slaves and consumers

Y'know, its a half formed thought, but that doesn't stop me from sharing it.

My friend Dave touched on it here, and that, combined with part of an interview I caught on NPR, got me thinking about how not only do we working americans make ourselves slaves to our corporate masters*, but then we turn around and pay too much of our hard earned money to buy the cheap crappy products that someone else's corporate master has churned out.

I'm no economist, not by a long shot, but it seems to me that we're seeing more and more of The Big (Or Medium) Corporation, paying its employees as little as it can possibly get away with, and even less when it outsources jobs, and, as I mentioned above, cranking out low quality goods and services to sell to us for too much money.

Now I'm thinking of a poorly drawn cartoons about a dog locked into a continuous cycle of producing waste, then consuming it, then producing it, then consuming it, ad nauseum, can you see it as well?

Oh.. I remember what the NPR interview was about. It was a newly elected senator talking about trying to stop letting Big Business legislate. Corporations seem to, in this day and age, have the ability to create legislation which either protects them or adds to their profit, or both. And by protects them, I mean from things like (and I'm making this up, but..) employees suing them when they've been discriminated against.

We've got consumerism on steroids, and Big Business seemingly running the whole show.


* broad generalization of course. I like my job, and get paid okay for it, but still..