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Random Thoughts
Poikilotherms,
Slave Labor and Crony Capitalism
by
Gaurang Bhatt, MD
Warm-blooded animals like
us (mammals) maintain a steady temperature different from the ambient
one and sweat to cool off and shiver to warm up. Frogs (amphibians),
lobsters (crustaceans) etc. are poikilothermic and their body
temperature is the same as the environment. Their nervous systems are
geared to detect rapid and large temperature alterations and react
defensively to them. If a frog is thrown into a pan of hot water it will
jump out. If on the other hand if it is put in a pot of water that is
gradually heated, it will stay put and be boiled to death. In fact that
is one way lobsters are cooked.
Human labor has been historically exploited in a similar fashion.
Serfdom, caste system and slavery were used to mentally and physically
coerce the poor, uneducated and intimidated to work for unfairly small
or no wages, while the rich and powerful reveled in the fruits of their
labor. The abolition of slavery after the American Civil War brought
about no lasting change. The agricultural system of the US south
depended on cheap or free labor. The victorious northern armed forces
and political leaders with limited attention span for the suffering of
the freed slaves and lack of general interest and covert racism allowed
the southern politicians to enact Jim Crow laws. A common statute still
misused by police all over the US is that of vagrancy. The police on
suspicion, often unjustified and without cause, can accuse a person of
loitering and vagrancy and incarcerate the accused for lack of gainful
employment or legal purpose. In the civil war era, there was no
universal photo identification or employee ID card and blacks were
imprisoned by the police and then hired out as convict labor or enforced
slavery. A recent book by a WSJ reporter details this abuse that lasted
well into the nineteen fifties.
This atrocious practice persists in agriculture and textile industries
even today in the US. Migrant farm laborers are underpaid, abused and
held captive. Only now they are from Central America. Similarly the US
Congress (scum buckets) has passed a law, exempting workers in American
Samoa from minimal wage laws. This allows the factories to hire Chinese
and Filipino women and underpay and exploit them. A few years ago fire
led to the death of workers in sweatshops in the Los Angeles garment
district. A recent incident of protesting workers imported from India as
pipe fitters is another telling example. Certain types of H1B and L
visas leave IT workers to the exploitative mercy of their unscrupulous
employers.
There is more than one way to skin the cat. Leaving the minimum wage
unchanged for years or a decade while inflation eats away the worth of
the pay is a different way of exploitation. The poor, unskilled and the
young (school teenagers) are abused willingly but knowingly in this
fashion. These are ways to enrich small businesses under the pretext
that white teenagers are only working for pocket money and black ones
are too unskilled to deserve more. COLA adjustments for retirees and
frequent substantial pay raises for elected officials and company
executives require no prodding. In India domestic workers and daily wage
laborers face the same abuse, as their pay remains the same even as
inflation is galloping.
To the shame of America and the executive, legislative and judicial
branches, it was the progressives, socialists, communists and unions of
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we have to thank for
a forty-hour week, overtime pay and improved working conditions. The
Supreme Court judgment in US vs. Lochner is as bad as the Dred Scott and
Plessey vs. Ferguson verdicts. The Reagan and Thatcher era destroyed the
unions (air traffic controllers) and wages have not kept up with
productivity or inflation. The incomes of the top 1% and really only the
top .1% have reaped the gains. Now with rising oil price, galloping
inflation, a sinking housing market, increasing job losses all due to
the mismanagement of corporate executives with lack of supervision by
the Fed, SEC and other regulators, connivance by the Congress and an
idiotic ignorant president, we as a nation are up the creek.
Socialism for the rich and jungle capitalism for the common man is
manifested in rescuing Bear Stearns, other investment banks and
brokerages by letting them borrow from the fed window, while workers�
pensions and 401Ks evaporate by market meltdowns or Enron, WorldCom and
similar misappropriations and scams. Public money is wasted on pork
barrel projects like the bridge to nowhere, earmarks and unaccounted
defense spending on sweetheart contracts without competitive bidding.
Now the chickens have come home to roost like the Taliban and Al Qaeda
that the US financed and nurtured to become our Frankensteins. Our young
men and women are dying and becoming disabled and lack adequate medical
care and economic support and guidance. Automobile and airline
industries are gasping their dying breath. Congress and the president
fiddle as America burns. It is gotterdamerung time in the last act of
Wagner�s opera.
June 29,
2008
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