Day: November 24, 2021

Closing Thought–24Nov21

It appears the workers have found a new clout basically because of the pandemic…..companies are starting to run scared…..workers are getting in control of their destinies…..I appears…..

The pendulum has swung toward the labor force, and US workers are taking advantage of it. With their pick of employment opportunities these days, more Americans than ever—4.4 million—left their jobs in September, CNN reports. That could become the norm. “Labor now has the initiative, and the era of paying individuals less than a livable wage has ended,” said one economist. “This strongly suggests that rising wages are going to be part and parcel of the economic landscape going forward.”

Those workers had 10.4 million vacant jobs to choose from in September, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Employers in health care and state and local government especially are dealing with more openings. There were slightly more vacant jobs overall in August, but that total was affected by the steady decline in hiring for leisure and hospitality jobs. While there were 7.4 million unemployed workers last month, per the Wall Street Journal, the site Indeed.com figured the number of US openings at 11.2 million. Workers also set a record in September with a quit rate of 3%, which refers to how many workers left their jobs as a share of overall employment.

The shift can be attributed to several factors, per the Washington Post. Some employers improved pay and benefits to attract hires. Coronavirus infections caused by the delta variant increased, making child care and school attendance less certain, and some workers were less eager to stay in jobs that require dealing with the public—including health care and education. Retirements were up. “Workers are fed up with working conditions and feel unsafe and quitting even though they might not immediately jump into a new job,” said an economist for Glassdoor.

This could be monumental for any labor movements….the workers are asserting themselves as they should have been doing for decades.

Turn The Page!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving….please be careful and be safe……

Thanksgiving Day 2021: Recipes, Traditions, and Trivia - Farmers' Almanac

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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The Political Slide Is Almost Complete

I have been watching our political system for decades and always saw some chance for a more representative government that was until 1980 and the election of Reagan wedge issues started sneaking into the discourse…..then in 1992 and the election of a corporate stooge made the slide more easily achieved…..and then 2010 arrived and the rise of the wedge issue dominance…and the slide gained momentum…..and here we are today…..a system in chaos.

Some ask why has this been allowed to flourish…..

Political inaction is the key to this devastation of our political system….

Speaking to Salon’s Chauncy de Vega about how the United States is mired in a crisis of democracy that shows parallels with Germany’s descent into Nazism during the 1930s, Norman Ornstein recently noted that “Most people don’t pay close attention, day to day, to what’s going on” in the political sphere.

Speaking just anecdotally, my guess is that Ornstein is correct.  In my experience, most people I talk to outside of my pre-existing left circles have only the foggiest notion about the specifics and meaning of current events. “The news” holds little real interest and significance for everyday Americans. And the notion of doing the work to “pay close attention, day to day,” is simply beyond the pale of imaginable life activity for most ordinary citizens in the nation that absurdly claims to be the world’s greatest democracy.

This is a problem – at least it is a problem for those who would like to live in a polity rooted in popular sovereignty and a society committed to the common good. It is an appropriate longstanding truism that democracy is impossible without an informed citizenry paying informed attention to political developments. Public knowledge is a matter of life and death, like when people learn on the radio or television that they must evacuate because a major hurricane. The political hurricane of white nationalist authoritarianism – fascism, American-style – is bearing down on the United States today (anyone who thinks it has gone away because Joe Biden is president is living in denial.)

On Mass Political Inattention

Militant ignorance is our biggest answer….

With apologies to Paul Simon, and despite all of the information available to the mortal man, there are still millions of Americans who currently believe they’re gliding down the highway when in fact they’re slip slidin’ away.

It is the root cause of our problems with China. It’s why some people don’t want to get vaccinated. It’s why some people still gleefully follow Donald Trump. It explains why Congress can’t get together in a bipartisan fashion to deal with infrastructure, health care and gun control. It’s why we have problems understanding climate change. It explains voter suppression. It’s why “critical race theory” has become controversial, why elements of our population on the left and right are at war with each other and why some believe the earth is flat and the Holocaust didn’t occur. It’s why some of us believe we’re still the “No. 1” nation in the world when — other than having the largest military — we clearly lag behind other major nations in many critical factors. More than anything else it explains why we fail.

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/28/dumbass-nation-our-biggest-national-security-problem-is-americas-vast-and-militant-ignorance/

Until the voter backs away from Facebook and Twitter this slide will continue until there is nothing left of this country but division and hatred….and we are well on the way today.

Is this the future you want?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”