Republicans are creating a system cheaper than slavery

[Elwood P Dowd]

Just think about it. Buying a slave cost money. After you buy the slave, you have to give him/her clothing, food, shelter, transportation, and health care. Shipping the jobs to third-world countries and paying pennies an hour is much cheaper. Importing workers from south of the border is cheaper for jobs that have to be performed on site - construction, landscaping, roofing, paving, etc..

They have now applied the theory to high tech jobs. Why pay an American engineer 60K a year when you can import someone from India for half that salary and no benefits. Better yet, just move the job to India for 20% of that salary.

There are only about 40-50 million American jobs that are safe. If the repukes win in 06 and 08, you better be proficient in gardening, guns, and self-defense if you want to survive. The Depression these scumbags are about to create will make the 1930s look like a walk in the park.

[burrowowl]

1. Yes,

slave-owners had to feed and keep the slaves well to work (just like your work horses or oxen). Under Repugs, let them die drinking high fructose sodas and 'bidnez' will get more needed workers from illegal immigrants.
BTW, if you read Howard Zinn's: A People's History of the United States; you will find that many immigrants went back to Europe, if it was bad there, it was worse here (revers migratiom).

[Yollam]

2. I moved back to Japan because I'm too poor to "stay and fight"

Over here I make a decent living. In the states, I couldn't afford a decent apartment.

Isn't there something wrong when a home in Japan is cheaper than a home in the US? I've seen a few single-family homes here in Fukuoka at or below $100K. Not new or fancy, but this is a decent-size city. You'd have to move to Hillybilly Holler in the US to find homes for $100K.

[nealmhughes]

3. Believe it or not, there was insurance that owners put on their slaves!

That was one reason why NYC was anti-war at the beginning of the civil war -- freedom meant no more premiums going into the coffers...

[In Truth We Trust]

4. K&R- Hand counts NOW!!! Democracy NOW!!!

[lonestarnot]

5. Slave labor market pure and simple.

[lostnfound]

6. It's not much different than colonies..puppet governments/bribed leaders

in many cases -- smaller non-G8 countries get to keep 2-bit dictators while G8 etc governments have leaders who are in on the take, like Blair. The former are not much different than the days when the British empire selected someone to run a colony.

However, people aren't powerless. People of at least modest means can band together and form independent centers of production for basic goods -- coops, for example -- and end up creating an alternative to the highly centralized, globally-dependent monstrosity that the Monsantos and Cargills, Walmarts and Pfizers, GE's and GM's are creating.

On edit: The fact of the monoculture which has taken over is part of what is so distressing; the other part is the power which these have accumulated.

[tblue37]

7. We went out to eat the other night.

It took two days to get our food. Apparently the cook's job had been outsourced to India.

Bada-Bing!

[kittenpants]

8. excellent post... K&R

[n2doc]

9. And another reason to not raise the minimum wage

Because it would make the new slaves more expensive. So long as they can get new immigrants to take those jobs, or make existing Americans desperate enough to take them, nothing will change with pukes in power.

IMHO, we won't see a crash like the one in the 30's. That would lead to too much instability and they might not be able to hold on to power even with Diebold. What is more likely is the slow but steady erosion of jobs, wages and lifestyle that we have seen over the past 5+ years (more like 25 counting the job started by Reagan).

[katty]

10. that's the plan for plantation Amurika