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Today's Top News
Jobs Emergency
The best way to address budget deficits is to put people back to work so they can pay their share of taxes.
It's been two years since the Lehman Brothers collapse set off a global financial meltdown. The government bailed out big Wall Street banks and they're now making bumper earnings. Major corporations are sitting on $8 trillion in cash reserves, the biggest pile since 1963.
For working families, the crisis didn't start in 2008. They've been getting what New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse calls "The Big Squeeze" for decades, as the income gap between the rich and the rest of us tripled. These families are continuing to bear the brunt of the economic crisis.
More than 15 million Americans are out of work, and there are nearly five job-seekers for every job opening. Long-term unemployment is at record levels. This "jobs deficit" is longer and deeper than any other post-war recession. If job growth for the next decade matches 2000-2010, the official unemployment rate will hit 13 percent by 2020. And that doesn't even factor in that workers are earning less, losing benefits, and working longer and harder.
Conservative activists and some members of Congress have been grandstanding about our massive budget deficit to block a recovery for the rest of us. Yet these same people want to maintain tax breaks for the rich and stop taxes on the Wall Street banks that created this mess in the first place--two steps that could help shrink the deficit. It's time for ordinary Americans to make our voices heard. It's time to declare a state of emergency on jobs.
Across the country, workers are already taking a stand. At a Mott's apple juice plant in New York, workers have gone on strike over wage cuts. Hugo Boss and Republic Windows workers in New York and Illinois have successfully prevented plant shutdowns.
Unemployed workers across the country are also organizing and demanding jobs with justice. Jobless doesn't mean voiceless or powerless.
Chicago's Unemployed Council has been collecting surveys at unemployment offices to get information on jobless needs and met with members of Congress to push for extended jobless benefits. In Eastern Maine, the laid-off committee gives tips on surviving unemployment and connects with local farmers to arrange food baskets. In Long Island, New York and Portland, Oregon, monthly potlucks help the jobless break out of their isolation and take an active role as citizens holding representatives accountable.
On September 15, coalitions of community, faith, labor, and student organizations are taking action in 30 cities, calling for "Full and Fair Employment," and demanding that officials explain what they will do to fill the jobs gap and put America back to work.
Polls clearly show that most Americans consider the jobs emergency a higher priority than the budget deficit--and after all, the best way to address budget deficits is to put people back to work so they can pay their share of taxes. Making Wall Street pay its fair share works well too.
There are several actions Congress could take as emergency first steps towards full and fair employment. For example, they could pass the Local Jobs for America Act, which would save or create 1 million good public sector jobs, providing needed services in communities that need it most.
A small tax on financial transactions would reduce the most harmful speculation games of Wall Street, and could potentially generate $200-500 billion per year for jobs programs.
Without jobs, there is no recovery. Without good jobs, there is no justice.
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29 Comments so far
Show All"Without jobs, there is no recovery. Without good jobs, there is no justice."
The key words in this quote are GOOD JOBS. Here in our town, the front page article of the local paper today is that there are two new big box type stores coming to the area. Big deal. Retail jobs pay minimum wage for most of their workers. No one can make a living at that wage. Of course, what's needed are good paying jobs, lots of them, corporations hiring and paying a fair wage. But maybe the first step should be an increase of the minimum wage to $10 per hour. That would be a start at least. Of course the Repukes would stamp down any such efforts, wouldn't they?
Yes. And not just jobs that pay well. Jobs with dignity in a democratic workplace, jobs that do not merely pay a higher wage but rather jobs that pay the workers for the actual value they create. Jobs that are useful, meaningful and creative.
Of course Republicans would try to stop that, but the only reason they win is because we don't fight. We need to stop asking merely for what we would settle for, what we think is "realistic" or "practical." Never start negotiations by making what you would settle for your initial offer, and never negotiate from weakness. The bosses and owners and landlords and investors and rulers are playing hard ball, making no compromises, they are fighting tooth and nail to take everything from us. Why are we reluctant to advocate fighting back?
There are far more of us than there are of them, and they need us far more than we need them.
"There are far more of us than there are of them, and they need us far more than we need them."
This is a powerful realization, Two Americas. We have to get over our learned helplessness.
Joe
Another piece that assumes our present Capitalist system can be 'fixed,' and that we should be trying to 'fix' the doomed-to-inevitable-failure, Upper Class owned and operated American-dog-eat-fellow-American-dog system.
It can't be and we shouldn't.
We should be focusing on what comes After Capitalism - a society based on fundamental fairness and what's best for the Commonwealth of America... and Earth.
The Era of Materialism is over. So is the Era of Selfishness, the Era of Greed, and the Era of Perpetual Growth.
Let the Era of Evolved Humanity begin!
What comes after capitalism? A smoldering, lifeless planet.
Frank, pretty good keep at it.
Monty Python ran a spoof on the Robin Hood series called "Nathan Moore". He steals gold from the rich and gives to the poor. Eventually the poor are sick of having so much useless gold and demand posies instead.
We're so short on real jobs, and so long on cheap plastic junk, that we should actually pay people depending on the inherent quality of the jobs they create, instead of how much product the workers create.
3 billion Chinese and Indian slave laborers are leaving 300 million Americans jobless and ruined.
No outsourcing, no off-shoring. Problem solved.
100 million people world wide were plunged into unemployment and poverty, because of the bankster created fiasco.
People can't get "jobs" when they are homeless and spending their entire day on mere survival.
The CEOs of all these corrupt entities have kept their mansions; even the ones who were caught red-handed stealing!
Don't "tax" bankers. Take our money back from them!
I have a new idea for a progressive tax structure.
The top 1 percent's tax burden would be set proportionately higher or lower, depending upon the unemployment rate, measured in the same way it was measured during the Great Depression.
The higher the unemployment rate, the higher their tax rate.
Perhaps then, there would be a real incentive to keep jobs in this country, and free up some of the money that they sit their fat asses on.
Of course, I realize these are just idle imaginings.
This might actually work. However, a great number of the fabulously wealthy currently pay no taxes at all.
True.
Few, if any, of the "top 1 percent" "sit their fat asses on" idle money. Most of their money is invested; in things (jobs creating), muni bonds (job protecting), public companies (job protecting), and startups (the most job creating of all). Right or wrong, it is true.
3 billion Chinese and Indian slave laborers are leaving 300 million Americans jobless and ruined.
If true, only slaves trade can restore America’s original greatness. It should not be that difficult for USans.
32-hour work week, 40 hours' pay.
Cut the military budget by at least half. As it is, half the military budget is a total waste.
Dedicate billions in government subsidies to "alternative" energy startups instead of the existing on-again/off again partisan funding bullshit.
Boycott anything owned by Rupert Murdoch and any company that advertises through his media empire.
Invoke universal health care and kill off health "insurance."
Buy as locally as you can.
Stop all use of corn for ethanol.
Decommission all nuclear power plants and require that their waste products be stored on the grounds of their respective power company headquarters.
Dismantle the five biggest U.S. banks and reinvoke the essence of Glass-steagall.
Continually accuse all Republicans of being closet homosexuals; tit for tit, esp. former Senator Alan Simpson.
Tear down your white picket fence.
-30-
"half the military budget is a total waste. "
that's quite generous i'd say - i'd put the amount around 80% or more......
I like it but you need to drink decaf I think.
Wrong! Jobs get exported to extremely low wage authoritarian nations that are willing to bust heads and shoot to kill whenever unions raise their heads above ground.
The reason the jobs go to the worst labor environments is because "free trade" agreements allow and encourage the exodus.
It has little or nothing to do with the mentality of the American worker. That is right wing capitalist claptrap.
Yep.
globalization is winning because only they understand Marxism to the letter
"The reason the jobs go to the worst labor environments is because "free trade" agreements allow and encourage the exodus"
Ok. That too...
Really?? How about the capitalists who exploit labor while they do no work for 40 hours times 10??
Well, I guess some day they will pay for their deeds.
As satisfying as shooting gay congress critters as they cower within the closet may be, it plays into the hands of the elite. Closeted gay republicans are not the problem. The hypocrisy goes deeper than that.
The ruling class, and their servants--the politicians and the white collar folks--rely on us to shred each other, while they keep looting and pillaging--Democrats, Republicans--all serve--it has been resoundingly, unequivocally demonstrated that they all serve the elite.
They don't serve us, and haven't for at least three generations now. It is the political structure itself that must be dismantled, and any such talk gets you nabbed off the street and tortured to death, eh?
What I'm driving at, albeit circuitously, is: don't fall for the Divide and Conquer crap. Hang the gay republicans, sure, with the entrails of speaker pelosi and anyone else who approves torture, illegal war, trillions for banks, nada for the people. They're all as guilty as a cat in an empty goldfish bowl.
As for the rest of it, yeah, right on. I'd add: create a garden and produce at least something you can eat.
Peace.
the economy is a zero-sum game regardless of what hucksters like david stockman and ronnie raygun had to say about it.....
the more the wealthy have the less everyone else has....
and then goes the tax base and demand......
I say we need a tax on WEALTH coupled with a tax on high incomes - hell eisenhower raised the top tax rate up to 91% on incomes over 3 mil in todays dollars......
and the most important point there is you didn't reach the top tax rate until a very high income......
unlike now when the lower middle class hits the top tax bracket and some fatassed schmuck sitting around the pool waiting for the dividend check to roll in pays a lower rate than the poor........
I agree. There are so many ways the super rich hide their wealth from taxes. It's time the working people got some of that money in the form of better government services and a better "safety net" funded by the new revenue.
remember that nothing is better than divorce from the devil
edweg
Good article.
Joe