The plight of workers the world over is getting worse each passing day with the corporations and governments fighting against unions and worker rights. The jobs have gone to countries where the workers can be easily exploited or to U.S. southern non-union or Right to Work states, where if there are unions the employees have the options to pay dues or not, which further kills off unions.
To add injury to this bleakness, the Iowa legislation passed a bill, signed by its governor, Terry Branstad, to reverse the minimum wage law, which in effect will steal the raises of the lowest paid workers. The minimum wage will revert from $10.10 and $8.25 back to $7.25. The republicans say it’s just teenagers or entry level people working for minimum wage. They lie, 84 percent of the workers are 20 years of age or older; 31 percent are parents; and at least a third are 40 years or older.
Then there is automation. Robots and driverless cars and trucks, which will conceivably put up to 3.5 million truck drivers out of work. What will happen to these workers and their families? At this time workers are fighting a feeble defense and losing ground every day.
So what is needed to slow the worker alienation? Some solutions might include Universal Benefit Income (UBI) of about $1,200 a month for all older than 18 years of age and older. This would help undercut the power of the oligarchies hoarding the wealth and power by taxing them accordingly and putting the cash back into the economy.
It is the spending habits of the 76.5 percent that stimulates the economy, building, and spending, which creates more jobs. With a minimum wage of $15 an hour, plus UBI, all would win. The workers, the capitalists, and the governments, which would have tax money for healthcare, free education and pensions of Social Security for all. If workers with UBI wanted more money or a better lifestyle, they can work or start a business or they can band together and have worker-owned businesses.
We need a world where people don’t try to control others for personal gain and greed, but instead, equal the playing field so everyone can flourish.
In order for that to happen and to save the capitalist system, we need: $15 an hour minimum wage, healthcare for all, free education, and UBI of $1,200 a month for 18 years and older, which would cost $1.75 trillion. We also need better union laws with teeth that work for workers, state owned banks so the profits stay in the state, which to help pay for the state’s and its citizens’ needs. Also, like Alaska, the continental U.S. needs to charge for the rent or use of our Commons to defray some of our costs. These should be the new Bill of Rights for all.
In 2012 more than a quarter of all political contributions came from just 30,000 people who represented the 1 percent of the 1 percent, 90 percent who spent the most won. Today, we are an experiment in either a democracy, which started in 1787 or an oligarchy, which is winning. The nonunion people, like Trump and Musk, have most all the tools in their pockets to destroy our unions. They have money, they have the courts, they have law enforcement, they have the media, and 50 percent of workers that don’t know this don’t know the history of the working class people. This is the perfect storm to lose all the gains workers have made whether they’re union or not, even our Social Security and Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. So, now we will have to go way back to the late 1920s and ‘30s and dig up the old labor party books. One book, written in 1964, has the information, The Rebel Voices, an IWW Anthology by Joyce L. Kornbluh, educator, activist, and advocate. The history of our labor...
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