Disposable people by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Disposable people

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Monday, December 2, 2013 19:28
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Monday, December 2, 2013 6:34 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Disposable people

This is partly in reference to this thread:

With food stamp cuts, GOP turns its back on the hungry
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=56928

but also in reference to extremely high levels of child labor in Europe since the 2008 crash.

"Child labour in Europe: a persisting challenge

In Bulgaria child labour is apparently very common in the tobacco industry, with some children working up to 10 hours a day."
Many children who used to go to school are now working full time - or more - in tobacco fields. But though Bulgaria is an EU member, maybe Bulgaria is a backwards country and really doesn't count.

So, let's look at Italy:

"Under the headline “Child Labour Re-emerges in Naples”, the article describes how thousands of children (roughly 60% of children in 7th and 8th grades) have been forced to quit school and find jobs in order to help feed their families in the southern Italian metropolis. The article cites a local government report from 2011 which noted that 54,000 children left the education system in the Campania region between 2005 and 2009. Some 38 percent of these children were less than 13 years old."
But maybe Italy isn't a good example of a typical EU country.

The problem is serious in the English Midlands where one in four children drop out early, many of them in order to work under the table, in order to help support their families. (The reference is a documentary not available on the internet.)

Maybe that's more telling. After all Britain is a 'strong' member of the EU.

So, what's the problem? Children who drop out of school to work won't be able to participate in the future economy at the technological level that will be needed. These children will be facing limited futures because they need to work NOW. It's like eating your seed grain because you're starving. The economy is eating its children.

But that got me to wondering - how many other categories have we eliminated from our consideration, and what rationalization do we use.

Inner cities - ghettos must be their fault. Migrant workers - it's their choice. Detroit arson - those animals. Rural poor - who? I don't see no rural poor. Unemployed - lazy porch monkeys. Uneducated - idiots. Industries - we can do better with financialism. Long-term unemployed (especially since 2008) - economic leeches who lack motivation.

And once we cut out areas and demographics - what did we get? Certainly not an improvement. We ended up with a hollowed-out Detroit, hollowed-out cities, hollowed-out suburbs. We ended up with increasing levels of poverty.

So it led me to consider that a system that HAS to write off its parts - that has to eat its children - is a system doomed to fail.

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Monday, December 2, 2013 7:28 PM

BYTEMITE

Quote:
So it led me to consider that a system that HAS to write off its parts - that has to eat its children - is a system doomed to fail.

Put someone in a cage - a pretty cage, with a roof and groceries, some plants and some of those waterworks, maybe even a balcony view of the sunset, and it's still a cage no matter how liveable. Give them no way out and it's a fight for survival.

There will always be the greedy, both sides who are not so different, who say there are not enough resources for everyone for various reasons. So they say we should cut them loose, all of them: the desperate, the sick, the lost, let them fend for themselves, let their children flounder, or better yet, let there be no children, solve the problem by removing those who need the solution.

Oppression is stagnation. And stagnation is death. This is true on every level you can conceive of. The system, and the people, have to evolve. There's no other option. Live or die.

Scientific progress may well eliminate many of these problems in time. So I say let's get to work. Let's defy those who would be obstacles and death merchants in service of their own greed and power.

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