Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling for January 18, 2024

We people didn’t turn the corporations into virtual entities. SCOTUS did.

This is why Mittens claimed that “corporations are people too”.

And in recent news…

Banks are fighting limits on overdraft fees.

And oil companies and pharmaceutical companies are trying to get the Supreme Court to void all regulations.

.

Because they aren’t making enough money.

I know this is from the archives, but the selection of logos in the penultimate panel dates it like the PanAm product placement in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

At the very least, update it by shoehorning in Microsoft, Disney and Apple.

Oh hey, 23+ years later and capitalism stick #$%&ing SUCKS!!!

Hmm… Seems plausible….

Banned list now includes a feminine hygiene product that starts with the letter D. Ok, I guess in panel 4 that his fiduciary duty doesn’t include women. TBH, sounds about right if we were in the 1950s.

yes master.

You must be available for any shift 24 hours a day. Don’t worry. We will let the union protect you.

Before that it was the nobility. Before that the priesthood.

In school they hinted at, but never directly discussed, servitude to the corporation. But my bosses strongly voiced it – particularly doling out fear during performance reviews or as “work incentives”… if you displease the corporation in any way then you risked losing your job, and if you lost your job then you would instantly become destitute…

It was a major life milestone to achieve enough financial stability to no longer have to succumb to bosses trying to inflict that fear. Although it was not pleasant, there actually were other jobs available, and one could weather some months of unemployment. The biggest winners were the ones who were able to go into business for themselves.

This could have been written today, and it would be relevant. Slavery never really ended. When you accept a job, you have to build your life around the job. If you have kids, it’s even more difficult. And if the corporations decide the schedule isn’t profitable enough to meet the demands of their shareholders, they change it. Even if it turns your life upside down and inside out, they don’t care. Americans don’t have paid daycare. A lot of us don’t even have decent health care, but it’s all good, because we are making the shareholders more and more money. As they eat the pie from our labor, they give us the crumbs. Unregulated capitalism is destroying us.

The first panel in the second row has no truth and is a strawman at best.