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blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 15 October 2009

How many of you, having previously held a presumptively secure job with a solid company, are now working as a “contractor” or “consultant”? The trend toward taking employees off the payroll only to hire them again as contractors—without health benefits, pensions, sick days, vacations—began in the 1970s with janitors, construction workers and truckers. Now highly skilled technology workers who helped transform the global economy are among the downsized, the outsourced, the contracted-out.… …Soon the political discussion will shift from the need to keep propping up the economy to the need to reduce the deficit and debt. Then we are certain to hear that Social Security and other “entitlements” are the problem and must be curtailed. In fact, Social Security has sufficient funds to pay full benefits through 2037—a cushion no other government program can claim. Medicare, while under financial strain, has done better at containing costs, per beneficiary, than private health insurers on a similar basis, according to government studies. The myths that led us to this pass did not materialize by chance. They were conjured up by conservatives intent on dismantling the New Deal society that reigned through the 1960s—a society that produced the world’s most robust middle class. They are fed by lawmakers in both parties who depend on campaign contributions from powerful interests. Looking for a Middle Class

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