09.02.13
The anti-labor Labor Day thing: It’s about contempt
I’ve said it before. The American workplace and economy is about contempt for people. It is the oxygen on which our country runs.
I’m not the only one who thinks so. A lot of people get it:
In 1894 Pullman workers, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike — and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation’s workers.
It’s all hard to imagine now. Not the bit about financial crisis and wage cuts — that’s going on all around us. Not the bit about the state serving the interests of the wealthy — look at who got bailed out, and who didn’t, after our latter-day version of the Panic of 1893. No, what’s unimaginable now is that Congress would unanimously offer even an empty gesture of support for workers’ dignity. For the fact is that many of today’s politicians can’t even bring themselves to fake respect for ordinary working Americans …
You might ask why we should provide any aid to working Americans — after all, they aren’t completely destitute. But the fact is that economic inequality has soared over the past few decades, and while a handful of people have stratospheric incomes, a far larger number of Americans find that no matter how hard they work, they can’t afford the basics of a middle-class existence — health insurance in particular, but even putting food on the table can be a problem. Saying that they can use some help shouldn’t make us think any less of them, and it certainly shouldn’t reduce the respect we grant to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules.
But obviously that’s not the way everyone sees it. In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn’t wealthy a loser — an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington.
Since 2009, the Fair Labor Standards Act has dictated that the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. Some people think that’s too low; others think it’s too high. But it turns out that, in 35 states, it’s a better deal not to work—and instead, to take advantage of federal welfare programs—than to take a minimum-wage job. That’s the takeaway from a new study published by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes of the Cato Institute.
“The current welfare system provides such a high level of benefits that it acts as a disincentive for work,??? Tanner and Hughes write in their new paper. “Welfare currently pays more than a minimum-wage job in 35 states, even after accounting for the Earned Income Tax Credit,??? which offers extra subsidies to low-income workers who take work. “In 13 states [welfare] pays more than $15 per hour??? …
Obamacare is doing much to make it harder for Americans to find work, especially full-time work. At the same time, the aging of the Baby Boomers and the growth in welfare payments is making it easier for Americans to give up on looking for work. If we do nothing, this won’t end well.
Yes, on Labor Day, a report issued by right-wing libertarian dbags on how Obamacare will make the country into a nation of parasites.
Adding a note of reality, I don’t have health insurance. So it’s really great to read the true American spirit in full flower on Labor Day:
Extending health care to people will make them welfare bums, proven by a libertarian report.
In my lifetime, this country will fail because of the triumph of such oh so Christian sentiment.
A collection of heart-warming recommendations:
At the National Review, the problem in our country is not that jobs pay too little, it’s that people are ashamed to take poor-paying jobs! Quote: “On the recent National Review cruise in Norway, I was very happy to hear Ralph Reed use a word that the public faces of the Republican party use too infrequently: poverty … Politicians used to talk about having ‘a job for every man who wants one,’ but there are many men who do not seem to want jobs, or at least such jobs as are available to them.”
From the Waterbury, CT, newspaper, food aid to the working poor is bad: “Labor Day, a day for celebrating the hard work of millions of Americans, should serve as a reminder to politicians of their duty to use tax dollars prudently. There is no excuse for recklessly spending the money of people devoted to making better lives for themselves and their families. A prominent example of reckless spending is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the food-stamp program.”
From the same paper, citation of another libertarian dbag “study” by an “institute” that only exists to provide comment that the minimum wage is bad: “A recent study from the Washington, D.C.,-based Employment Policies Institute concluded that over the last 20 years, minimum-wage increases consistently have led to job losses.”
At a Minneapolis newspaper, a 70-year old white man’s get-off-my-lawn anti-Labor rant: “So what are we doing to solve this labor-income problem? It seems we are taking a very dangerous route, that of entitlements. Entitlement growth per capita has been nearly twice as fast as income growth per capita for the last 50 years (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. census). Entitlements have grown from 7.8 percent in 1969 to 17.6 percent in 2009. I’m sure it’s gotten even worse in the last four years. We’ve got to not only stop the trend but try to reverse it with more people working …One of the most important lessons [we] should teach is how to work; if the kids want money, they’d better work for it. For most of us, only work produces wealth and money … Let’s save public assistance for the truly needy, the blind, the lame … ”
And at the end he talk about the two “interns” who worked for free for him this summer.
