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The Associated Press reports today:
What the hell is it politicians do not understand about the relationship between unemployment and poverty?
If you are unemployed you are going to be poor.
These politicians don’t understand the relationship between poverty-wage jobs and poverty, either; workers paid a poverty wage and going to be poor.
The solution is obvious: A full-employment economy with real living wage jobs for everyone with Affirmative Action being enforced to create a level playing field for everyone until a full-employment economy is created.
Do the politicians need to learn to connect the dots?
Wealth and resources being squandered on wars and militarism prevent solving the problems of the people.
Putting people to work solving the problems of the people is the way to create jobs.
A National Public Health Care System is what we need to solve this health care mess; creating such a system will create 15 million new, good-paying, living-wage jobs.
Creating a National Public Child Care System will create at least 5 million new jobs.
Paying Wal-mart employees and casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry along with those employed at sweatshops like Lillian Vernon, Burger King and McDonald’s real living wages will take millions of workers out of poverty.
If union “leaders” are going to shirk their responsibility in organizing workers while choosing to back Wall Street creeps like Barack Obama, instead, we will have to seek universal social programs as the solutions to our problems including forcing the government to enact a minimum wage that is a real living wage based on all actual cost of living factors as calculated by the high-paid bureaucrats employed by the United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Alan Greenspan in his book, “The Age of Turbulence,” points out how important these statistics are for corporations when it comes to maximizing profits— well, these facts, figures and statistics are vitally important to working people in our struggle for a just and adequate standard of living free from poverty.
Fight for peace to end poverty and injustice.
How is Barack Obama’s Wall Street war economy working for you? According to this Associated Press story published on Yahoo which I reprint below, for millions of Americans the answer is: Not good. So, what are we going to do about this?
Click on link for full story, video and graphics:
http://news.yahoo.com/poorest-poor-us-hits-record-1-15-people-040233161.html
Poorest poor in US hits new record: 1 in 15 people
news.yahoo.com
WASHINGTON (AP) — The ranks of America’s poorest poor have climbed to a record high — 1 in 15 people — spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income.
New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation’s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty.
In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America.
5 Comments
Great post, Alan. Recommended. I will only add that our politicians Do Not Care about how their policies affect the rest of us. They only care about serving their corporate masters, lining their own pockets, and securing the future for their own families.
We are less than cattle to them. They won’t listen to us. They’ve gamed the system to maintain their own power. That is why the system must be replaced by another one.
Wonderful post.
I share your anger and frustration sir.
As if things weren’t bad enough, now officially most of the unemployed in the U.S. are not receiving any unemployment benefits: http://news.yahoo.com/most-unemployed-no-longer-receive-benefits-135836370.html
This is a recipe for disaster if I ever saw one.
This kind of suffering and exploitation is unsustainable.
I see “full employment” as a key component of “the commons”. This is to say that all engaged in commerce, and especially corporations, should have, in their corporate charters, an obligation to serve the commons. Today, the only charter requirement for corporations is to act in the best interests of their stockholders. That has to end.
And, taking up the phrase “the politics of economics”, we need to democratize work as much as possible for all workers. When the management and the stockholders vote to close a plant and move it to a cheaper labor market overseas, what role do the workers play in this political process? The answer is that the voice of the workers has absolutely no say in the process and that, too, has to end.
When each dollar bill gets a vote, i.e. when capital gets a vote and workers do not, the politics of economics is perverse. Too many who see the corruption of big money in the political process and call for campaign finance reform fail to see the incredible inequities in the workplace. Workers should control their own places of employment and not be ruled by the undemocratic, greedy tyranny of capital.
I don’t believe that.
We’re the wealthiest nation on earth. If we wanted to fix our potholes, feed our hungry, shelter our poor, etc., we could easily do so.
The problem is that the wealthy believe they don’t need us any more and see us as a drag on their economy. And, they see themselves as staggering under an ever-increasing tax burden and will gladly cite Heritage Foundation statistics to “prove” it.
When the wars go away, the rich will simply give themselves another tax break. They and their politicians will not use the peace dividend to improve social services.
I don’t agree we can finance wars and militarism while solving the problems of the people at the same time simply because any government which wages these immoral, illegal and unconstitutional wars abroad is not the kind of government that believes in social justice as domestic policy.
In terms of real wealth you are probably technically correct.
But, solving our problems here at home AND financing these wars would require HUGE taxes on the wealthy.
We have a government owned lock, stock and barrel by Wall Street and unless we successfully challenge Wall Street for power behind an anti-imperialist, pro-peace, pro-people agenda that puts people before corporate profits we will never be able to solve our social problems.
No government perpetrating injustices abroad is going to advance a socially just domestic agenda at home even if the wealth is there to do both.
But, in reality, the fact remains, every single penny spent on wars is money we can’t spend creating THE MOST socially just society here at home.
Wasting money on wars ALWAYS involves cutting into living standards.