Whats Happening To Overtime...

[Alex H]

Originally posted by vidcc+15 April 2004 - 16:58--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (vidcc @ 15 April 2004 - 16:58)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> Even the most anti american flamer on the board knows that when Bush talks about American interests it&#39;s just political speak for corporate interests. [/b]

The fact that I wasn&#39;t mentioned by name is a bit disapointing.

Michael Moore (stop reading now if you are too closed-minded to think about this) made an interesting point in his book Downsize This&#33; about layoffs and profits:

<!--QuoteBegin-Michael Moore &#045; Downsize This&#33;
Why Doesn&#39;t GM Sell Crack?
People in the business world like to say, "Profit is supreme." They like chanting that.
"Profit is king." That&#39;s another one they like to repeat. They don&#39;t like to say, "I&#39;ll pick up the check."
That means less profit. Profit is what it&#39;s all about. When they say "the bottom line," they mean their
profit. They like that bottom line to contain a number followed by a lot of zeroes.
If I had a nickel for every time I heard some guy in a suit tell me that "a company must do whatever is
necessary to create the biggest profit possible," I would have a very big bottom line right now. Here&#39;s
another popular mantra: "The responsibility of the CEO is to make his shareholders as much money
as he can."
Are you enjoying this lesson in capitalism? I get it every time I fly on a plane. The bottom−line feeders
have all seen Roger &Me, yet they often mistake the fuselage of a DC−9 for the Oxford Debating
Society. So I have to sit through lectures ad nauseam about the beauties of our free market system.
Today the guy in the seat next to me is the owner of an American company that makes office
supplies—in Taiwan. I ask the executive, "How much is &#39;enough&#39;?"
"Enough what?" he replies.
"How much is &#39;enough&#39; profit?"
He laughs and says, "There&#39;s no such thing as &#39;enough&#39;&#33;"
"So, General Motors made nearly &#036;7 billion in profit last year—but they could make &#036;7.1 billion by
closing a factory in Parma, Ohio, and moving it to Mexico—that would be okay?"
"Not only okay," he responds, "it is their duty to close that plant and make the extra &#036;.1 billion."
110
"Even if it destroys Parma, Ohio? Why can&#39;t &#036;7 billion be enough and spare the community? Why ruin
thousands of families for the sake of &#036;.1 billion? Do you think this is moral?"
"Moral?" he asks, as if this is the first time he&#39;s heard that word since First Communion class. "This is
not an issue of morality. It is purely a matter of economics. A company must be able to do whatever it
wants to make a profit." Then he leans over as if to make a revelation I&#39;ve never heard before.
"Profit, you know, is supreme."
So here&#39;s what I don&#39;t understand: if profit is supreme, why doesn&#39;t a company like General Motors
sell crack? Crack is a very profitable commodity. For every pound of cocaine that is transformed into
crack, a dealer stands to make a profit of &#036;45,000. The dealer profit on a two−thousand−pound car is
less than &#036;2,000. Crack is also safer to use than automobiles. Each year, 40,000 people die in car
accidents. Crack, on the other hand, kills only a few hundred people a year. And it doesn&#39;t pollute.
So why doesn&#39;t GM sell crack? If profit is supreme, why not sell crack?
GM doesn&#39;t sell crack because it is illegal. Why is it illegal? Because we, as a society, have
determined that crack destroys people&#39;s lives. It ruins entire communities. It tears apart the very
backbone of our country. That&#39;s why we wouldn&#39;t let a company like GM sell it, no matter what kind of
profit they could make.
If we wouldn&#39;t let GM sell crack because it destroys our communities, then why do we let them close
factories? That, too, destroys our communities.
As my frequent−flier friend would say, "We can&#39;t prevent them from closing factories because they
have a right to do whatever they want to in order to make a profit."
No, they don&#39;t. They don&#39;t have a "right" to do a lot of things: sell child pornography, manufacture
chemical weapons, or create hazardous products that could conceivably make them a profit. We can
enact laws to prevent companies from doing anything to hurt us.
And downsizing is one of those things that is hurting us. I&#39;m not talking about legitimate layoffs, when
a company is losing money and simply doesn&#39;t have the cash reserves to pay its workers. I&#39;m talking
about companies like GM, AT and GE, which fire people at a time when the company is making record
profits in the billions of dollars. Executives who do this are not scorned, picketed, or arrested—they
are hailed as heroes&#33; They make the covers of Fortune and Forbes. They lecture at the Harvard
Business School about their success. They throw big campaign fund−raisers and sit next to the
President of the United States. They are the Masters of the Universe simply because they make huge
profits regardless of the consequences to our society.
Are we insane or what? Why do we allow this to happen? It is wrong to make money off people&#39;s
labor and then fire them after you&#39;ve made it. It is immoral for a CEO to make millions of dollars when
he has just destroyed the livelihood of 40,000 families. And it&#39;s just plain nuts to allow American
companies to move factories overseas at the expense of our own people.
When a company fires thousands of people, what happens to the community? Crime goes up, suicide
goes up, drug abuse, alcoholism, spousal abuse, divorce—everything bad spirals dangerously
upward. The same thing happens with crack. Only crack is illegal, and downsizing is not. If there was
a crack house in your neighborhood, what would you do? You would try to get rid of it&#33;
I think it&#39;s time we applied the same attitudes we have about crack to corporate downsizing. It&#39;s
simple: if it hurts our citizens, it should be illegal. We live in a democracy. We enact laws based on
what we believe is right and wrong. Murder? Wrong, so we pass a law making it illegal. Burglary?
Wrong, and we attempt to prosecute those who commit it. Two really big hairy guys from Gingrich&#39;s
office pummel me after they read this book? Five to ten in Sing Sing.
As a society, we have a right to protect ourselves from harm. As a democracy, we have a
responsibility to legislate measures to protect us from harm.
[/quote]

[vidcc]

Originally posted by Alex H@15 April 2004 - 16:31
The fact that I wasn&#39;t mentioned by name is a bit disapointing.

well, call me gullible, but i believe that anti american flaming is directed at the government and not the average american citizen

A very witty article by Mr. Moore, i must make time to watch the bowling film. It may be way out there in it&#39;s comparisons but it does make an interesting point. I do doubt however that it would be taken seriously by many, i mean some people still insist that canibis is bad and they argue it over their alcoholic beverage