Corporate America is our enemy not our diagonsis

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I hate to be the messenger of bad news but unfortunately it's true. Corporations, banks, and big business are the problem not AS.

I am a political activist. I know the majority of people with AS and others mental health are unemployed and find it difficult to get a job, but it is not you or AS that is preventing you from working, it's capitalism and the 1%. Nowadays most NT's are underemployed and some can't get a job either.

Businesses have one priority, that is the bottom line. Wages are being decreased across all industries. Most companies are increasing productivity with fewer workers. Workers hours are reduced. The deindustrialization in America has exported thousands of jobs overseas. Once wages increase the jobs go to another impoverished country. Automation is taking jobs away. The cost of living is increasing and at the same time wages are stagnated. Profits have become more important than people. They do NOT care about us anymore, we are just a cog in their machine.

College is expense and yet the majority of college students are underemployed. Healthcare is expensive, only the wealthy can pay for healthcare anymore. Americans go into deep debt because they have become terminally ill. Corporations profit off of people living in prison.

Voting has little to impact anymore because lobbyists now dictate Washington. Lobbyists prevent the increase in minimum wage. Lobbyists create laws and regulations that favor the corporations, banks and the wealthy, not American citizens. Since Corporations are now multinational this problem is now worldwide.

This is serious issue...

The environment is being stripped of all it's resources, the world population is growing and oil and other resources are the decline. And for what? Profits and Wealth!

I have personally given up on society, that's why I stopped looking for work and I'm becoming an entrepreneur. I know my AS has been a barrier to me, but I also know corporate america uses everyone including NT's.

Are you suggesting that a more socialist economy would allow more AS adults to be gainfully employed? If so, how?

I think he's pointing out that corporate idealogy has seeped into our government and has more say then the people do. That's not good. I don't think corporations should have influence in our government's decisions. That bail out was a joke too.

I'm not trying to be political. I'm saying unemployment is a problem for AS and NT's. Unemployment and poverty affects me personally, alone with my family and everyone else suffering from it. There is connection between unemployment and Corporation's bottom line. Everything is connected.

My point is corporations employ the majority of the workforce and their decision making and bottom line is preventing you from living an independent life. No one can live without money.

I used to be a hardcore Capitalist and Libertarian until I become increasingly uncomfortable with how they focused on freedom on paper rather than in Reality. For example, legally on paper it is easier for me to live in the North Pole (with Santa Claus since he is apparently a Canadian Citizen) but in reality it would be far easier in reality to live "illegally" in the USA. Few seemed to understand it's great to remove restrictions on working and laws that create unemployment and provide a "free market" but all the freedom is meaningless if you can't find a f$*^** job in the first place!

That's not getting into the fact that Corporations are an artificial creation and it wasn't to benefit you or me. Bottom line is all the 'libertarian' type freedoms in the world are useless if you have no money or job. What I find amazing is how so many people sit back and take it while they are living in misery! I could go on but this isn't the PPR section I will leave it at that.

Well I pretty much agree with everything you just said about corporate america....however I disagree that the AS plays no role in making employment difficult. Some of the things do make it hard to function well enough for work even if you subtracted corporate america. I mean say I had just AS and no other conditions, the sensory issues would still make some jobs impossible to function at, slow processing speed/executive function issues and having a hard time being self directed on the job do to this can get in the way of gainful employment. All of what you said is a very big problem and unfortunately unlikely to change anytime soon......but it is also true some of the AS symptoms/traits do get in the way even if that problem didn't exist.

It is not capitalism per say but the particular brand of capitalism practiced by the most influential companies in the USA which emphasizes short term profit over gaining long term loyal customers that is making it bad for everybody.

Being a small minority with a non-psychical "invisible" condition that makes us different in the social things people care about most makes a bad situation much, much, much harder for us. If companies hired based on profit motive only and no other factors involved we would do a lot better. While job skills matter, networking skills a who makes them feel comfortable are more important.

This is exactly my point. I hate that I'm in poverty because of this situation. I hate being an aspie and also being poor. I also believe I would still be struggling if I wasn't an aspie but was instead black or gay. I hate being discriminated against and that is making me stay poor. Even though I'm an aspie I can live independently, I mostly appear and feel normal nowadays but I don't have any income to live on, and that's what hurts the most.

As an ex-USSR citizen I have to say that in a socialistic country you'd have much more problems. The word socialism has a "social" root in it for a great reason.

I don't hate being an Aspie. I did not do anything wrong it is them being greedy and stupid.

I wasn't saying socialism is the answer to fix America. I do believe big business is a serious problem though. I believe in Capitalism, but there is a difference between Corporatism and Capitalism. Unfortunately, Corporations are the dominate businesses in America and over the past 40 years has corrupted the labor market and the American government. This has only been a recent problem in American history. Capitalism does work as long as it is regulated. Over the past 40 years a lot of those regulations have been removed. Unions also play an important part, as they were the check and balance between employee and employer. Now that unions are a thing of the past, there is no longer a balance between the employer and employee.

The Difference between Captialism and Corportism

Economic Policy Journal's Differences between Corporatism and Capitalism



I said that because my ASD has done a lot of damage to my life.

I don't think so. It's not just big business making our lives bad. It's all NT people making our lives bad.

Thank You! Technically they are breaking the law by not hiring us.

I think it's NT people expecting us to act like NT people that makes our lives bad.

I'm on board with big business being a serious problem, though. I completely fail to understand how people can look at a legal entity that exists only to profit, has no responsibilities except to make a profit, and doesn't get punished in any meaningful way for behaving in ways that are bad for society as a whole, and not see the inherent problems.

aspie_comic_nerd wrote that automation is taking jobs away, but referenced it like a problem. It's not. Automation removing the need for humans to work is great. It's that society still requires people to work to live that's the problem. If we'd spread out the reduced need for work over the populace as a whole and used it to reduce costs instead of using it to push down wages for the sake of corporate profits, instead of having widespread unemployment, we might have been able to reduce the number of hours people work while increasing the standard of living. Instead, we have a returning Gilded Age.

One issue that I've taken personal interest in is the loss of overtime protection for workers in America. Some time in the Bush administration, overtime rules were changed so that essentially every job that requires an college or trade school education is exempt from overtime pay (the so-called white collar exemptions). Along with the threat of losing a job in a bad economy because of the ubiquity of "at-will" employment, this is what has allowed corporations to squeeze more productivity out of fewer workers via overtime. Getting rid of the exemptions would be a good start. I discovered last night that the Obama administration has started the process of changing them (but not getting rid of them completely).

Blue-collar workers have never had significant protection to start with unless they were in a unionized corporation, but it's only lately that corporations have figured out how to organize themselves in ways that make this clear. It's kind of obvious, though. Instead of having 4 workers working 40 hours a week and risking overtime, have 5 workers working 32 hours a week. This is facilitated by temp agencies, and creates a sort of implicit cooperation between corporations where they each work the same person 30 hours a week, for a total of 60, and neither is liable for overtime. The fix for this would be to raise the minimum wage to something where people don't have to work 60 hours a week to live on the minimum wage. This requires action from Congress, and so is harder to accomplish.

The situations of all workers in the US would be improved if "at-will" employment is disposed of. "At-will" employment, for those who do not know, is the legal fiction that allows workers to be fired without cause and without a reason given. The rhetoric behind it is that it benefits workers by allowing them to drop one job for another easily, but as the market is controlled by the corporations (supply side of jobs, demand side of labor, depending on your preference), workers who actually take advantage of this end up with bad work history and don't get hired. It doesn't benefit workers in any significant way when compared to the disadvantages workers suffer from being able to be fired at any time.

How so? there are a number of jobs even if I was functional enough for work that I would not expect someone to want to hire me for. If I get to a point where i can work I think there are some jobs I could do alright with but others not so much....it wouldn't be breaking laws to not hire me for a job I don't have the skills for in my opinion.

Depends on what sort of socalism, a socialist democracy where the government actually works for the people for instance would not be a terrible idea in my opinion...a more totalitarian form like what existed in the USSR would cause a lot more problems than it would solve. Either way corporate america has far to much power and pretty much owns the government which is a problem as it essentially means the government creates policies in favor of large corporations and the upper, upper class who have the most wealth to throw around rather than serving the people. Its a disgusting system we have.