I got yer alternative right here!
1. In her book, "Uncle Sam's Plantation," Star Parker recounts her journey from life as a hustler and welfare addict to freedom. The following gives one version of the path to success.
She's talking about you, ErroneousJoe
My, what is it with you guys, that you trot out these self-loathing Uncle Tom and Aunt Jemimas and you think you have an argument.
What does that have to do with anything I said.
I got let go from a job after 6 years of hard work because I slipped on some ice and busted up my knee and required tens of thousands of dollars to fix.
Didn't matter I worked 60 hours a week for them sometimes, coming in on Saturdays to take care of things. Didn't matter that I had seniority on the rest of the office, didn't matter that I developed processes and procedures they are using to this very day.
The minute it looked like i might cost them more than their obscene profit margin, they were pretty keen to get me off the payroll.
So seriously, **** the rich, **** capitalism.
I don't want to see people on welfare, but I'd rather give it to welfare people than rich people.
So, socialism, that is to say, sour grapes economics, is the answer?
You know my grandparents were hit hard by the Great Depression, knocked clean out of the middleclass, lost virtually everything . . . but their trust in God and hard work. But they packed up what they still had, which was a few hundred bucks, some clothes and an old Ford, moved clear across the country, worked odd jobs, made ends meet, started their own business, and built a happy and successful home in spite of it all. They never got rich, but my grandfather's modest, repair-and-whatever-else-you-wanted business paid for a modest house and a modest retirement.
And my father, an aircraft technician, moved our family squarely back into the upper middleclass . . . eventually. He could have done even more had he worked in the private sector, as he was an especially ingenious electronics man who turned down the really big bucks offered him by Boeing, Lockheed, Hughes Airwest and others over the years. In fact, everything I know worth knowing about mathematics, electrical wiring, plumbing, masonry, framing, cabinetry, tiling, automotive repair . . . I learned at his side. He was a self-taught jack of all the manly trades. Comes in handy around the house. I've saved many thousands of dollars over the years.
Like my parents and their parents before them, we invested a lot of time and money in our children's education . . . because we couldn't afford private schools, and the state schools weren't good enough.
Today, I'm a near millionaire, and my son's already there.
My father worked for the Air Force for 38 years out of sheer gratitude to a great nation that afforded him the opportunity to better the next generation. He remains the longest serving civil servant in Air Force history, a record that won't be broken any time soon as the Air Force systematically eliminated civil servants from those kinds of jobs. But they kept him around, because he was
that good. As a GS-15, he was the equivalent of a colonel when he retired. All that on a high school diploma and hard work.
Sadly, this understanding of what America is all about seems to have been lost on way too many of the European and African descendants of America's founding. Asian Americans still get it. African Americans were generally on their way too during the 1940s and 50s . . . before the devastation of the War on Poverty.
My point is this: I just don't get you. What really happened to you? Why did you allow this company to sour you on life and the opportunities that are still out there? Character is what makes us or break us, not the next crisis. I nearly lost everything at one point, but learned from my mistakes and moved on. Work. Risk. Build.
The answer is not socialism, as the attitude it engenders in society infects companies too, apparently, like the one you worked for. I don't understand why you can't see the detrimental impact socialism has on the entrepreneurial spirit. You talk about Europe, where small business is virtually extinct as new enterprises can't get past all the regulation and the staggering rates of taxation, at least not without being inordinately beholden to powerful political or corporate interests. Corruption.
Generally, the essence of socialism in capitalist societies is corporatism, burdensome regulation and taxation, and the redistribution of wealth of social and corporate welfare that systematically enslaves the poor and hampers the middleclass. It's your economic agenda that keeps the little people down, not capitalism proper.
