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Edited on Mon Dec-13-10 01:13 PM by Rozlee
"I never got a job from a poor man."
So goes the mantra from the conservatives/teabaggers clamoring for tax cuts for the uber rich.
The wealthy earned their wealth. They worked hard for their riches; "worked hard" being the operative phrase. Somehow, the CEO of a corporation that lays off hundreds of workers when he merges his business with another corporation works a hell of a lot harder than the single mother of two that was working split shifts as a bagger at a grocery store, who also had a night job as a cocktail waitress and was an Army Reservist back in the 90s. That was yours truly. Some of these wealthy don't even bother doing something so mundane as dirtying their hands at labor. They just live off the hundreds of millions of dollars their parents left them when they died. The biggest labor they do is the heavy lifting to pick up their pens to write the checks to the politicians that will pass the biggest tax cuts for them. Forget about the taxi driver who told me that he needed to work 15 hours a day, six days a week to break even--and now also needs back surgery for years of performing such labor; not to mention the insurance he doesn't have to get it. He doesn't work hard enough; he doesn't merit the rewards that the rich deserve because of the hard work that they've done to get where they are.
How about you, nurses' aide? I'm a medically retired Army nurse now; I've seen first hand the work that you do for barely over minimum wage. You run from one patient's room to another; changing a patient's adult diaper here, changing his soiled bed, moving his heavy body by yourself, even though the rules say you're not supposed to, but the hospital is so understaffed that it would take forever for someone to help you. Why is it so understaffed? Because the CEO of the hospital or nursing home corporation that oversees your employer makes more money when he has less staff. Boy, you think you're sweating hard? You should see him.
Cashier at Walmart? Don't even go there. Everone knows that you qualify for food stamps. All of the above qualify for them. But, your employers are the Walton multi-billionaires who trudge home so tired that they can barely stand up at the end of the day.
Rich people give you jobs.
Don't they?
Have you gone to the store lately and looked in the produce aisle? Where are those grapes from? Are they from the U.S.? How about those blueberries? I always thought blueberries were from Maine. I googled and found out that New Jersey has them as the state fruit. We get them from Argentina? You have got to be kidding me. Our grapes are from Venezuela? Our avocados, onions, tomatoes, watermelons, oranges, and apples from Mexico? Apples? Really? Oh, snap! It appears that those rich people really are providing a whole lot of employment. As in outsourcing our agriculture into large corporate farms south of our border to provide jobs for people that don't live here in the good ol' USA. This canned beef here? Argentina again. We have a lot of cattle here in Texas. At least I know that our fresh beef in the store comes from our local cattlemen. Hmm, let's see. Oh, thank Medusa! It does! Huh. It says here on this label that it's a Product of the USA, Canada and Mexico. Makes sense to me. As in Orwellian sense. Let's not talk about all those manufacturing jobs like automobile, steel plants, and textiles. Too depressing. Let's talk about some of these service jobs. These hard-working rich people that deserve all the benefits the rest of us shiftless bastards don't are working really hard again to find new businesses to export in the service sector. Radiologists in hospitals make pretty good money. Someone comes in injured from an auto accident. They're taken to radiology where techs take CT scans and X-rays. A radiologist then views the results and makes his determination and reports it--from India. The American radiologist was outsourced. Who needed him when simply forwarding the X-rays and CT scans to the Indian radiologist was easy as pie and much, much cheaper? Don't laugh. They're trying to do it as we speak. And that neurologist I see for my seizures? Actually, I see a nurse practitioner first. She does a physical exam, talks to me about how I'm tolerating my meds, asks about any seizure activity, etc. Then the neurologist comes in and briefly confers with the nurse who repeats back what I told her; he asks me the same questions she did and electronically countersigns the meds and treatments that she has already ordered. Simple. Any doctor could do it. Especially if he was a foreign doctor from Pakistan and had a camera hookup to her computer and could talk to both me and the nurse about it and then electonically sign off on her recommendations as well. How about outsourcing public schools to a foreign country? Foreign teachers teaching your kids via satellite close circuit TV? No, you say? Think again. Republican lobbyist have been rhapsodizing about such scenarios for the last ten years. Although that last one might strain their xenophobic base just a tad.
Yeah, all you worthy rich people. We great unwashed don't deserve to reap the bounty that your great labors have conferred on you. After all, what have we done to deserve them? That interstate that you drive your $110,000 car was made by some of us despicable slackers (with big government funding, I might add). That escargot that you have with your caviar was harvested by the laziest marine workers you could ever meet; the grapes for your wine were picked by nasty sweaty peons; and your waiter, mon-sewer, might act snooty as is his wont working in a snooty restaurant, but I'll bet you guys give him the stingiest tips. Your gardener probably isn't even American nor is your nanny and you pay them practically scrip; young people go off to serve and die for your country with taxes that you don't pay, another big government program, and your mansions were built with the labors of indolent construction workers that hustled in the hot sun for hours because you needed that behemoth built NOW!
Must suck being so rich and working so hard; being surrounded on all sides by the shiftless masses that keep clamoring for what they think is their fair share. What fair share? If they worked harder, they'd be the ones in the big fancy corporate offices, where you struggle with the heavy weight of that pen to write the check for the campaigns to the politicians that will get you those tax cuts you deserve. Where you struggle with the intensive labor of cutting the jobs of those ne'er-do-wells that wouldn't know hard work if it bit them in the ass. I deserve my $887,000 tax cut. Then, I'll be able to invest it in one of those great foreign economies like we mega-wealthy did with the 2002 tax cut. Poor people and the middle class would piss away $887,000 the minute they got their hands on it on things they consider "necessities."
If they worked harder, they wouldn't need their money to pay for "necessities."
The labors of the poor and middle class. The labors of the rich. How did our society get to the point that a person that slaves hours in 100 degree weather collecting garbage doesn't work hard? And that a person that works in a sumptuous office, cutting his workers health insurance, somehow works much harder and should be allowed to become richer by being given even more money so that maybe he can move some of his operations to another country and make some of his workers join the ranks of the poor?
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