For those of you who think the current incarnation of the Republican Party, including those in Congress, has even the slightest clue when it comes to handling money and deficits, let me disabuse you of that concept right this minute. They don't know squat. I've talked about their asinine approach to deficits and debt in a previous post.
Another example can be seen in their attitude toward unions.
Do you have any idea why there are no jobs in many places, unless you want to bust your ass for minimum wage and no benefits? It's because the right has run the show for a while now, and they've convinced too many people that, in order for our economy to hum along, we have to give rich folks as much as possible, so that they'll do nice things for us and create jobs.
Well, guys, the right's been in charge for 30 years now; where are the nice fricking jobs? Oh yeah; they're in China and India; I forgot.
Wake the hell up, people!
The REASON you're living from paycheck to paycheck, and in deathly fear of a layoff is precisely because the system we have created is taking money from your pocket and putting it into the pockets of the rich. And far right Republicans love the virtual feudal system that's developed, because it makes their financiers supremely happy.
I'm going to pick on Wal-Mart a little here, but this could apply to a number of large companies.
Did you know that more than 2 million people work for Wal-Mart? I'm sure you know that almost all of them who don't occupy management positions are poorly paid, by any historic standards. Study after study has been done that shows an increasing number of full-time workers in Wal-Mart and stores like it also qualifying for public assistance. One recent study commmissioned by Ohio Rep. Robert Hagan showed that thousands of Wal-Mart employees in his state qualify for welfare, Food Stamps and Medicaid.
In other words, folks, you the taxpayers are subsidizing Wal-Mart. And they don't just screw the taxpayer with low wages. The Wal-Mart business model was built upon moving huge stores into rural areas and killing off all commerce in an area by offering prices lower than anyone else could offer. How many towns lost most of their business tax base when Wal-Mart moved in?
Yet, Republicans praise Wal-Mart's business model, and they have allowed many other companies to follow something similar. Have you even noticed that most new shopping centers these days include the same assortment of plain-vanilla chain stores and franchises, with no local flavor, and no jobs that pay livable wages? Worse, have you noticed that the same chains are often lumped together in many of these shopping centers? Welcome to the anti-competitive world of right wing capitalism.
Wal-Mart had been around for many years before Reagan was elected and the right wing meme started taking hold, but they didn't start "thriving" until then. You think that's coincidence? Try again.
There have been numerous attempts to unionize Wal-Mart, and every time their corporate headquarters, or even a store manager gets wind of it, they take measures to quash them. They have been known to fire any employee who even mentions a union and they will throw out any union representative that attempts to recruit employees.
Last year, Wal-Mart had revenues of $405 billion. That's roughly $200,000 in revenue per employee. Now, those of you who have ever run a small business, imagine if you had $200,000 per employee coming in; would paying employees a living wage and health benefits really make it impossible to make a profit? If you answer yes, and you're not selling Ferraris, then you should sell your business and do something else for a living.
I'm picking on Wal-Mart, but as I pointed out, what they do has become something of a business model in this country, so they are not alone. I could easily name 30-40 huge companies in this country that are only slightly above Wal-mart in their predatory ways, and several that are actually worse.
Make no mistake; that business model is killing us as a nation. Wages have been stagnant for 40 years, while huge corporations are making record profits, and seeing their stock prices go through the roof. Currently, they are sitting on more than $2 trillion in cash, and refusing to hire people at decent wages, in part because no one is representing us anymore.
And that's the real problem here, folks. Huge companies are well represented, and we, the people, are largely ignored. We're told that we should sit down and shut up, and that we should feel lucky to have a job.
The US Constitution -- you know, the "just a piece of paper" that Bush and Cheney pissed on for eight years, and which the teabaggers pretend to worship as sacred but don't really know anything about -- MANDATES that that government regulate commerce. No, folks -- it's not just a simple request; it's a requirement. You see, the Founders were rich men who had built their wealth honestly, through hard work and sacrifice. But they also knew there were a lot of people who liked to cheat, or take shortcuts, and they knew the damage such folks could do to the economy. They knew that money was power, and that concentrating power into too few hands was damaging to the democracy that envisioned.
You see, the people who founded this country believed that equal opportunity for all (admittedly only white males at first, but I'd like to think we've grown since then) to make money and better their fortunes was the best way to move this country forward. They believed in creating a regulatory scheme in which Joe Blow could open a store and compete on an equal basis with Wal-Mart and Home Depot, or open a restaurant that could be competitive with Olive Garden or Applebee's, because that was better for all concerned. (They also believed in high estate taxes, so as to prevent the build-up of dynasties, but that's another rant for another day.)
We were almost a century into the industrial revolution before workers began to form unions in this country, and it was a long, hard slog. a lot of people died to bring you a 40-hour work week, overtime pay, and safe working conditions. Employers didn't just give them to you, folks; just as military people have died through the years to bring us general "freedom," a lot of civilian union organizers died to bring you time-and-a-half.
And consider this; throughout the 19th and early 20th Centuries, before unions became strong, we rarely went more than 3 years between economic recessions, and we experienced economic depressions in 1807-1814, 1837-1844, 1873-1879, 1893-1898 and of course, the Great Depression, which lasted from 1929 until we went into World War II in 1941, and that spending (hint hint, righties) lifted us out, finally. That's just a list of depressions, folks; in some of them, the GDP dropped by more than half, and most people lost everything.
The strong union era took off in the early 20th Century, and soared strong through the 1970s. During that period, we became the strongest economic power in the history of the world. With the dawn of the neocon era, attacks on unions and union membership became the norm, and the neocons in government even gave businesses incentives to move their operations overseas to take advantage of the cheap labor, with no penalties. As a result, the number of union workers went from 30-35% through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, to 12% now.
In other words, when we had high union membership and high pay for the working classes, or economy boomed. When union membership waned, pay scales went down for most people and the economy continues to stagnate, buoyed only by the occasional bubble, caused by the greedy bastards Jefferson, Madison and the rest of the Founders warned us about.
Why doesn't it gall more people that "made in China" labels are at least 10 times more plentiful these days than "made in the USA" labels? Why do those who support Republicans have no clue that the reason you can get a spatula or a pair of tongs for a buck is because someone in China is being paid $2 a day to make them?
Not only that, but the spatula and tongs are made poorly, anyway, and you'll have to buy them repeatedly over the years, so you're not really saving money. I have American-made pots and pans that I inherited from my mother, who received them for her and my father's wedding in 1957. To buy the same set of American-made pots and pans right now would cost me about $300-400, but if they last me 50-60 years or more, that's actually cheaper than the $40 set made in China that I'll have to toss in a couple of years, isn't it?
We have to return to what made us a great economic power in the first place, and that requires a better sense of balance between what corporations need and what the average person needs. I'm not one of those lefties who thinks all large corporations should be broken up and/or demolished. But there is no balance now; everything about our system is geared to corporations and away from us. Like I said, you're apparently supposed to be grateful to the nice corporations for giving us a job and paying us anything at all; to make any other demands upon them is unthinkable and un-American or something.
Well, if you think that, stop it. They can't make money without your labor. And make no mistake; these people are making plenty of money; they can afford to pay more in most cases. A lot more. And the way you get it is for all workers to get together and demand it. And one way to do that is to unionize.
You've heard a lot of bullshit regarding the Wisconsin protests, especially from Fox News. Well, did you know that pretty much everyone complaining about unions on Fox News actually belongs to one? If you watched the Academy Awards last night, you should known that almost all of those people belong to a union. And they all make more money than you for the work that you do. And not just then talking heads and famous actors. Everyone who works at regular jobs behind the scenes also belongs to a union, and makes more money than you.
The question you shouldn't be asking as you watch the goings-on in Wisconsin is "how dare they ask for that"? Instead, you should be asking, why aren't you fighting for that? Do you LIKE looking through the newspaper when you're looking for a job and seeing nothing but ads for jobs at discount stores, warehouses and fast food chains, that pay poverty-level wages? Isn't it FUN to have to work three jobs just to pay the rent, food and gas for your car, so that you can get back and forth to those three jobs? Do you think it's fine and dandy that your kids have to raise themselves, while you and your spouse work so hard, just to make enough to survive from paycheck to paycheck?
And how about the fact that the rich keep on getting richer, while income for most everyone else has been stagnant for 40 years? It really doesn't matter that a CEO makes more than 200 times as much as his lowest-level employee; the real problem is that the lower-level employee can rarely afford to live anymore, and he or she could before. Likewise, the gap between rich and poor isn't the real problem. The real problem is the size of both groups. The number of people in the "poor" category includes a hell of a lot more new people than the rich, as the middle class has been sinking into poverty for 30 years now.
At what point do workers rise up and say "enough"? Huge companies are making huge sums of money, and they're not sharing because you're not asking them for it. You're not lucky to have a job; they're lucky to find someone dumb enough to work for so little money. They can't function without their workers, and it's time you understood that. Get together and demand a living wage, health care and a pension plan. Then demand that they start making more things here, in plants that also pay a living wage, health care and a pension. You know what will happen to the economy? It will boom.
Trust me, folks; they can afford it. And if you start making what you're worth, you won't care so about those $1 spatulas; you'll buy a nice one for $10, made in a union plant in a formerly poor area of the country, and it'll last 20 years.
It's time to demand what you're worth, and stop letting huge companies push you around. That store your working for is making ten times as much as you are on every hour of work you do for them; is it really too much to ask that they only make five times as much?
We have to do several things.
First of all, the concept of the "at-will" employment contract needs to go. No worker should be able to be dismissed from a job for absolutely no reason, period. The employment relationship is not based on equality. If you quit, there are many others to take your place. On the other hand, if your employer just gets rid of you, you are at a disadvantage in the marketplace.
Second, the federal government has to start getting behind workers and unions and stop allowing companies to continue to dominate the process. If some workers want to unionize, and they lose by majority vote, that's fair. But if they lose because a number of workers were coerced or intimidated into voting against the union, such actions must have legal consequences to the employer.
Third, the minimum wage has to go up. Way up. Up until the Reagan years, it had always kept up with inflation, and it was a fair bottom level for workers. But after years of neocon neglect, it is far behind where it needs to be. And for you right wing geniuses who swear it'll cause millions of jobs to be lost, I want you to do two things. First, point to a time when this ever happened before, and then explain to us how giving rich people free money that they'll put into savings is good for the economy, while giving the working poor a raise is bad for it.
But most of all, we have to break this attitude problem we have, in which we're supposed to feel grateful to rich companies for their largess in giving us a paycheck, especially when that paycheck isn't enough to pay for our basic needs. When a CEO takes home millions in bonuses every year, it's your work that made it possible. It's really not too much for you to demand that you make enough to live on. Really.
