Growing Despair Among White Blue Collar Workers

Posted by John Engelman

I doubt American white blue collar workers are killing themselves because they read articles in The New York Times that blame them for the problems of the world. I think they are killing themselves because of economic changes promoted by the Republican Party on behalf of the business community, which has always dominated the Republican Party.

Noted Republican economist Milton Friedman introduced the idea that corporations have no legitimate goal but to maximize the amount of money going to stock holders through rises in stock prices and dividend payments. Employees do not matter. They are to be discarded as soon as they get old, like worn office furniture.

Even the customers do not matter. When was the last time you had a serious problem that had to be handled over the telephone by calling a corporation? You wanted to call a phone number and have an employee answer immediately with whom you could discuss your problem. What happened instead was that you got an interactive voice response system that gave you a menu of options that had nothing to do with your problem. When you were finally transferred to an operator you were put on hold for fifteen minutes. Maybe the line went dead, and you had to do it all over again.

When you are put on hold, this means that when you finally get an operator he is stressed out from dealing with previous problems. He is probably evaluated by how many customers he can deal with, and not by how well he deals with them.

This is called "market failure." Corporations have figured out that it is more profitable to replace knowledgeable operators with computer technology, even at the expense of frustrating their customers. No, the "liberal media" is not responsible for this. Neither is the Democrat Party. Business executives raised on books by people like Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand are responsible.

During one of the Republican debates in the 2012 Republican primary, Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain was loudly applauded by the audience when he said, “If you don’t have a job, and you’re not rich, blame yourself.” How do you think that attitude makes a middle aged white employee feel who has been arbitrarily fired or laid off, and who has been looking everywhere for a job and who can't find one anywhere? That was a moment of rare candor. Nevertheless, that is the way business executives and their paid lackeys in the Republican Party talk to each other in their country clubs when they do not think anyone else is listening. No Democrat politician would say something like that. No Democrat audience would applaud.