Why Oppression is necessary......

We all, to some extent, hold our free market system dear. For the lucky ones with the connections, the savvy, the opportunity, and in some cases some real elbow grease, the opportunities to join that enviable club of the "Haves" are certainly there. Bob knows there has been enough housewives who somehow turned their baked cookies into a full blown commercial enterprise. However, I am sure it is quite obvious to most of us who care to look around and notice that a hell of alot of people never quite manage to figure out the mystery of navigating the raging river known to all of us as the American dream. The reasons are myriad, and yes, some blame can be laid upon many individuals who do not have the strength of character to make any real effort to do what it takes to join the club. However, there is one glaring fact that we all need to admit to before we can begin to understand the real truth concerning the free market system. And that fact is this: the free market system depends on poverty in order to operate.

I know it, you know it, even conservatives know it. The free market system is NOT free. You can see this in the sale and distribution of certain commodities, such as petroleum products. The price of petroleum and it's related products has little if nothing to do, actually, with what it costs to produce it. With petroleum, you literally have your customers "over a barrel", and are free to charge whatever you think you can get away with short of riots breaking out in the streets. Our society was built around the automobile, and citizens in most areas of the country are held hostage to it, so they have no choice but to pay whatever they are charged for it. No gas, no go no where, plain and simple. The government has the power to intervene and apply any number of various controls to control the price of this stuff, but will not do so until the economy becomes so damaged and the outrage so overwhelming that it has no choice. So, when your government is in the control of people with strong ties to the oil industry, you know damn well where their loyalties lie.

Then there's big business and corporations. The real purpose of these institutions is to produce profits, not for these ethereal entities we like to call investors, but for the good old boy clubs running these monsters. They award themselves obscene salaries for their supposed services while controlling the financial fates of millions of ordinary workers. Their job is not to provide you, the ordinary worker, with employment opportunities and any decent quality of life in return for your labor, no, their job is to suck as much production out of you as possible at the lowest possible wage, in order to make those profits they rely on to enrich themselves and their friends. So, if you are basically unskilled or do not happen to have a complex skill that is in high demand, you are basically screwed, for these people could care less about your quality of life. You are made to believe you need to be grateful you have a job at all. Without you, the worker bee, working hard for slave wages, the Walmarts of our miserable world could not offer those low, low prices that our consumer oriented society demands. If such annoyances as decent heath insurance, vacation, or even respect as a human being gets in the way of generating maximum profits, then that has to go. Conservatives bemoan any intervention by the government in their operations that attempt to offer employees any measure of protection, and you must remember, my fellow workers, that these are the same kind of people who employed children as laborers at one time and even now will use illegal immigrant labor whenever they can get away with it in order to avoid paying decent wages or benefits.

I know most of you would like to think that should fortune shine upon you, either through your own efforts or happening to be in the right places at the right time, you can enter the ranks of the Haves. But one thing I would like to ask you is just how much personal enrichment you think is due you? Is one hulking SUV sufficient to make you feel you made it? How about two, plus a nice high performance convertible? How about a nice big house on the waterfront, with enough square footage to house a small village? Would that be enough? Or how about a nice yacht, or two, or just one really big one? And your own personal learjet, we can't forget that. There is just no end to the toys and opulent living available to you, the rich guy, and since you have all this money, you might as well enjoy it, right?

Now, when you do achieve this opulent lifestyle, will you also dare to consider who aside form yourself helped to make this all possible? How about those janitors you employ in your office buildings. Is the 6 bucks an hour you pay him plenty enough? Or could you do better sneaking in some illegals to cut those odious labor costs? Do you REALLY need those 850 skilled workers your factory employs to produce your product, or do you think you could cut that by at least a fourth, demanding that the survivors just work harder and perhaps pay more of their own health care coverage? After all, they are lucky just to have a job, right? Another way you might consider increasing your profit margin is too lure other trained workers from some other company rather than investing in training to provide more skilled jobs for the community. You can always lay them off, anyway, if your profits don't grow every year, like you think they should. Just how much damage do you think you can do before you one day look in the mirror and admit to yourself that YOU are part of the problem? I guess one needs a soul in order to be able to see such a reflection.

Hurricane Katrina has brought forth yet another examination of the growing divide in this country between the haves and the have nots. We will all pay lip service to the problem and then go back to business as usual. The middle class will continue to shrink, the rich will get so rich they won't have any real clue as to how much money they have hoarded in off shore accounts, and the America we once thought we had will simply disappear behind barbed wire fences in gated communities. You think I doth protest to much. I'll meet you at a soup kitchen one day and we can sit down and discuss it over a nice bowl of gruel. I won't tell you I told you so.....I promise.