats of employees for years, but where has the company’s loyalty to its workers gone?

Once, workers controlled the power. Now the tide has turned and computerization means workers will one day have to beg for a job. The bosses are regaining control. They have the power.

If you want to know how they will use it, just ask four bus company employees from central Illinois.

Filed under: 1984, or 2054?

At a press conference in the White House today, Laura Bush denounced the Burmese junta for not doing enough to help its citizens devastated by Cyclone Nargis.^[1]

With their usual simpering manners, and a fear that asking the wrong question might see them barred from future presidential events, the White House “press corps” demurred to comment on this blatant hypocrisy so readily spouted by America’s First Lady.

No-one dared so much as murmur the words, “Hurricane Katrina”.

With its usual ruthlessness, the US administration of George W Bush has continued severe sanctions imposed on Burma by Bill Clinton. As with all cases of sanctions – so obviously witnessed in Iraq in the 1990’s – the rulers don’t suffer at all. Such high-handed, moralistic, interventions by those who have plenty, and the military power to ensure they keep it, only results in the common people going without.^[2]

Sanctions are designed to topple dictatorships and juntas by imposing immense hardship on ordinary people, eventually forcing unrest and uprisings, which in theory may cause regime change.

Rarely does that occur.

Over the last few months we’ve seen the consequences of unrest in Burma; monks beaten and tortured, soldiers on the streets, a sudden increase in burials. Is this the unrest America wishes to inflict with its high-and-mighty sanctions?

US politicians are especially adept at taking such stances. One has to wonder just who they think they are, these self-appraised demi-gods anticipating a military junta halfway round the world will listen to their words and take heed. Hillary Clinton is such a one, as is Nancy Pelosi. Both were shouting their mouths off today warning Burmese leaders not to turn down international aid.

Had they bothered to watch foreign news reports they could have saved their breath. The Burmese had already agreed to international aid long before Bush, Clinton, or Pelosi opened their mouths.

The US Congress, continuing this tortuous crusade of magnanimity, has announced via its mentor George W Bush that America’s highest civilian honor, the US congressional gold medal, is to be awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Democratic activist under house arrest in Burma these past ten years.

One has to wonder at the thinking of the US Congress – that is, if it thinks at all. Of course, it’s so easy to award a medal. It’s cheap, and hardly takes up any time, not enough to interfere with the claret and smoked salmon eye-balled for senatorial luncheons.

Gestures of this nature are worthless, and will probably do a disservice to Aung San Suu Kyi, who is bound to feel the repercussions from her Burmese masters, who won’t take kindly to such Western interference in their affairs.

Meanwhile, George Bush announces the suffering people of Burma will receive bounteous American Aid, in the sum of – $250,000. It’s not a fortune, but to be fair, he can hardly give more to a foreign nation than he stumped up for New Orleans, now can he?

Congress, stuffed to the gills with the soft warmth of giving, second helpings of salmon, and a glass too many of Chateau Moulin de Peyronin, can rumble, belch, and fart their way through the afternoon house session contentedly oblivious to the knowledge Suu Kyi’s golden gong will probably secure for her another ten years of lonely incarceration.

^{[1] “Laura Bush urges Burma to accept US aid”, Guardian, May 5th 2008}

^{[2] “U.S. SANCTIONS AGAINST BURMA – A Failure on All Fronts”, Cato Institute, March 26th 1998}

Filed under: Burmese/US relations

NBC Nightly News ran a heartrending piece tonight on the suffering of seniors and those on fixed incomes, desperate to make ends meet as food and gas prices skyrocket. One unfortunate old Californian couple had to live in a van when the rent on their house was raised beyond their means to pay. Immediately following this woeful piece, was a segment on the luxurious lifestyle of pampered thoroughbred horses bred for the racing fraternity.

Apparently, the irony was lost on Brian Williams and his crew.

In Britain, voting has been taking place in local council elections – always a barometer of public sentiment towards the government – and Gordon Brown’s Labour Party is in deep trouble. Looked at logically, Gordon Brown has held the reigns of power for less than a year, so the tribulations that caused the British people to turn so violently from their government are actually Tony Blair’s old chickens coming home to roost. Unfortunately for poor Gordon, he’s been left desperately trying to clear the vast quantity of fermented guano from the hen house floor.

In London, England, matters have become more than dire. Ken Livingstone, a Labour mayor with a strong Socialist background, who worked hard to turn the nation’s capital into something more than the world’s greatest carpark, has lost his position to the biggest Tory buffoon ever to grace the Palace of Westminster. Boris Johnson, is an archetypical braindead Etonian who’s only claim to fame has been an endless round of quiz shows and late-night chats; his only contribution, to make other contestants look vaguely intelligent.

Even his father, in a BBC interview, could only define Johnson’s enthusiasm for the mayoral position by stating that he’d “….even stopped drinking for three months.”

In this excerpt from the UK comedy quiz show, “Have I Got News For You”, Ian Hislop, editor of the British satirical magazine Private Eye, reminds Johnson of his seedy past.

There was a time when American elections made British politics look satisfyingly sensible. The US media can be relied on to turn any political event into a fairground switchback ride, but the British media is not so easy to condemn. At the end of the day, when matters turn pear-shaped, the Brits only have themselves to blame.

Tony Blair knew full well what he was doing when he sprinted off to America and left the ruins of his policies in the hands of Gordon Brown, but the British fail to grasp such easy logic. There was even talk in some spheres recently of the ‘heady days of Blair’s premiership’.

How quickly they forget.

Such reaction may be understood in the US, where Blair could do no wrong, despite him fawning up to the most hated US president since……since……well, ever really…… but the British are usually quite good at laying blame where it’s deserved, so anyone waxing lyrical over Tony Blair surely has to be a candidate for the psyche ward.

Why this apparent breakdown of sanity across the pond?

Probably, it’s a severe case of politician disillusionment. Ever since Maggie Thatcher and her abortive poll tax, one prime minister after another has promised the earth and delivered only dung. Now, the Brits aren’t prepared to allow Gordon Brown the luxury of delivering the earth, even if he proved capable of doing so, and when the going gets tough they’ll inevitably turn to humor.

With rising prices, a National Health Service in chaos (thanks to Tony) and an unseasonably cold, wet, spring that’s sending even the illegal immigrants scampering for the Channel Tunnel and balmier climes,^[1] the British answer is to have a bloody good laugh.

Unlike NBC’s Californian seniors forced to vacate their home, live in a van, and complain bitterly about it, the British will simply titter, say “it were much worse in the Blitz, luv…” and vote Boris Johnston Mayor of London, just to enjoy the unholy mess he’ll make of the job.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown picks up his brush and shovel and heads back to the henhouse. He may not be Tony Blair, but he knows what he wants to do if the voters will just give him a chance, and he’s maybe dogmatic enough to win out in the end.

And those high-living Kentucky racehorses are preparing for their grand Derby on Saturday. I see one of the runners is called “Big Brown”.^[2]

Maybe, I’ll risk a dollar or two on the nose.

^{[1] “‘We’re fed up with the cold weather and the NHS,’…..”, Daily Mail, May 2nd, 2008.}

^{[2] ” Big Brown favored in 134th Kentucky Derby”, Sports Network, May 2nd 2008.}

Filed under: Desperate times