Barrons (might be firewalled) sort of gets it that workers are suffering. But remains unconcerned about their fate.
They’re rowing harder than ever to make up for their colleagues who have been thrown overboard (getting rid of that extra weight improves the vessel’s efficiency.)
If you’re happy and you know it clank your chains.
Now, after a long spate in the doldrums, the captain has called for those still manning the oars to pick up the pace to move some cargoes, which had been notably scarce for well on a year and a half. It seems that money had been showered down like manna from heaven (this was before helicopters). That it came from a printing press or by pledging the credit of the land mattered little. Some of the money was spent, which, in turn, brought forth new orders of goods, since the storehouses had been emptied. And thus the need for the slaves to pick up their pace
Translation: Unemployment for many. Lower wages and less hours for those remaining. Or the owners work them into the ground because they don’t want to hire new people.
It has all put dough in the pouches of the owners and the captain of the ship, but there isn’t much for the slaves. And, no surprise, that’s caused some grumbling below. Not that there’s much the galley slaves can do about it, lest they become the next to get tossed overboard.
Au contraire. History shows us that sometimes galley slaves can do quite a lot besides passively accepting their fate. Peasants with pitchforks. Populist uprisings. Armed revolts. Things like that. As I recall, the birth of our very country involved tossing the tea overboard and the rascals out.
Soon after Marie Antoinette is reputed to have said ‘Let them eat cake’ she soon had no head with which to eat it.