Note: I post Jonathan Tasini's complete essays: Conspiracy of Silence" and "An Emergency Bailout Plan That Americans Will Love" below. I think his essays offer a great opportunity for discussion, dialogue and debate.
I have included Jonathan's excellent suggestions which come from his linked post--- for now, I would like to offer some discussion on his minimum wage proposal and the Employee Free Choice Act--- numbers one and six:
1. Immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, with additional increases over the fives years following raising the minimum wage to $20, which will begin to return some justice and return to workers’ sweat of the brow.
2. Pass HR676, Medicare for All legislation to (Rep. John Conyers is the main sponsor of the bill). Aside from the moral issue of covering every single American and making health care a right not a privilege, it would save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars and immediately make American-based companies competitive around the world with companies operating from countries with national health care.
3. Create a national guaranteed universal pension plan, backed by the government, so people can be sure that their retirement years will not be threatened by the wild swings of Wall Street.
4. Repeal the Bush tax cuts now and raise the top two income tax rates to 40% and 45%, add a new 50% income tax bracket for those with taxable income over $1 million, and tax investment income as ordinary income. Frankly, that is pretty modest and should only be the first step in rediscovering a progressive taxation system—but it will still raise several hundred billion dollars this year to finance a variety of public investments. The very people who have enriched themselves in the deregulation orgy of the past couple of decades should pay to repair the country.
5. A couple of years ago, when I was involved in a little political race of my own, I latched on to this idea: a tiny transactions tax on stock sales. It would be so minuscule that the small investors would never feel it, say, 0.25 percent of the sale. It would raise about $150 billion. Wall Street benefits from government protections, not the least of which is a regulatory system (oh, there I go using that "regulation" word, which now seems to be back in vogue) that prevents, in theory, fraud and crazy speculation (ok, so that doesn’t always work out well). Plus, such a tax might also exercise some restraint, perhaps modest, on the wild and crazy big trades made on rumors and the thirst for a quick buck. But, the main point is shared responsibility. You live in this society and, so, you make a contribution. And that contribution is relatively modest and relatively painless.
6. The Employee Free Choice Act. There is no better middle-class jobs program than unionization. Period.
First, the minimum wage...
Jonathan acknowledges that the minimum wage should be just over $19.00 an hour now if a small family is to escape poverty... so, why would he suggest anything less than a real, living, non-poverty wage as part of his suggestions?
It is time for progressives and others to stop pulling figures--- willy-nilly--- from a hat concerning the minimum wage while suggesting the wages of other workers be increased; this suggestion only serves to drive a wedge between working people when our objective is unity of the working class.
The solution to this is very simple; and, the solution unites the working class and anyone else considering themselves progressive... here it goes:
Legislatively tie the minimum wage to what the United States Department of Labor and its Bureau of Labor Statistics would determine a real living--- non-poverty--- wage to be, based upon real cost of living factors... if $19.00 is the where the minimum wage should be for a small family to live out of poverty, so be it; legislate it at that level.
And recalculate the minimum wage every three months there-after.
Suggesting a poverty-level minimum wage should be abhorrent to every progressive. As for the Employee Free Choice Act, many calling themselves progressive and supporting this act do so without considering that it will take twenty-eight state legislatures in this country rescinding "at-will hiring; at-will firing" legislation currently on the books in these twenty-eight states for workers to avail themselves of the benefits of the Employee Free Choice Act... but, as with the carnage of Palestinians in Gaza, the Democratic Party has refused to act--- and Barack Obama has remained silent; and, again, like with the Israeli killing spree in Gaza, the AFL-CIO and Change To Win remains silent.
Again, we see the "politics of pragmatism" playing out fully and working people are the ultimate losers--- and victims.
No matter how loudly those calling themselves "progressives" make the claim, calls for legislating a minimum wage that is anything but a living wage is very reactionary and divisive in the working class movement and calling for implementation of the Employee Free Choice Act while ignoring the very reactionary, anti-labor aspects of "at-will hiring; at-will firing" is nothing short of hypocritical... especially when a union contract is better than any government anti-poverty program with the exception of those union contracts which impose poverty wages on working people.
Its kind of like calling for justice for working people but excluding the two-million casino workers employed in the Indian Gaming Industry in smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages without any rights under state or federal labor laws... these right-to-work-for-less without-any-rights colonies created by these same Democrats like Barack Obama and his Democratic Party giving their full ascent to Israel to carry out a genocidal campaign of murder and mayhem... with progressives offering a few words in opposition but not organizing any real resistance... let alone initiate a real alternative to the two-party trap knowing we are like a dog chasing its tail... around and around we go, never getting anywhere.
Alan L. Maki
Director of Organizing,
Midwest Casino Workers Organizing Council
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Jonathan Tasini
Posted January 6, 2009 | 09:23 AM (EST)
Conspiracy of Silence: Wage Collapse Caused Crisis
Every day, there is another example of the conspiracy of silence that pervades the traditional media's description of the current economic crisis. Sure, de-regulation, greed and pure stupidity has a lot to do with it. But, in truth, the underlying reason for the collapse has been a persistent war on the wages of American workers.
Call it -- egads -- class warfare.What is astonishing, and aggravating, is that much of the traditional media continues to point the finger at workers -- those wild-spending people who just bought all those yachts, fur coats and mansions in far-away countries. And, now, shame on them, those wild-spending workers are doing something awful -- they are saving money.This morning brings another example, courtesy of The Wall Street Journal:
Rick and Noreen Capp recently reduced their credit-card debt, opened a savings account and stopped taking their two children to restaurants. Jessica and Alan Muir have started buying children's clothes at steep markdowns, splitting bulk-food purchases with other families and gathering their firewood instead of buying it for $200 a cord. As layoffs and store closures grip Boise, these two local families hope their newfound frugality will see them through the economic downturn. But this same thriftiness, embraced by families across the U.S., is also a major reason the downturn may not soon end. Americans, fresh off a decadeslong buying spree, are finally saving more and spending less -- just as the economy needs their dollars the most.Usually, frugality is good for individuals and for the economy. Savings serve as a reservoir of capital that can be used to finance investment, which helps raise a nation's standard of living. But in a recession, increased saving -- or its flip side, decreased spending -- can exacerbate the economy's woes. It's what economists call the "paradox of thrift."U.S. household debt, which has been growing steadily since the Federal Reserve began tracking it in 1952, declined for the first time in the third quarter of 2008. In the same quarter, U.S. consumer spending growth declined for the first time in 17 years.
The article goes on to describe how people are now pulling back from spending and doing with less. But, nowhere in the piece do we read about the most important factor that lead to people piling up debt: the lack of wage growth.I have been doing a presentation around the country about the short-term and long-term reasons for the economic crisis facing workers. Here is the slide (courtesy of the Economic Policy Institute and Change To Win) that I think is perhaps the most graphic, clear explanation of why we are where we are. It measures productivity versus wages:Basically, the basic bargain was roughly this -- if you worked hard and became more productive, you would see that sweat of the brow in your wages. And from the post-war era until the 1970s, that deal basically held -- as you can see from the lines that are basically close together until the 1970s.Then, the lines diverge -- dramatically. You can see it yourself. If the lines had continued to track closely together as they did prior to the 1970s, the minimum wage would be more than $19 an hour. The minimum wage!So, in short: people had no money coming in in their paychecks so they were forced to pay for their lives through credit -- either plastic or drawing down equity from their homes. There are lots of reasons that this happened -- greed, the attack against unions, de-regulation, dumb trade deals.But, the point is: we will never fix the economic crisis, whether through short-term economic stimulus and certainly not through tax cuts, until paychecks are re-inflated. Dramatically.I outlined a whole set of solutions to bailout American workers but the main one is simple: raise wages. Dramatically. And end -- and I know some people cringe at the term -- the class warfare that has been underway for the past three decades.
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An Emergency Bailout Plan That Americans Will Love
by Jonathan Tasini
Tuesday 30 of September, 2008
There is a great economic emergency looming in our country. But, it seems to me that we—or at least our elected leaders—have only looked at one side of the crisis, that of the housing bubble-inspired financial credit crunch. By doing so, we’ve missed the bigger picture and the solutions needed. So, here is one person’s take on the Emergency Economic Bailout package that will heal the economy.
As quick background, let’s consider this:
24.5 all Americans earn poverty wages (9.60 or less)
10 percent of all Americans—15 million Americans—earn 6.79 or less
33.3 percent of African American works and 39.3 of Hispanic workers earn poverty wages.
The share of our entire national income hoarded by the top one percent is, as of 2005, 21.8 percent. The last time it was that high was in 1928 (23.9)—just as the Great Depression was about to hit with its full fury.
We accept poverty as a fact of life in this country—partly because workers have not gotten the fair share of their hard work over the past three decades (in Republican and Democratic Administrations). If productivity and wages had kept their historic link (meaning, as workers were more productive, that translated into higher paychecks), the MINIMUM WAGE in the country would be $19.12. Yes, $19.12.
At the recent new minimum wage of $6.55 an hour, if you worked every single day, 40 hours a week, with no vacations, no holidays, no health care and no pension, you would earn the grand sum of $13.624. The POVERTY LEVEL for a family of three is $17,600.
47 million Americans have no health care and tens of millions more have inadequate or costly health care that can bankrupt them.
Since 1978, the number of defined-benefit plans—that means, pensions that give retirees a promised monthly amount—plummeted from 128,041 plans covering some 41 percent of private-sector workers to only 26,000 today. It’s a Dog Food Retirement future for millions of people.
All those numbers above do relate to the more narrow crisis in a very specific way: without being able to rely on their paychecks to survive, a lot of people got sucked into the housing bubble mania as an economic coping mechanism. Home equity credit lines substituted for decent pay, retirement and affordable, quality health care. And we know the rest.
So, here is what I think is a more comprehensive economic rescue plan, all of which should be attached to any new "bailout" proposal:
1. Immediately raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour, with additional increases over the fives years following raising the minimum wage to $20, which will begin to return some justice and return to workers’ sweat of the brow.
2. Pass HR676, Medicare for All legislation to (Rep. John Conyers is the main sponsor of the bill). Aside from the moral issue of covering every single American and making health care a right not a privilege, it would save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars and immediately make American-based companies competitive around the world with companies operating from countries with national health care.
3. Create a national guaranteed universal pension plan, backed by the government, so people can be sure that their retirement years will not be threatened by the wild swings of Wall Street.
4. Repeal the Bush tax cuts now and raise the top two income tax rates to 40% and 45%, add a new 50% income tax bracket for those with taxable income over $1 million, and tax investment income as ordinary income. Frankly, that is pretty modest and should only be the first step in rediscovering a progressive taxation system—but it will still raise several hundred billion dollars this year to finance a variety of public investments. The very people who have enriched themselves in the deregulation orgy of the past couple of decades should pay to repair the country.
5. A couple of years ago, when I was involved in a little political race of my own, I latched on to this idea: a tiny transactions tax on stock sales. It would be so miniscule that the small investors would never feel it, say, 0.25 percent of the sale. It would raise about $150 billion. Wall Street benefits from government protections, not the least of which is a regulatory system (oh, there I go using that "regulation" word, which now seems to be back in vogue) that prevents, in theory, fraud and crazy speculation (ok, so that doesn’t always work out well). Plus, such a tax might also exercise some restraint, perhaps modest, on the wild and crazy big trades made on rumors and the thirst for a quick buck. But, the main point is shared responsibility. You live in this society and, so, you make a contribution. And that contribution is relatively modest and relatively painless.
6. The Employee Free Choice Act. There is no better middle-class jobs program than unionization. Period.
The point of these suggestions is not just moral but common, economic sense. The way to avoid, to some extent, speculation and crazy amounts of debt is to take away the victims that are preyed on by banks, unscrupulous investors and free-market pirates. If a person has a decent income, real health care, a secure retirement and a government that can invest in the country, he or she is less likely to feel the need to latch on to risky investments and get-rich-quick schemes (also known as day-trading).
My guess is the American people would feel pretty good about a deal that included the above. To those, I’d add two specific pieces about the current mess:
First, any investment of money in banks is done on a debt-for-equity swap. No bailouts. As Nouriel Roubini and my friend Dean Baker have both pointed out, there is no justification or economic logic to bailout banks as a solution to the crisis we find ourselves in. Roubini writes, in arguing that the buying up bad assets is the exception, not the rule, and:
So this rescue plan is a huge and massive bailout of the shareholders and the unsecured creditors of the financial firms (not just banks but also other non bank financial institutions); with $700 billion of taxpayer money the pockets of reckless bankers and investors have been made fatter under the fake argument that bailing out Wall Street was necessary to rescue Main Street from a severe recession. Instead, the restoration of the financial health of distressed financial firms could have been achieved with a cheaper and better use of public money.
Second, as I’ve argued, we should own Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. We need those two huge institutions to be boring and predictable, not participating in crazy leveraging and speculation. The only we guarantee that is by installing publicly accountable board members who will run the companies for the benefit of homeowners, not profiteers.
