Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for July 23, 2021

“Use an empty soda bottle.”

Big boss man, can’t you hear me when I call?

There’s a difference between greed and survival…

It hasn’t changed for 30 years. Is anyone else seeing the problem with this?

Thanks Reagan

Where did this year’s $60,000 tuition go? Are they using tuition to pay this year’s retirement benefits?

Dean grew a chin after the first panel.

Amazon has an aggressive policy to encourage workers to leave, after a year. If the worker has been there for a year Amazon considers the worker as being burned out and thus a likely malcontent. The annual turnover is 100%+. Amazon unlike Walmart almost never promotes from within. The problem is they are running out of people who are willing to work at Amazon.

Very “Cool Hand Luke”.

And we wonder why millennials turned out the way they did?

Fast-forward to 2020, where we at once told people they were far too valuable to be allowed to stay home during a worldwide pandemic, and far too worthless to be paid a living wage.

Gallup does surveys on how “engaged” workers are on their job and the results show that about 33% of workers are fully engaged and work to the best of their ability, 50% of workers do just enough to not get fired and 17% are actively disengaged -do a bad job on purpose.

Hill Haven Corp. used to be notorious for taking over nursing homes and eldercare facilities and firing all the full-time nursing staff. They would then hire nurses from one of the local temporary nursing placement services. Hill Haven’s reasoning being that while they paid the nursing service slightly more money, they were saving an enormous amount of money by not providing any benefits to the health care workers – ie. insurance, 401Ks, pay raises, etc. Even their department heads and executives were not usually employed for more than 4 years.

Later they would wonder why their school / company reputation went down the drain…

College, along with medical costs have gotten insane. 4-6 years at a state uni, or one serious injury or illness, could amount to 10 to 20 years of income to the average american.

A fine example of “Austerity” at work.

Austerity: the practice wherein the people in Charge decree that financial problems require drastic cuts in the Salaries, Wages & Benefits of everyone below themselves in the food chain while awarding themselves large Bonuses for their brilliance in solving the Financial Crisis.

A “Side Effect” of Austerity is the eventual collapse of the institution at which time it will be sold for pennies on the dollar value of the institution’s assets to a Vulture Capitol organization. The Administration which imposed Austerity will frequently have close personal and/or professional ties to the Vultures.