Adam Proctor, host of the Dead Pundit Society podcast examines the real calculations behind the Silicon valley billionaires and libertarians pushing a Universal Basic Income. Turns out that some of them want to substitute a meager UBI for actual wage increases, and for programs which deliver food, child care, housing, medical care and other necessities.
By Rachel Gray, Cobb Greens & Friends
It might shock some Georgians to learn that they live, work and pay taxes in a country where the top 1% of our national citizenry owns almost 40% of the country’s wealth. Unlike these multinational, multibillion-dollar corporations and their millionaire CEOs, Americans are tirelessly working, sometimes at more than one job, yet too many can barely raise their heads above the poverty line. The cost of living continues to rise, while the median hourly wage of U.S. workers advanced only 5 percent higher in 2013 than in 1975. Essentially, Americans in the lower half of the income scale have not seen an increase in income for 40 years.
Meanwhile, .01% — composed of an elite circle of enormously wealth families — possesses $6 trillion dollars. Specifically, the Walton family, who rakes in billions of dollars in profits from WalMart. This retailer has the immoral credit of having the biggest customer base paying in food stamps, while also being the biggest employer of people who rely on food stamps. That is the definition of corporate welfare in America; rich profit-sucking stock holders forcing the working class to rely on social programs like food stamps, subsidized housing and Medicare. A corporate subsidy bill that runs taxpayers a cost of $153 billion from the state to federal level each year.
This kind of successful, legal wealth grab victimizes average taxpayers. It also relies on extremely harsh, low wages for American workers who cook our food, care for our loved ones, clean up our messes, watch over our young children, transport and stock our never-ending list of daily supplies and in many other ways grind the gears of our service economy, as we slug further each day into an entrenched, corporatized, consuming society.
According to a recent article in Common Dreams, “These multi-millionaires effectively shifted nearly $4 trillion in wealth away from the rest of the nation to themselves in 2016…That’s over $17,000 in housing and savings per lower-to-middle-class household lost to the super-rich.” This funneling is mostly done through tax breaks to the top 1%, all while our hospitals, schools and roads fall into disrepair, and the average middle-class family falls further into bottomless debit.
GOP Wages War On Poor; Democrats Play The Victim Role
This week, President Trump pitched his horrific budget proposal, drastically cutting $6.2 billion in safety-net, assistance programs from departments like Housing and Urban Development, as well as eliminating the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. The White House budget proposal also decimates job training, heating subsidies, community development grants, financial support for homebuyers, Meals on Wheels and Head Start, with the harshest targets being small town, rural America, the exact areas candidate Trump boasted he would protect. The GOP is hoping the 4.5 million low-income households will be too lazy to do anything about this moral crime, and the Democratic Party is relying on their base being too helpless to do anything but ask for mercy, and then declare it a victory with the cuts are slightly rolled back.
The GOP plan would place the burden of these programs (dating back to the 70s and 80s under Johnson, Nixon and Ford) to state governments, despite the horrible record of municipalities on ensuring affordable housing in some of the nation’s largest, most diverse cities. Still, local progressive initiatives might be the only way to actually achieve progress in this area. For instance, voters in Los Angeles, where Green candidate Kenneth Mejia is running for U.S. Congress, approved a $1.2 billion bond measure to house the homeless.
If the federal government actually ensured a living wage, along with fully funding education from pre-K through college, and increased Social Security benefits, then American citizens would be less reliant on food stamps, housing credits and other ‘welfare’ programs. The lack of foresight and understanding by the GOP is actually perpetuating this cycle of ‘handouts,’ which the Democratic establishment also seems completely content with maintaining, as it makes their supporters more and more reliant on this ‘charity,’ while doing little to actually build a prosperous middle class.
Georgia Greens Demand Wealth Equality
Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. That debunked theory seems to be something the average American knows today. When wealth only flows to the top, the elite have no incentive to loosen their grasp on trillions of dollars. These dollars, when placed in the hands of working Americans, could cycle through the system, creating a robust economy that benefits everyone. Real solutions can only be discussed in new ways by the Green Party. Progressive economists don’t merely want this captured money (held at ransom) to trickle down; the true goal is for America’s wealth to flow down and all around, especially at the local level. The Democrat establishment, tied to Wall Street and large charitable foundations, are content with trickle down. The status quo allows them to be glorified for taking pity on the poor. The Green Party recognizes pity isn’t what is needed, as desperately as dignity, respect and opportunity.
“Green economic policy places value not just on material wealth, but on the things which truly make life worth living — our health, our relationships, our communities, our environment, and building peace and justice throughout our nation and the world…We support using the tax system to bring more equality to our nation. Rising income inequality makes us all poorer in myriad ways. More equal societies are happier, healthier, safer and greener.” – U.S. Green Party Economic Justice & Sustainability
The accumulation of individual wealth in the U.S. has reached grossly unbalanced proportions. ‘Luxury development’ has pushed Atlanta to the breaking point, prioritizing multimillion-dollar stadiums over affordable housing. This kind of economic depression and oppression must be stopped, and replaced with a system designed to work for everyone. It’s clear the American people cannot rely on rich Wall Street executives and establishment politicians in Washington to regulate their profit making. The Green Party and its members must push with all of our strength to aggressively restore a fair distribution of income, starting with our demand that the federal minimum wage be raised to $15 immediately.
Georgia Greens on the Scene!
On Sunday, February 26, the organizing team from Cobb Green & Friends attended a town hall in Smyrna held by Democrat State Representative Stacey Evans, who represents much of the Cumberland and Marietta area. When asked about the plight of America’s working class, Rep. Evans reminded the room of more than 50 people that Georgia’s minimum wage of $5.15 an hour is far below the federal standard.
Rep. Evans quickly cast the blame of this systemic poverty issue on Republican lawmakers in Georgia, who she stated placed road blocks to keep cities and counties from enacting laws to protect workers from oppressive practices like surprise scheduling of retail and service workers. Evans told the group she has voted against those laws. However, the only amount of leadership Evans offered on this issue at the meeting was to advise Georgia Greens and fellow grassroots activists to apply organic pressure as consumers on businesses to pay higher wages.
Last month, the Cobb Greens & Friends leadership also attended a tele-town hall of Republican U.S. Congressman Tom Graves of Georgia’s 14th district, covering the northwest corner of the state, including Paulding County. Rep. Graves told the more than 8,000 callers he wanted to reduce the size of government, and rework the tax code to drastically decrease collections at the federal level.
However, a poll conducted by the Congressman’s staff live on the call revealed that less than half of the callers would prioritize their need for a lower tax rate, with 16% saying they would favor keeping their current rate, and 38% seeking only a simplified tax filing process. “Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem,” was the mantra Rep. Graves repeated a couple of times, as he vowed to abolish the IRS and install a fair tax, which he said would end corporate welfare with a more direct, upfront tax policy with less loopholes.
During the call, the Congressman alluded that the town hall discussion had addressed jobs in America. Unfortunately, those limited references were mainly around rallying cries to build a Mexico-border wall and evict immigrant workers, with a heart-wrenching 51% of callers responding to a live poll that a wall on the southern border should be built ‘no matter the cost.’
Neither Democrats nor Republicans stand for raising wages and guaranteeing the right to organize unions. That’s why we need a Green Party in Georgia. Consider joining the Georgia Green Party at our minimum dues level of onoy $10 per month.
By Dan Arel
Gentrification is a fact of life in capitalist America. As long as the only value stable working class neighborhoods possess is the value which can be realized by flipping the real estate, expelling the residents and replacing them with stadiums, hotels, tourist attractions and wealthier, often white residents, it may be inevitable. We have yet to see a different model of urban economic development advanced which allows working class neighborhoods to stabilize and survive. (more…)
reports on a ruling that denies overtime protection to millions of workers.
A TEXAS judge just denied more than 12 million workers a raise with the stroke of a pen.
U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant issued an injunction to block a new rule from the Department of Labor that would have enabled millions of workers currently ineligible for overtime protections–for example, getting paid time-and-a-half when you work more than 40 hours in a single week–to become eligible.
Specifically, the Obama administration regulation would have reduced the so-called “white-collar exemption,” which allows employers to avoid paying overtime for salaried administrative or professional workers who make more than about $23,660 a year–the equivalent of around $12 an hour for full-time work, and even less for workers pressured to work more than 40 hours a week.
The new rule would have basically doubled the threshold where companies can stop paying overtime–but that was too much for Judge Mazzant. Because of his ruling, millions of dollars in income that would have gone to workers will instead remain in the pockets of employers.
When the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) was passed in 1938, overtime protections were intended to apply to all workers. Only managers and supervisors with the power to make schedules were supposed to be exempt.
Since the 1930s, however, a smaller and smaller percentage of workers have been covered by overtime protections. The rule change would have reversed that trend by expanding the number of workers eligible for overtime.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, millions of workers stood to benefit from the Obama administration’s rule change, including:
WHY DID Judge Mazzant issue the injunction and why is he so keen on denying raises to millions of workers? Ross Eisenbrey at the Economic Policy Institute has an excellent critical breakdown of the legal details. But this isn’t at root a legal issue–it’s a thoroughly political one that has to do with the balance of power between workers and employers.
An important starting point for understanding Mazzant’s move is the election of Donald Trump. The injunction will be one of many challenges to existing protections for workers in the next four years. But there is more than contemporary politics at play.
Where did the FLSA come from in the first place? It is part of a web of bureaucratic machinery enacted during the New Deal era in the 1930s to regulate industrial conflict between workers and capitalists. All these laws were forged in the midst of the greatest working-class revolt in U.S. history so far.
In 1934, there were three general strikes–one in Minneapolis, one in Toledo and another in San Francisco. These were mass strikes involving hundreds of thousands of workers that shut down entire cities and sparked a huge wave of organizing activity all over the country.
These strikes resulted in a number of advances, including the successful unionization of the “Big Three” in auto manufacturing–a feat, like the unionization of Walmart today, that many at the time thought impossible. By the early 1940s, millions of workers had joined newly organized unions, more than doubling the size of the labor movement in the span of half a decade.
This working-class upsurge didn’t go unnoticed by the ruling class, of course, but there were debates about how the wealthy and the state should respond to it.
Some sections of the capitalist class wanted to try to maintain a status quo in which unions were basically illegal. Others associated with the millionaire Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt were reluctantly pushed to the conclusion that a carrot-and-stick approach was needed to quell the revolt and preserve the existing order.
Roosevelt’s approach carried the day. This is the background for the passage of various labor reforms, such as the overtime protections included in the FLSA, as well as Social Security, unemployment benefits, legal rights to collective bargaining and so on.
The positive aspects of these reforms were not given out for free–they were only won after hard-fought, militant struggles of millions of ordinary workers against their employers, the state and, in some cases, against their union leadership.
Fast forward to 2016. A billionaire who is staunchly anti-union is now set to control the executive branch of the federal government alongside a hoard of anti-union Republicans who will control Congress.
Mazzant’s attack on overtime is likely to be a mere opening salvo in a battle involving more brutal and ambitious attacks on workers, such as a national right-to-work law, the overturning of the Friedrichs decision affirming public employees’ right to collective bargaining, more legal restrictions on the right to strike, and on and on.
What right-wing Gov. Scott Walker did to labor in Wisconsin, Congressional Republicans and Trump may seek to do to workers all over the nation.
HOW SHOULD workers respond? The history of the 1930s presents some answers: Militant action in their workplaces, organizing the unorganized, and building the kind of broad-based unity and organizational strength in the labor movement that neither capitalists nor politicians can afford to ignore.
This was what won the meager labor protections we have in the first place. The strides that labor made in the public sector during the 1960s and ’70s were also won through militant, ambitious organizing efforts–many of them inspired and buoyed by social movements of the era, above all the Black freedom struggle.
These lessons from history are at odds with the common sense of contemporary liberals, however. For them, the reforms of the 1930s and 1960s were won by electing reform-minded Democrats with the foresight and resolve to do what was right.
In contemporary terms, this approach translates into a strategy that emphasizes looking ahead to the 2018 and 2020 elections with an eye to “take back” the White House and the Congress by campaigning for Democratic candidates.
Far from being a realistic solution, however, this failed approach is a prime cause of our present malaise. For decades, most of the labor movement has done little more than manage its own decline. It has brokered concessionary deals with employers and partnered with Democratic politicians in the hopes that the worst outcomes could be avoided through patient negotiation and cautious conservatism.
You can only effectively negotiate from a position of strength. So long as strikes remain at historic lows and union density continues to drop year after year, the power of workers to stop attacks, like the injunction against expanding overtime protection, will continue to decline as well. To the extent that the union movement allows itself to be divided, all unions will be vulnerable to being conquered by Trump and employers.
A renewed, militant labor movement based on class solidarity and rank-and-file democracy is the only way to turn the tide and stop the coming barrage of attacks from Trump and his ilk.
Trump is actually vulnerable on a number of fronts–the most obvious being that he has no mandate for his reactionary agenda. He lost the popular vote in the presidential election by a margin of more than 2.6 million votes and “won” the election by garnering the support of little more than 25 percent of the eligible electorate.
Trump is the most widely disliked president-elect ever since statistics were kept. The labor movement and the left should exploit this weakness to the fullest extent possible in order to thwart his anti-worker agenda.
That is a task best accomplished through independent political action, protest and, most importantly, a wave of new organizing that leverages the widespread anti-Trump mood in the country to build a bigger labor movement and a bigger left.
Disaster capitalism is the manufacture of phony “crises” to divert government revenue directly to banksters and sell government assets off to privatizing looters. City government in Detroit, and the school system in suburban Atlanta’s Dekalb County, population 700,000 each have been nullifiehttp://blackagendareport.com/content/vampire-capitalism-comes-detroit-michigan-and-dekalb-county-georgia-where-black-political-cld, while black political elites in both these majority African American constituencies are impotent or complicit.
Originally published at Black Agenda Report on April 20, 2013
What do Detroit MI and Dekalb County GA in suburban Atlanta have in common? Each has about 700,000 people, and both are majority black, Dekalb at 55%, and Detroit over 80%. Both elect local officials to manage local affairs, like city government in Detroit, and the school system in Dekalb County GA. In both cases, phony fiscal and educational crises have been manufactured in accordance with state law to allow state governors to sideline or fire outright local elected officials — City Hall in Detroit, and the elected school board in Dekalb GA, to impose programs of vicious fiscal austerity and privatization.
The crises exist because corporate media, and our bipartisan political elites, including the black political class, tell us they do. And although the laws in Michigan and Georgia which enable governors to sweep aside elected officials in these “crises” were passed by Republican legislators and and the triggers are being pulled by Republican governors, the virtually all-Democrat black political class has rallied no resistance, its pundits and intellectuals have proposed no alternatives. At most, some like MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry have offered the standard neoliberal justifications for austerity and privatization as if they were explaining some impersonal, automatic phenomenon like gravity — “there’s no money…. budgets have to be balanced” and invite us to fruitlessly wonder whether the whole thing was “racist” or not. Really, who cares?
In the first place, the “crises” are fabrications of corporate media, and the wealthy banksters, bondholders and privatizers whose “solutions” are inevitably pushed upon us. In Detroit, bondholders and banksters declared they feared the city would miss or default on the interest payments for previous loans, and that was just about all the governor needed to sweep aside Detroit City Hall and appoint what amounted to a dictator over every aspect of local government. In Georgia, the private organization which accredits public school systems is a captive of the US Chamber of Commerce and right wing pro-charter and privatization foundations, so it threatened to revoke the accreditation of a county school system serving 100,000 children based upon spurious, insubstantial, and in some cases anonymous charges against elected school board members, so the governor could fire and replace them with his own appointees. In both locations, the gubernatorial appointees will impose massive job, wage and service cuts, and are expected to privatize everything that’s not nailed down.
This is the hollow soul of vampire capitalism — the conversion of local government from an engine which collects local tax revenue, user fees and dollars from state and federal levels to pay living wages, health care and pensions to its service-providing employees, into an engine that diverts tax revenue straight into the pockets of banksters for debt repayment, and sells off public assets like city and school district real estate for a song to well-connected looters and privatizers. On the economic level bloodsucking fiscal austerity is just about as rational a the brain deciding to strip mine the liver and kidneys for minerals.
The black political class of politicians, preachers and business people from whom the ranks of establishment black leaders are drawn doesn’t just lack a vision of how to do things better. They lack even the soul that believes a better world, a more just society, with high quality education for everybody’s children, jobs at living wages, decent housing, a clean environment, justice and an end to war are even possible. Our black political class has been entirely captured. They are held hostage by their own perks and job prospects. While local governments in the heavily black constituencies that made their rise to prominence possible are being nullified by “crisis” and “emergency management” laws, they toast and roast and coast on the victories of the sixties, instead of leading campaigns of mass action and defiance that might enable African Americans and all Americans to dream a new world and begin to build it. All that our black misleadership class knows how to do any more is get paid.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a member of the state committee of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via this site’s contact page or at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.