Businesses - run by people - aren’t simply unbiased, ethical enterprises, LisaA.
They are profit driven. And lets not obscure that fact. Is profit or the goal of profit bad? No. But lets not portray businesses as some benevolent thing collectively seeking the betterment of man like Jesus or a Mother Teresa. For the sake of “just doing business” more than one businessman or corporation might get into bed with mafioso, dictator, African strongman, or cast the American Stars and Stripes aside in Detroit to create “tax payers” in communist China or Vietnam.
There are plenty of people that would like to work on the North side of Milwaukee but big businesses have largely picked up and abandoned that side of town long ago. Few have come to take there place. And no… just filling out a job application does not result in a job. It’s an employers paradise out here. What… maybe 200 applicants for one position?
Mind you… some of these factories don’t mind training Mexican immigrants for their factory jobs (like foundries) even though many of these men can’t speak English. Guess that contradicts the polemic of “the need of high school diploma.” I know because I helped some Mexicans write out their application at the same time I was filling out an application at a South side foundry years ago. So, in other words the two gentleman could not write in English (again, contradicting the complaint of businessmen, "Americans don’t have the high school diploma or the training or experience) Not sure I ever ran into a Mexican working at that company (I never got the job) that could speak English. But companies invest in and get around that hurdle by hiring one or more overseers that are bilingual. And I’m not mad at the Mexicans. They are hard workers and only looking to better themselves and or the lives of their families.
But let’s loom at the United States as it is probably midway between the states of the United Kingdom and Brazil in terms of cash transfer programs and welfare states.
In the United Kingdom able bodied, working age, males that become unemployable due to drug addiction can join a waiting list for free government financed housing and free food assistance.
Not even the Democrats in the U.S. would swing for that in the U.S. - not to mention it is extremely difficult to get put on disability in the U.S., with only certain conditions automatically approved once claim filed (e.g., renal disease, bipolar disorder). I know someone that was beaten and left for dead in the cold Milwaukee winter. Suffering multiple seizures in the hospital. He could barely walk for months - maybe over a year - after being discharged from the hospital. He was denied temporary disability payment the first time he applied. And that was with his older sister who worked at the Social Security office helping him fill out his claim and submit it. Ironically, you can fake bipolar disorder (we both know someone that did this) and get put on disability in the U.S.
Gaining employment in the U.S. - a capitalist society - is comparative. So, the question “can you work by picking up a phone” is just about meaningless. The question ought be can you compete among the best or even the average American for job X, Y, Z?
Then we have Brazil before Lula with his Abraham Lincoln-like rise to the presidency of his country. Essentially, the state had large swaths of urban territory (and rural as well) it had abandoned. No services and the police operated like military raiders into hostile, foreign territory. In other words they made lighting strikes into favela X for suspects A, B, and C and then immediately withdrew. They did not have police posts and stations permanently set up like we do in the U.S. inner-cities. Today that has changed in a number of favelas of Rio de Janeiro (one city) as it prepares and invests in the city for the Olympics.
In terms of negative externalities I would say the old Brazilian model is far less favorable than the United Kingdom model.
The United States also has a huge - very huge - gun violence problem in which very few victims of shootings result in homicides. There 360 days in a year. In one year in the medium sized city (and by far not the most violent of U.S. cities) of Milwaukee alone, over 800 people were shot in which only 100 or so resulted in a homicide. Over 30,000 Americans are shot every year in the United States and if it were not for our advances in medical trauma care since the end of the Vietnam War (which learned on the streets of America has been exported to the battle fields of Iraq and Afghanistan to save lives - consequently troops have survived traumatic injuries that would have killed them in the Vietnam War) the U.S. would have around 60,000 homicides a year.
My point is those traumatic injuries from bullets often result in anything from temporary disability to life long disability. It’s not uncommon in American cities to see young black males rolling around on street corners confined to wheel chairs.
I dont agree with Obama on many issues, I don’t blame him for everything under the sun either. Bottom line, the strategy of the right is not working. If Republicans lose this election it will not be because people are just so happy with Obama.
