He Called Us “Overhead”

I commented to a diary on Daily KOS, and it got me thinking (Diary here:  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/07/1128977/-Shocking-no-one-Mitt-Romney-is-a-dick-to-our-troops).

In the 1990’s, I worked for a small service company.  I worked an average of 10 hours per day and there were no lunch breaks.  You ate food at your desk and continued to work.  If you were lucky, you were the one who went to get the food.  Otherwise, you were in that building from 7:30 to 5:30 every day.  We had meetings either before 7:30 or after 5:30, when the business was closed so that no work time would be “wasted”.

Most of the meetings involved the service techs, and would educate them about new technologies and procedures.  The one meeting I recall involving the office staff was a lecture that began, “You are all overhead”.  The speech didn’t get any better from there — a long list of mistakes we’d made and things that he didn’t like.  We wondered how he would react if we would all walk out — nobody would answer his phones, order his parts, schedule the service techs.  Overhead.  We were that unimportant to him.

This is, unfortunately, how corporate America sees workers.  It was just starting in the 1990’s, but is an epidemic now.  The payroll is overhead.  The fewer people you have on it, the higher your profits.   An automated system can answer your telephone.  People overseas can follow a script to take calls for a fraction of what Americans would cost and you don’t have to give them health insurance or sick days or vacations.

This is, unfortunately, how Mr. Romney sees our troops and our population as well.  Overhead.  Needing things like food, healthcare, shelter.  All of these things subtract from the all-important bottom line and keep him and his corporate friends from maximizing their profits.  This is a view that he learned at Bain Capital and I haven’t heard him say anything to indicate that he has changed.  He is looking to maximize his gains in every way.  He does not care about making things better for other people because there would be less for him.  In the Romney-Bain world, you do not spend money to make money.  That does not make sense to them.  You do not invest in people because people cost too much.

I do not want to be so cynical as to speculate why he’s so in favor of war with Iran and Syria and staying in Afghanistan.  He has already stated that he supports the “Military”.  Not the troops.  He did not thank the troops for their service, and even now does not think that it was important.  He said it himself: “You talk about the things that you think are important”.  The troops are “overhead”.  The “Military” — with its huge budget — will maximize the bottom line.  His.

If he is elected, do not forget that you are overhead.  An expense.  I hope we are better than this.