Only by the United States government becoming the primary employer can such a huge unemployment problem even begin to be addressed because the facts clearly prove that private industry has taken advantage of this severe recession/depression... to rid itself of what they claim are useless workers... now they employ fewer people producing more at lower costs including severe reductions in wages and benefits as profits have risen.
Solving the problems of working people and societal problems with the government being not only the employer of necessity but the employer of choice on projects like a new Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC as note above); WPA; a national public health care system and a national public child care system both of which would provide well over 13 million new, good-paying jobs.
We need to work our way out of this economic crisis and government becoming the employer of people working to solve problems while providing needed services like health care and child care is the way to go.
Obviously this will cost a lot of money and the money has to come from somewhere... we need a good healthy peace dividend derived from ending these wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with a new tax policy of "tax the rich" and the corporations. Redistribution of the wealth created by working people but now in the possession of a very wealthy few needs to be addressed if we are going to seriously consider putting 20-million unemployed (not to mention the 50-million underemployed and/or paid poverty wages) back to work at real living wages... obviously poverty wage jobs are no solution at all to unemployment and the "small business" sector Obama keeps talking about helping mainly provides poverty wage jobs to workers as these small business people reap huge profits through government subsidies. It is these very small-business people who are first to scream there is "no such thing as a free lunch or a free ride" yet they are selfishly demanding government assistance for themselves the same kind of government assistance they would deprive of others.
Why Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO never insisted during the debate on health care reform that our insane, arcane private-for-profit delivery of health care be replaced with a universal not-for-profit publicly funded, publicly administered and publicly delivered health care system rather than this farce, the "Health Industry and Health Insurance Bailout and Profit Maximization Act of 2010," needs to be explained since a public program similar to public education is what is required for health care reform... which will create around ten-million new jobs. Why this approach is not being taken by Richard and the AFL-CIO needs to be explained by him.
We need to stop these dirty wars and "tax the rich" to pay for what we need... we would be better off tossing the wealth and resources of our Nation into the ocean rather than waging wars. Why is it so difficult for Richard Trumka to talk about the need for peace to create full employment... we simply can't put America back to work while fighting these murderous destructive wars.
Richard Trumka should have asked of every worker to consider on Labor Day this very basic and fundamental question:
How is the war economy working for you?
No comments:
Post a Comment