I Need a New Phone Company

A few weeks ago I made a bonehead mistake. I thought since we had our phones for some period of time Doreen and I should get some new ones. After all, the cell phone folk just hand them out to customers who say they will remain loyal for a couple of more years, right? So, we got our new phones, which aren’t quite as good as the old ones, and in the mean time they changed our rates (guess which way) since we needed a new plan with our new phones. Okay, I said it was a bonehead mistake didn’t I. We’ll live with it. Our phones are with Verizon originally Alltel, who then came someone else etc.

Now I read that 45,000 Verizon workers went on strike on the east coast because the company was demanding huge cuts in their benefits; smacks of a certain governor of a state we know well. Now bear in mind the company is doing very well, $20 billion in profits as they did last year. Their top five executives pulled in $258 million in compensation. Obviously in light of such setbacks then workers needed to lower their pensions, lessen health care benefits, get rid of paid holidays, etc. [note dripping sarcasm.]

On the other hand the company claims that their typical worker makes $80,600 per year with $42,000 in benefits. The union says it’s less, more in the $60,000 to $77,000 range. Have you walked into a Verison store lately? Actually, I think they’ve improved but one time I entered the store and a young lady with lots of piercings and tats yakking on her phone to her girl friend about navel lint collections who’d look annoyed at you and finally condescended to wait on you with little knowledge of anything. To think I wasted my life going to college, grad school and working to help people deal with issues of the eternal; obviously a waste or our union wasn’t as good as theirs.

Makes me wonder why we are complaining about our politicians. They seem to well reflect those they represent…”give me more, give me more, give me more…” might be our new national anthem.

At Sam and Devon’s marriage party we met a girl, Agnes from Sweden. Nice girl and we had a nice conversation. She was really interested in Americans and their values. I hope she is reading this blog and will become a contributing writer. I’m also fascinated by Sweden and had just done a bit of research about that country. I was checking out the countries that were the most generous. I hear many of my fellow Americans complain about all we give away to ungrateful damned foreigners, so I wanted to check it out. Americans rate number 18 on the generosity scale of developed countries, that’s near the bottom. Number one is Sweden. Sweden, a far north country, has a 50% tax rate and is also the happiest country in the world. That almost boggles a capitalists mind. They also believe it is every citizen’s right to free health care, education, free day care, extended maternity/paternity leave, and things like that. In my conversation with Agnes it became clear to me they thought more about the common good rather than the individual good.

I need a new phone company but I’m stuck with my current contract. I also want new corporate mentalities that believe they are to provide good/services to the folk who pay them and politicians that see themselves as public servants all working for the common good. I don’t want to have to go to Denmark to change phone companies or government. I just want ours to shape up.