Song 570: Seven blogs (but in this case eight weeks, due to computer problems that prevented one weekly blog dispatch) after my previous personal friend song post, this week's compelling jaunt We're Supposed to Die for McDonald's comes from my Berkeley songwritiing comrade Carol Denney, who also wrote the song, and you can find a YouTube video of it by clicking on the title. I haven't seen much of her in the past few decades, but I still pay a lot of attention to her, and for good reason. I don't claim to know the answers to the big questions about the pandemic, but one thing I saw quite clearly from the very beginning was how the billionaires dramatically increased their wealth through the situation while American workers, as usual, got brutally screwed over by the unfolding events. While I have witnessed various version of this story play out over and over again in recent years, it still does amaze me on some level to hear about, for example, the world's richest man doing everything possible, including actions that violate human decency and may potentially break laws, just to hinder his employees from unionizing and demanding a slightly-better deal. He has to grab every penny he can, but the guys delivering his goods might have to pee into bottles they carry in their vehicles. From the rich ruling elite POV, workers are supposed to die for the owners who always think labor's to blame and who think that worker health care cuts into their wealth and can never remember a worker's name.
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