Why it is so hard for the toilers to understand that capitalist system and that it is rigged against them? The system is rigged in favor of the 1 percent. Even small business owners don’t understand this. This is not to say that the toilers cannot win the war of wage and living standards inequality.
In order to do this, the toilers must understand the basic rules of the capitalist system. The governor of California, Jerry Brown, explained this is a speech the other day to some labor groups. He said if the consumers are up to their eyeballs in debt, aren’t making a decent wage, how the heck are they going to buy anything? If they don’t buy anything, the economy doesn’t go forward and doesn’t work.
This was well said, but he could have also said that the capitalist system is driven 67.5 percent by spending, which proves that when insufficient wages are not high enough for the toilers to have enough money left over after paying for their basic needs (rent, food, debts) to purchase some durable goods, like a new vehicle, that drives manufacturing and creates jobs the economy will not grow.
The key is higher wages. This will not hurt the economy, it will drive the economy and this works worldwide. The information on this comes from the PPP (purchasing, power and parity). This means that a unit of such imaginary currency can buy the same basket of goods in India as in China or as in France, Argentina or Zimbabwe. PPPs are used to compare the real income of nations.
Once we have a GDP (gross domestic product) per capital in PPP dollars fixed for a given year we can then use the county’s GDP growth rate to project backward their GDP per capital in PPP terms. GDP sums up the value of all goods and services produced in a given country or an area, and divide it by the number of people who live there.
This is why we cannot compare wages of other countries without using the countries' PPP system. Higher wages will drive up all countries’ living standards, such as proper shelter, water, food, healthcare, education and pensions. These things will give hope to the world’s toilers and take away the breeding grounds of terrorism. The toilers can win the war on inequality we just have to connect the dots and remember it is all connected.
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…