Quote:
Originally Posted by tmg19103
Corporate America used to have what I will call, for lack of a better term, an unsaid social contract with both blue collar and white collar employees. It was basically along the lines of: You work hard for me and I will give you a fair wage and job security.
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You lost me right there, there's no factual basis for that belief. American business has never had a dominant culture like that. Japan used to, but no longer does.
When did American businesses have such a partnership or contract with workers? When the mine operators ran company towns that pushed their workers further into debt while they worked 80-hour weeks and got black lung? When union busters hired detectives to machine-gun striking workers? When it required Federal legislation to limit work hours, pay overtime rates, and get a day off once in a while? Did the Molly Maguires rise up to demand a lower co-pay and free child care, or was there a deeper problem?
I think that many CEO's are paid far too much, and that's an issue for the shareholders to address. But we don't officially live under socialism, at least not yet, and it's a false premise to imply that paying CEO's more means paying workers less. In fact, any business will pay its workers the market rate, and any excess income goes to the shareholders, who own the business. BTW, unions and retirement accounts own a HUGE chunk of the stock market, so those profits go to the workers who invested in the stocks.
On a separate but related note, I have little tolerance for people who discuss "poverty" like it's a migrating weather system, or a drought, or a plague that just strikes people. When a huge part of a city is poor, it's a sign that fundamental changes are needed. Maybe they should move somewhere where they could get a job. Maybe they shouldn't have started families first, THEN tried to figure out how they would pay for 18 years of obligations.
Poverty is just people who don't earn enough money. It's the default condition. Doing nothing keeps you poor, just like not walking towards your destination keeps you where you started. Doing the wrong things will keep you poor. To not be poor, you have to do the right things. We as a society offer 12 years of free education, so there's no excuse for being illiterate. Anyone who drops out of school without a job lined up will likely be poor. Any girl who gives birth at 16 will likely be poor, and so will her bastard children. Anyone with multiple arrests by age 18 will likely be poor.
Really, if you eliminate the criminals, the illiterate, and the economically non-viable "single parent households" from the math, how much poverty is left in Philadelphia? Shouldn't Philadelphia's government be fighting crime, illiteracy and pregnant unwed girls, instead of blaming guns and suburbanites?
Philadelphia has 30-story buildings filled with good jobs in banking, insurance, law, import/export, whatever you want; the city has to import suburbanites to fill these jobs. It has port facilities and an established infrastructure, an airport and highways. It has a bunch of colleges and trade schools. There are plenty of jobs, it's just that too many of the residents are useless parasites without skills or reliability.
Much like Soylent Green, Philadelphia's troubles are made from people.