http://www.anarchistecouronne.com/corporateamerica.htm
I was astonished by how merciless America could be in the work environment and how little security was provided to anyone. In fact, within nine months, half the company had been sacked on the spot without pay, the other half was living in fear of the same thing happening to them, and others were mercilessly demoted, humiliated and hurt emotionally beyond salvation. I thought no one could work under those conditions.
What I witnessed was far from being the land of the free. We were treated like prisoners chained to our desks, with dire consequences if we could not produce miraculous results. I think I succeeded in walking on water once or twice, as this is what was expected of me, while I worked over 80 hours a week through all my holidays, and yet, it was never enough to satisfy their greed.
When you work in a horrible corporate environment, fearing for your security, under emotional distress, you quickly reach breaking point and depression. For me, these issues are as important as health care: providing security and happiness at work, not a stressful environment where making money becomes so important, if you do not perform 200%, and make the company at least a million dollars in the first six months, you are fired without financial support or safety net to fall back on. And bye bye health insurance.
Obama is also trying to fix the health care system, when in fact, it is flawed at the core and salvaging it is simply impossible. It may prove useless in the end the way he wishes to go about it. He should scrap the whole health care industry and system, and get inspiration from countries like Canada, France, Germany and the rest of Europe. Even Poland has an excellent health care system for everyone, better than the British one, I have been told.
You cannot have a health system based on capitalism; that is the obvious flaw, is it not? Corporations should have nothing to do with paying health insurances for their employees. Health insurance should have nothing to do with getting a job good enough in order to get access to such insurance or being able to afford it.
The government should pay for everything for everyone through general taxes; it's as simple as that. Why complicate your life with all these health insurances that are all different from company to company, from corporation to corporation, from State to State?
Eliminating all this bureaucracy and health privatization would save a lot of money and headaches, and would insure that every single American gets the exact same treatment nationwide whether they are rich or poor, whether they are working or not, whether they have a great job or a dead end one, whether they are living in California or Alaska, whatever their skin color, whether they are illegal immigrants or not.
By the way, I am aware of many Americans crossing the border to Quebec in order to benefit from free health care, and I am not bothered by it in the slightest. We can afford it, we all can afford universal health care, and we should offer it to everyone. It is one of the most basic human rights. Or else, we play God by deciding who has the right to live and who should die. We all deserve to live, don't we? We are all equals, aren't we?
Some countries have solved these problems a long time ago, is it that difficult for politicians to look at what is happening elsewhere and draw some inspiration from it? It is time for radical thinking and radical change. There is no better time than now.
About immigration, I am a bit afraid of what Obama said. It seems he wants to build a Wall of China all around America, and uncover every single illegal worker in existence. He also wishes to let in only the cream of the crop, inviting a brain drain from the rest of the world.
At least he did say that he would like to facilitate the twelve million supposed illegal immigrants to gain citizenship, and that would be about time. They are after all, the new American slaves sustaining the economy; no government can deny that. Which is precisely why Great Britain was one of three countries within the European Union to allow any Polish immigrant to come in and work in the U.K. We still need our slaves.
As an immigrant myself, I suffered the whole brunt of what it means to be an undesirable, even though I am a Canadian immigrant, have a Master's degree, can contribute to society and I am here legally.
I suffered greatly and I am still suffering. I don't have my British citizenship yet after 15 years in the country, I simply cannot afford it, now that I am allowed to request it. It only took me 14 years to get that right (I am gay, living in a 15 year relationship).
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