Again...

 March 2011

Again, some media outlets (notably Forbes magazine and The O'Reilly Factor) are blaming budget crisis on politicians who "made pension promises to the public employee unions that cannot be met".

No mention whatsover that these pension funds were drained by a crashing stock market. They are trying to manipulate our anger and direct it to the politicians and to the unions and away from regulation of Wall Street. Wall Street does not want regulation.

O'Reilly says that Walker's Wisconsin is an example of how democracy works. Though he freely admits that the public is wary of Governor Walker's attack on unions. Governor Walker says his limiting of collective bargaining and paring down of union benefits will create 250,000 jobs.

Really?

Yes, this is the same supply side economics that reduced wages and benefits for workers over the last couple of decades and brought about at least one "jobless recovery". Shall we call Walker's move the last test of supply side theory?

O'Reilly says that if Walker fails to create those jobs that then he deserves to be voted out. Will he hold him accountable to that?

It is hard to see how paring down paychecks in Wisconsin will create the demand to support those new jobs.

Having O'Reilly swing his support to unions over supply-siders would be an interesting paradigm shift.

I have always suspected that O'Reilly, like many of the talking heads of the right, ride on the wave of resentmentful working class purely for personal economic gain, while being the agents of big money. If the public anger begins to shift I think O'Reilly will go wherever it leads. The Fox Network makes big money by manipulating and riding public anger.

Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I think soon the American public will see the man behind the curtain in the Emerald City of our economy. I think many of them have already. Perhaps ironically Governor Walker is to credit for making the contradictions of his economic theory more obvious.

Blue Collar Economics 101

Welcome to Working Class Weekly.

Our origins, beginning October 2010:

Let's get right down to it. It is 2010 and the world economy is still reeling from the dramatic crash of 2008. Economists have all kinds of ideas about what could be done but none of them can tell you with any certainty when--or if--things will take an upturn.

If the economists hint too strongly that there is something that is fundamentally wrong with our economic system, they will lose their jobs. Their job is to convince people like you and I that if we invest our labor and hard-earned dollars in this economic system we will come out ahead of the game.

Well, as a factory worker, I don't make those assumptions. I have seen things go south for workers for at least three decades now.

I will lose my job if I don't make my production and quality quotas and show up for work on time, but I won't lose my job if I tell you that the economic system is fundamentally flawed.

So, from the mind of a factory worker--Blue Collar Economics 101:

Many of you lost big chunks of money from your 401K. As a friend of mine said, "When you lose money in the stock market where does it go?".

Good question.

Let me share a little known fact about about this thing called a "Depression". Oh, OK, if you insist, I will call it a "recession". Not very convincing to those on the hurting end of it but I can work with it for now.

Depressions--or "recessions"--are accompanied by a dramatic transfer of wealth from those lower on the economic scale to those higher on the economic scale.

You could almost say that this transfer of wealth is one of the things that most characterizes a depression.

Before the Great Depression of the 1930's eighty per cent of farms were family owned. After the recession 30% were. This is a dramatic concentration of wealth transferred from those at the bottom of the economic scale to those at the top.

The current real estate foreclosures? Same deal. Corporate bail-outs? Same deal. More wealth being transferred--being moved away from people like you and I and concentrated in the hands of people at the upper levels of our economic system.

In the case of home foreclosures it is people's life savings being transferred. In the case of corporate bail-outs it is our tax money. No matter to those at the top where it comes from as long as they maintain their dominance in the economic system.

The A-student of Blue Collar Economics asks, "What about my 401k?". Go to the head of the class. And sorry you got burned in the recession. Same deal though. "Thanks for letting us play with your money at your expense. By the way you don't have as much as you used to before you let us invest it for you."

And don't blame yourself if you weren't the A-student. We had some of the "brightest minds" in the country telling us to invest our future in this booming economic engine.

The head of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan who was the nearest thing to a god in the financial world admits that he blew the call on the economy.

It is no wonder we were confused. We wanted to believe. The American dream dies hard. 

So just know--this current recession that is causing your depression is nothing new. It is the cyclical nature of a system that requires illogical growth and investment in financial instruments that have only speculative (and no inherent) value and are not regulated in any way that protects the consumer. 

It is the nature of an economy that relies on consumption and at the same time keeps the profits from getting into the hands of the consumer. Deregulation in theory reduces costs for consumers but it often comes with tax cuts for the corporations, taxes fall onto the consumers, the gained wealth is not shared with consumers which in the end lessens demand.

So the game grinds to a halt and the deck is reshuffled. Who will end up holding the cards this time? Who will rewrite the rules of the game?

We Can't Afford Teachers?

A friend posted the following on Facebook:

My son's teacher, pink-slipped

Last week, California's budget cuts put a pink slip in the hand on my son's teacher, Irma Navarette, one of the best educators I've ever met.

Robert Reich put it this way:

"Last year, America’s top thirteen hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion each. One of them took home $5 billion. Much of their income is taxed as capital gains – at 15 percent – due to a tax loophole that Republican members of Congress have steadfastly guarded.

If the earnings of those thirteen hedge-fund managers were taxed as ordinary income, the revenues generated would pay the salaries and benefits of 300,000 teachers. Who is more valuable to our society – thirteen hedge-fund managers or 300,000 teachers? Let’s make the question even simpler. Who is more valuable: One hedge fund manager or one teacher?"

Only One Reason: March 10, 2011

There is only one reason for right to work legislation or limits on collective bargaining. It is to reduce the wages and benefits of all workers--union or not. No employer or politician fights for these measures so that they can raise workers wages or provide them with more benefits or to work for a fairer deal for their employees. It is all about a concentration of wealth and power.

When they remove provisions of contracts that have been negotiated with the workers it is to drive more money into the hands of the wealthy to remove the limits on their concentration of their wealth.

Regarding workers in the public sector: it is not about balancing a budget. The unions have agreed to economic concessions. Just before these take-aways from workers, tax breaks for the wealthy added millions to budget shortfalls.

It is all about transferring wealth from those who create it to those who hoard it. It all adds up to increasing the gap between the tiny minority of the super rich and the vast majority of working people.

In the end this system is unworkable. It starves our economic engine of the fuel that it needs to run--wages.

Layoffs, decreased wages, will only deepen the economic crisis.

Mark Shields on Unions: March 8 2011

"Inside Washington" on Public Broadcasting hosted a panel discussion on various issues, one of which centered around the protests in Wisconsin over the Governor's attempt to limit collective bargaining rights for state employees.

Mark Shields, a noted commentator and columnist, was uncharacteristically passionate about the role of unions in the United States.

Here is the transcript in part:

MR. SHIELDS: Let’s be very blunt. The United States workers would never have had a five-day work week, an eight-hour work day. We would never have had minimum wage laws, child labor laws, health and pension benefits, without the skill, the passion, the commitment, and the clout of organized labor. Owners and employers just didn’t voluntarily wake up one morning and say, let’s be nice to the workers. So unions made a difference in America’s landscape. Do they make a difference every day? You better believe it.

At the same time, the same people, my good friend Evan, whom I respect enormously, endorses and embraces private sector unions, which now have fallen in strength to the point where they represent one out of 12 workers. They’re defanged. They’re basically powerless, okay? When they represented 35 percent of workers, a generation ago, not Evan, but many on the right said, they were a threat to American democracy. They’re a threat to the American way of life. Now public employees have the same right to collective bargain that any employee does. And it’s that simple. How does a school teacher, a lone school teacher negotiate with the city of New York or the city of Milwaukee. You’ve got to pool your resources to do that.

…..

MR. SHIELDS: Here’s the rub. Yes. This is ground zero in the fight for collective bargaining for unions. But here’s the rub. Between 1989 and 2009, the average hourly wage – the median hourly wage for the American male fell by 2 percent – fell by 2 percent. All of the concentration was in the top 1 percent, 56 percent of all the economic growth was in the top 1 percent. Thirty six percent was in the top one-tenth of 1 percent. The bottom 90 percent got 16 percent. That’s why this tension exists right now.

People in Wisconsin have had their own lives decimated and threatened and they bought into, quite frankly, the specious argument that the enemy is not the economic system that’s rigged against them with a tax system that’s exploitative. Somehow it’s a social worker [who wants to protect her rights to collective bargaining.]

Sharing the Pain: March 1 2011

Gasoline and home heating oil prices are rising in advance of anticipated disruptions in availability.

Yet employees and pensioners are asked to accept freezes in cost of living increases for increases that have already happened.

Is there a double standard for the ordinary person vs. a huge corporation?

Exxon Oil registered the largest profit of any corporation every in the last quarter of 2009 yet there is little talk of regulation, freezes or cut-backs on government benefits for industry there. (Halts on drilling in the Gulf are being lifted even as baby dolphins drift up onto Gulf beaches.)

The people who are pushing freezes and cut-backs on wages, benefits, jobs and collective bargaining rights for the working class are against regulation of industry and business.

Public employees have to "share the pain" with taxpayers?

Can we "share the pain" with Corporate America?

Abundant Wealth: February 28, 2011

It is so strange that there are all of these budget stand-offs when we live in a country of such abundant wealth.

It is hard for me to believe that we cannot keep a disabled senior on social security pension warm in his home for the winter.

Or that a friend cannot afford to take her heart medication since she lost her job.

I walk to the harbor and look at money tied up to moorings bobbing up and down in the water and vacation homes worth millions lining the shoreline that are lived in only part of the year.

It will take a lot to convince me when a Senator or a Governor says, "We can't afford to pay these benefits or we can't keep these government employees on our payroll."