by metatron 15 Replies latest jw friends
And..... ever heard of "debt slavery"? Very popular in the 3rd world and getting more popular in the US, too. I know plenty of people who would be in deep trouble just by missing a couple paychecks - because of the mortgage, car payments and medication.
metatron
"Indentured Servitude" is the name of the game. Its really slavery which pays an amount which never is enough to pay off debt which in turn brings more debt requiring continued servitude. You see that in places where the price of commodities continue to rise, jobs are scarce, but the base salary stays the same (flatlines). [ie Third World countries.]
Plus basic "usury"; which we are supposed to have laws against in the 21st Century.
Its all the rage.
....and yes, pharmas are definitely trying hard to sell people on pills here in the US. Commercials run all day and night here ... the side effect lists are scarey to boot. A large number of children are pill poppers ranging from anti depressants to ritalin.
The term 'slave' applied to white slaves was then switched to indentured servant when English law changed and made it illegal to actually 'enslave' your own countrymen. So they just changed the word and then indentured the kids and the women and men to them for sometimes a lifetime. They found the bones of a boy about 14 years old buried behind some blocks not too long ago in the south - now recognized as one of the thousands of missing 'slaves' that the British kidnapped, stole or simply took from the poor houses and shipped to America to be used as slaves.
The same exists today but on a much wider scale and is allowed to foster with minimum wages, inadequate education, substandard housing and societies that foster class distinction. It becomes as much a part of the mindset as anything as people gradually lose their motivation or ability to seek anything further than what they then believe they are entitled to. sammieswife.
Oh and yes - big pharma is part of that picture. You know - all those drugs that they keep finding new diseases for. Last clinical trials said that anti depressants for example - billions of bucks in profit for them - are proven to have little to no effect at least 75% of the time and yet they are prescribed to almost everyone including small children. Let's face it - the new fight is on for legalization of marijuana and they want dibs on that too. A weed that a person should be able to grow in their own house and use for their own purposes should neither be illegal nor should it be allowed to be the sole ownership of the pharmaceutical industry so they can make more money and tell you what you are allowed to take or use for your own illness.
I now slave for riches....and am very happy to do so!
ever heard of "debt slavery"?
I think more of us are in a form of debt slavery than we realize. If you owe more than a mortgage and maybe a car payment, you've become a slave to the financial institutions. We work to make payments on the things we've bought on credit.
If we're completely, totally honest with ourselves, we have to admit that most things that we've bought on credit, we really didn't need. TVs, electronics, computors, furniture, big boy toys, etc etc etc.
We've got all these great toys and gizmos but we're enslaved to the credit companies that we borrowed from to buy these things. If we lost our jobs tomorrow, how long before we were in deep trouble, not able to make those payments?
Kudos to people who have managed to not get caught in the credit trap, but they are a dying breed. Most Americans have fallen for the "want it now, get it now, pay for it later" mode of thinking. I don't know about people in the UK or Europe, but somehow I don't think they're as ignorant or gullible as we are.
People look back at our parents and grandparents time and think about what they didn't have that we do have. At first we think, wow, we've got so much more to enjoy than they do. But what most of them didn't have was enormous debt. Mortgage and cars...that was it. Everything else had to be saved up for. And their lives were so much simpler for it.
Sometimes I wish life was that simple again....but then I pop a movie in my blu-ray player and escape into the movie. After that I play some Wii games or I might surf the web or maybe update my itunes on my iphone, trying to foget that I've got credit card payments due.
I think it goes so much further than just people 'wanting' things.
My parents bought a toaster that lasted them 30 years..it was heavy and solid and it could be repaired. I bought a toaster that is plastic so it's lighter, it broke, it was cheap coming from China, cost more to fix it than just buy another cheap one so it was not worth repairing and goes in the trash. One of the big differences is that our parents did not live in the consumer/corporate system of producing things that were not made to last in order to keep consumerism alive and in fluid. They bought a couch and it lasted 20 years without any problem - today unless you can afford a superb quality sofa, you get one that starts to sag in a few years. We have exchanged quality for quantity and so it's a continual cycle.
There is so much more to factor in than just people buying stuff on credit they don't need - not saying it doesn't happen but the whole issue becomes complex. sammieswife.
