In These Times

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• • 03 Nov 09
  • 3:07 pm

  Sorry, but it's not possible to do more than very marginally, temporarily, improve economic conditions as long as we refuse to have a legitimate/non-punitive welfare system. This is something the more economically successful countries have figured out. When a you fall without a safety net, you crash to the ground. With each economic downturn, more fall into poverty; when conditions sort-of improve, fewer are able to climb back out, so the number of very poor keeps growing. The abundance of mandatory workfare labor, paid minimum wage or less, has served as a "captive" temp help workforce, saving our corporations billions of …

  Posted to U.S. Poverty: If Only We Knew How Bad It Really Is

• • 04 Oct 09
  • 11:10 pm

  Where America has actually gone backwards is in the area of economic/social policies. We watched as our government ended aid for our neediest in order to (A) help cover the costs of annual tax "relief" for the rich; and (B) to create an instant Third World workfare workforce here in the US, and America yawned with utter indifference. The progressive community in the US yawned with indifference. Ironically, President Clinton's welfare "reform" policies were enacted in the year that we celebrated the anniversary of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and even the progressive community was indifferent to the fact …

  Posted to Love and Revolution

• • 17 May 09
  • 9:54 am

  Once again, Mr. Sirota hits the nail on the head when he points out how much we've become a "winner take all" society. Sadly, even the progressive community in the US has somehow lost track of the socio-economic issues that have created the disaster we have today. Few have cared about not only the loss of certain fundamental legal rights for our poor, as a result of welfare "reform", but about the very real suffering and hopelessness of our poor today. They don't seem to grasp our welfare "reform", by turning the poor into a bottom-wage temp help workforce without basic …

  Posted to Columbine Questions We Still Don’t Ponder

• • 14 Feb 09
  • 7:44 pm

  I didn't cry, but just acknowledged that "things could be worse." I was encouraged early in the campaign, when Obama strongly criticized the old "trickle down economics." This has been a disastrous strategy for the poor -to-middle classes. Then, within a couple weeks of the election, Obama "clarified" that his social agenda for the poor consists of ... you guessed it, "trickle down economics." It makes sense, in a hopeless sort of way. A whole generation has been born and reached adulthood since the Reagan years, when the campaign to raid public welfare funds began in earnest. This generation has had …

  Posted to The Difference Between Hope and Change

• • 16 May 08
  • 11:53 pm

  The poverty in much of rural Wisconsin is severe, yet we don't have massive immigrant labor here. If there really is a problem of too many migrant workers in a particular area, the answer is to require companies to comply with the law, imposing harsh penalties for those who don't. But our economic crisis has little to do with our economic crisis. On illegal immigrants taking jobs, one must fill out a job application form which requires information about citizenship. The employer is required by law to verify this information. If they don't they are breaking the law, and yet I …

  Posted to Blue Collar, Bare Cupboards