When I write about this I call it the "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity."
While I believe raising the Minimum Wage to a real living wage based on actual "cost-of-living" is very important, this alone won't solve the problems of working class poverty.
Workers without jobs are going to be poor.
Workers paid poverty wages are going to be poor.
Part-time employment has become the "new normal" along with massive unemployment.
The "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" would legislatively mandate the president and Congress to work together to attain and maintain full employment, make the Minimum Wage a real living wage based on actual "cost-of-living" factors, include a Basic Income Guarantee in line with the Minimum Wage and include creating massive job-creating universal social programs like a National Public Health Care System (12 to 15 million new jobs) and National Public Child Care System (3 to 5 million new jobs)--- free health care and free child care together with re-establishing the WPA, CCC and C.E.T.A. programs. Pay for everything with a Peace Dividend obtained from ending militarism and wars--- what this won't cover, tax the hell out of the rich.
Living in the wealthiest country in the world, is this too much to expect?
Why is it so difficult for some people and most politicians to understand that if you pay a worker poverty wages they and their families are going to be poor?
There are other things that should be included in this package of reforms, too.
Things like:
Earlier retirement with expended Social Security benefits.
A shortened work week with forty hours pay.
Four weeks vacation for everyone.
All of this creates jobs.
All of this combined makes every job a good, decent job.
Politicians talk about "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" when they are running for office; but once elected they run away from anything that provides these jobs and a better and improved standard-of-living for working people.
We need to understand that militarism and these dirty wars are killing our jobs the same way they kill people while squandering the wealth of our Nation created by labor... we need to "beat swords into plowshares" and this is what a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" would be all about.
Democrats have created the most massive job creating program since FDR's New Deal employing almost two-million people in over 350 communities spread out across the country...
These jobs are in the hideous Indian Gaming Industry where workers are employed in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws...
All of this created under the terms of special "Compacts" agreed to by politicians and the mobsters who own the slot machines.
Just like with the Minimum Wage, these Democratic Party politicians have used the levers of government to provide employers with cheap labor to enforce poverty when the objectives of government should be just the opposite--- to eradicate poverty by raising wages and putting everyone to work in safe and healthy workplaces.
There is a reason the Minnesota Indian Gaming Association has spent over fourteen-million dollars lobbying--- bribing politicians--- not to raise the Minimum Wage.
Poverty wages mean super-profits for employers.
The chronic sectarianism of the left is going to have to go.
These left-wing leaders had it right...
It's time for some roundtable discussions to sit down and talk these these through to get a meeting of the minds.
