Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers (NYT)

[somone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/10/business/10capital.html

Companies Spend on Equipment, Not Workers
By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Companies that are looking for a good deal aren’t seeing one in new workers.

Workers are getting more expensive while equipment is getting cheaper, and the combination is encouraging companies to spend on machines rather than people.

“I want to have as few people touching our products as possible,” said Dan Mishek, managing director of Vista Technologies in Vadnais Heights, Minn. “Everything should be as automated as it can be. We just can’t afford to compete with countries like China on labor costs, especially when workers are getting even more expensive.”

Vista, which makes plastic products for equipment manufacturers, spent $450,000 on new technology last year. During the same period, it hired just two new workers, whose combined annual salary and benefits are $160,000....

[RKP5637]

1. People are obsolete and many don't care. n/t

[Newest Reality]

2. Grab a ream of paper.

Okay, now pull a piece of paper out from that ream.

What are your feelings towards that piece of paper? Is it not just another, expendable object that is not more important than any other piece of paper in that ream or any other? You either use it now or crumple it up and throw it in the trash.

What was your emotional or ethical investment in that process?

Like or not, believe it or not, that is the relationship that multinational corporations have with the larger part of their employees, (except for the big-ticket executives who are bonded by golf games and exorbitant parties in a very special class) these days.

No matter what you might still think or feel about your relationship to a big corporation employer, (as and underling below a certain grade) you are nothing more than one of a heard of cattle destined for slaughter when the time is right.

You know what? They are cashing in the cattle for slaughter any day and every day now. You really don't have much to bargain with when you are on the conveyor belt to the big spike they shoot into your skull.

That's okay, enjoy what you have right now because you won't do anything to stop this process. We know because you didn't react much or do anything when it was happening to someone else. That's why this system of human commodities works so very well for the ultimate consumer of humans: the Elite families who hide behind corporate veils, no longer needing the pomp and circumstances of Royalty to accomplish the very same outcome.

This is the endgame. Who won?

[RKP5637]

3. The ultimate capitalistic machine breeding sociopathic like behavior. The guy

next to me got spiked, oh well, still got my job. WTF, they're coming for me now. Lambs are raised and breed in the system for the eventual slaughter. The next step will be Soylent Green. No sense wasting a food source in the 21st century. Feed the masses of waiting lambs.

[Newest Reality]

4. Yes!

And that's what we call being a human being with all the science, philosophy, spirituality and meaning that most of us ascribe to and accept as our nature?

We will go silently to our slaughter as meaningful beings, and even as a species, (and even taking all other species along with us) with nary a bleat or even a fuss?

Then I guess it is set in stone. We are defining what we are by are acceptance of what we are told this is and is going to be. Where is the random, chaotic factor of being a human that we are known for? Has that, too, been so skillfully edited out of our nature and understanding by the Simulation that we will gladly go to our slaughter and give thanks as are obligingly brought to our own destruction?

Who can you blame there? No fuss, no muss? We will be the perfect sheeple led to slaughter and, we also bequeath our children and their children to the bloody stockyards of the investor class?

It is really getting to be time for a massive and unrelenting FUCK THAT! Really, think about your trip to the spike machine that shoots through your head and the potential to do something really exciting, meaningful and benevolent with your impending slaughter.

Warriors, (both Klingon and American Indian) always consider each day as a good day to die. Maybe, just for the sake of power and justice, we should consider that as a practical way to empower our people, as well.

[pampango]

5. Glad Vista hired two new workers "whose combined annual salary and benefits are $160,000", but

the fact that automation is getting cheaper is one of the reasons that manufacturing employment declines everywhere. Reminiscent of what happened to agricultural employment in the past couple of centuries as we went from a nation with 70-80% involved in farming to one with 2% working in agriculture. Mechanization (and other changes in the world and economy) enabled a tiny percentage of workers to produce ever more food.

"Two years into the recovery, hiring is still painfully slow. The economy is producing as much as it was before the downturn, but with seven million fewer jobs. Since the recovery began, businesses’ spending on employees has grown 2 percent as equipment and software spending has swelled 26 percent, according to the Commerce Department. A capital rebound that sharp and a labor rebound that slow have been recorded only once before — after the 1982 recession."

"Some economists support policies that might shift the balance away from capital spending. Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University, advocates tax incentives for hiring that mirror those for capital investment. Congress passed a hiring tax credit along these lines last year, but it was not well publicized, and some said it was poorly devised. The proposal is reportedly floating around Washington once again."