UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS?? CAUTION!! DANGEROUS SUBSTANCE!!
INDUCES SLEEP AND LOSS OF CONSCIOUSNESS!!
Please settle your mind firmly into the recognition that the UNEMPLOYMENT STATISTICS are sleeping pills. Their function is to distract us, to cover up the real problems, to make sure that we do not begin to ask the pertinent questions. In the USA most people know that the “official statistics” are comic because one is listed as unemployed only if one still applies for jobs at regular and prescribed intervals. If one fails to apply one is not counted as unemployed, but as “DISCOURAGED.” The comparison (that I suggested in the Red Book) is that this is like counting as victims of a flood only those who still come to the surface at regular intervals and shout for help. Those who are drowned are not COUNTED – i.o.w. the longer the flood lasts the greater the number of people who do not show up in the official statistics.
But that is not the most serious part: These numbers are much more misleading still because the people who fall into unemployment are only one narrow facet of the vastly larger situation. The totality of everything that is connected with work is falling, collapsing and deteriorating. (In the Red Book I talked about the Pathology of the entire Job-System) The wages, the benefits, the working conditions, the health insurance, the retirement pay, the speed at which people must work, the pressure put upon them, you name it – nothing at all is exempt. Everyone that has any connection at all to work is gradually sinking, slowly but surely into the deeper quicksand in which our system of work is drowning.
Therefore, please, make an effort to not have the wool pulled over your eyes; do not allow yourself to be tricked with primitive slight-of-hands, do NOT for one moment imagine that “things are improving” because the unemployment figures have (temporarily) dropped! Hogwash. Baloney. Nonsense. Our whole culture is locked into a welded shut train that races faster and faster towards a six-storey deep hell. (The spread of terrorism is only one of the six levels of this hell.) The unemployment statistics are just a napkin that the Sleeping Car Porters on this train – our politicians – put on the pillows they have given us so that we slumber while the train continues to speed up.
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1 comment:
Frithjof,
I loved the 'flood victims who only come up for air at regular intervals' and 'Sleeping Car Porters' metaphors! Albeit there's nothing funny about the topic, the metaphors themselves made me smile. And that usually happens when a truer picture could not have been painted. Thanx for a writing-style that always refreshes and enlivens!
Have you seen the 'monster.com' commercial that starts out with this question: "What are you working for?" A good question indeed, but, sadly, the possible answers portrayed in the commercial are categorically welded shut inside that speeding train either on a collision course to nowhere, or heading straight for disaster; given either scenario, it's difficult to distinguish which one is worse. Thus, it's safe to assume that 'monster.com' unfortunately did not consult you before making that commercial. One wonders not only what they paid to have the commercial made, but what they pay for each time-slot(?) It's commercials like this that have me thinking that the dividing line in the U.S. is not so much one of "Red States" and "Blue States," but one of a total disagreement on what constitutes a Resource!
Be well,
Your student,
~David Stevens
(blogger name: Ravi Vesely)
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