Union Perspectives

The two things which will destroy our world as we know it, are inequality and climate change. The Freedom of Enterprise Act (FEA) being proposed by the Republicans will be against anything that alleviates climate change and inequality. In fact, EEA exempts anyone worth a billion dollars from paying taxes and from having to obey all laws, exempts for now homicide and assault. OxFam, an international charitable organization focused on eliminating global poverty, says there are now 2,043 billionaires in the world and their fortunes grew by $762 billion in 2017 while the poorest of humanity saw no increase in their wealth. Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett have $250 billion more than 160 million Americans. If this trend continues driving up the bargaining power of those at the top while driving down the bargaining power of those at the bottom, this will trap people in poverty and further fracture our society. OxFam said the massive inequalities are being driven by factors t...

Where's all the cash? Hint, it's not in your pocket. The need for cash is necessary to alleviate the war on the poor. The latest facts show 1.5 million households with 3 million children have cash incomes of less than $2 a day. The number we usually use to measure third- and fourth-world poverty. Then in order to get the cash to pay rent in some dilapidated housing, buy diapers, and even tampons. They will have to sell their blood or their food stamps at a deep discount and the desperately poor people are willing to lose about 40 percent of the value of their food stamps, which is the going rate to trade some of their stamps for cash. There is about 15 million people who are in deep poverty with annual incomes of about $10,000 below half the poverty line for a family of three. A lot of the $2 a day people are single mothers without a high school diploma whose jobs have been in decline. This is one of many reasons that we need $15 to $18 an hour minimum wage, single payer healt...