The best chance for wage slaves to prevail in their fight for higher wages can be found in the tireless work of two women: Kshama Sawant in Seattle, WA, and Marilule Wili in Switzerland. Sawant is a Seattle city council member and Wili is a waitress and musician and a member of the organization, Generation Basic Income, an activist group trying to persuade voters to amend Switzerland’s Constitution to guarantee every citizen a yearly income of $33,000 a year whether they work or not. They have gotten the necessary 100,000 signatures to place the initiative on the ballot to put it before the country’s voters. The vote will be in two or three years.
Philosophically, the idea of equality has a long history drawing support from the likes of the English/American revolutionary Thomas Paine and economist Milton Friedman. The best minimum wages are in Denmark, which gives its poorest citizens $1,800 a month; enough to keep their citizens out of poverty. This all can be financially feasible by moving away from a lot of government support in other programs and making people tax payers.
Also, by boosting the economy with infusions of more cash into the economy, and create more jobs, the government can take people off unemployment, food stamps and welfare benefits. There is real hope for the working class here in the U.S., and a lot of the rest of the world. I see that something building that is bigger than any political party you belong to.
The workers just want someone who will work for their best interests. They do not care if they are a Democrat, socialist or hell maybe even a Republican. If there is one out there somewhere, I believe, that if the Democrats are to be of service they need to start supporting new, bold programs, which will benefit all of the 99 percent—the 1 percent has enough.
To change the abundance of labor in the world is to put more money in the pockets of the laborer to buy the products their fellow workers are making. Otherwise, when there are more products than money, there is slump in the economy. Austerity policies, low wages and automation (robots) were also of concern in the 1950s when Henry Ford II, CEO of Ford, took Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers Union, on a tour of a new engine plant.
Ford gestured to a fleet of new machines and said, “Walter, how are you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union leader turned to Ford and said, “Henry, how are you going to get robots to buy your cars?”
This type of change in the labor has created a new type of working class that swings from task to task in order to make ends meet while enduring the loss of labor rights and bargaining rights. They are called “precariat” workers, a group of workers who live on the verge of collapse due to the instability of the nature of their job…