Reply #168: Agree on all counts.

[vickitulsa]

I was working at corporate or regional headquarters for some damn big companies which were bought or merged while I was there. Not only is it a big board game for those with enough power and wealth to get into the game in the first place, it's a losing proposition for anyone who does not have billions to play with.

One company that employed me I actually liked and "went perm" with after several months as a temp (I mostly worked temp, period) -- they had good benefits and were fairer to their employees than most. Immediately after a bigger fish gobbled them up in a leveraged buyout, all the decent treatment of employees ceased.

Heads rolled right and left... and strangely, the people they did keep were the crappy ones! Folks they could get to do their bidding no matter how nasty it was, or how dishonest, and no matter who it hurt.

I saw this sort of thing so many times I learned to just get the hell out of a company once takeover or merger or buyout moves began. One reason working temp can be a good thing! There is not much that's more depressing in the working world than to watch employees all around you cease to enjoy life at all as they live in fear and dread of the "pink slip" in their next paycheck, or get called in to be given the ax, or to be told their hours would be reduced along with benefits. It's grim, as you obviously know. Not an environment I wanted to enter day after day.

Problem was, everywhere I went, the same damn thing kept happening! There is no stability in any employment situation anymore for most people. The Big Guys like it that way; scared and nervous employees are ones they can control more easily.

And the middle class are already feeling it, and feeling it in a big way.

The middle class in the U.S. is disappearing so rapidly my head is spinning. If nothing happens to turn the trend around, there will be little left pretty soon except the very few megawealthy and a huge population of worker bees living in poverty. Drones. Beasts of burden who live short, mean, and desperate lives.

And as far as I can see, ALL the politicians are completely and totally now either in the pocket of those big-money power players -- or they are themselves among the power players. Either way, they are part of the problem, not the solution, I've sadly concluded.

It seems to me we've accepted lies and abuse of our trust as the norm for so long we've forgotten things could ever be any other way....