"Oh-oh...who knew (???) besides UPS workers..."

Below is my latest email (greatly edited/expanded) sent to family and friends.

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4e8jI_qzro

I hope they get a good contract without a strike.  99.9% of the multiple, multiple packages I get from Amazon per month are delivered by UPS.

This scenario is a good example of how Big Biz sometimes screws its employees in order to shift wealth to the Upper Crust.  Kudos to Main St. workers for fighting back.

Yes, companies should make a profit, no question about that; but making obscene profits harms society in the long run.  How/why?  Because such profits usually are the result of not treating workers fairly, cutting corners re safety (think Deepwater Horizon in 2010, among many other examples), damaging or destroying natural ecosystems (thus harming what sustains us), causing workers incredible stress re job security and a substandard living, and more.

All the above is one more reason why the USA is circling the drain in the sink of "glory days", and one more result of the Oligarchy getting more and more desperate as the so-called "American Empire" declines.  One possible solution to this particular scenario is to begin a long conversion of our economy to worker co-ops.  There's no good reason for workers not being the owners of a company.  A few such companies already exist here, and are doing well.  Some examples:  

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/insights/051316/6-successful-companies-are-employeeowned.asp#:~:text=The%20largest%20employee%2Downed%20company,WinCo%20Foods%2C%20and%20Brookshire%20Brothers

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Not only my opinion.  Be Well

Three More Blatant Lies by Our Oval Office Occupier

Note---  The following quotes may or may not be exactly as spoken.  Any error is quite minimal, and does not change the meaning of the precise quote.

1.  "We now have the greatest economy in our history."  Ha!  Not even close to that, Don Corleone.  It's only great for perhaps the upper 15% or so of income earners.  Everyone else is barely keeping even, or falling behind.  The median income in this country is only $33,188; that means half of us make less.  Asset Bubbles (a type of inflation) and the Debt Bubble are larger than just before the 2008 Crash.  Financial derivatives still are a massive problem.  Casino Capitalism and Crony Capitalism still are setting us up for the next Bust... which, by the way, is overdue.  If you don't believe that, simply look at the time intervals between Booms & Busts from the 1973 Recession to present day.  No one, including you, has eliminated the Boom-Bust Cycle.

2.  "We also now have the greatest employment in our history."  Wrong again.  See this post of mine to understand why Gov't employment/unemployment stats are almost always wrong...including those put out by your Crew---
http://individualsovereignty.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-real-state-of-union-rather-than.html
The piece also explains why Gov't inflation stats are extremely misleading.

In both cases above, today's stats are dwarfed by those of the Golden Age of American Capitalism.  During that time, not only was the economy booming, manufacturing growing, and Business thriving, but mega corporations were being taxed at up to 90%.  With its length of twenty-plus years, that economy makes today's look like an unmitigated disaster.

3.  This last quote is in relation to the Mueller Hearing that took place Wednesday.  "Under Article II [of the Constitution], I have the right to do anything I want to."  What planet are you on, Don?  Good grief.  Even a cursory examination of Article II shows that, except during times of declared war, the Presidency actually is a rather modest Office.  Perhaps you were gaslighting when you made that particular statement.  You have a penchant for trying to confuse people with outrageous claims and obvious lies.  Unfortunately for you, most of us see through your dangerous childishness.  Now we just have to convince your cult following that you're a total fraud.

Not only my opinion.  Everyone Be Well
p.s.  For any new visitors here, I'm not a Democrat or a Republican.

"An Economy for the 1%: How Privilege and Power...

in the Economy Drive Extreme Inequality and How This Can Be Stopped".  That's the title of a new Oxfam America report.  From the Report and as reported on Democracy Now, the 62 richest billionaires in the world (a majority of them in the USA) now are as wealthy as the poorest 3.6 billion people worldwide combined.  The inequality is due primarily to:  deregulation (i.e., Crony Capitalism), privatization (more Crony Capitalism), and offshore tax havens (even more Crony Capitalism).  [Those are key components of Neoliberalism...which is subscribed to by most Democrats and Republicans (at the highest levels) here in the USA.]

In one such tax haven, the British Virgin Islands (population 24,000), there are 800,000 shell corporations associated with real corporations from around the world.  Anxious to get in on the action, there also are a total of fifty banks there.  Here in the USA for the last 20 years, politicians have talked about closing the loopholes in the Tax Code that allow tax havens.  In that timespan, there have been periods when both the Repubs and the Dems each have controlled Congress separately.  Nothing has been done.  Lobbyists.  More Crony Capitalism.  Democrats and Republicans both are to blame.

Some here would argue that the corporations need every break they can get, and that allows them to expand and create more jobs.  It's the old "Trickle Down Theory of Economics".  Unfortunately, nothing much is trickling down anymore.  The tax avoidance wealth is either being held offshore, or being used to close, dismantle, & ship factories out of the country, or buy/lease existing factories in another country, or raid companies here & the downsize them, or invest in bizarre financial derivatives, or in foreign currencies, or in foreign bonds, or in a number of other ventures that also create zero jobs in the USA.  So much for the Trickle Down argument.  Mega Corporations seem to rarely invest in their communities anymore (or even in the USA); instead, they move their operations to wherever the labor is the cheapest.  Apple Computer is a prime example:  they don't make even one of their products in this country...not one.  Remember that the next time you buy something from Apple.

Meanwhile, the Middle Class here shrinks, wages essentially are stagnant (& have been for 30 yrs), our manufacturing base rapidly is disappearing, jobs are becoming more & more inferior, employee benefits are shrinking, and the income of the Upper Crust has increased 700% in the last thirty years.  Plus because of the crashing economy, in 2016 alone many 401ks already have lost from $2,000 to $6,000.

While eight million jobs here evaporated after the 2008 Crisis, the Mega Banks grew by 37%, significantly increasing their profits.  At the same time, their Executives avoided prosecution for what was blatant FRAUD during the time leading up to the Crisis.  More Crony Capitalism.  Politicians know on which side their bread is buttered.  SSDD.

NeoFeudalism is well on its way to being here.

Not only my opinion.  Be Well

The Truth is Being Sidestepped, Omitted by Politicians & the Corporate Media

Those at the highest levels in politics, along with the Corporate Media, are avoiding talking about the Economic Crisis in this great Land.  For most people here, the American Dream has turned into the Nightmare of the Working Poor.

Fifty percent of working households in the USA now are economically insecure.  They are just getting by... barely.  Many of them have two part-time jobs because they can't find a decent-paying, full-time gig.  Many companies nowadays prefer part-time workers...fewer employee benefits to cut into corporate profits.  Ask the Great Wall of Mart...the largest private employer in the world.  Because these workers are only scraping by, they can't save for emergencies...or anything else.

Many college graduates now are working as bartenders, or waiting tables in restaurants, or working as CSRs in "call centers", or as security guards (the minimum wage type), or as part-time cashiers in retail stores.  Not only have wages across the board stagnated for the last thirty years, but adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage in this country is the same as it was in the 1960's.  Meanwhile, those few in the Upper Crust here have seen their incomes go up by 700% in the same time period.

Ever since NAFTA and other "Free Trade" Agreements were approved, millions of jobs have evaporated from our economic landscape.  Since the year 2000, about 60,000 factories have closed or been moved out of the country.  The TPP will exacerbate the problem.  The jobs replacing those generally good-paying manufacturing positions are mostly, to be blunt, shite...crap...bullshit.  For the most part, they are low-paying, often part-time, and sometimes temporary.  They rarely match the jobs lost in terms of pay & benefits.

The 2008 Crisis resulted in the loss of eight million jobs.  It's clear by now that the cause of that Crisis was not only "greed".  Massive fraud was involved...by Mega Banks, by stock-rating agencies, by real estate brokers, by due diligence companies, etc.  On top of all that, the highest levels of the Fed Gov't were not paying attention to the developing Crisis.  Worse yet, at the beginning of the meltdown and in between the times when TARP was voted down by the Congress and when it finally was passed, the Fed Reserve made between $12 trillion and $13 trillion (estimates vary) available to several Mega Banks in loans at point two-five percent (.25%) interest.  That amount of money is equal to all Fed Gov't expenditures from the Revolutionary War to the beginning of 2008.  Think about that.  It turns out that the overwhelming bulk of those loans was not converted into loans for businesses or consumers.  The Mega Banks either hung onto it or used it for more stock market casino gambling.  Neither action created any jobs.  The Fed saved the Mega Banks instead of the economy of our Land.

What should have happened is QE for the People instead of the Mega Banks.  All those trillions of dollars did not "trickle down" to the economy of We the People; those dollars stayed in the Big Banks.  QE for the People would have saved the economy.  About 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending.  It isn't driven by Mega Banks or the Stock Market...and especially, not by the Casino Gambling done by Wall Street ever since the invention of bizarre financial derivatives.  Those derivatives now infect almost all commodities and stock transactions to the tune of $1.25 quadrillion (best estimate by experts).

Estimates of the real unemployment rate are at about 20%.  Some people have given up looking.  I remember looking in 1997 for what turned out to be my last wage-slave job...the last before I retired in 2004.  I sent out 88 inquiries & resumes, had 16 different interviews, and finally secured a job after about five months of effort.  I was getting fairly discouraged just prior to being hired.  Some people today have been looking for two years; imagine how they feel.

Despite what the highest levels of the Gov't and the Corporate Media tell us, there is no Recovery going on in the U.S.  Any honest evaluation of our economic condition shows that.  In addition, the world economy and financial situation appear to be imploding.  The whole scenario, according to many reputable analysts, is so fragile that we are a hair's breadth away from another Great Depression.  Unfortunately, too many people in Power seem to have their heads in the sand.  Either that, or they don't want to risk putting us into a panic.  Or, worst case, they are keeping us in the dark until they and their Big Business Cronies can suck as much wealth as possible out of the economy before the Crash.  [The last choice probably is unlikely...but I would never say that it's impossible.]

Not only my opinion.  Be Well