The person who came up with the phrase “quiet quitting” took the effort to incorporate alliteration, which made the phrase catchy. You’d think the author of the article 5 Signs You Are Being “Quiet Fired” From Your Job (shown above) would have put in a few seconds to do the same for its employer counterpart, but instead, they took the lazy route and simply replaced “quitting” with “firing.”
In my opinion, “furtively fired” — and its noun form, “furtive firing” — sound much better, are grammatically correct, and employ an underused word.
The scene at The Sail on Monday, July 25, 2022. Tap to view at full size.
Two weeks ago, on Monday, July 25, I attended a send-off party for StartupBus Florida. Despite being in an open-air location on a breezy evening (there was a thunderstorm later that night), five people who were there ended up sick and testing positive for COVID.
Here’s a photo that shows how open-air the party location, The Sail, is:
I’d hoped that an open-air location would reduce the odds of anyone catching the latest COVID variant, which was proving to be very contagious. Here in Florida, the incoming reported cases had remained steady since the beginning of the summer:
Most of us were there for about two and a half hours. Near the end of the gathering, one of the guests mentioned that they’d started their throat had started feeling scratchy and they were feeling a little ill, and I suggested that they go home and test themselves.
And as a result, 5 people got sick. Two tested positive the following day, another got ill a couple of days later, and another a couple of days after that.
My recommendation: You might want to cut back on socializing in larger groups for the next couple of weeks.
I’ll open with a direct quote from the newsletter: 75% of middle-income families say their wages are falling behind inflation, according to a new report from Primerica and Change Research. 77% say they’re expecting and preparing for a recession, with 71% already cutting back on spending to help make ends meet.
Corporate profits are at 70-year record highs. Since 2020, the after-tax profits made by corporations who aren’t in the business of finance have grown by a trillion dollars:
Tap to view at full size. You can also see this graph at its source.
There was a record level of stock buybacks: $882 billion! A stock buyback is the act of a publicly traded company (one that issues stock to the public) using cash to buy its own stock on the open market. This reduces the supply of the company’s available stock, raising its price, which is what shareholders like.
I’ll close with another direct quote from the newsletter: “The average S&P 500 CEO received $18.3 million in total compensation in 2021, an increase of 18% in one year. During that same period, average hourly earnings for workers fell 2.4%.”
At the same time, you’ve got the hue and cry from the executive class, with that same old “nobody wants to work” refrain. It’s nothing new, and suggests that the current situation isn’t a labor shortage, but a wages and worker treatment shortage:
That’s one of the challenges of having “the courage of one’s convictions” — the prerequisites are courage and convictions, neither of which Hawley appears to have in an appreciable quantity. He stoked a crowd with a lie, and ran when he had to deal the consequences of said lie.
I think the whole thing is best summed up by Michael Fanone, a D.C. police officer who was injured during the January 6th sedition that Hawley encouraged and then ran from: Josh Hawley is a bitch. And he ran like a bitch.
And before you say “No, this is the fringe,” let me disabuse of that false notion right now. This is the new mainstream, and it’s been part of the alt-right playbook for years now:
