A pretty good pastor told me this story. His first born son came home, obviously had been crying. So he asked him if there was something he wanted to tell him and was told his son hated school. With this son it was a shock. A complete reversal because that was all this son talked about up to this point: how wonderful his days were at school. With a little probing the pastor found that other boys had discovered this pastor’s son, didn’t hit back and were having a field day at his expense. So, the pastor had a little heart-to-heart talk. “You know,” the pastor said. “you have the right by God to defend yourself. If someone hurts you, you are allowed to hurt them back, so they see what if feels like and stop hurting you.” The relief spread over his son’s upturned face. “Really? it’s ok?” “Why yes.” the pastor said. “I used to be one of the best fighters in my school when I was growing up.”
The next day his son came home all smiles. “Everything go ok?” His son’s smile said it all..
That normally would be the end of the story. Life lesson taught. Well, this story has a twist and keeps going. A couple of weeks later, the pastor got an urgent letter from his teacher. ” I must see you personally as soon as possible.” He hurried down and the teacher begins… “I don’t know what is wrong with your son. He used to be so nice and kind and everybody loved him. Now no one will sit next to him. They are adamant. I’ve had to put him in a chair in the corner just to get class back on track. They say he’s hitting them, but I really find that very hard to believe.”
The pastor went back home, found his son, and together, they had …. another little heart-to-heart discussion… 🙂
Point is: sometimes though fighting back is not deemed civilized or the mature method to handle problems, it is necessary. ( Just don’t enjoy the rush so much you forget when to stop.)
The erosion of the middle class has gone on long enough. Let me rephrase that: the erosion of all classes except those at the top 1%, has gone on long enough. What can we do about it?
it is time for class war. i don’t like it anymore than that little boy who was taught that hitting was wrong, liked hitting back at first, but it is necessary. The longer we wait; the weaker we become.
How do we win? We win by deflating the value they place on their pile of money. We throw the economy so investors everywhere are forced to panic. The easiest way to do that, is to simply not work. We can a) under perform and drive up productivity costs; b) sabotage our bosses and drive up supply costs; or c) strike and win, and drive up labor costs.
Of the three, the latter is the cleanest. Staging a mutiny until conditions change, sends the clearest signal that the rules on the playing field must change. The price of labor is going up. If you refuse, we shut your plant down.
It has been awhile since we have had strikes. If they’ve happened at all, they get swept under the mat of the next news story to come up on the wire. Strikes are kind of ugly. They hurt a lot of people just like war; many of those hurt are completely innocent. And at one point, those of us who remember the past, recognized that strikes were being thrown way too often; in fact, they at one point were being used as extortion. Give it to us, or we’ll strike. The middle class did well back then too.
Strikes hurt those striking. During the strike they stop earning money. Strikes hurt employers whose revenue stream screeches to a stop. They have to pay bills and have no income with which to pay them. Strikes hurt customers and vendors of that company that is the target of the strike. It is indicative that in these times, of all the strikes we have had in recent memory, most have all been done by millionaires striking against other millionaires. By that I mean the sports industry. Baseball, hockey, basketball, football… no problem with them striking; they have money to wait it out indefinitely.
Our middle class may be past that. But strikes have a deeper purpose; if they are never used, that purpose ceases to exist. A strike reminds the employer that they need to pay attention to those who are doing the work. A strike reminds an employer that all are in life and business together, Life is not a two layer system consisting of the overseer and the slaves; where one has all the privileges; the other all the pain.
Life is a cohabitation. And sometimes the expense of a divorce is necessary to drive that point home. For if you are completely confident that no one will ever strike, you can act with impunity. Cut wages. Cut pensions. Cut rates. Cut benefits. If you always know that people will work for you, you can starve them to enrich yourself. Really. If there were no consequences: who wouldn’t?
War is always far more costly than the concessions of peace. That was how strikes were won. A business may balk at paying one percent more of its revenue towards its employees. “That is outrageous” the business owner may puff. “That will never happen.”
But he can only say that because he is confident that the employees will say, “oh, ok. Sorry we bothered you then.” For if they went on strike, and his revenue drops down to zero, he has lost 10% of his potential yearly earnings because of the strike. The 1% was rather cheap comparatively.
Which is why we need strikes to return. We need the threat of a strike, to be real again. What would happen if every teacher refused to return until Common Core was eradicated. We would finally have a serious discussion about Common Core and it would be eradicated. What if dock workers in both Paulsboro and Wilmington went on strike until Dole decided to stay in Wilmington. In a few short days, Dole would lose more cash than it would ever pay out any other way… What if policemen stopped working because their pension was being privatized? What if all of Detroit simply stopped working until their pensions were guaranteed by the Federal Government. What if the wait staffs and bartenders of every restaurant in Delaware refused to work, just stopped one day until their minimum wage set in 1990 was allowed to rise above $2.23 an hour? What if nurses did not show for work, until rich investment companies owning hospitals, agreed not to steal their pensions, but fund them fully? What if every administrative assistant in the Federal Government went on strike until Congress passed their budget? What if no one services a broken car, in any garage across the country, until some of that $150 dollars an hour fo labor, went to them.
Can you see the implications? In every case the cost of a strike is far more rigorous than the cost of the demand. But it can only happen when there is a viable expectation that a strike is imminent. An owner can be as invective as hell at the insolence of his worker daring to ask for more money, but his accountants and lawyers with wiser heads, know full well that the cheapest way out is to give them what they want… Cheaper by one tenth.
So we have come to where strikes must occur, not only for individual workers, but for society as a whole. Labor is underpaid, and it is time to use the laws of supply and demand to correct it.
And what will happen if we do? Suddenly America will no longer be the safest place to park one’s money. The stock market will fall by billions. Money will move out of our financial center over most likely to China, at the moment. The wealthy certainly can’t have that. It is far better to stop getting as high of a rate of return as one is used to, than lose 40% of everything one has accumulated so far….
And that is the power behind committing to a strike. As soon as the strike goes into effect, every shareholder of the company being struck, loses tremendous value on their investment. Does that boss really want to face his angry shareholders at the next stockholders meeting?
The Declaration of Independence states that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That adage doesn’t apply just to the one percent. Sometimes like that little boy at the beginning of this story, you just gotta hit back.
kavips 
4 comments
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August 3, 2013 at 11:31 am
Rob
Kavips,
News Journal reports today, Democratic Senator Carper plans again to
Privatize the Post Office-claims a $15 billion deficit
Our US Democratic Senator Tom Carper puts privatization of the Post Office back on the table…a Congress law in 2006 that even private companies do not have to bear the burden of. This deal would hammer jobs and reduce labor wages drastically!! Call Senator Carper’s Office to stop the plans to Privatize the Post Office!!
Post Office Privatization Is Probably a Huge Real Estate Deal
( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-reinbach/post-office-privatization_b_1730996.html)
Meanwhile, calls to privatize the USPS are being heard from mainstream outlets and on the Right. Bloomberg recently published a piece on the subject from Peter Orszag. Much on the Right issues from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)and a group called the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation (IRET), which is funded by the Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation.
It’s hard, in this pass, not to wonder if the Right Wing is forcing the issue by creating a crisis, then pressing for action. This, after all, has been its strategy for shrinking the Federal Government — systematically starve it for money by cutting taxes and larding it with debt, then call for drastic reforms to stave off disaster, a la the Ryan Plan.
Article in PoliticoFact.com , Congress is Causing the USPS Postal Problems
“The Postal Service is critical to our economy – delivering mail, medicine and packages,” the ad says. “Yet they’re closing thousands of offices, slashing service, and want to lay off over 100,000 workers. The Postal Service is reporting financial losses but not for reasons you might think. The problem: a burden no other agency or company bears, a 2006 law that drains $5 billion a year from post office revenue, while the Postal Service is forced to overpay billions more into federal accounts. Congress created this problem, and Congress can fix it.”
(http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/sep/29/save-americas-postal-service/ad-save-americas-postal-service-claims-rule-congre/)
August 4, 2013 at 12:40 pm
kavips
Rob, you are pretty much right on with your assessment. The only question is whether Carper is helping promote the sham, or is a partner willingly duped into thinking he is doing what is best for America.
I can understand where he is coming from. If I had a division that was not performing and I couldn’t get it to perform, and was taking money earned by other divisions just to stay afloat, … selling that division would be a priority. I can see that.
In fact, the British did the same with their aerospace, port, and automobile industries in the 80’s., with apparently good results.
One must look at the root cause as to why we are considering this at all. The reason is money. our governments are running in the red and need to get to the black. It is like if you had gangrene on your foot, you’d hate to lose it, but not doing so, pays a worse consequence over time.
So as would any business operator, we need to look at why we are losing money. Is it because our expenses are too high? Well. no. They are lower than they have ever been in our history. Is it because our revenue steam is too low? Why yes, matter of fact it is. It has never been lower in history.(with proper interpretation) … As every business operator must answer this question when he sees his margins deteriorate: … is it finally time to raise my prices, so my income stays ahead of my expenses?…..
Most businesses have no qualms with raising prices. It’s the American Way. in 2010 America tried outsourcing to a new crew to cut expenses. What they found, was there was really no expenses that could be cut. Which is why, we are even considering privatizing the post office. Because crazier and crazier notions have to be considered to keep up the sham….
We tried cutting and it did not work. America made a statement in 2012 and needs to insure the opposite approach will be tried after 2014; work to put in those who have no qualms following the American Way, and raising the price of government... Raise taxes on those who can afford them… Simple. If they leave the country, they leave the country, but we can still tax what’s left here. They aren’t going to “sell” everything and put the money in their Tajikistan hostel’s mattress.,, lol.
For the reality is that most readers of this see no tax increase. For the reality in America is that we really don’t tax income. With our progressive system in place, we have evolved to taxing only the money one has which one cannot possibly use for personal consumption… In which case were are taxing not the livelihoods of people; only what is extra after they have done everything they can to push the economy forward. The old lie that we are taking money out of the economy and giving it to government, has been proven untrue with events this century so far. The government only takes money, that is outside the economy, and brings it back in…
Pretty good arrangement. So instead of kicking the post office in its teeth, we should raise money on the 1%, and just tax only what they can’t spend. Now if they want to spend it all, as does General Electric on the economy so as not to pay taxes, they are doing all of us a good service so I say that should continue. Hear hear.
But money that is over and beyond what the economy takes in, those who have it, should be allowed to keep some of it, but taxes on that sliver need to raise the revenue stream up to the point where it meets or exceeds the mandatory expenses our government needs. We are done cutting. Time to raise our prices…
And seriously. What is wrong with taxing only the money one has leftover and can’t spend? That sounds like a “fair tax” to me, and I believe, since only those with that luxury now all exist in the top 1%, All the “extra” money is in the same tax bracket now, therefore they all pay the same rate… How much “fairer” can a tax system get?
The point of this whole piece, is America’s focus needs to be on raising taxes, not cutting necessary services. Hope we can consider all good readers to be protagonists in this fight.
August 5, 2013 at 11:08 pm
Rob
I would agree with your analysis about raising taxes on ‘people-corporations’ in the top 1% but it does not answer the question to the USPS 2006 law. Why does the USPS have to over pay $5 billion from its revenue to various federal accounts? Are there other government or private companies that bear this same burden?
August 6, 2013 at 2:01 am
kavips
Yes. I did skip that. From what I know, the post office is the only entity that is required to pay that amount… The reasoning back then, was that with every corporate and state robbing pensions to balance their budgets, that, damn it, it wasn’t going to happen to the post office. if they didn’t pay into the pension fund, at some future point, that money will have to be paid back into it, which rarely happens. Which makes sense. It is better for postal employees I think to have a pension rather be like everyone else, pay into the fund, then have it disappear at some point in the future.