One conclusion is crystal clear. Even a more modest employment goal is doomed to fail unless the corpocracy is upended and its allies quieted. They will block any and every employment initiative. They will trot out their thoroughly repudiated free-market argument that by letting the free market work the economy will grow and create new jobs and secondly that spending more federal dollars on employment programs will raise the federal deficit. I can't repeat enough times. The free market theory is just that, theory, and it's all bunkum. The GDP and stock market are up from the depths of Economic Katrina and yet the unemployment rate has soared.
4d. Unlivable Wages
In the opinion of the
The national minimum wage law is based on a minimum level of consumption, has been on the books since the late 30"s, and has become a farce. It falls short of a wage a middle class family actually needs to live not luxuriously, just worry-free of being able to meet reasonable needs. Many states' laws consequently have set a higher minimum, and several jurisdictions have established local policies requiring still higher so-called living wages. But they are "just a starting point," claims author Thom Hartmann in his book Screwed: The Undeclared War against the Middle Class because "even people making a "living' wage often must work two jobs." The argument that raising wages raises unemployment is false, Hartmann claims, and notes that "every time the minimum wage gets raised, employment goes up." Corporations don't want to concede that raising wages lower profits, not employment.
Corpocractic capitalism offers "dead" wages, not living wages, mostly by emasculating the bargaining power of labor unions. For any wage earner nowadays to keep up with inflation isn't like running on a treadmill, it's like running on two of them at once. Moreover, many low-wage earners aren't paid even the minimum wage to which they are entitled, are denied overtime pay, and are dissuaded from filing worker compensation claims.
Anyone who needs work ought to get work and be fairly compensated for it. The taskforce should consult with jurisdictions about what lessons were learned in requiring a living wage. Consideration could also be given to proposing a nationwide living wage and offsetting the costs to employers possibly through tax credits adjusted by the financial health of the employers.
4e. Backbreaking Costs of Daily Living
So much personal wealth owned by so few helps to drive up the cost of daily living simply because the wealthy can afford to pay more for goods and services. A major cause of indebtedness, Professor Howard Karger contends in his book, Shortchanged, is due to "the high cost of living in a privatized society," not to "over consumption." He notes that the rising cost of necessities now amounts to 75% of a family's two-person income, leaving little left for luxuries for the "functionally poor."
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