I am writing as a teacher in the New York City public school system who is fed up with giving up hard earned benefits that took over a 150 years of blood (literally), sweat and tears to make a reality. The recent ridiculous last minute rejection of the teachers contract in Philadelphia because of the health benefits is the latest example of the strapped state and city governments sticking it to the public service worker. Why are state and city budgets so tight? I will get to that in a minute.
All workers in America benefit from the worker's rights struggles over the last 150 years here in the US and even further back in Europe. Rights most now take for granted by most such as the 40 hour work week, safety in the work place, over time pay, no child labor, guaranteed breaks, sick time pay, due process and essential benefits such as health care and pension plans. But these hard earned rights, fair wages based on inflation, health coverage, and retirement plans in the form of pensions are quickly being eliminated from the picture by powerful private industry influence. What do the government politicians and the super rich executives who control them like puppets expect working people to do in retirement, never mind right now as far a living wage and health care are concerned? Do they think that folks can live on minimum wage ($7.25) or later on the meager Social Security payment plans, which average out to what are considered poverty scale salaries- 12-20,000 per year? This is peanuts - and the hard working, retiring middle class majority of peoples have paid their 35% taxes and SS/Medicaid etc. fees every week for 20-30 years, only to have all these hard earned living wages and benefits eaten away by special interests via their puppet representatives in federal, state and local governments. These ambitious, sell-out, no-integrity politician puppets will later get cushy high paying jobs as lobbyists, who in turn will do the future dirty work of the evil corporations - and on and on the corrupted cycle goes. That is unless we the people do something about it ASAP!
The median income in the US is around $30,000 in 2014. This is a cruel joke for anyone who has even one child never mind two or three. Just do the basic math of a bare minimum existence and one can figure out quickly that the only way that one can achieve the basic American Dream is now impossible. The dream being to eventually be a home owner, or least be able to house, clothe, and feed your children and help them get through college. This lesser, working class renter version is not even possible now without going into huge debt on several levels.
The current nationwide debt for college costs is over a trillion dollars+. The interest rates on graduate school loans in particular are anywhere from 8-14 %. That is 3 times higher than the rate to buy a car or a home at around 4%. Bankers will claim that it is a bigger risk - but the law is now on their side because college loans can be deducted from your paychecks if necessary. Conservative economists predict the next big economic crash will be tied into this growing higher education debt quagmire/nightmare.
The bottom line is that all education should be free, paid for by our tax dollars. Education should be a right and not a privilege for the few or mean indentured servitude for the many to big banks, private colleges and now the government with unreasonable tuitions and greedy, blood sucking interest rates. It stinks to high heaven. But this blog is about austerity in an age of billionaires and US workers ongoing high productivity.
Productivity in the US has been steadily growing over the last 30 years, while wages have stagnated or gone down for the majority of Americans (see links). This is not a good mix. In the meanwhile the top 1% of earners have quadrupled their fortunes - going from being millionaires to billionaires. How much money does one need to be happy? Obviously these top earners 1% are suffering from some kind of greed sickness. They sit on billions and do not pay decent wages (export jobs), provide pensions or reinvest back into society. And since they will not or simply do not have enough time to reinvest it - it is necessary for them to pay their fair share of taxes as in a Buffet billionaires tax. Warren Buffet, one of the top 10 richest people in the world - made a smart and honest observation a couple years ago about how his secretary pays more in taxes (around 35%) than he does. After all the tax breaks and loop holes for the super rich - they barely pay any taxes. Most of these super rich are rich mainly on paper as in stocks. Rich presidential hopeful Mitt Romney finally admitted that he only paid around 15% tax. This is the capital gains stocks tax and the current low rate for it is around 15%. An all time low if you consider that it was once 90% during the two term Eisenhower administration during the 1950s, which was a period of explosive growth and wealth creation in our nation's short history.
This low rate of 15% is irresponsible if one considers that we have been in 2 very expensive (3-5 trillion & counting) wars for the last 13 years. These wars were not payed for - we went trillions more into national US debt and rely on autocratic countries such as China and Saudi Arabia for loans to pay off just the interest on our own federal loans to keep the government floating. It is truly ridiculous that Bush II made them (capital gains tax) so low and that current President Obama does not push hard enough to bring them back up to at least later Reagan/Clinton era levels of the mid twenties. The late 1990s was the last time we had a healthy economy with low unemployment and a federal balanced budget under President Clinton. Balanced federal budgets are a rare thing in our country's history. Yet many of Clinton's deregulation(s) and international trade deals (overseas cheap labor and new markets for US to dominate) such as NAFTA helped put us in the current economic mess the US is in post the 2008 near total collapse of the stock market/economic system.
During a time of high productivity and record profits for the top 1%, government officials (federal, state & local) as puppet mouth pieces for the top 1%, who basically run the show at this point - have the nerve to constantly cut budgets for teachers, firemen, police, and all kinds of civil service workers who keep this country running smoothly. Have you ever lived in a city when the transportation broke down from a natural disaster or when civil service workers go on strike? How about sanitation workers not picking up the garbage for a couple weeks? All work is good work. I do not understand how Wall Street workers deserve million dollar bonuses for playing casino with old folks retirement monies, while teachers, firemen, police and garbage men have to continually battle to keep hard earned benefits and a decent living wage.
Everyone's work contribution to society is important. Yes - the street sweeper is important, as is the doctor. But If the streets are filthy - disease runs rampant and there are already not enough doctors to deal with such a scenario. Yes - supply and demand dictates our reality but I feel that there has been a steady and growing disrespect for manual labor as well as other professions that used to get more respect such as teaching and social work. People who are not in unions are often disparaging against them based on brain washing corporate media who are openly hostile toward unions because it threatens their personal billion dollar worth. Uninformed people obviously do not know the long history of the ongoing battles for workers rights and fair wages. This country is based on checks and balances and if you are ready to hand over the entire operation completely to the corporations, then you are ignorant, myopic and not thinking in terms of what's best for the entire country and need to educate your self (see Links).
'We the people' need to stick together. They (the creepy powers that be) love it when we are at each others throats in situations such as in Ferguson, MO where racial tensions are high. The reasons are historical endemic racism mixed with a bad economy. The US is becoming a stratified country where the police (white in Ferguson) are themselves struggling to survive. Whereas the marginalized black communities always have twice the unemployment levels as whites to put things in perspective. The winners of the new world economy are the top executives of big corporations who profit greatly while the losers are the US workers who are left in the dust to fend for themselves. This creates a perfect stressful pressure storm for all citizens that leads to divisions among 'we the people'. Yet citizens would be much more powerful united rather than divided. If one goes by the huge success of the Gofundme campaign for the white officer who shot the unarmed, young black man in Ferguson, MO and the ongoing black protests - it's obvious there is still a serious racial divide in our country, regardless of a two term, first ever black president.
Let's quickly examine some of the main reasons states and cities who rely on federal tax revenues have ever shrinking budgets. As mentioned earlier - 2 Middle East oil wars that cost the US $ trillions, and the super rich 1% not paying fair share of taxes based on the low capital gains tax rate, tax loopholes, offshore corporation incursions etc., all sucking billions of tax revenue dollars from our country. These rich idiots have no allegiance to anything but the almighty dollar. Yet they made their fortunes within the US infrastructure, paid for (taxes) and built by all US citizens. All these creepy, greedy shenanigans by the super rich 1% and the ongoing US war on 'terrorism' (in cahoots with the Military Industrial Complex), which has only created many more terrorists - are some of the core reasons workers are getting the shaft on many levels - as in austerity measures.
Austerity measures during WW II were necessary and made perfect sense. It was a collective effort of all Americans to make sacrifices (food rations), conserve and or donate/collect certain materials (alloys etc) and resources to help the war effort against fascism all over the world. But now, in 2014, to have the gaul to ask any of the struggling American working peoples to 'do more with less', while the top 1% are making fortunes - is not only an insult but makes me downright angry. Revolution is the thought that comes to mind. When the politicians are more concerned about the interests of a tiny minority of the super rich 1% versus the basic quality of life issues of the majority 99% - we no longer have a democracy for and by the people, but a plutocracy geared toward a tiny elite of around 400 families out of 317 million citizens. Something is drastically wrong with this picture.
The only way it is going to change is if 'we the people' - all working people - from all backgrounds - get off our couches and organize. We need to get into the streets and commit acts of civil disobedience. Just marching alone does not change things as we have sadly learned from past huge protests such as against the 1999 Seattle WTO meetings, the 2003 world wide marches of millions against the US invasion of Iraq, which happened anyway, and most recently in September, 2014 the 400,000 million strong People's Climate March here in NYC that received little corporate news coverage (not surprised), and seems to have done little to force any real change at the UN Climate Change meetings.
Therefore, as written by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 -
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their own future security."
In sum - F-U to any puppet politician trying to push any austerity measures while the rich get richer and American worker productivity is high. Enough is enough! Lets get corporate money out of election cycles! We need a constitutional amendment to undue the Supreme Court's huge blunder and blow to democracy - Citizens United decision. Until we fix our broken democracy, things will not ever change for the better. We will never get the best and brightest, but only have the current crop of no-integrity sell-out puppets who use our government as revolving door to a cushy, corporate, million-dollar lobbyist job. Sad but true - so do something now! Raise awareness, organize and rebel!
http://www.amazon.com/America-Working-Nations-Economy-Politics/dp/1572593032/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413470987&sr=1-6&keywords=history+since+1877
http://www.amazon.com/A-Peoples-History-United-States/dp/0060838655
http://www.amazon.com/Profit-Over-People-Neoliberalism-Global/dp/1888363827/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_2_7NE6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1XBN4BN4ZW64CQ043K1J
http://www.amazon.com/Hegemony-Survival-Americas-Dominance-American/dp/0805076883/ref=pd_rhf_se_s_cp_18_Z1KJ?ie=UTF8&refRID=0SM3RHEH4Q0526N0VX82
http://inequalityforall.com/
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674430006
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