(February 5, 2016 at 4:42 pm)Rhythm Wrote: Meh, that's taking it a bit far. Not having the money to pay the man to ride the donkey is -alot- better than being owned by the man, and -being- the donkey. Though, admittedly, it can get difficult to tell which situation a person is in sometimes.
Calling the wage gap "no better than slavery" shits on anyone who's ever been a slave. Pretty sure that plenty of liberated slaves preferred their menial jobs to their status as property. Don't get me wrong, if big business had their way they wouldn't even be doling out menial jobs. Slavery is a fucking wet dream for the pursuit of profit. Big Sugar was the originator, the ancestral model for all subsequent international big biz...........and we know how they felt about slavery. They're marginally better today, after 400 years of "ethical progress"...in that they now pay a wage...but they still just dump illegals and migrants on the curb of a hospital, if they even help at all.. when they get snakebit. Bit like dropping off a mangy stray at a shelter in the middle of the night to avoid paying any fee or filling out paperwork. No, wait, not a bit like that, that's -exactly- what they're doing.
Bonus, you rarely have to pay them that last weeks wage..they get deported before they can complain.
Thankfully, beet farmers have taken this market away from the old guard (cane ranches)...and the conditions they offer are marginally better still..most through no effort of their own, mind you, but at least they can claim it.
Hold on, not being able to pay your bills most certainly is a form of slavery, no not the ownership part, but by proxy, "hostage". You can train a dog and a horse with a leash at first, but train them long enough, they walk by you without the leash. You still depend on the trainer for survival.
Even Martin Luther King Jr had the attitude that when minorities do well everyone does better. It still amounts to a society is as only as good as it's weakest link.
I only agree that the brutality physically yes was far worse and also based on bible based bigotry. But you don't need physical chains on you to be stuck in poverty and be dependent on your master.
Same difference between a parent being physically abusive, and another being merely mentally abusive, you don't have to be physically abusive to make people desperate and dependent.
Poverty is a form of slavery, it allows the rich to pass the poor around like poker chips.
