America's #1 Progressive Host & NY Times Bestselling Author
The Not-So-Happy-Labor-Day Aggravation, Agitation & Information List
So we get a day off. So what? A whole lot of us would rather be working, and not in that sweaty, part-time, on-call, no-benefits, minimum-wage, you-want-fries-with-that? kind of way.
It sucks. It blows. It [insert your pseudo-sexual euphemism here] Big Time! I feel your pain, but I can't explain your pain. That's way above my pay grade. Thankfully, there are those who can and do. Excerpts to excite, entice, and incite with excellent insight...
Alex Henderson/AlterNet: How Conservatives and the GOP Destroyed the "Traditional Family" They Claim to Treasure: Social conservatives are right about one thing: the American family is under attack, but not from cultural liberals. The greatest threat to the American family is economic stress—and the modern-day Republicans and social conservatives who preach family values are the ones who have done the most to imperil the American family. From union-busting and the outsourcing of jobs to developing countries and opposing universal health care, social conservatives have not only endangered the American middle class, they have also made it increasingly hard to raise a "traditional" family.
Prairie2News: Need a job? Go to prison: Billionaires who structure their incomes to pretend they are paid only dividends and interest are paying, according to the IRS, an average of 16%, and they don’t pay Social Security taxes on most of their income either… Fully two thirds of corporations operating in the US pay zero taxes, and some even get billions back from all manner of schemes… For example, BP has been using free prisoner labor to do beach cleanup and gets a 2500 dollar tax credit for each slave (I mean job trainee) that they use.
G. William Domhoff/Who Rules America: Power in America: Wealth, Income, and Power: This document presents details on the wealth and income distributions in the United States, and explains how we use these two distributions as power indicators… The most amazing numbers on income inequality come last, showing the change in the ratio of the average CEO's paycheck to that of the average factory worker over the past 40 years... It's even more revealing to compare the actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from 1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while production workers gained a scant 4.3%. The purchasing power of the federal minimum wage actually declined by 9.3%, when inflation is taken into account.
Thom Hartmann/Common Dreams: Two Santa Clauses or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years: The Republicans got what they wanted… They held power for thirty years, made themselves trillions of dollars, cut organized labor's representation in the workplace from around 25 percent when Reagan came into office to around 8 of the non-governmental workforce today, and left such a massive deficit that some misguided "conservative" Democrats are again clamoring to shoot Santa with working-class tax hikes and entitlement program cuts.
Mike Elk/Huffington Post: Sad, Startling Stats: Number of Union Elections, Strikes Continue Steady Decline: Labor's decline in power is caused primarily by three factors—unionbusting, outsourcing, and union leader incompetency. As labor power weakens, employers have doubled their use of illegal unionbusting tactics since the 1990s, according to a study by Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Currently, 34 percent of employers fire union activists to intimidate other workers from joining a union. Studies show that without such threats, 58 percent of the workforce would be willing to join a union. But intimidation tactics make that virtually impossible.
Tomoeh Murakami Tse/Washington Post: Buffett Slams Tax System Disparities: Warren E. Buffett… slammed a system that allows the very rich to pay taxes at a lower rate than the middle class. Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent… And he challenged Congress and his audience to see what the people who "clean our offices" are taxed, to loud applause.
Neal Gabler/Los AngelesTimes: Disincentivizing Greed: [W]hen President Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate drastically from 70 percent to 50 percent in 1981 and then to 28 percent in 1988 (putting aside for the moment the cut in the capital gains tax and other investment incentives), that's when the troubles began—from the S&L crisis right through to the fall of Lehman Bros. It wasn't enough for the rich to be rich. Human nature being what it is, they had to be super-rich. Or put another way, tax cuts, including the Bush tax cuts, fed some of the worst aspects of human nature and led to some of the worst excesses. It was just a matter of time before Wall Street went wild.
Tula Connell quoting Robert Reich/AFL-CIO Now: Public to Lawmakers: End Tax Cuts for the Rich: A final reason for allowing the Bush tax cut to expire for people at the top is the most basic of all. Although Wall Street’s excesses were the proximate cause of the Great Recession, its fundamental cause lay in the nation’s widening inequality. For many years, most of the gains of economic growth in America have been going to the top—leaving the nation’s vast middle class with a shrinking portion of total income.
Thomas Kostigen/MarketWatch; The happiest taxes on earth: More people are satisfied in heavily tariffed nations: Northern Europeans are the happiest people on the planet, according to a new survey… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says people in Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are the most content with their lives. The three ranked first, second and third, respectively, in the OECD's rankings of "life satisfaction," or happiness. Northern Europeans pay some of the highest taxes in the world… Why be so happy about that? It all comes down to what you get in return... The U.S. ranked 11th on the OECD list. In addition to the top three, we were beat out by Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland and Norway… Other, more "satisfied" countries also earn more on an individual income basis. Oh yes, and the average workweek in Scandinavian countries is less than the U.S.'s.
Newsweek: Lay Off the Layoffs: Our overreliance on downsizing is killing workers, the economy—and even the bottom line… Companies now routinely cut workers even when profits are rising… They're cutting jobs to minimize hits to profits, not to ensure their survival… There's substantial research…that reinforces the seemingly hyperbolic notion that layoffs are literally killing people. There is also empirical evidence showing that labor-market flexibility isn't necessarily so good for countries, either. A recent study of 20 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economies over a 20-year period by two Dutch economists found that labor-productivity growth was higher in economies having more highly regulated industrial-relations systems—meaning they had more formal prohibitions against the letting go of workers.
Cartoons
Videos
Lobbyists’ Cozy Ties with Congress
Songs to lift your spirits
Pete Seeger: Which Side Are You On?
Pete Seeger: Solidarity Forever!
Test your labor knowledge: What is EFCA?
a. The Employee Free Choice Act
b. A pinko plot to destroy the free world
c. The sound a cat makes coughing up a fur ball
(Technically all may be correct depending on your point of view, but “a” is the preferred.)
Best wishes for better days ahead from THE LABOR MOVEMENT: The folks that brought you the weekend… and holidays… and sick leave… and vacations… and the 8-hour day/40 hour week… and overtime… and work rules… and health & safety rules… and pensions... and Social Security… and child labor protections… and public schools… and the minimum wage… and equal pay… and unemployment insurance… and family medical leave… and hundreds more state and federal labor laws for the advancement and protection of all workers, including THE RIGHT TO ORGANIZE.
