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-----Original Message----- Post-Corporate - http://postcorporate.listbot.com
From: Marie Heins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Friday, 20 August 1999 2:48 PM Subject: Intro -- Real World Experience Introducing Marie Heins, who learned about the global economy the hard way. My contribution to this group will be real life economic experience – my own and people I personally have met in my travels. My goal is to have communities and local economies routinely accepted as the source of all wealth -- individual, corporate, and government. It seems like another lifetime that I had a home, a mortgage, and savings. I worked for manufacturing subsidiaries of large corporations, and for me the economic system worked as advertised -- until mergers and downsizing changed the rules. I remember the exact moment my economic reality changed. The mortgage on my small bungalow was sold to a rapidly expanding out of state bank. I felt incredibly sad that all my money was leaving the community, but I was in no financial position at the time to refinance the house. My company was being sold, and the downsizing had already started. In the 80’s I did not have the words to describe what was happening. I was being shoved into the global economy. Other people made fantastic profits and bonuses from my work, but my life became a daily struggle for survival. My son missed a lot of school. In 1995 I was the lone survivor of a downsized information systems department. Between the crushing workload and my declining health, I did not have time to fight off an avalanche of tax increases, and other government mandates, such as higher auto liability insurance. Eventually I could not afford any housing in the area where I worked and my son attended high school. We moved in November of his senior year. I dropped him off at his new high school early one morning, then started a long winter with a very long commute. By spring I was too ill to work. I was out of work for 2 years, and homeless for several months. With extensive help from many private individuals, government programs and charities, I returned to paid employment. I currently live in Olympia, Washington and work as a computer programmer for a state agency. I read The Post-Corporate World and When Corporations Rule the World, and thank David Korten for helping me understand the global economy and my place in it. |
