I was laid off, went back to work at about 60% of previous wage for an ostensibly pro bono state university where i continue to be appreciated as long as i agree to be exploited without complaint. I check the salary surveys and note that I get paid less than the average for my region, field and experience.

What’s my problem? I’m better off than so many billion unfortunates in the undeveloped, developing, and industrialized world; better off in terms of life-expectancy. So i got nothing to complain about.

So i change the focus and ask what can i generate? I’d like to start local in my region and change the way the system functions. For example so much wasted energy for transportation and consumerism could be reclaimed if the geographic layout of the residential, urban, industrial, commercial, agricultural landscape could be changed. That requires capital. I wonder how much i could get by setting up a website that accepts credit card payments and also bills those in cyberspace. I’d really like to separate the fools and their money. Kind of like Marjoe Gortner who made a few millions evangelizing. If a few of you out there would join me in raising money this way, we’d soon have enough to start a charter school (for all ages), integrate that school with local farmers and even provide free lunch to students, and furthermore construct some energy production infrastructure. It would be a collective. If any of you are good at day-trading, your talents would certainly be of use in the spirit of separating fools from their money and investing that money in the collective. Like Gaviotas in Colombia (Google that). Why not start a Gaviotas in the midst of the United States? What have you got to lose now that you’ve already lost so much?

We can represent all the professionals in the US, but as long as we don’t represent the ones being exploitively underpaid in cross-border outsourcing scams, our power to change the atrocious status quo is going to be severely limited at best.

> Consumer Credit Counseling Services is a non-profit organization that could provide
> a free analysis of your credit report and tell you what things you’re doing wrong
> that really have a negative impact on your score. I’m a certified consumer credit
> counselor.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m belittling your occupation, but at the same time, I need to state my impression, right or wrong, that, profit or non-, Consumer Credit Counseling is a shill for the creditor industry invented to indoctrinate helpless debtors into “recognizing” their “responsibility” to pay back money borrowed from those who are virtually able to print it at will and designed to be as creative as possible when it comes to squeezing blood from a stone—or from its hapless victims whose credit will be destroyed one way or another.

> … I must admit to harboring a grudge against corporations who have voided our contract
> with society.

I too admit to a grudge, but I question whether corporations ever paid more than lip service—if that—to the idea of a “contract” with (as opposed to on) society. The Robber Barons of the late 19th and early 20th century had no ethical qualms about squeezing out more honest competitors, as Wal-Mart is doing even as we speak, only to turn around and jack up prices to extortive levels, as Exxon and its partners in terror financing have been doing, once the competition is dead and the monopoly can count on laissez-faire Corruplicans and conservative “New (or ‘Reagan’) Democrats” to look the other way.

It is we, the gullible middle class, who look at corporations as having forsaken their former sense of fair play and community responsibility, when in fact, it was the all-but-extinct Mom & Pop stores that had the attitude that “the customer is always right,” which one never sees these days. It is also we who see the ability of a corporate “entity” to conduct business as a privilege. They see it as their inalienable right, and so do conservative politicians and those whose better judgment can be purchased by the likes of MBNA.

Speaking of banks, the worst offenders and the least honest of all these thieves, the author of the book “Your Bank Is Ripping You Off” is himself a proponent of free-market capitalism, yet he sees the rigged game of banking, and especially the Federal Reserve scam, as immune to the ups and downs of the free market. His ingrained conservative prejudices prevent him from seeing that protecting banking entities from the whims of the marketplace is nothing more than the perversion and complete opposite of the moral duty to protect human-being entities from the scam of the “free market” foisted on us by those who control the legal (but neither moral, ethical, nor human, and certainly not citizen) “entities” that make capitalism the inherently abusive system it is and was, even when it was under the regulations that were tossed away under the scam of Reaganomics and kinder, gentler S&L looting.

Absolutely! There is a class war, but not the bogus one we’ve heard propagandized by disingenuous pundits for the past several years. The middle class needs solidarity among all its members and with those below the poverty line against the greedy oppressor class of banking, insurance, and other corporate scammers. One of my first suggestions upon joining UP was to promote such solidarity through cooperative efforts with SEIU’s Purple Ocean and USWA’s “Fight Back America” associate membership program that I recently joined.

Although I haven’t been a member of any union since the Teamsters (IBT) in 1967, American Bakery and Confectionery Workers (ABC) 1968-69, and Lithographers and Photoengravers (LPIU) in 1972, my father was a steelworker for over 30 years and I was the recipient of a USWA partial scholarship, 1966-69. Having a Ph.D. does not make me “better” than those who may have to put up with more abuse and less freedom in the kinds of jobs open to them. And at least one kind of abuse—age discrimination—is one that impacts us more or less equally.

The Soviets and the Chinese may have looked like the pots calling the kettle black in their use of the term “capitalist pigs,” but given what we’ve seen recently from the likes of Enron, not to mention the corporate control whose pro-fascist threat encroches to some extent on all three branches of our government, if the shoe fits, let them wear it.

Has there ever been a good Republican president? Yes, Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt come to mind. Lincoln was shot and Roosevelt had to start his own party after running afoul of the Robber Barons. In our (or at least my) lifetime(s)? Well, Eisenhower was relatively harmless, even if he did inspire J.B. Lenoir to write the “Eisenhower Blues,” and the only time my father ever had to strike Bethlehem Steel was during the Eisenhower administration. I still remember the powdered milk and eggs from government surplus. I will say with certainty that Eisenhower was the last honest Republican president, in that he warned us of the military-industrial complex that is ripping us off, mainly under the name Halliburton, to this very day. Today, there is still plenty of money for these parasites to “earn” and steal, but there is no longer enough to provide for (i.e., “support”) the troops on the part of those who came up with this meaningless drivel of a slogan.

Just saw the segment on CNBC and signed up. Where to go from here?

Although it looks like I may end up on my feet (assuming my startup continues to prosper), it has been a *very* difficult three years, and I witnessed first hand the lack of a safety net, and the tremendous downward pressure professional wages have suffered over the last few years.

I like a lot about what I hear in the UP Mission Statement especially that an educated, experienced, skilled professional should expect and should demand compensation that can provide for a full and healthy life for themselves and their family. What I would call a living wage.

One thing that occurs to me (and that I haven’t seen anyone comment on so far) is that I sense this effort might be vulnerable to being perceived as an elitist clique with an overdeveloped sense of self entitlement. If UP is primarily designed to help over-aged, degreed professionals that have been laid off, it will certainly have a difficult time building up a critical mass. And, it will be extremely vulnerable to attack by organizations with a vested interest in undermining the success of UP’s stated mission.

On the other hand, if UP is targeting and representing the middle class, young and old alike, then it will be far less vulnerable. As an example, even the CNN anchor had to ask whether UP’s mission overlapped somewhat with AARP.

I’ve got other thoughts on how UP can be vigilant against its own elitism or perceived gentrification, but what do you other blog lurkers think about this potential problem?