SocraticGadfly: Business-world Orwell-speak — Temps are ‘contingent workers’

May 10, 2007

Business-world Orwell-speak — Temps are ‘contingent workers’

And, you’re about to be 10 percent of the U.S. workforce.

This is ridiculous. Is it any wonder that more and more solidly middle-class Americans are following the lower middle class into giving up hopes for even tattered remnants of “the American dream”?

That said, the American dream always was fantasy to some degree. And now, a trifecta of things not involving corporate plutocracy are tattering it more.

That’s the trio, oft-blogged here, of:
• Peak Oil
• Global warming
• The real estate crisis

The suburban sprawl of post-World War II America simply will not be sustainable once world oil supply peaks. I expect that in no more than a decade from now.

Especially since our one reliable export, agricultural products, no longer is so (the U.S. became a net food importer in 2005), to the degree global warming hits marginal U.S. agriculture hard (the irrigated High Plains and desert Southwest) our trade deficit will worsen.

And, the troubles of the real estate market and its bursting bubble mean less spending in a hyper-consumerist economy; given that real-estate driving hyper-consumerism rescued us from the previous, dot.com bubble, a recession is going to hit. Ignore the Dow at 13,000; the spending is irrational, including financial analysts touting subprime mortgage brokers up to the day of their crash and burn.

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