public sector workers are a 'privileged new class,' says billionaire

[bcbm]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/voices/public-sector-workers-are-a-privileged-new-class-says-billionaire/6442/

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

More preparation for the attacks on the living standards of workers, which will only continue to increase as the bourgeoisie tries to dig itself out of this crisis.

Those damn greedy garbage men! It's all their fault. :rolleyes:

[RebelDog]

seizing a disproportionate share of society’s rewards

Irony always seems lost on those who own the world.

[TheGeekySocialist]

arrogant twat of a billionare insulting workers?

how long before they make him a lord then?

[Robocommie]

Well it's official then, Mortimer Zuckerman is OFF my Christmas card list.

Seriously though, he should make himself a crown.

[La Comédie Noire]

My dad is a unionized public worker and rest assured he works very hard for what little is considered "generous" in this country. Apparently the elite thinks he should be happy to work 50 hours a week at a low salary as a store manager or some other awful indignity our class has been subjected to, everything else is just greed.

[Catmatic Leftist]

Another QQ by billionaires complaining that their taxes are too high and the poor aren't worked hard enough.

[bricolage]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oTwEGiup_Wo/TS_EJrko8zI/AAAAAAAAFeU/NT37W5GlN-M/s320/Battle_ahead.jpg

I would see the demonising of public sector workers as just one part of an already existing trajectory, the same can be seen in the treatment of temporary workers, immigrant workers and probably other examples that I can't really think of right now. It's all a matter of fault lines, either you can assert where they really are or we end up eating each other.

[Jose Gracchus]

Got to love the tacit reasoning behind public-sector-union demonization: they've fucked the existing private sector unions and their workers, so its only fair we finish off fucking the working class!

[Rusty Shackleford]

Public Sector and Service workers make up a HUGE portion of the american working class. the industrial proletariat is shrinking and has been since de-industrialization.

[Robocommie]

Got to love the tacit reasoning behind public-sector-union demonization: they've fucked the existing private sector unions and their workers, so its only fair we finish off fucking the working class!

Basically. The scum won't be happy until they're driven the country back to the Gilded Age, you know, the good old days, when men were men, and the average urban working class woman was a part time prostitute.

I love how the cover of The Economist makes the public sector union look like some kind of fucking barbarian horde. What utter reactionary scum.

[bcbm]

I love how the cover of The Economist makes the public sector union look like some kind of fucking barbarian horde.

if only they were

[TheGeekySocialist]

what gets me is how the media here are always hating on the unions...ignoring the fact that the unions represent workers, so basically the media are attacking workers...just indirectly via the unions...

[Ocean Seal]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/voices/public-sector-workers-are-a-privileged-new-class-says-billionaire/6442/
A new privileged class says billionaire:laugh:. Now come on didn't he know that he would sound silly saying this.

This sounds like the silly idea that many wealthy capitalists have, that the poor eat up all the wealth. Which is a bit ironic considering that they're called the poor because they have less money, and the wealthy are called the wealthy because they have more money.

Ah the wonderful capitalist prevailing logic.

[Obs]

Actually, they won't be a privileged new class until they string your balding ass up, Mort.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

A Billionaire thinks that under-paide nurses and daycare staff are privileged.

Where are the limits for idiocy?!

[RadioRaheem84]

John Bellamy Foster on PBS?

Anyone else notice that?

[Jimmie Higgins]

It's weird being in California and when the crisis hit, suddenly every right-wing crackpot posting on the internet in California was talking about 2 things: the immigrant "hordes" destroying the country and "entitled workers" who just have it oh so good.

God these people are history's idiots.

The billionaires who actually start these ideas at least have the virtue of being Machiavellian assholes. Amazing that they can whine about "Spoiled entitled" public workers while sobbing over even the idea that the Bush Tax cuts won't be extend forever. Fucking crybabies.

[Robocommie]

The billionaires who actually start these ideas at least have the virtue of being Machiavellian assholes. Amazing that they can whine about "Spoiled entitled" public workers while sobbing over even the idea that the Bush Tax cuts won't be extend forever. Fucking crybabies.

I would give anything to have their fucking problems. :laugh:

[Obs]

I would give anything to have their fucking problems. :laugh:
Naw, man, you'd give anything to have their lives, including the problem. There's a difference, see...

Imagine it's saturday night, you're working a ten-hour shift to pay the rent because your partner had a nervous breakdown and got fired from her job, so she's staying home and caring for your kid (for whom you can't afford a babysitter, so good luck having any free time as a couple) and you're so tired you can barely keep your eyes open but the manager's decided today's the day he's going to fulfill his aspiration of becoming Super-Prick, the Fucking Master of Workplace Misery, so you're not about to have even five minutes to catch your breath. Meanwhile, your own hacking cough reminds you of your ailing father, who just got thrown out of the hospital because he couldn't pay his medical bills and is now suffering in his house, which is about to foreclose on him meaning he might have to live his last days in your apartment. Just as all this runs through your head, your cellphone rings and you manage to sneak far enough away from the manager to pick it up, and...

It's your fucking butler calling to tell you that, somehow, all of your exotic fish, each of which cost a few hundred grand, are floating belly-up in your aquarium. Come on!

[Robocommie]

Obs, you make a sound point. I'd rather not try and figure out how I'm paying this month's bills while also trying to figure out how to dodge a federal tax evasion investigation. :D

[gestalt]

This is the next logical step for the haves in blaming the underclass. First it was maligning of the working poor as Cadillac welfare queens, complete with slashing of the social safety net. Then it was the parasitic unions holding the efficient economy back, summarily crushed by NAFTA and the like. So with the white-collar working class and the precariously employed on the wayside, civil servants and other pensioners are the ingrown hair on the cancer-ridden body that is capitalism.

[~Spectre]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oTwEGiup_Wo/TS_EJrko8zI/AAAAAAAAFeU/NT37W5GlN-M/s320/Battle_ahead.jpg



At least they're being honest about it. I like 'em out in the open about such things.

[Jose Gracchus]

Basically. The scum won't be happy until they're driven the country back to the Gilded Age, you know, the good old days, when men were men, and the average urban working class woman was a part time prostitute.

I love how the cover of The Economist makes the public sector union look like some kind of fucking barbarian horde. What utter reactionary scum.

This magazine was literally part of the laissez faire brigade agitating against famine assistance to the Irish in the 19th century Great Famine. Some things never change.

[zimmerwald1915]

At least they're being honest about it. I like 'em out in the open about such things.
We should only be so lucky if workers' response to the coming attack looked anything like that printed on the cover. My bet is that the public sector unions are just gonna roll over, maybe whimper a little first.

[rednordman]

Got to love the tacit reasoning behind public-sector-union demonization: they've fucked the existing private sector unions and their workers, so its only fair we finish off fucking the working class!Er..I wouldnt worry about that at all. The direction things are going now the working class will be very much alive and larger than ever...Infact some professions that where considered to be more illustrius will end up as poorly paid over worked positions, if it isnt like that already.

To be honest i dont really know who exactly this billionaire is kidding by saying this. In a sence he isnt totally wrong. Public sector workers do have something that private ones do not, and that is concrete rights. Surely, if this was to be abolished, it would only spurn on ever increasing disenchantment with capitalism and agitation that would most certainly lead to class struggle. When this happens I honestly believe that we will see huge change in the world, just i cant really predict how.

[pranabjyoti]

Nothing unusual. In India, this is a common mentality among a huge population of people, who are mostly self-employed (forced to be for lack of job) and low wage informal sector workers. Actually, if this kind of mentality persists among a large section of population, this will prepare the stage for future bloodshed of "common people".

[L.A.P.]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oTwEGiup_Wo/TS_EJrko8zI/AAAAAAAAFeU/NT37W5GlN-M/s320/Battle_ahead.jpg

I would see the demonising of public sector workers as just one part of an already existing trajectory, the same can be seen in the treatment of temporary workers, immigrant workers and probably other examples that I can't really think of right now. It's all a matter of fault lines, either you can assert where they really are or we end up eating each other.

I saw that magazine in an airport in India and was ready to rip that shit up but just laughed.

[gestalt]

My bet is that the public sector unions are just gonna roll over, maybe whimper a little first.

The teacher "unions" already rolled over and then whimpered, as always.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I love it when the wealthy are obvious with their contempt for the rabble. I was listening to the news yesterday, and one commentator said that people who were upset because they weren't going to get benefits from the money that they paid into "the system" all of their lives are like "petulant children". Which of course drew agreement from the host, who commiserated about what a shame it was that the rabble were preventing social security and Medicare from being cut to pieces.

[RadioRaheem84]

I am just shocked at how it's all so damn predictable.

It's like they don't even care to be subtle anymore. They must really think the American people are complete idiots because this is a ballsy move. Apparently, they think the situation is ripe enough to just be openly anti-worker.

I mean how is it that people aren't noticing the blatant anti-worker bias from rich jerks?

[MarxSchmarx]

Nothing unusual. In India, this is a common mentality among a huge population of people, who are mostly self-employed (forced to be for lack of job) and low wage informal sector workers. Actually, if this kind of mentality persists among a large section of population, this will prepare the stage for future bloodshed of "common people".


I think in developing countries it is rather accurate to say that public sector bureaucrats form something of a distinct managerial class from the bulk of the population, and such jobs are frequently filled through patronage. India is something of the exception because its public sector is incredibly meritocratic, but those from privileged backgrounds still enjoy advantages like exam preparation. Moreover, once they "make it" as a civil servent they are really just as removed from the working class as a former delivery boy like Vicente Fox and are really a different class altogether.

And the mentality you describe has long been true in for example China where there are over 100 university graduate applicants for a single civil service job.

In less developed economies the public sector is one of the few major employers through which employees can have a "real job", especially in societies where large private sector employers were non-existent or very rare until recently.

What's troubling is that this same mentality now exists in the so-called first world, esp. in NorthAmerica where public sector is really the last large bastion of mass-unionized employees. This provides a foundation from which private sector unions can develop, something which the American ruling class can't tolerate.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I disagree with your last sentence there, comrade, if only for the reason that the public-sector union bureaucracies have done squat to organize the private sector, hence that "good faith" demand of mine re. the private sector. I know a public-sector worker or two who agrees with me on this.

[zimmerwald1915]

I disagree with your last sentence there, comrade, if only for the reason that the public-sector union bureaucracies have done squat to organize the private sector, hence that "good faith" demand of mine re. the private sector. I know a public-sector worker or two who agrees with me on this.
And you expected anything different? As long as organization remains in the legalistic union framework, public sector workers and private sector workers cannot organize together, except in the biggest umbrella federations. The big umbrella federations which are, perforce, most opposed to any move by the rank and file and the most in bed with the leadership of the big official left parties. And as long as there is no great upheaval within the class, there won't be any organizing going on outside the legalistic union framework. Part of the task of communists when private sector workers were being attacked and their power driven back was to link public sector workers to the defensive struggles in the private sector. Judging by the state of things, and despite what link-ups did occur, we obviously failed. The task now is, at least partially, to fight against attitudes like the ones MarxSchmarx describes, which allow the bourgeoisie to mobilize private sector workers against public sector workers' self-defense.

[pranabjyoti]

I think in developing countries it is rather accurate to say that public sector bureaucrats form something of a distinct managerial class from the bulk of the population, and such jobs are frequently filled through patronage. India is something of the exception because its public sector is incredibly meritocratic, but those from privileged backgrounds still enjoy advantages like exam preparation. Moreover, once they "make it" as a civil servent they are really just as removed from the working class as a former delivery boy like Vicente Fox and are really a different class altogether.

And the mentality you describe has long been true in for example China where there are over 100 university graduate applicants for a single civil service job.

In less developed economies the public sector is one of the few major employers through which employees can have a "real job", especially in societies where large private sector employers were non-existent or very rare until recently.

What's troubling is that this same mentality now exists in the so-called first world, esp. in NorthAmerica where public sector is really the last large bastion of mass-unionized employees. This provides a foundation from which private sector unions can develop, something which the American ruling class can't tolerate.
In India, people rarely talk about beaurocrats, but their target is rather lower and middle level public sector workers. Their mentality is "they work less hard, but earn more". Actually, most people here don't have objections against beaurocrats coming from comparatively wealthy high-class families, because it's their "birth right". But, their anger is against low wage lower and middle level workers, specially if he/she belongs to a lower caste.
In comparison to China, the number is 1000 at least. Here, even candidates with PhD applied for a Gr. D staff job in Railway, where the minimum qualification necessary is 8th standard. At present, organizing an examination for a few hundred public sector jobs is like organizing a secondary level school examination here in India. Even miserable happenings happened here. In Jharkhand state recently, regarding application and examination for candidates for primary teachers, the local applicants beat and and drive out candidates from other states. While as per Indian constitution, any Indian citizen can apply for any job anywhere in India.
In my opinion, the reason behind the existence of such mentality in US is the presence of huge amount of immigrant workers around the world. Specially from Asiatic countries like India. They come to US with their semi-feudal mindset and as they become a (financially) dominant minority, they infect the country with their mentality. I have observed presence of semi-feudal mentality very strongly in NRI (Non Resident Indian) people. They often stuck to it as some kind of identity.

[Mather]

I love how the cover of The Economist makes the public sector union look like some kind of fucking barbarian horde. What utter reactionary scum




At least they're being honest about it. I like 'em out in the open about such things.


Give magazines and newspapers like The Economist and The Financial Times their due, they are written for and by the ruling class, as opposed to trashy tabloids and outlets like Fox News which are just propaganda for the masses.

It's always a good idea, especially in times like these, to keep an eye on opinions within the ruling class, it gives you a much clearer look at what we are up against.

[Jose Gracchus]

Agreed wholeheartedly. Business press is often less doctrinal and more straightforward, and can be quite useful if read properly from a socialist perspective.