Page 1 of 1 pages
Here is an “advertising approach” that could quickly get the ideas in this article across to the American public:
25% of the American workforce earns less than the MONETARY minimum wage of modern European countries (not counting Portugal, Malta, etc.). That doesn’t count the benefits a European minimum wager gets: 4 weeks PAID vacation, 10-12 PAID holidays, 3 months of PAID maternity leave, a year of PAID sick leave, severance pay (from McDonalds!)—oh, and don’t forget PAID health care.
The total must add up to more like 35% or even 40% of American workers earning less than minimum wage earners in Europe!!! That sounds like an all-in-one country waker-upper to me—what I would run on if I were running.
***********
A similar economic alarm clock might be explaining to one and all that the federal poverty line is based on completely arbitrary—and ridiculously understating— formula of three times an emergency food budget (emergency meaning you cannot even buy canned beans, only dry beans and soak them) which accidentally happened to coincide with a realistic poverty estimate in 1955 when it was developed—which was already understating real poverty because of the divergence of food prices with the cost of overall needs by 1965 when it was adopted—which is off by double at this point in the twenty-first century.
Meaning that real poverty in America is now 25%—not 12.5% as measured by the food-only formula; up from 14.5% at the time LBJs war on poverty began—in spite of doubling (!) of average income since the war began.
Some want to quibble that the official poverty line does not count income like food stamps, etc. Fine; I’ll take 25% American poverty without food stamps, etc—40 years into the war on poverty and double the per capita output since. Good enough shock all of America awake at once.
Posted by ddrew2u on Jun 18, 2007 at 9:41 AM
Hi, y’all!
Workers are a commodity to management, plain and simple, as are livestock to a rancher. They are treated as an expense to be weighed against profit. This has been the way business has operated for the past twenty-five years, and allowed to do so by our wonderful ersatz populism-spewing GOP who throw bones to the workers while giving the filet to their rich, and campaign contributing, friends.
Really should we be surprised that we are worked more in a society which allows business to dictate government policy?
Ta- ta!
Posted by Aunty Rightwing on Jun 18, 2007 at 11:51 PM
Moberg
Posted by whattheheck on Jun 19, 2007 at 5:53 AM
Whattheheck,
Taking Europe’s $9.50/hr minimum wage as an example—the American version of that could be a $12.50/hr minimum wage, w/o the 4 weeks vacation, paid holidays, etc.; but with health care. Americans would probably rather have the money; Americans would probably work on their vacation anyway.
Point is, total comp here stinks because we don’t know enough (culturally, common knowledgewise) to protect labor in the free market—we lack an inbuilt understanding of the need for checks and balances (read unions)—what amounts to super complacent labor.
A $12.50/hr minimum wage would add all of 4%, one time, to direct costs of GDP output—about how much we grow per capita every two or three years.
A $12.50/minimum wage would probably put an end to street gangs. No relatively spoiled, native born American is going to work for a 1939 minimum wage ($4.50 w/o tax). Combine a 1939 minimum wage with today’s prohibition (drugs) and you get East L.A.‘s version of Al Capone.
A $12.50/hr minimum wage would give 40% of Americans a raise. If any two people could earn $1000/wk doing anything there wouldn’t be much poverty. All the years I read all the magazines and books and watched all the talking heads I never realized we could end poverty in America just by paying people enough to work. It’s all in the eighth-grade math.
Posted by ddrew2u on Jun 19, 2007 at 6:31 AM
ddrew,
While I personally have no problem with a minimum wage, (it should be COL adjusted) I
Posted by whattheheck on Jun 19, 2007 at 12:14 PM
Whattheheck,
The $4.50 1939 figure was adjusted for inflation.
We don’t have a balance of power in the labor market in this country because Americans have no idea how much better they could be doing. See my post above (first one) on how to alert folks to how much trouble they are in. Then, all you have to do is change the labor laws and we are back on top. No big struggle—except to get everyone on the same page.
I’d blame management more than the labor unions for the low quality cars we used to make—they were used to no-quality (as in foreign) competition: a different example of missing checks and balances.
European labor is doing fine because their labor history was much worse than even ours: making them much more defensive today. All sort of a historical accident—that can be remedied.
Posted by ddrew2u on Jun 19, 2007 at 2:39 PM
ddrew,
Posted by whattheheck on Jun 20, 2007 at 9:18 AM
whattheheck,
If the USA were properly unionized there would be as many labor lobbyists in DC as there are business lobbyists—but labor would have the trump card: the vast majority of voters. A lot of stuff that happens in Washington now happens because there is nobody there minding the store for us.
No matter what you say about people here being aware they are hurting there is no cultural-common knowledge sense of labor needing to be very powerful to protect itself with management—the type of feeling that would exist even if times were very good—a permanent awareness.
We have an accidental culture of the “self-reliant pioneer”—that is our past. A lot of the European factory workers, particularly at the beginning of the industrial revolution were worse off than American slaves—a lot worse off—and it took them a century or more to throw that off. That is why they have such a left wing, protect themselves outlook built into their outlook—good times or bad.
To get Americans to wake up to the need for labor to be much stronger—which can be achieved overnight just by passing the right legislation—I would try the two wake up ideas I put at the front of this posting.
I don’t have a real answer to globalization other than that, at the very least, we should be getting paid a lot more for what we still do here and, also, poor countries have to get rich some time and this is something we may have to live with for a while until they do—on the most good for the most humanity basis—we are supposed to liberal, right?
Another thing: if other people are working for us for less, we should be doing better OVERALL—it is just that right now, with defenseless American labor, all the benefit of people working cheaper for us goes to the top. IOW, globalization may not be completely bad—sort of the equivalent of automation.
First, get America up to something like 90% unionized; then, see where we stand. Got to get the power first—above all we have to get that power.
Posted by ddrew2u on Jun 20, 2007 at 3:27 PM
ddrew,
Labor has been weakening for the last two or three decades
Posted by whattheheck on Jun 21, 2007 at 8:49 AM
If you think your employer does not provide enough vacation time or sick days, then quit being a wage slave and work for yourself.
The entitlement mentality quickly disappears when you are responsible for everything and have noone else to blame.
Posted by JT_Lancer on Jun 24, 2007 at 8:20 AM
On the issue of vacation time, there is a petition on this issue located at www.petitiononline.com. I believe it provides a minimum of three weeks paid leave annually, which is like at least meeting the Europeans halfway.
The big labor unions of the past do share some of the blame for our vacation drought, as they continually pushed for more money instead of more time. Although some of them did successfully bargain for a couple of additional holidays, much of which was “given back” when the Robin Hood in Reverse policies kicked in during the Reagan years.
I am all for the idea, and did add my signature to said petition. What I think will happen is that many companies will balk at first, saying that they can’t afford it. But they will adjust, and when they do, the idea of returning to the days of two weeks or less will seem just as archaic as does returning to the six-day workweek.
Posted by beechnut79 on Jul 9, 2007 at 8:31 AM
This may be the most concise indictment of the theft of middle class labor, health, wealth, and time in print. And the dramatic example of an Illinois home-care worker taking her charge on the road for a family visit, lest she lose wages, should make even religious-right leaders wake up and pray for forgiveness, having said amen for so long to the picking of working people’s pockets. Moberg’s piece is a reminder about the need for a simple policy plans to stop the stealing of time and money from ordinary Americans. And it suggests the power of such plans when put before voters as ballot measures.
Posted by HansJohnson on Sep 6, 2007 at 10:05 AM
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Reader Comments
Here is an “advertising approach” that could quickly get the ideas in this article across to the American public:
25% of the American workforce earns less than the MONETARY minimum wage of modern European countries (not counting Portugal, Malta, etc.). That doesn’t count the benefits a European minimum wager gets: 4 weeks PAID vacation, 10-12 PAID holidays, 3 months of PAID maternity leave, a year of PAID sick leave, severance pay (from McDonalds!)—oh, and don’t forget PAID health care.
The total must add up to more like 35% or even 40% of American workers earning less than minimum wage earners in Europe!!! That sounds like an all-in-one country waker-upper to me—what I would run on if I were running.
***********
A similar economic alarm clock might be explaining to one and all that the federal poverty line is based on completely arbitrary—and ridiculously understating— formula of three times an emergency food budget (emergency meaning you cannot even buy canned beans, only dry beans and soak them) which accidentally happened to coincide with a realistic poverty estimate in 1955 when it was developed—which was already understating real poverty because of the divergence of food prices with the cost of overall needs by 1965 when it was adopted—which is off by double at this point in the twenty-first century.
Meaning that real poverty in America is now 25%—not 12.5% as measured by the food-only formula; up from 14.5% at the time LBJs war on poverty began—in spite of doubling (!) of average income since the war began.
Some want to quibble that the official poverty line does not count income like food stamps, etc. Fine; I’ll take 25% American poverty without food stamps, etc—40 years into the war on poverty and double the per capita output since. Good enough shock all of America awake at once.
Hi, y’all!
Workers are a commodity to management, plain and simple, as are livestock to a rancher. They are treated as an expense to be weighed against profit. This has been the way business has operated for the past twenty-five years, and allowed to do so by our wonderful ersatz populism-spewing GOP who throw bones to the workers while giving the filet to their rich, and campaign contributing, friends.
Really should we be surprised that we are worked more in a society which allows business to dictate government policy?
Ta- ta!
Moberg
Whattheheck,
Taking Europe’s $9.50/hr minimum wage as an example—the American version of that could be a $12.50/hr minimum wage, w/o the 4 weeks vacation, paid holidays, etc.; but with health care. Americans would probably rather have the money; Americans would probably work on their vacation anyway.
Point is, total comp here stinks because we don’t know enough (culturally, common knowledgewise) to protect labor in the free market—we lack an inbuilt understanding of the need for checks and balances (read unions)—what amounts to super complacent labor.
A $12.50/hr minimum wage would add all of 4%, one time, to direct costs of GDP output—about how much we grow per capita every two or three years.
A $12.50/minimum wage would probably put an end to street gangs. No relatively spoiled, native born American is going to work for a 1939 minimum wage ($4.50 w/o tax). Combine a 1939 minimum wage with today’s prohibition (drugs) and you get East L.A.‘s version of Al Capone.
A $12.50/hr minimum wage would give 40% of Americans a raise. If any two people could earn $1000/wk doing anything there wouldn’t be much poverty. All the years I read all the magazines and books and watched all the talking heads I never realized we could end poverty in America just by paying people enough to work. It’s all in the eighth-grade math.
ddrew,
While I personally have no problem with a minimum wage, (it should be COL adjusted) I
Whattheheck,
The $4.50 1939 figure was adjusted for inflation.
We don’t have a balance of power in the labor market in this country because Americans have no idea how much better they could be doing. See my post above (first one) on how to alert folks to how much trouble they are in. Then, all you have to do is change the labor laws and we are back on top. No big struggle—except to get everyone on the same page.
I’d blame management more than the labor unions for the low quality cars we used to make—they were used to no-quality (as in foreign) competition: a different example of missing checks and balances.
European labor is doing fine because their labor history was much worse than even ours: making them much more defensive today. All sort of a historical accident—that can be remedied.
ddrew,
whattheheck,
If the USA were properly unionized there would be as many labor lobbyists in DC as there are business lobbyists—but labor would have the trump card: the vast majority of voters. A lot of stuff that happens in Washington now happens because there is nobody there minding the store for us.
No matter what you say about people here being aware they are hurting there is no cultural-common knowledge sense of labor needing to be very powerful to protect itself with management—the type of feeling that would exist even if times were very good—a permanent awareness.
We have an accidental culture of the “self-reliant pioneer”—that is our past. A lot of the European factory workers, particularly at the beginning of the industrial revolution were worse off than American slaves—a lot worse off—and it took them a century or more to throw that off. That is why they have such a left wing, protect themselves outlook built into their outlook—good times or bad.
To get Americans to wake up to the need for labor to be much stronger—which can be achieved overnight just by passing the right legislation—I would try the two wake up ideas I put at the front of this posting.
I don’t have a real answer to globalization other than that, at the very least, we should be getting paid a lot more for what we still do here and, also, poor countries have to get rich some time and this is something we may have to live with for a while until they do—on the most good for the most humanity basis—we are supposed to liberal, right?
Another thing: if other people are working for us for less, we should be doing better OVERALL—it is just that right now, with defenseless American labor, all the benefit of people working cheaper for us goes to the top. IOW, globalization may not be completely bad—sort of the equivalent of automation.
First, get America up to something like 90% unionized; then, see where we stand. Got to get the power first—above all we have to get that power.
ddrew,
Labor has been weakening for the last two or three decades
If you think your employer does not provide enough vacation time or sick days, then quit being a wage slave and work for yourself.
The entitlement mentality quickly disappears when you are responsible for everything and have noone else to blame.
On the issue of vacation time, there is a petition on this issue located at www.petitiononline.com. I believe it provides a minimum of three weeks paid leave annually, which is like at least meeting the Europeans halfway.
The big labor unions of the past do share some of the blame for our vacation drought, as they continually pushed for more money instead of more time. Although some of them did successfully bargain for a couple of additional holidays, much of which was “given back” when the Robin Hood in Reverse policies kicked in during the Reagan years.
I am all for the idea, and did add my signature to said petition. What I think will happen is that many companies will balk at first, saying that they can’t afford it. But they will adjust, and when they do, the idea of returning to the days of two weeks or less will seem just as archaic as does returning to the six-day workweek.
This may be the most concise indictment of the theft of middle class labor, health, wealth, and time in print. And the dramatic example of an Illinois home-care worker taking her charge on the road for a family visit, lest she lose wages, should make even religious-right leaders wake up and pray for forgiveness, having said amen for so long to the picking of working people’s pockets. Moberg’s piece is a reminder about the need for a simple policy plans to stop the stealing of time and money from ordinary Americans. And it suggests the power of such plans when put before voters as ballot measures.
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