Our country is on the brink, balancing on the precipice of feast or famine. If we don’t fix things as they are, we will fall completelyinot an oligarchy. We need to understand what needs fixing in order to know about the wrongs and what they are. Also how we, the U.S., stacks up against the rest of the world. Do you know that 50 percent of all 25 years olds still live with their parents, and a total 47 million of our citizens and one out of five children live in poverty, which places us 36th among the 41 wealthiest nations?
If you have no debt and $10 in your pocket, you are better off than 25 percent of your fellow citizens. The average family’s credit card debt is $16,000. Sixty-two percent of our citizens live from paycheck to paycheck, which 21 percent have no savings. Forty-three percent of households spend more than they earn.
Median wealth of middle class households dropped 28 percent from 2000 to 2014. Today, 51 percent of workers make less than $30,000 a year. The U.S. now ranks 19th in the world in median wealth per household. The 20 wealthiest people own more than 152 million of our citizens combined. The top 0.1 percent has amassed as much wealth as 90 percent of American families.
A total of 8 million homes have been lost to foreclosure since 2004. Total student loan debt is $1.2 trillion and to repay in many cases will take until these students have become senior citizens and they cannot declare bankruptcy on this debt thanks to the GOP. Forty-one percent of families suffer medical bills and 30 million people are under collections for that reason.
These are just a few of the things facing the Have Littles and wage slaves, and just how long will the citizens take this kind of injustice when most or all are not a result of their own doing. The corporations have stacked the odds against us with the help of the sellout politicians on both sides of the aisle.
With the will of the people and the right leadership, people like Bernie Sanders for president, and support people like Elizabeth Warren and Robert Reich, who support fixing these problems plus bringing the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and breaking up the Wall Street and the big banks.
These problems are also faced in other countries and some have been fixed while others have not gotten there yet, but we should keep an eye on how some have fixed their problems, like healthcare, unions, pensions, and renewable energy. How did we fall so far behind and allow our country to lose its standing in the world? More than machinery has become automated, we accept the unbearable and the inhumane and for what so a few can have it all. If we don’t stand up against this tyranny now, when will we?
There are three phases of a general strike and unions must plan for one. Those three phases are: 1. general strike in an industry 2. general strike in a community 3. general national strike We need to move away from being on the defensive and move toward a good offensive. The American Federal of Labor (AFL) could not have held a general strike if it wanted to because they had thousands of different contracts that expired at different times of the year. This was done deliberately so that there is no consolidation of power for a general strike. Also, nowadays, there is no law agency that will support labor, except the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR), which has been under attack and in decline for years. This leaves the burden of change up to unions, and unless unions work together, little will change. We essentially have a combination of job trusts, which are not as strong as contracts, and the courts can break easily because the NLBR will be further weakened and essentially elim...
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