Wobbly Times number 23

Wobbly Times number 22

Productivity is measured as a worker's average output of wealth per hour. You've all done very well! Your productivity has skyrocketed over the years. Congratulations!

source:
Workers productivity

International workers productivity comparisons
However....


Wages and Benefits: Real Wages (1964-2004)
REAL WAGES
1964-2004
Average Weekly Earnings (in 1982 constant dollars)
For all private nonfarm workers
Year Real $ Change
1964 302.52
1965 310.46 2.62%
1966 312.83 0.76%
1967 311.30 -0.49%
1968 315.37 1.31%
1969 316.93 0.49%
1970 312.94 -1.26%
1971 318.05 1.63%
1972 331.59 4.26%
1973 331.39 -0.06%
1974 314.94 -4.96%
1975 305.16 -3.11%
1976 309.61 1.46%
1977 310.99 0.45%
1978 310.41 -0.19%
1979 298.87 -3.72%
1980 281.27 -5.89%
1981 277.35 -1.39%
1982 272.74 -1.66%
1983 277.50 1.75%
1984 279.22 0.62%
1985 276.23 -1.07%
1986 276.11 -0.04%
1987 272.88 -1.17%
1988 270.32 -0.94%
1989 267.27 -1.13%
1990 262.43 -1.81%
1991 258.34 -1.56%
1992 257.95 -0.15%
1993 258.12 0.07%
1994 259.97 0.72%
1995 258.43 -0.59%
1996 259.58 0.44%
1997 265.22 2.17%
1998 271.87 2.51%
1999 274.64 1.02%
2000 275.62 0.36%
2001 275.38 -0.09%
2002 278.91 1.28%
2003 279.94 0.37%
2004 277.57 -0.84%



Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics




Your real wages have gone down, down, down since 1964. At the same time, your real productivity has gone up, up, up. You're being screwed fellow workers and you think you're so classless and free.

And the everyday solution to this robbery of your time, wealth and power?

The Four Hour Day with no cut in pay.

"Whether you work by the piece or work by the day, decreasing the hours increases the pay." Mary Steward, wife of Ira Steward the eight-hour day pioneer.

"So long as there is one man who seeks employment and cannot obtain it, the hours of labor are too long.'" Samuel Gompers, first president of the American Federation of Labor.

"Further steps toward a reformation of society can never be carried out with any hope of success, unless the hours of labour be limited, and the prescribed limit strictly enforced." R.J. Saunders, English Factory Inspector, 1848.

"The limitation of the working-day is a preliminary condition without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive..." Resolution adopted by the First Congress of the International Workingmen's Association, drafted by Karl Marx.

"A nation is really rich if the working day is 6 hours rather than twelve. Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more." Charles Wentworth Dilke.

"The ideal working day of the future cannot be eight hours, for it must be essentially a progressive ideal."/ Sydney J. Chapman

Workers are hired for wages. The total wage bill for the workers hired amounts to less than the new wealth they create during their time at work. Time is the key. Over the labour time, the good or service which the worker is producing amount to more than the wages they are hired for on the labour market. Wages now amount to about 12% of the wealth workers are employed to create in the USA. Another way of putting it is that the wages paid to our class for creating the wealth of an 8 hour day amount to about 12% of the working day or .96 of an hour.

Wobbly Times number 21

Entre Nous Ma Cherie

Most of us

in the industrialsed world

face our banal lives

as REALITY

and tuck away

the fact that we

face nearly

instantaneous anilhillation

a souped-up holocaust

We also may be dimly aware

that millions of children

die each each year

for lack of clean water

(keep that one buried in your misanthropic id)

But

for the most part

our thought-time

is spent

wage-labouring

for the boss

or commuting

sometimes for hours

with TV

shopping and

texting inbetween

roaming past

another screen

sitting front another

Be at peace baby

Don't you worry

'bout a thing

and take good care of your kids

Wobbly Times number 20

Table 3: Share of wealth held by the Bottom 99% and Top 1% in the United States, 1922-2004.
Bottom 99 percent Top 1 percent
1922 63.3% 36.7%
1929 55.8% 44.2%
1933 66.7% 33.3%
1939 63.6% 36.4%
1945 70.2% 29.8%
1949 72.9% 27.1%
1953 68.8% 31.2%
1962 68.2% 31.8%
1965 65.6% 34.4%
1969 68.9% 31.1%
1972 70.9% 29.1%
1976 80.1% 19.9%
1979 79.5% 20.5%
1981 75.2% 24.8%
1983 69.1% 30.9%
1986 68.1% 31.9%
1989 64.3% 35.7%
1992 62.8% 37.2%
1995 61.5% 38.5%
1998 61.9% 38.1%
2001 66.6% 33.4%
2004 65.7% 34.3%

Sources: 1922-1989 data from Wolff (1996). 1992-2004 data from Wolff (2007).

Who rules the USA?

Even though the USA has a democratic political system, the people who have the most wealth, also have greater power to express their political wills. Are the major stock, bond, and non-residential real estate barons running your nation?

Wobbly Times number 19

Winter's End

The bees are humming

around the rosemary

The Sun is warm

in ice-cold air

My garlic is sprouting

green rocket head

up through composted

ever ancient Australian soil

And I'm reading Carl Sandburg's

The People yes part 99

dressed in heat soaking black

beret Basque atop my naked head

dragonfly passing pollen

sipping nectar

me too

Dark

The Sun shrouded behind windblown clouds

nightshade on the mind

a hint of nuclear winter

makes my toes turn cold

Light

bright

white

The page regains its friendly hue

Sandberg speaks to me

to my way of thinking

echoes from a time gone by

and yet

here

Hope is with the general course of history

and the people make history

and tend towards freedom

as they stumble on

Wobbly Times number 18

Destination

In our brief passage through time
we leave our marks
if we try
Some just eat
drink
shit
piss and
wait for the inevitable
guaranteed outcome
Decomposition of the body
putrid mass turned fertilizer
we make the world anew
without our presence
Death becomes life
and life meanders
stumbles
crashes towards the end
again and again and again
We strive through love
to make a fucking connection
to reunite ourselves with our
self-replicating ancestors
microbiologal lives
in hot rocks
and steamy
prmitive swamps
amen
ah hell
most of us miss the mark
dominance/submission kills the spark
But
the Cambrian explosions
come and go
Meteorites hit the planets
Comets as well as asteroids
bringing amino acids
water and our bright futures
through the star dust Universe
Big Bang
banging on for 13.4 billion years now

Wobbly Times number 17

The Limits of Control (2008)

A Bohemian conspiracy!




"Life has no value if four people are being killed every minute and in the final analysis, abuse wins the day." That is a rough translation from Spanish of a phrase very relevant to "The Limits of Control" which IMDb won't let me reproduce in the original because of 'spelling errors'. The great Mexican director,Pedro Infante filmed "La Vida No Vale Nada" in 1955. Might be worth checking out that film after watching "Limits of Control".

"Those who think they are important wind up in a cemetery – a handful of dust". Numerous characters repeat this sentence in Jarmusch's "Limits of Control". In fact, many sentences are repeated in "Limits...". "You don't speak Spanish." The answer is, "No." if you are on a secret mission and sitting at a café table with two cups of espresso. This is the intro you get in the assassin's game. Like Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog" our assassin is in to martial arts exercises. Like "Ghost Dog", he doesn't like mechanical, robotic like abusers.

Maybe abusers are CIA agents in Spain. More likely, Jarmusch's secretive base operatives symbolize worldwide power mongering abusers of life. Maybe, just maybe, there are people out there in the world, some maybe even who have taken psycho-active drugs like peyote, who want to demonstrate to these power mongering dominators that they aren't so powerful at that. 'Life is arbitrary" as the anonymous protagonist of the film played by Isaach de Bankolé says before he strangles the CIA Station Chief, played by Bill Murray, with an old guitar string.

Maybe, the limits of control are human beings! Oh, not human beings who use the various electronic trappings of identity of the modern world. Those human beings can be tracked and controlled. "No cell phones", says Jarmusch's protagonist. And what happens to those in the assassin's conspiratorial loop who use them? They are found dead or kidnapped by authorities who travel by black helicopter to secret bases in the Spanish bush. Yes, murder as a political weapon, human beings killed, even if they are beautiful and naked.

"How did you get in here?" Murray asks Isaach de Bankolé. "I used my imagination." And after all, as the French Situationists used to say, "Imagination is revolution." Imagination is also unpredictable, even arbitrary, so unlike machines or uniformed humans attempting to morph into androids in service to their rulers.

This movie is a secret operation. Think of it as an imagination-trip. Take it and be wary. Sometimes, it's not that you're paranoid, it's that they really are out to get you. Have a care. Don't let your guard down, even for one blissful second with a gorgeous woman. You're working now with Isaach de Bankolé. Let it happen. Let it wash over you. But remember the signs: two separate cups of espresso at one time at the café table;matchboxes (the ones with the boxer on the cover) swallow the coded paper which you'll find inside said matchbox after you've memorized the instructions for the next stop on your way towards ending abuse.