On this day when the Empire State Building is gaily bedecked to honor the rise of The People’s Republic, it seems appropriate to take stock of the narrowing gap—culturally and philosophically—between our two nations. I’m waiting to see if the owners of the ‘State also put up a joyful noise of red white and black to honor the Third Reich—oh shit, I’m already burning attitude…

I’ve just taken a job for $9.50 an hour.

Can some of you even imagine that? Can you imagine living on that? Considering that my rent and car payment equal about the same amount as that monthly swag, I will have to invent some new mathematics to feed myself.

This job is what is available. Tough market, eh? But let’s abstract it away from simply me. A lot of people are trying to live on less. A lot of them are working two jobs. The woman training me on my job is—late fifties, she is securing a building full time and also getting you the double-dip cone at UDF, full time. “There are some days I feel like throwing up my hands and quitting,” she says. “But I know I can’t.”

When my great grandfather immigrated to this country in 1905, he worked sixteen hours a day. In 2009, this woman is working the same hours. The same hours we rejected somewhere early enough in the previous century as inhumane, crass, uncivilized. The wage slave is back.

A couple of years ago, I worked for some asinine swindlers who considered me “salaried.” I worked up to 80 hours for forty hours pay. Then they tried to dock me for an absence when I took a day off—even though I had exceeded forty hours “off book.” The wage slave is everywhere.

I have watched for the past twenty years while so-called Liberals have helped convert criticism of illegal immigration into “racism”—mostly because they count immigrant votes as Democratic cinches. But illegal immigration is really about slavery. It’s about getting a job done for next to nothing, and often with the workers corralled into horrifying living arrangements. They like to say “these immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do,” when they really mean, “these immigrants do the jobs Americans won’t do for two dollars an hour.”

A real socialist or communist would see this border-bleeding for the exploitation it really is. A real lefty would see it as a scheme to devalue the labor of the American worker—a capitalist plot. But instead we have these blinders on and chant “racism, tra-la-la” and call the nativists out. Strangely, nobody seems to want to raise the wages of those immigrant workers, or any side. That’s never under discussion.

I realize some of you out there are doing really well. You can’t really imagine what it is like to be trapped on the underside of the heel of the economy. Many of you think you can—but it is like trying to imagine going hungry. Until you have met the subtleties, intellectual sympathy is worthless.

The problem is I don’t think you will all continue to be comfortable. This spike in prices and the tenuousness of your jobs is a mere pimple on the tip of the iceberg. Our economy is going through a radical conversion. Now that we no longer need fear communism, we now no longer need a middle class.

Surprise, the New Prez is a Free Trader. He decided in his first week of presidency that his “rhetoric on NAFTA was overblown.” Haven’t heard anymore about that have you? Let’s keep in mind that much of Big Business rather likes the public option. Switch the burden of insurance costs to tax payers?—FUCK YEAH!

Should I even open the can of worms about Obama’s speech to the UN? “No World Order will prosper that…” Oh Jeez. I can see George H dancing in the vestibule. He next scolded you G8 or G20 or G-whatever protestors. The global economy is going to be restructured so that even the bottomfeeders may experience economic justice. So stop sweating it. You are annoying your owners.

Can you post that plan on line? Does it include sixteen hour days? Does it include the government rating us by the amount of investment placed in each of us? I still have a question from the Stimulus: what return can I expect to see as an investor?

Where are those “shovel ready jobs” we heard about a year ago? Jaysus Christ the Dancing Bear we need them, don’t we? Among all the crackpot doomsday programs making the rounds of History, Discovery, and the National Geographic Channel, the only one that ought to scare you is called “The Crumbling of America.” Our infrastructure is overdue and failing. Bridge pylons and dam walls offer more transparency than this government. Our water pipes are polluted. Our roads are frayed. Did I mention our electricity grid, which is only a few years younger than the Sphinx? You can drive around your city and see the de facto conversion of our nation into a party of the Third World. We don’t need Al Qaeda anymore—we can bring our own buildings down, through neglect and flummery.

All this blather and, as usual, no action. This is a crucial moment in history, with lots of sweeping talk about grand designs for some utopian new age—meanwhile the freaking pitons are popping out of the mountainside and the guidewires have long since snapped free.

Shovel-ready indeed. And what was being shoveled was bullshit.

No surprise that Red China is being celebrated. Our thinkers seem to admire it most—meditate on it as a model. For Red China is a rancid capitalist boutique of privilegeless bodies-belonging-to-the-corporate-state. Work till you die, then have your organs harvested. Look to the cockroach, consider her ways.

The only way Red China could join the community of nations is if the community of nations joined her. In the dirt.

Dear Abby, sign me, “Darth Bitter.”