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The now famous high stepping Wal*Mart video mentions that point….
Now, the meme of bashing Wal*mart and fast foods has gotten a little blaze and to be honest, when I first saw the flash mob at Walmart on the national sites, as a person with little time, I passed.
But on Delaware Liberal, I opened it in another tab, and was listening to it as background and all of a sudden….. it stopped for a half second and then…
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
The answer in my head was … “no, i didn’t…”
The second answer was… “of course I did.” which made me more intrigued by my original answer. Why on earth did I think it was bad for these people to interrupt business as usual to demonstrate for something affecting I think, one person?
As this “wow moment” started to dawn on me, I realized I’d been brainwashed’… Over time. it had really happened. My gut, had been over-ruling my head…. it’s a business. They should call the police. They should fire everyone involved… Demonstrations are really ineffective blowing off of steam…
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
How many others out there would say “no” … How many others out there really don’t know it is their right to form a union? That anyone can form a union? It is legally protected.
Oh, they can threaten to fire you if you join… And they can fire you….
But if they do… you can sue… and even better, under current law, you can sue them and win. Win big!
You can make them pay you for all back wages you lost. So finacially it is just like you were working but having the entire time off.
You can make them pay all your damages, including late fees on bills you couldn’t pay because the illegally fired you. You can make them pay interest on all loans you took out to live on, even if they came from family. If you Dad gives you a loan at 1000% interest, they have to pay that… and to your Mom, your brothers, your sisters, your aunts, and uncles… Your whole family and friends can get rich off them because they fired you for forming a union!
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
The business may respond to the legal judgment , “Screw you , we are closing”. But if they close they will still have to pay you for all the damage they cause you because they fired you for forming a union… You still win! And win BIG!
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
How is it that our newspapers don’t remind us of this. How is it that Unions are painted to be the bad guys, because they make a business lose money? Why isn’t the business painted as the bad guy, for stealing potential earnings out of each and every employee working for them…
Some may think forcing a union on a business is unfair. Racist states often use this argument. Why should White owned businesses pay more for black people’s labor? That is why ALEC (in Delaware associated with Patty Blevins) was invented: to protect White Businesses’ interests. And still unfortunately, in some states, there were enough white people still agreeing that black people as well as to those whites who associate with them, should be paid inferior wages,so much so that with ALEC’s help, enough votes were mustered to pass state anti-union laws..
But historically there were laws that once said: slavery was legal. Despite bad law, morally it was still everyone’s right to be free….
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
It is your right to form a union. Existing law is crystal clear. Why was this decided? What is the moral argument behind it?
Simple. You have to eat. Bottom line. If someone says I have to pay you $6.00 an hour because I’m not making enough money, and you can’t get money anywhere else, you work for $6.00 and hour. If he counters that he can only pay $5.00 an hour, and you can’t make money anywhere else, you will do his bidding for $5.00 an hour. Why not $4 then? Why not $3 then? Why not $2 then? Why not $1 then? Why not .25 cents then?
You have to eat.
There is no bargaining chip in your favor… Your employer if legally allowed, would pay the lowest rate possible to still have employees. When there are more employees than positions, wages could drop very low…. because you have to eat.
America went through the Great Depression primarily because of this… Even business leaders realized from that experience that by making their employees so poor, no one was buying the products they were making…
And so they agreed: “If we make our employers have disposable income, they can buy our products and we can again make money”. So the legal basis was almost unanimously approved by both businesses and labor, to make the right to strike just that. a basic human right protected by the full force of the law… Simply because paying workers higher wages is good for increasing overall demand. and that is what drives economies forward.
“Hold It! Did You Know? It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
Basically, a union is the answer to this counter argument: “why should you, the investors, get all the money off our labor, and we get none?” Admittedly both of us should get something decent from our arrangement….
And there you go. America did do very well… that is, until our media became influenced by investors (who now own them btw) and started painting unions as a scourage… Missing from all press coverage, was the simple fact that one has to act scouragingly when bargaining with fellow scourages… Sort of like not realizing that your hero prize fighter has to hurt people. It’s necessary to stay in the ring…
So I encourage all reading this to now begin talking up unions in your workplace… Because if you get fired for any reason afterwards, you can blame it on the legal right to form a union…. it is like a wonderful vacation in which you still will get paid, probably even more than if you’d put up with the bosses crap the whole damn time….!
Now… you know! It Is Your Right To Form A Union!”
Yeah.
It really is your “right.” and it is protected by law. Now, go get them tigers!
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.
It probably hit mass culture with Star Wars. Where, when in a pickle, one made some adjustments to a computer, pushed a button, and one was suddenly in another part of the universe.
Then came the TV show Quantum Leap in the 80’s, where after a certain feat had been changed, one jumped through space and time into a new body, to begin a new episode the following week. Remember Ziggy?
I was reading one of my earlier pieces that for some random reason yesterday had caught a flicker of interest, and back then I had used that concept, that of “jumping”, to explain why America was finally settling on Obama as their candidate of choice….
America had been milling around in stagnation and needed a “jump” to move us forward. Clinton and McCain could not engineer that, I proposed and that is why we needed someone new, to “make the jump” forward.
That was written during the campaign of 2008. This summer will be 5 years hence.
America still needs to make that jump.
But just as we almost get there, Republicans sabotage it by pulling the computer’s plug…
Now you reading this may be a Republican but please don’t take offense. You are actually a big part of the solution which you will see, if you read through to the end.
Let’s look at a few things.
- Starting in the 80’s the Middle Class has consistently been losing ground against the top 1%. Now the Middle Class has spent their retirement savings just to pay normal expenses , and we are still heading downward.
- Immigration reform was supposed to be completed and done in Reagan’s time. Thirty years ago. We are just getting serious now.
- Our interstate system is 50 years old. We haven’t reinvested adequately. 11,000 bridges are held up by paint, and could drop out from under us at any moment.
- Our tax system is still after 30 years, in disarray. The wealthy get breaks, the poor get pissed on.
- Our Social Security and Medicare Programs are going bankrupt. They were also supposedly permanently fixed in Reagan’s term, again 30 years ago.
- We have been at the mercy of oil speculators for the past 13 years. We still are. What did you pay today?
- Capital investment in America is at an all time low, yet the wealthy have parked $13 trillion in savings. Why no investment?
So America, why are we still stuck in the 1980’s?
Republicans. That is why. Conservatives.
That sounds so simple that one must wonder why we haven’t moved them out of the way?
And that answer, is because for some crazy reason, we keep changing the rules to let them play longer. Citizen’s versus United is just one case in point. Allowing one person to fund a candidacy opposing the people’s true choice, obfuscates the entire playing field, and in the fog, makes the minority appear to have far more clout than is endowed to it by the American people.
Voting tallies prove that we have had over the past 24 years, 5 popular vote victories for Democrat presidents, and just 1 for Republicans, and to be fair, that was to a wartime president who barely got re-elected into office. Voting totals are the only non-spin, the only unobfuscated time we ever get to see how America truly feels.
The majority of America want us to jump forward. They are tired after thirty years of nothing.
Right now, Republicans have killed the America dream. College grads do not see them using their knowledge in their future jobs. Retirees see their golden year’s savings swallowed up by profits of gigantic medical corporations. Everyone is making tremendous amount of money, except 99% of the American people.
The majority want to jump forward. Yet it is always Republicans holding us back.
Holding us back on Immigration Reform. Holding us back on higher revenue. Holding us back on budget cuts. Holding us back on health care reform. Holding us back on Chuck Hagel’s nomination….
It is just stupid.. It is done simply to achieve drama, and is only done for dramatic effect; it still is just a stupid waste of time and your money. It is as if Republican behavior was patterned after that of a six year old child who drags his feet before going to school. That child knows he has to go there eventually, but he whines, supines, and acts recalcitrant, just to get attention…. maybe make someone feel “sorry’ for them… Boo hoo.
America is playing the role of the parent to these recalcitrant Republicans and is damn tired of it.
One simply has to look at today’s looming sequestration, which is strictly a problem Republicans created and brought down upon all of us, and across this great nation, Americans shake their heads in unison, remembering that if a Republicans had never been elected President in the year 2000, by 2008 and Obama’s election, our national debt was on track to have hit zero… Yes, Democrats would have paid off the entire National Debt by 2008, if we had never had George W. Bush slip into office.
And now, we preparing to slash $86 billion over the next 9 months. Then do the same over the next 12 years…
Under the Budget Control Act by 2021 discretionary spending will be at 5.5% of GDP which is its lowest level of GDP since 1931. (We all know what happened in 1932!) And we propose to cut it lower?
Yet we have $13 trillion in savings owned by the top 1%. $86 billion of $13 Trillion is…. 0.7th of one single percent. If you increased taxes on the wealthy by only one penny per every dollar over $1 million, we would have yearly budget surplus... just like that. One penny per dollar over $1 million. That one penny would even give us an additional 0.3 of one percent extra which could be applied to lowering the deficit… Unbelievably easy…. If you own trillions, who is going to miss a penny?
But we can’t do it for one single roadblock. Republicans won’t raise taxes.
America needs to “make a jump”…… and we need to make that jump now.
If this were Hollywood or a television drama, Captain America would pull out his sidearm, kill the insubordinate (spy) officer, and ask his attache to step into his position. We would then, finally be able to save our ship.
Americans could then dream again about prosperity. There is only one reason we don’t still have it today.
Photo courtesy of Google Maps/ Lower Schuylkill
Kinder Morgan is a pipeline company. It is the fourth largest energy company in America, behind Exxon-Mobile, Chevron, and Conaco-Phillips. Though it was spun off from Enron, a point of contention which many opponents point to, it was started by those who saw to where Enron was headed and jumped the ship in port before Enron began its fateful run. In fact, it employs the whistle blower who reportedly sank Enron. So get that comparison out of the way. KinderMorgan is not Enron. It IS the fourth largest energy business in America.
Which shows how little we really know about it. For Kinder Morgan likens themselves to a toll road. No matter whether the price of gas goes up. or the price of gas goes down, as long as it gets transported by the fourth largest energy company, it makes money. Kinder Morgan transports energy.
Which is why it wants to come to Wilmington.
Big company. Little state. Equals coercion.
Today, most people have no idea what the Dupont reference means in the title. That is amazing and really shows how far things have come in thirty years… Without exaggerating too much, it would be safe to say, Dupont owned Delaware’s government, and got anything it wanted. For that privilege, mind you, they loved us and bestowed upon us many gifts, including our double laned highway stretching from Delmar to Philadelphia Pike… now named the Dupont Highway… In all honesty, one of the things that makes Wilmington such a great city, and makes Delaware one of the best states, is the generosity of Dupont bestowed upon this state with the second smallest landmass.
It came with a price. Our toxic waste dumps. Our cancer rates. Our brownfields. These were bought by Dupont’s gifts to those running our state. Vote to allow Dupont to dump toxic chemicals on a piece of land and get a museum as a bonus. Really how can anyone say no?
38 years later, no one remembers the museum, except that their school may have went there on a field trip. And that is hard to even remember while busing mom to her radiation treatment center, and taking the kids to AI Dupont for their bone marrow transplants… And with all the Advil you have to take to keep the throbbing bearable in your own head, it is a miracle that you even remember anything..
Choices have consequences. Every marriage has its cost.
It becomes a moral issue, now. Should Delaware divorce the marriage made to its high school sweetheart, the one with a long high school and college courtship? The one both families have gotten used to? The one spawning four children? The one supporting a church, a PTA, the Food Bank, the fight against diabetes, with volunteer effort, because a new suitor just happened to notice you and wants to play?
A big name like Lindsey Lohan wants to marry Delaware. She will bring a lot to the table. The question is, just as if the suitor were Lindsey Lohan, the benefit is very short term. The cost, will be on-going for the rest of our lives…. Is there a chance that such a marriage will work? There is always a chance…… but .. nope. Not in this case.
There will be a Kinder Morgan port with liquefaction plant somewhere on the east coast. It can either be in the Delaware Bay or the Chesapeake Bay. There is so much gas being found in the Marcellus Shale region of Pennsylvania right now, estimates of a massive 100 years worth, that to get a higher price for it one has to go overseas. Europe is starving for gas. Russia keeps turning their supply on and off.
Someone will need a gas port on America’s east coast and the cheapest spot is between north of the C&D Canal, and Philadelphia….
A pipeline from the terminal at Coatesville to Wilmington is rather cheap, and with minor adjustments, LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) ships docking in Wilmington will soon carry their explosive cargo to Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Sagunto, Spain. ..
This construction will be done with non-union labor brought up from Texas. Existing contractors with whom Kinder Morgan are familiar. Costs per mile, payment plans are already locked down. Gradually Southbridge with the help of Delaware’s General Assembly and the blessings of the next generation of chief executives, will be bulldozed and turned into the next Marcus Hook.
It is inevitable. Europe’s lifestream will flow through Delaware. Shipping is not as dependable as are pipelines and storage is a key component… Fill the tanks when the price is low; sell the contents when the price is high.
The Christina Riverfront, will resemble the lower Schuylkill delta. Across the river from the riverwalk, storage tanks will stretch as far as the eye can see……
This deal, that of giving away our port, WILL CHANGE DELAWARE FOREVER…. and it is being done in secret. No community involvement. All hush hush. False innuendos being given instead of details…
Are the details not as bad as the hype? Well, whenever that scenario occurs, details usually are leaked out for the very reason the are used TO SWAY OVER the public… Since they aren’t leaking, someone is trying to present a fait accompli.
Speculation is always rampant when there is silence. The best way to combat irresponsible speculation is to release the actual details. Let people know what to expect before the deal is done. Just perhaps, their objections may open your eyes to a possibility previously unconsidered, that could, if found out too late, wreak havoc with our daily lives!
Otherwise Delaware, expect to be greeted early one morning with this… : Kids? I kicked out your Mom last night… I want you to meet your new Mom… Her name is Lindsey. Lindsey Lohan… Everything is going to be just great from here on out!”
Surprising the (thought of too late) proper answer to Romney’s silly statement that: Corporations are people too… would be how I ended my post below, which is the headline above. People are capital, too.
Which means just like you have to invest in physical capital, one has to invest in human capital too.. Ironically the wisdom of this disappears in corporate boardrooms. They look at how to use capital to achieve more profitable ends. Therefore it falls upon the shoulders of Labor Unions, to bring this argument into daily discussion. sometimes by employing the action of a a strike.
Suddenly with a work stoppage, the idea that one needs to reinvest in human beings, makes itself readily apparent.
Isn’t it a bit unconscionable for an administration (Democratic at that), to ask for raises for its staff, because they were effective especially at minimizing raises for everyone else? The surprising answer is … no.
Because yes! Cabinet secretaries under the law, should be getting a raise right now.
The answer also for those underneath, is that ALL state employees, based on their hard work and sacrifice over the past 4 years, now that money is again flowing into our treasury, should also get a raise as well.
Both groups deserve a raise. The money to pay for it should come from those who did well over the past four years,… Our own 1%.
Obviously someone has to be first. By the law specified in Delaware’s code, in order to have any raise for the next term of 4 years, the request for Governor Markell’s staff has to go in now, between the election and prior to the swearing in of the new legislature.
As for the AFSCME union’s rank and file, their request is handled through a different venue, the General Assembly, as those legislators take on the task and divvy up all the resources being spent in 2014.
So if there is any controversy, it can only be about timing… and the attempt to make a comparison of future earnings with the practices of the past. None of us do that in our own lives; we should not do that when messing around with the lives of other people….
How much do these raises cost us taxpayers?
Under the original proposal, as reported in the News Journal, here were the dollar amounts to be raised…. $12,775, $19,780, $9375, $2781, $2781, $2781. Effectively a grand total of…. $100,546.
Theoretically, if this money was spread between all of AFSCME’s employees, 4000 in number, it would amount to an extra $25 dollars per year… That would be an insult. Those workers deserve more.
Every leader or head manager needs to take care of his team; especially when they do well. Obviously the opposite does not fly. “Oh, I stole all your time away from your family, and used your intelligence, effort, creativity, to enable me to get the credit for running one of the best administrations ever, and now, I am going to take everything for myself and give you nothing back for all your effort.”
That statement does not fly in the face of the rank and file, nor should it fly among the top echelons of government.
Keep in mind, that salaries for these positions are set at the beginning of every four year term, specifically to last the duration of the whole term. None of us, who usually get yearly reviews, have our salary levels that well set into stone. Also keep in mind what the Minner years gave us, where we did not keep our cabinet position salaries competitive with those in the private sector, and, settled for the level of talent we paid for..
Salaries at the top are seen in light of investments. “If we, the state of Delaware, invest this much into you, Mr/Ms Secretary, what will be our return?” Smart people give better returns than dumb people. Smart people usually charge more… For example? Really good lawyers charge more than those getting a foot in the door; they do so for a reason.
So what about those on the bottom? How is this fair when they are required to stay at the same level, or as was the case recently, even being asked to work for less when the money became tight from lower revenues?
The answer is: those on the bottom deserve raises as well. And my answer to any questioning of the percentage often in double digits to those at the top, would be… that if you saved Delawarean taxpayers hundreds of millions, then perhaps you too, would be worthy of the same percentage… But most likely you didn’t make that much of a financial contribution to all of us paying your salary… Therefore, your salary increase which is expensive, needs to be proscribed by what we can afford.
For you see, $25 extra dollars a year doesn’t cut it. If 4000 people all got $1000 raises, that would cost an additional $4,000,000 over what we currently take in now. If you make that $2000, still very little, the cumulative total is now $8,000,000. Considering we were once considering an 8% cut of all government employees in times of hardship, then re-giving them that 8% in times of plenty, would be more than fair. Furthermore when you consider a 2% raise was called for and only 1% was given, that too should be tacked on, simply to be fair….
So if we gave $10,000 additional dollars to every one of the 4000 AFSCME employees, the gross cost would be….. $40,000,000. Considering what they have sacrificed, how much they have lost paying into their own pension plans, the level being re-invested into our infrastructure of people, should probably be around $100,000,000 a hundred million a year... After trimming waste and sunsetting programs no longer needed, the funds for this raise still unpaid for, should be made up in the forms of a millionaire’s tax… After all, if you prospered off the backs of those earning far less, then, pay-up time is more than fair.
The nice caveat of paying all these people more, is that instead of justifying the expense of say…. the Route 1/Interstate 95 interchange upgrade as improving productivity by moving goods and services faster, you just invested $100,000,000 right back into the economy… where… it will be taxed again on a) income, b) gross sales receipts, c) real estate and property taxes, d) capital gains and dividend taxes, e) and even though election year is long past and this topic with the loss of Romney’s big mouth is long forgotten, this $100,000,000 will create lots of new jobs at the grocery store, movie theaters, convenience stores care dealerships,etc….as regular government employed citizens all release some of that “pent-up demand.”
People are capital too.
Pros and Cons of Holding A Nationwide Strike on January 2nd, 2013.
Pros:
1) Forces Republicans to negotiate.
2) Demonstrates to Congress this is not a game.
3) Gives everyone a day longer holiday break.
4) Raises stakes for Tea Party Republicans thinking about defaulting.
5) Causes all eyes to stay focused on the deficit issue at hand.
6) Could be conducted as a wildcat strike , just call in sick.
7) Shows that Americans are serious about taxing the wealthy.
8) Gives our president a tool to hold over corporate America
9) January 2nd is the lowest productivity day of the year, no economic loss
10) Needs to be viral to have any meaning. People have to want to show their support for balancing the budget through taxes on the wealthy.
11) Continuation of occupy themes.
12) Businesses as well as labor, can show their support for raising taxes on the wealthy.
13) After experiencing a nationwide strike, Labor negotiators will have more clout in negotiations.
14) America’s people takes back their destiny. Like Thanksgiving, almost every American is off work.
15) Will demonstrate what happens if America stops working.
16) Will be called off if Agreement is decided before Dec. 15th.
17) Should be also supported by Businesses, corporations as well as workers. We all have a hand in making sure our government can pay it’s bills far into the future.
Cons:
1) Inconvenience to those flying that day, or any travelers.
2) Lost day of work.
3) Job may fire you.
4) There are no winners in a strike. Victor goes to the one who stands hardship the longest. All lose.
5) If successful Could be overused. Strike for Animal Rights.
6) Will gum up normal operations. for whole day. and perhaps the next.
7) Will lower GDP by one day’s worth in that quarter.
8) May cause gigantic riots never before seen in the history of the World.
9) Nobody will come.
kavips 