We need healthcare for everyone and Medicare single payer is the best way to go. This would relieve businesses of the burden of healthcare and make our goods more competitive overseas where labor is cheap.
Think of car and truck manufacturing not having to pay for healthcare for their workers. This would cut the cost of their vehicles, which would give them more profits or make for more sales. Either way, it is a win. Then there are all the manufactured products, like televisions, washing machines and dryers, stoves or steel, plus all of the technology products we sell here and abroad. The local government employees would not have to ask the states, counties, and cities for healthcare for the law enforcement, firefighters, and maintenance workers, again saving money for the government, which could go toward healthcare taxes.
There is argument that we need a healthcare safety net for all, but disagreement on the best way to achieve it.Some Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, advocate for a single-payer system or Medicare for all, but there are people who believe that insurers are too entrenched and too powerful in this country for this ever to happen.
Really, if this is the defeatist mindset of our people then we will never win against the corporate control of our collective healthcare. This all can be overcome if we work together. Just look at what has been won, like the 8 hour work day, child labor laws, Social Security, union rights, job safety, overtime, unemployment insurance, and the 4 hour work week.
We were told that none of these things were possible. We were told just three years ago that there never would be a $15 an hour minimum wage. We are now being told that there will never be a universal basic income (UBI), and yet Hawaii is considering implementing UBI, countries like Scotland, Finland and Switzerland are considering the same, and there are millionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook and Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, who advocate for the people and UBI. There’s a group that has been working on UBI since 2002, their information can be found at http://www.usbig.net
Even the rich understand that wages and inequality must be dealt with in order for their businesses to continue to prosper. There is a group of billionaires called the Patriotic Billionaires, who are working on this. The notion that it can’t be done, should not be given credence.
People should study what the UBI is and read Peter Barnes’ book, “With Liberty and Dividends For All.” This book explains how we can save our middle class when jobs don’t pay enough and advocates citizens be paid for the use of our Commons.
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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