Incorporated Job Killers: First They Came for Laborers
Written by Teodrose Fikre, September 4, 2017
First they came for the laborers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a laborer.
Then they came for the receptionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a receptionist
Then they came for the managers, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a manager.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
This was a take on a poem by Martin Niemöller that spoke of the horrors that foreshadowed the rise of the Nazis. Hitler came to power under the guise of nationalism where he blamed the ills of Germany by demonizing “others”—until others morphed into everyone else. I hope people don’t take what I wrote above as a means of minimizing the horrors Jews and those deemed “undesirable” by Hitler endured. I allude to Niemöller’s words as a warning for those who grow complacent and disregard the creeping tyranny of corporate fascism that is choking life and livelihood from billions around this world—the fire is now at our doors.
A lie told with repeated velocity, when conveyed by those who have the status of fame and fortune, is accepted by the public as fact. Politicians, pundits and media darlings—those who are afforded the stage by the Corporate State Media—have parroted the lie that corporations are job creators. This article is thus meant to destroy this malicious myth and in the process serve as a rallying call for the 99% to unite and stop feeding the monster that is slowly bleeding us with the twin pillars of economic anxieties and financial insolvency (read Divest from Wall Street; Reinvest in US).
The truth is that corporations are actually job killers. When companies like Walmart or Starbucks invade our communities, they kneecap small businesses and local entrepreneurs by pricing private companies out of the market. This is not theory, I witnessed this personally as a coffee shop called Tia’s Eatery in Fort Collins, Colorado was forced to close their doors unable to generate enough revenue to keep pace with overhead (read Tia’s Choice). Tia lived right in Fort Collins and her coffee shop supported all varieties of local groups and artists. As much as she did to give back to her community, Tia’s Eatery could not garner enough customers to remain a going concern. Meanwhile, a few blocks down the street, Starbucks was always jammed with people who could not get enough of their overpriced cappuccinos.
The sad thing is that Tia not only had better coffee, she also treated her customers with utmost courtesy and care. The first day I walked in to get coffee at 6:00 AM, Tia—even though she was the owner—was behind the bar with a smile and greeted me with a warm welcome befitting of a king. Starbucks and corporations make a show out of saying “customers first”, in reality customers are nothing more than a means of maximize profits and enhancing institutional shareholder wealth. They don’t care about the community; Wall Street corporations’ only concern is producing month over month revenue growth. As they make billions by destroying local businesses, they give back pittance by way of pseudo-charity—even that “kindness” is only done as a way of maximizing good will on their 10K and 4Q financial statements.
Let us circle back to the argument that corporations are job creators. This is the same lie that is behind the claim that Obama saved this economy or that Trump has been good for Main Street. The statistics that are used by corporate shills like Paul Krugman and government propagandists like the Business Labor Statistic (BLS) makes sense only if you view their pronouncements from the perspective of Wall Street (read Krugman and EconoCrooks). Sadly, this perspective is what too many Americans have been conditioned to accept. So when some Corporate State Media hack goes on the air and announces that the unemployment rate is 4.4%, it is printed as fact when in reality that statistic is a lie straight from Satan’s forked tongue.
The official unemployment rate does not take into account the long term unemployed. Those who stopped looking for a job, those who lost a well paying job and are now working at a minimum wage job, people who receive government assistance by way of welfare and those who are unable or unwilling to work are not counted when the unemployment rate is calculated. When our economy nearly imploded in 2008 and took with it untold millions of jobs and our life savings, people who were forced to work at McDonald’s because they lost their jobs at Lehman Brothers or Wachovia were counted as being fully employed. The devil is a liar; statisticians are his enablers.
This slight of hand is the same way corporations justify the farce that they are job creators. If you look at quantity of jobs created instead of quality of jobs, that claim is semi-valid. However, in the long term even those jobs end up being slowly eradicated as corporations use a global market of labor in order to outsource more and more jobs overseas. But lets just look at this in the short term and inspect the assertion that corporations are job creators. When a corporation colonizes a community, most of the benefits are reserved for the company and few are felt by workers and the community writ large. As corporations get preferential tax treatments and cash payments to plant their flag in our community, we the people get screwed over as we foot the bill by way of increased taxes, lower wages and lower quality jobs.
College graduates are the first to understand the pernicious nature of the corporate propaganda. Not too long ago, a college degree ensured a job paying around $50,000 a year; that was the case when I graduated George Mason University. Now, more and more college graduates are working minimum wage jobs even as they are shackled with debt that is onerous. The only six figures that a college education guarantees now is student loan debt. College students and recent graduates should be united and leading a revolution at this precise moment; they are getting screwed over royally as they are the first generation to be worse off than their parents in the history of America (read Apology to Millennials).
What is being done to college graduates is being done to all of us—the common enemy in corporatism. When the emphasis is based only on profits, who invariably gets harmed are the people. Or nation and the world has become a giant toothpaste tube where we get rolled up slowly starting from the bottom in order to squeeze our wealth upward. Yet, these slick moneyed snakes accuse people like me of class envy for having the temerity to defend our economic interests. Republicans are great at calling victims of this crony capitalism all kinds of reprehensible names as they use call anyone who refuses to bow before the aristocracy of initiating class warfare even though it is corporations that have declared a unilateral war on humanity. Democrats being the duplicitous charlatans pretend to be outraged by the excesses of corporatism even though they are the same whores of Wall Street that Republicans are.
We better wake up to this shell game and corporate hustle before we wake up one day and call pavements and concretes our new homes. That stress and duress you feel on a regular basis as you pay $10 for a meal at Subway is not irrational; all of us are but a few missed paychecks away from homelessness and soup kitchens. The average savings of Americans is zero as the gap between the 1% and the rest of us is the highest it has ever been. I don’t speak on this based on theory, a few years ago I was earning six figures at a corporation called Booz Allen Hamilton only to lose my job in 2014 and feel the injury of indigence and hopelessness (read My Legacy, My Love).
I really want you to pause and reflect and think on this fact. Is this how we are supposed to live? Even those who are lucky enough to have a well paying job in corporate America are rarely happy. Unless you are in a C level executive, most corporate workers are mired in the drudgery of cubicles and repeating the same tedious tasks as corporate jobs become chains by the way of badges around the neck and the shackles of paychecks. We have become a society of hamsters always running in place yet never getting ahead. Most of our money is taken by way of taxes, fees and inflation that is kicking our collective asses. If we retain more than 10% of our paychecks at the end of the month after paying for overhead, it is a cause for celebration—they have made corporate slaves of us all.
From left to right, liberal to conservative and all groups in between are all outrage at the core about the very same things. If we put aside our differences, we would see that “white folks” who get irate at the excesses of the government in Idaho are taking at the same umbrage that is felt by “black folks” in Chicago who are getting shellacked by gentrification. Yet we would rather claw at each other instead of uniting and clawing at the barrel that is repressing all of us. For God’s sake stop aiming sideways, your enemy is not your fellow sufferer who is getting screwed by the gentry as the elites lead you to believe. Aim up! The source of injustice are the few who are lording on top of all of us and using corporatism to reign supreme.
These people are slick and diabolically brilliant, they are going to use Trump as the straw man and blame the orange carnival barker for all that is wrong with America and offer themselves as our saviors in the near future. Do not fall for Wall Street CEOs are the leeches that have been sucking us dry all along. This is why the Donald Trump was foisted on us all along; his diatribes and outrageous tweets are meant to distract us as the degenerates on Wall Street go back yet again to putting a wrecking ball to our life savings and the economy. There is another recession in the offing for there is no such thing as perpetual growth in the realm of our economy. When the next bear appears on Wall Street, watch out because our government no longer has the ability to prop up this system of crony capitalism. Obama’s $14 trillion transfer of wealth to the 1% was the death knell of Keynesian policies—the next Dow Jones dip will lead to a tail spin into an economic abyss (read Unity or Dissolution).
I wish I could be more inclusive and write spread a message where I preach about inclusiveness that chips away at the notion of “us versus them”. But the truth is that they, the very rich who live a life of utter opulence, only see the rest of us as stepping stones and their pets to toy with as they wish (read NGO Hustlers). Although this earth has enough to sustain triple the numbers we have now, the greed of crony capitalism requires scarcity for the masses in order to nourish the wealth of a few. The rich and wealthy, I’m alluding to the top .01%, would rather go to hell with their wealth than they would have heaven here on earth. Though they deploy their wealth to buy up good press and silence one prophet after another who speaks against their hustle, in time the truth will come out and it will be their avarice that shall be their crucible.
Giving our hands to corporations means forfeiting our freedoms and security concurrently. Mark Felt, otherwise known as Deep Throat, told Woodward and Bernstein to follow the money in order to unravel Nixon’s criminality. In that same light, if we want to trace the roots of most of this world’s iniquities, all we have to do is follow the money and it will lead us to a few globalist plutocrats who are enriching themselves by bilking the rest of humanity. We can go on ignoring the suffering of others the same way Germans did when the “others” were getting trampled; in time the same way corporations keep firing labor—that fire will surely come for us. #99Labor4Solidarity
“A lie cannot live.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you appreciated the message behind this article and you too want to stand in solidarity with the 99% without regard to ideology or identity, share this article on social media using #99Labor4Solidarity
Check out the Ghion Cast below where I discuss how unity and solidarity is the only way we can overcome the ways the elites are trying to divide and conquer us.
Check out this Ghion Cast where I discuss another way apart from corporatism, a methodology that places emphasis on people above profits and delivers us away from the Corporate Stat Media model.
Teodrose Fikre
Teodrose was born in Ethiopia the same year Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by the communist Derg junta. The great grandson five generations removed of Atse (emperor) Tewodros Kassa II, the greatest king of Ethiopia, Teodrose is clearly influenced by the history and his connection to Ethiopia. Through his experiences growing up as first generation refugee in America, Teodrose writes poignantly about the universal experiences of joys, pains and a hope for a better tomorrow that binds all of humanity.
Teodrose has written extensively about the intersection of politics, economic policies, identity, and history. He is the author of "Serendipity's Trace" and newly released "Soul to Soil", two works that inspect the ways we are dissected as a people and shows how we can overcome injustice through the inclusive vision of togetherness.
Latest posts by Teodrose Fikre (see all)
- Call to Action: We the People Unite - September 11, 2017
- Enkutatash: Let Our Treasures Be Troubled No More - September 10, 2017
- Conundrum: Making a Difference Without Monetizing Injustice - September 8, 2017
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!