One thing labor has to look forward to is the growth of the technology markets, which typically follows a distinct pattern of power law, or Pareto Curve. Pareto Curve is a small number of players represent a disproportionate share of the rewards. High Tech Internet networks become more valuable the more they are used. It can also generate a kind of winner-takes-all or winner-takes-most markets. This is the start of a revolution in the work place and for the U.S. to have a chance at competition in the world.
Businesses, individuals and governments must understand what is going on. Yes, we are having some manufacturing returning to the USA, but the dynamism and creativity that made the U.S. the most innovative nation in the world is faltering. Graduates in the U.S. with at least an associate’s degree has fallen to 12th place in the world. We were once the envy of the world, but then came the greedy GOP’s Tea Party and the Have It All with their heads in a very dark place.
This can be changed but a program of free education at least to the bachelor’s degree level and a minimum wage of $15 to $18 an hour with free healthcare. What Wall Street and businesses should be demanding that the government be spending on public investments, which are known to yield high returns in basic research in health sciences and technology, in education, and in infrastructure spending on roads, airports, public water and sanitation systems, and energy and communication grids.
This spending would boost economic growth now and real wealth for generations later. With the people who are getting elected who will or can make these decisions do not have the will or smarts or understanding of how our financial structure works, to do what is needed. Most of our elected people don’t even believe in climate change.
If we want to survive and have a future for the young ones, we have to step up and fight for our future and let us start with the minimum wage increase—without it being slow walked—free education and healthcare. One place to start to improve our country is to stop listening to Fox news and all the GOP talking heads. Learn to think for yourself, research any topic and don’t take one side on an issue, check the facts and then vote for your betterment and not theirs. Fox news and all the GOP talking heads are paid very well to mislead you, to get you to vote against your best interest and to look down upon others whether they be brown, gay, black, female, disabled—whatever, when you should be standing tall with these others. They are you and you are them.
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…