IF I HAD A TIME MACHINE

[NeverMore]

I wouldn't mind going forward a few years to find out if today's North Korea news is as momentous as it sounds.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_US_NK_NUCLEAR

[Murfreesboro]

That link took me to a map of the US, but it just said to click on a state. I didn't know what to do.

Mike, you are right about the constitutional issue of the Civil War. And I agree that slavery was going to die out eventually. For one thing, our technology ultimately changed the way we farm. It is also our technology that has helped to make us one nation. It was more understandable to regard a state as a "country," back before people could travel and communicate as we do today.

[Li H'Sen Chang]

There still is slavery we just call it minimum wage.

[Nick Nefarious]

There is so much truth in that comment, it stings a bit.

[NeverMore]

There still is slavery we just call it minimum wage.

Ha ha! Just watched an episode of Dr Who that touched on this. They were in the far future trying to free the Ood and Donna made a comment about slavery being so wrong, the Doc told her the same thing goes on in her own time. She looks and him and goes "what?!". He says, "where do you think those clothes you're wearing comes from?" Nice piece of social commentary from the Doctor.


Oh yeah... Murf, the link just went to an article about North Korea suspending their nuclear activities. The new kid (Jong Un) is already making a difference.

[Pumpkin_Man]

I know all about minimum wage. Been there and done that. And you are quite right. Making minimum wage is not even half a step above slavery. That's how I had to pay my "dues" when I was in college working on my under graduate degree. I worked as a janitor at a brick yard, and I worked at Martial Fields and Sears Roebuck. This was in the day when the minimum wage was $3.10 per hour. When I became a Teachers Aid, I made 3.20 an hour, but it was full time and I was still living with my parents. When I got laid off from my teachers aid job and started working at Sears, it went up to 3.35 per hour, but they would only put me to work part time. 20 or less hours a week. They did it under the guise of "fairness." Then I worked at my school newspaper when I started at Governors State Univ. The job was supposed to pay 4.35 per hours, but they imediately cut it back to 3.35 per hour when they heard I was an under grad. The pay days were on the 1st and 15th of every month, and I was only alloted 20 hours every pay period, wich made for some really tiny pay checks.

The real insult, however, came after I graduated college. I went to work at Martial Fields at the Orland Square mall. Again, the wage was 3.35 per hour, and the hours were part time, and in some cases under 10 hours per week. The last week I worked there, I sold over 20 thousand dollars worth of fake Christmas trees, and that same week, I walked out of there with a "HUMONGOUS, WOPPING, MOST GENEROUS, AND NOT TO MENTION HUGE" pay check for a 32 dollars and some change for a TWO WEEK PAY PERIOD!!! I was able to gas up my car with enough left over for a Big Mack and an order of fries.

So yes. Minimum Wage IS, for all intent purpose, SLAVERY.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I've worked a few short-term minimum wage jobs in my life, too. Although the conditions are very frustrating and can certainly feel unfair, I don't think that kind of job is similar to slavery. It's very discouraging to work hard for low pay, but a person doesn't have to live without hope in that situation. The minimum-wage worker can quit that job, move to another place, re-think his options. A slave has no options. He is treated as property and can never look forward to any difference in his life. A minimum-wage worker may feel he has no control, or very limited control, over his circumstances, but a slave literally has no control over them.

[Li H'Sen Chang]

We need to earn income though and there is no way around it. Welfares is something I do not believe in.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Murf, I think everyone was exagerating a bot, all though not by much. While it's true that as an American we do have a "choice," we are often "enslaved" by circumstances. The rent is due. ( in my case it ws room & board) The car needs gas, and the insurance is past dus. The electric bill is due, the doctor has to be paie, and so on and so on and so on. I would have been in real dier straights ( and I do n't mean the rock group) if I didn't live with my parents back then. The problem is, I was 23 and out of college, and feeling frustraited, discouraged and like an A #1 LOSER because while people who I graduated high school with had fast paced, high paying careers, I was pulling down an average of $16.00 a WEEK. The only reason for that is they had the "right connections," and I didn't.

The Post Christmas Winter season of 1984 was THE WORST ever for me, and my prospects were not looking too good. The good news was that it was a LOT easier for me back then, than it is for young people in that same situation today. Oh, and ther is plenty of age discrimination, too. I'm over 50. I lose my present job, I very could end up right back in one of those minimum wage <deleted> jobs until I'm old enough to retire. So I am not knocking it. I really worry about my little grand nephew. I don't know what kind of a U S A we'll be living in by the time he's ready to go out and earn a living. Will it even be possible for him? Only time will tell.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I realize people were speaking metaphorically. Lots of folks do feel like "wage slaves," including myself at times. But every once in a while, maybe it's good to remember that we are really making light of slavery when we use that comparison.

My husband is a public school teacher. He works incessantly. This weekend, for example, he worked at school from early afternoon until 10 at night, doing paperwork (he teaches special ed in addition to one AP class, so there is lots of government paperwork for him in addition to the grading and class prep for the one advanced class). Last night he came home for supper, then returned to work until 9 pm. As a teacher, he does not get paid for all this overtime, and his salary is not that great (mid-40s gross). The kicker is that his special ed program (his primary job) is working with intellectually gifted kids as a sort of special counselor. Now that the school district has got a new director and is looking to cut costs, guess which program is likely to be the very first one on the chopping block? After all, gifted kids don't need any special treatment, do they? They are smart enough to make it without extra help, right?

My husband is a superb social studies teacher, one of the best anywhere, as everyone who has ever studied under him has eagerly said (good enough that, back when he was teaching 8th graders, the teachers at the high schools around here always knew which students had come from him). Yet he cannot get hired to teach social studies in high school because he has never been athletic, hence cannot coach anything. He has tenure, but it won't mean anything if there is no opening for him if/when TPTB eradicate his gifted program.

He used to work in the city system, but lost out when that school system cut all its grades above 6th (he isn't certified to teach anything below 8th). Now he works for the county. The county is a hotbed of nepotism and cronyism.

And of course, he is over 50 now, too.

We are walking on eggs. We can just barely make ends meet as long as he keeps his job. Without it, the abyss.

I also share your anxiety for the future of our nation, Mike. I think I see our constitution being ignored and disparaged. I think I see financial disaster on the horizon. (You've heard that saying, that if you were to pay one million dollars a day, from the time Jesus was born until today, you wouldn't pay out one trillion dollars? It is true. My husband did the math one day when I was questioning it. And our government is at least 15 trillion dollars in debt. How are we ever going to pay that back, short of monetizing the debt--printing the paper money we need to pay it back? And that's what Germany did during the Weimar Republic. You know, when they had to bring wheelbarrows full of money to buy a loaf of bread.)

When I think of all this stuff, I just think that somehow, people do survive even the worst of times. We have a little ground. We can plant a garden. The sun will still shine. But I do think that our generation has blown it, completely. We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg.

[Pumpkin_Man]

Being over 50 and working in the Education field myself (I'm a pro photographer but I work in the Media department of my local community college) I share a lot of the same fears that you and your husband have. The trouble is, in ADDITION to all the nepotism and cronyism that exists in any public sector employment system today, just getting some one to even look at your resume is paramount to winning a lottery. For each job that opens up, and this situation is as prevelant in the private sector as in the public, litteraly 10s of thousands of resumes and on-line applications gush in via the Internet, and there are is litteraly a stack of resumes as thick as 4 or 5 Chicago telephone directories jost FOR ONE JOB OPENING. They go theough them with an electronic scanner, and the odds that your one resume will be picked out of that huge stack are astronimicaly against you.

And yes, our generation has completely blown it as you stated. My nieces and nephews, like most college students today, have the distinction of being the first generation of Americans who have a LOWER standard of living then their parents generation. And like you, I fear that it's going to get worse before it gets any better. As you pointed out, we may go the same route as the Weimer Republic did, and print all kinds of worthless paper. That will adversely affect my pension, and how well I'll be able to live after retirement, and there's a very good chance I may be forced into early retirement. Another possibility, which IMHO is much more frightening, is that the Federal and various state government will file for bankruptcy, cancel all debts, DESPITE what Constitutional Guarentees we have, and there will be nothing at all for those who have paid into SURS and SERS for years. The government will simply default on the huge debt, and we'll be in a depression that will make the 1930s look like the proverbial cake walk

I very much feel for you and your husband, Murf. I think it's going to take a miracle of scripture to save our country and our livelyhoods.

As for planting a vegitable garden, you still need to own your property to do that. Illinois property taxes are among the highest in the nation, despite the fact that property values have fallen. The value of my house has fallen by 10 grand, but my taxes are actualy up 500 bucks from last year from 2000 to 1500. If I end up with no pension, or the government prints 'funny money' to pay the debt, and my pension and paycheck won't pay the tax, Well, you can surmise what could happen.

I guess I'll take the Blessed Mother's advice, and live by my Rosary.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I hadn't thought about the property taxes, Mike. Ours aren't as high as yours, but anything at all is too much when your income stops. Wow.

I think we should all be praying, hard.

[Pumpkin_Man]

That's a BIG 10-4 as we use to say on the CB. Of course there's another little scenario that I didn't think of when I was writing that other rant. The total collapse of our civilization. The good news there, is there won't be any government to levy taxes. The bad news is, no more law enforcement, and total chaos and anarchy. Ever watch any of the "Mad Max" movies? Imagine living in that kind of a world.

Mike

[Murfreesboro]

I've thought about that possibility, too, although I came at it from a different direction. My husband and I have a DVD series called In Search of the Trojan War, hosted by Michael Wood. It was made back in the '80s but is very interesting still for history buffs. Anyway, near the end of that series, Wood is interviewing a prof, asking what happened a generation or two after Troy fell. He said something called "systems collapse" happened throughout the eastern Mediterranean--several different kingdoms/cultures at once fell into a kind of dark age. He didn't fully explain how this happened. Said something about ancient civilizations being fragile, not being able to withstand much economic instability. It took several centuries for them to build back to what we think of as "classical" Greece. By then, the Trojan War had become mythologized in song. But it was a real war. It did happen.

I have seriously wondered whether we aren't in a similar period, a time of "systems collapse." It seems to happen every so often throughout human history.

[Pumpkin56]

Pumpkin, it sounds as if you and I share similar desires. I wonder if you couldn't find out about your ancestry through some serious genealogical research? Things like birth certificates and places of origin, etc., should go a long way toward helping you discover which tribe your family might have belonged to.

Things took a wild turn on this thread...

I actually have been doing research on my ancestors since I graduated college. There are some parts of the family I can trace back 500 years and some even further. But it's a lot easier when you're dealing with white European ancestry. When it comes to Native American ancestry, you practically need an expert to uncover anything. All I have after all of these years is a few photos and a few names and the trail just stops.