My friend and I have made a decent living in the remodeling business for the last twenty years. We make new cabinets for kitchens, living rooms etc. and install them for private homes and various motels in the area. When the economy crashed, life became very difficult for many months when nobody did any home or motel improvements.
We were asked to give a bid recently for some new cabinets at a motel we have done a lot of work at a few years ago. We were underbid by a company that got them made by a prison, marked them up and shipped them. You read that right, we can't compete with prison labor that is paid 75 cents or a dollar an hour.
FishOutofWater posted a diary about arrests at schools in Texas for some relatively minor infractions.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Is this the labor force of the future?
It seems like a bleak vision of capitalism with cancer, with an appetite that can not be satisfied until there is no oxygen in the room, only carbon dioxide that leaves everything gasping.
Capitalism gone nuclear with no controls, melting down, consuming itself.
Is it any wonder some people are losing confidence and turning away from the F** tele-vision of the future and inward towards their local community for meaning and possibility? Can my local community learn to become much more self sufficient quickly enough?
The Fear and Loathing Mongerers of the extremist faction of the Republicans appears hell bent on proving to us that when we look towards D.C. we will only see insanity and catatonia. No leadership there, only the inmates who escaped from the asylum. They are the proof, their self fulfilling prophecy.
However! I can not dwell long in that cold and dark vision before I get bored and remember that I don't have to buy into that possible version of the future, that paranoid version. My friends and I remember that it is not the end of the world, it is the end of the old way of looking at the world fraught with maybe bogeymen around every corner. We are not carrying the dark jungle around in our brains anymore. We have evolved, the majority of us. The old way, while useful at the time, is no longer functional and should not be taught to impressionable youth.
I will quit this stream-of-consciousness ramble for now.................