Help Wanted: Menial Labor. Dead End Job. No Health Insurance. Fun Place to Work.

Here's a help wanted ad from the local newspaper:

"Order Picker/Packer
Someone to do a variety of tasks in small warehouse, no forklift. Must be able to lift and carry 50+pounds, day hours. No health insurance."

The ad ends with a slogan: "A fun place to work."

Maybe, if there's a compressed air hose, they let you make fart noises in your armpit. Or maybe there's a TV bolted to the wall above the grease-spattered microwave in the break room. And that, "No health insurance"? Sounds like a regular laugh riot.

Maybe you have to be able to lift 50+pounds because they stack the irony so high. Wouldn't it be ironic, for example, if the front office person who wrote and placed the ad weren't eligible for health insurance herself?

The up-by-the-bootstraps set consider jobs like this to be opportunities -- a chance to grab that bottom rung and make something of yourself. And maybe that's true. For all I know, this job is a rocket to the top of the heap. You're picking and packing one day. You're running the whole show the next.

But experience would lead you to believe that, for every individual who can turn a job like this into a rocket, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who can't. They don't have the intellect. They have other responsibilities. They get injured on the job. They've got a kid with health issues. Whatever.

The reality is that for the vast majority of Americans -- especially young Americans -- jobs like this offer little chance for advancement and no incentive to work hard. The company doesn't care. It's just a job, no matter how assiduously you apply yourself. It's a paycheck without benefits. It's day labor, nothing more.

Meanwhile, out in Washington, the anti-universal health care lobbyists and politicians -- people who eat lunch off white tablecloths in four-star restaurants, not break rooms -- say employers, not the government should provide some form of coverage.

And elsewhere in America, CFOs and CEOs of companies that do provide health insurance discuss the crisis over lunch at the club and decide to increase the employee's share of health care costs 50 percent. "We need to do it to remain competitive. And besides, the employees can afford it. We just gave them a 3 percent cost of living raise, didn't we?"

This is the job market the Bush Economic Miracle has created. This is the future we are providing for Generation Screwed -- and future Generations Screwed.

Help wanted. Menial labor, dead end job, no health insurance, no future.

In America -- a fun place to work.

Comments

[JonQPublius]

US Postal Service has had OCR technology since 1979. But has yet to figure out how to handle square envelopes, and only "competes" with the overnight experts (FEDEX, UPS) by charging extra for regular mail.

Pentagon: $400 toilet seats, $900 hammers.

Air Traffic Control: using a logistics plan devised in 1927. Recent statements by government authorities put a new system out 15 years.

Federalized Health Care scares the dickens out of me. Big Business wants it - they want to offload that problem on the taxpayers. Politicians want it as a HUGE new honeypot of patronage and related legal graft.

The question is: why would WE want that? Does the Democratic Party only want this for the patronage and voting loyalty expected from the poor? does the Republican Party only want this to aid their wealthy Big Business donors?
Nationalizing anything runs contrary to the winds of progress. All of Europe (east and west) is tearing down their nationalized structures and openeing up their economies to the free market. Communism and Socialism are proven to be huge inhibitions on progress and economic growth.

Here's a concept: perhaps fully insured access to the very best health care for every possible ailment is NOT a right. Those who can afford Cadillacs (Lexi?) also pay Cadillac car insurance rates. And if they choose, they buy Cadillac life, dental, disability, and HEALTH insurance.

Those who can only affort Toyota insurance, buy that. Those who can't even afford a car, ride a subsidized bus system. Not as nice as a Cadillac, but a form of conveyance nonetheless. Should we simply accept that we need to make sure the poor and the working poor have basic health coverage; and also accept that as people move up the economic ladder, they will earn enough to proved access to better everything? cars, homes, insurance, medical care?

[SisterAnn]

The buying power of the dollar is 30% less than it was 5 years ago in this country. There is a sense of total unfairness growing across the country.

Still the neocon government is not satisfied they have privatised and made profitable even Medicare letting it be bankrupted.

They want to push us into investments so more profit can be made. They want to destroy Social Security. They don't want to pay back Social Security because that two trillion is needed for the government pensions.

Everyone will have pensions from the police and firefighters to George Bush. He will get half a million a year and Laura gets some too. The rest of us will work until we are 70 paying with reduced benefits to pay for the other group's retirements.

Plus most of the other groups have investment plans, matched by us the taxpayer, because they work for us.

It is odd how they work for us when it comes to funding their retirements, but are not for us when it comes to fairness.

There is nothing wrong with expecting a living wage for work. The lack of respect for work is shameful.

I have made money in the stock market, while sleeping. I have earned money working, where I had to get up early, wake the kids, feed and dress them, take them out in the cold, gas up the car and pay a fortune for someone to watch them, someone who was doing it for the money.

There is no comparison in the way the money was made. But money earned in the stock market is taxed at 15%. Money we earn is taxed at 25%. How is that fair?

Don't tell me it is because of the risk of the market. Then I would have to ask why they want us to risk our retirement in the market.

[The Collinbrandt]

I am The Collinbrandt, the keeper of the forest is now the keeper of mankind. I am the master of warfare and I hate it but, when I see the starving children all around me I know I, The Collinbrandt have no choice. War is the last thing I want for my country and civil war between the rich and poor in this country, means, everything has failed.

[rixhex56]

This statement has always been true:

"But experience would lead you to believe that, for every individual who can turn a job like this into a rocket, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people who can't."

I have always been cynical about the myth created by pointing to one success story and simply saying "Anyone can do that if they work hard enough." What a crock.

[rh654]

This type of job market:

A) Existed long before Bush was President.
B) Will exist long after Bush leaves.
C) Is not a creation of Bush
D) Is what happens when other countries build up their infrastructure and can start building things cheaper.
E) And is what happens when Americans love to buy the least expensive product - without regard to where it was made.

Given that we provide free education to children (not all schools are equal but they are there and better than no education) and there are low cost Junior Colleges all over the country - lets face it, unless someone had the bad luck to be born with a very low IQ, there is opportunity for people to get educated and not have to just get by with dead end jobs.

Like I always say, if someone born and raised in the U.S. is ends up competing for the lowest level jobs they need to look in the mirror not at society.

[themodernleader]

When the men of words conspire with the power ellite, the average American is checkmated. This morning I watched on C-Span an "economic journalist", founder of The American Prospect, a self-proclaimed periodical of liberalism, who was pitching his book on health care or lack of health care in our forsaken land.
As an aside he said that we will remain a service economy because we can not compete in manufacturing in the world market with other countries. The assumption being that we can be a great country by solely serving ourselves and others. How was not explored.
Both the right wing and left wing intellectuals preach the same doctrine of the wonders of free trade as our benighted Country is bankrupted and our citizentry are left with no future except poverty and serving the aspirations of predatory masters of unwonted wealth and ownership.

[blowoutfan]

"Meanwhile, out in Washington, the anti-universal health care lobbyists and politicians -- people who eat lunch off white tablecloths in four-star restaurants, not break rooms -- say employers, not the government should provide some form of coverage."

The politicians who get their care paid for! Yay!

[scooperss]

I asked my grown son this morning who he was going to vote for in the presidential election.
His response

Doesn't matter who I vote for I'm going to get screwed.

[LateDave]

My daddy told me 40+ years ago, "We cannot all prosper taking in each other's washing." A thriving economy based on service jobs is a delusion. As the hysteria of American consumerism is dislocated by loss of the manufacturing jobs that have historically served as the engine propelling the service sector, there is no basis for support for our unique standard of living.

Recall that prostitution used to be called "living without visible means of support." Notice that the advice of the "president" on the occasion of a "war" was to go shopping. America is being turned into just another whore; this administration is the pimp.

[gopindrag]

To paraphrase, "Greed is my God," and I worship everyday.

[outnow]

Take this job and outsource it! Manufacturing jobs all went overseas. Free trade policies prevailed in England, and look what happened. We have stepped into the shoes of the British after WW II. Now we feel the sorrows of empire as we police the world. The problem is that China is getting stronger and the higher prices for oil are benefiting Russia, Venezuela, and Iran. Our infrastructure is being privatized, social services cut, and civil rights eliminated. The dollar is falling, foreclosures and bankruptcies increasing, wealth is shifted upwards, and the lack of regulation of international financial markets is taking its toll. Unless you are in oil, oil services, or defense contracting, there is no future for you. Even if you are set, your children will be paying back the debt incurred for a generation to come. When you compute the price of fuel and food, there are falling wages as adjusted for inflation.

Since Ronald Reagan declared war on the middle class in America, two presidents have run up debt, Reagan and Bush, Jr. The interest on the 5 trillion debt is the cost of two Iraq wars simultaneously. That's right, the interest alone is $400 billion per year on our debt run up by Bush, Jr., according to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prise winning economist, in his Vanity Fair article. Worse than the cost of the war in Iraq!

[Libsrule]

ChiMichael pretty much nailed it.

We have CEO's and other top level management who are happy as hell to fire everyone, move the operations to China, give themselves huge raises and could give a flying fuck about the middle class of America.

I just can't understand how they love money so much that destroying the middle class of America is what they are aiming for.

There seems to be a concerted effort to return America to the days of robber barons. Where there were no unions, no middle class and no benefits of any kind up to and including safe working conditions, health care and retirement after a lifetime of working for a company.

These guys long for the days of the early 1900's. The Poor, the working poor, and the ruling elite with a tiny middle management class. And they don't see the damage, just the profits. It's a shame they can't be forced to live in the country where they move their company to.

See how they like supporting a communist, repressive regime and have to live under it as well.

We are digging our own graves with shovels made in China.

[lgillooly]

What did you expect? Did anyone read his resume or was having a beer at a barbecue the only factor to vote for him. Wake up America!!

[esquire07]

America is a failing Empire. Things in the United States are going to get real messy.

Economic collapse, Bankruptcy, Depression, Riots, more False Flag Operation.

American lies and greed are will eventually destroy the Empire. The Treasury has been looted.

Americans are soon going to have to face it, the once great Nation is falling to pieces.

Americican citizens, Dead Troops, Health Care - none of it matters. All that maters is profit, profit, profit.

Get in line America - the soup lines are coming.

[Overd0g]

If you object to the job, don't take it.