So I guess that means the RightNetwork won’t be offering a profit-sharing plan
The wingnuts are all up in arms about Obama’s remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today. Obama said that corporate profits “have to be shared with American workers,” and the wingnuts are hysterical because they say OMIGOD THIS IS SOCIALISM. Well, I guess it is socialism in a way; it’s just socialism circa 1910. Back in the days of child labor and Dickensian working conditions, it was the Socialists who argued that workers deserved to share in the prosperity their labor created. So, yeah: Obama’s speech would be totally rad if he were addressing the House of Lords after taking tea with King Edward and Queen Alexandra.
Besides, I thought this was how the wingnuts wanted our economy to work. Trickle-down, rising tide, what’s good for business is good for America, blah blah blah. Yes?
By the way, I used to work in the financial industry, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of Marxism (just throwing that out there in case you didn’t know). We had a profit-sharing plan. So that was socialism? Who knew?
11 Responses to “So I guess that means the RightNetwork won’t be offering a profit-sharing plan”
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Mike McQuaid says:
I really, really can’t understand how the majority of people in your country seem to think evil SOCIALISM is bad thing anyway? It only sucks for the very rich people but yet you hear people who earn relatively little talk about the perils of it. It’s pretty incredible for people in Europe to watch.
February 8th, 2011 at 5:37 am EST -
votermom says:
Mike, the thinking goes like this:
Socialism = communism = Stalinism = totalitarianism = Hitler = Devil.Not kidding.
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quixote says:
Mike, when you’re inside this country, it’s very very very very weird to watch, too. But without the comforting thought that you’re not in the middle of the madness.
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LFC says:
You shared the profits within your firm, a sacred place filled with “producers” and “wealth creators,” not with the great unwashed “eaters” outside. That’s why (according to the wingnuts) what you had was capitalism and what Obama talks about is socialism (the skim milk version). When these folks say “socialism,” what they mean is that the “undeserving” might get something they’re not entitled to. We can’t have the wrong people getting help and getting ideas about who ought to run things or have a decent life.
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Teresainpa says:
business is in favor of sharing pennies with those willing to kill their health and live in a shack with little heat. the rest of us who are not willing to live that way can go to hell. They have their stooge in the white house and they know he will play the company way no matter what he says in public.
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Violet Socks says:
I really, really can’t understand how the majority of people in your country seem to think evil SOCIALISM is bad thing anyway?
Mike, the Republican Party is the party of corporate interests, serving our nation’s industrialists and bankers. Since the invisible hand is actually not at all enlightened and is in fact willing to destroy anything and anyone for the sake of next quarter’s bottom line, the Republicans have spent the past century engaged in a propaganda war to buff that particular turd. The aim is to demonize the opposition, specifically those of us who care about workers, the environment, a healthy society, anything other than the turd.
The Cold War helped immensely in this process, since Republicans were able to conflate any form of socialism with the Soviet Union, our arch enemy. Thus profit became patriotic.
More recently, the Republicans have resorted to the politics of distraction, choosing to emphasize things like race and religion and guns. Most Republican voters really have no idea what they’re actually voting for (the interests of bankers, etc.); they think they’re voting for God.
Most Americans are also extremely ignorant. They don’t know what socialism really means; they just think it’s something foreign and evil.
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myiq2xu says:
There is no such thing as a “self-made millionaire.”
Every single person who gets rich enjoys the benefit of other people’s hard work and genius.
At least the guy who invents something adds value to the mix, so many of today’s millionaires and billionaires got that way by figuring out a way to game the system and extract wealth they did not earn.
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Carmonn says:
In America, “victim” is a dirty word. Many people find it too frightening or insulting to view themselves as subject to circumstances beyond their control, so they identify with their corporate overlords and convince themselves that hard work, agency, and initiative will take them straight to the top. The rest of us will fail because we’re too lazy or not smart enough or somehow undeserving, but they’re rugged individualists and they can and will prevail.
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Swannie says:
You mean the way Arianna will be sharing profits with her bloggers?? And unpaid “moderators” ??
sarcasm alert
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Grace says:
It’s the myth of the “American Dream:” work and persevere and eventually you will be rewarded. It’s too bad that you may die before you obtain the fruits of all your hard labor, OK? One favorite rationale to dismiss poverty as an “individual” problem, are those few exceptions when people growing up with deprivation and lacking of resources, after much personal sacrifice get a higher education and overcome their hardships. I have personally known people like that. But they are just exceptions and do not explain away the problem of the unequal distribution of wealth, which is the foundation of corporate capitalism.
What these conservative repubs call “socialism,” has to do with countries like Sweden, Norway, Iceland, or even France, all with universal health care, workers who enjoy leisure time, paid vacations, and parental leave (for both women and men). And so, “God forbid” that people can stop being quasi-slaves for even a day.
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roofingbird says:
Trickle down, tinkle down, tinkle on, pi** on; it’s all the same.
