This ingeneous fable is a perfect illustration of the American economic system today. Big corporations have experienced gains in worker productivity as a result of, and despite, freezing wages, conducting layoffs, and reducing workers' hours. REAL unemployment (not the "official" government statistic, but those who are still without a job) is still unbearably high. Meanwhile, CEO salaries and benefit packages continue to skyrocket. Outsourcing of American jobs continues. Union membership in the private sector is at an all-time low, as repeated union busting attempts over the past 30 years have been largely successful. The corporation and its kingpin, the CEO, rule the roost. They have devoured the Republican Party whole, and have succeeded in neutralizing and making impotent the once formidable (former) party of the workers and the poor, the Democratic Party. Now they wish to make their victory all but complete by doing away with public sector unions. They know if they are successful in this attempt, the few remaining private sector unions will also disappear. It is a disgraceful and indefensible action being undertaken in this so-called "land of the free," where the only freedom in the marketplace belongs to those who set the wages, not to those who actually produce wealth through their labor.
The corporatists and their willing parrots in the reactionary Republican Party are trying to turn non-union employees against union employees. They circulate wild and crazy rumors about how union employees make vastly more than non-union employees for the same type of work (in most cases they DON'T); how union employees' benefits dwarf those of non-union workers and are paid for by taxpayers (although most union pensions and medical insurance are either fully or partly worker-funded); and how closed-shop companies are costing jobs overall (a baldfaced lie). Their strategy is simple: divide the workers, and then conquer them. Whip up public opinion against unions (especially public-sector ones), and remain safe and untouched and able to further increase revenues and profits while both groups of workers fight among themselves. It is a dishonest and cynical ploy. It is a tactic these plutocrats and their far-right parrots are attempting to institutionalize. It must therefore be resisted to the bitter end by all who aren't members of the upper 2% of the income scale!
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Corporate taxes have steadily decreased as a percentage of our Gross Domestic Product, as the chart below clearly shows. Yet corporations still send out swarms of lobbyists to get Congress to lower their taxes even further! It defies logic, and such behavior can only be filed under the heading of GREED. For, along with tremendous gains in productivity per worker over the past 20 years, corporations have caused an actual REDUCTION in the number and pay scales of American workers' jobs. That's right: rather than take their tax decreases and apply them to the creation of new, better-paying AMERICAN jobs, corporations have either sat on their savings, or, worse yet, exported American jobs overseas. Even worse, much of the taxes bthey used to pay have been moved steadily from them over to personal income taxes over the years!
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To further show how greedy corporate America has become, not only has their average rate of taxation declined steadily, but they have also taken to using creative ways to present themselves so as to incur even less taxation! Designation as a sub-S corporation provides for an even larger tax savings, as the steady rise in companies doing so is shown in the chart below.
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PROGRESSIVES AND INDEPENDENTS: REMEMBER THE WISCONSIN PUBLIC SECTOR WORKERS!!!
In closing, I say to the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives:
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13 comments:
Jobs, what jobs? 700,000 more jobs lost to pay for GOP cuts? "So be it!"
Their true colors are flying. They are out to destroy Planned Parenthood, public education, public broadcasting, and everything else for the public good. Not to mention democracy itself.
I haven't followed the union-busting attempts in Ohio and other states as closely, but Scott Walker needs to be recalled as soon as he's been office for one year (as the state law stipulates). His sleazy bait-and-switch tactic is reason enough for the voters to fire him. He never mentioned anything about unions' collective bargaining rights during the election campaign. He also never mentioned anything prior to the election about his other union-crippling plan: that union members will hold a vote once a year to decide whether to keep their union in existence or not.
Both of these plans were first mentioned after the 2010 election, and Walker keeps lying through his teeth saying "I'm only fulfilling my campaign pledge," "I talked about this during the election campaign and that's why the voters elected me."
That lying sack of sh*t needs to be fired and forced to get a real job for the first time in his life.
Dave Dubya,
Thanks for dropping by, and what you say is another in a long, long line or reasons why I will NEVER be a Republican!
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Tom,
Thanks for your comment. I'm with you all the way on the need for Walker to be run out of office ASAP! What a lying snake!
Way to go,Jack. I just lost a long comment. Probably just as well.
My final point was that we have to stop listening to republicans and instead look at what they do.
They campaigned on jobs jobs jobs, then turn around and pass in the House budget cuts that will cost 700,000 jobs.
They want to destroy the economy in order to win in 2012. It is their only chance. They have no one with better ideas.
Jerry,
We can only hope that the electorate will see through their stalling and favoring the rich. I think Wisconsin may have opened a few eyes---let's hope!
Too true.
I wish Wisconsin would wake up the American public, but they don't realise that yet another monopoly manipulates public opinion.
It's all Fox News in the US, mate!
Even that pretend Public Media which is now even mor ebeholden to Corporate Underwriting.
Laci,
Fox is starting to lose viewers, thank God. Beck's viewers are down by 1/3, O'Reilly isn't as strong as he once was, and neither is Hannity. So there is SOME hope...
Jack,
thank you for breaking it down and for backing it up with charts-it is indeed disgusting and things are getting visibly and predictably worse.
The Reps don't even make a pretense of caring about working people anymore.
I share your disgust with them.
Thanks, Oso.
As members of the Chrisyian Left, we are supposed to be forgiving. But it is very hard to firgive such deliberate acts of greed which so unnecessarily hurt innocent people. These Republicans just need to come to their senses and leave something for the other guy once in a while!
Theodore Roosevelt knew what to do about the oligarchs. Unfortunately, we have few politicians these days with the spine TR had.
Jolly Roger,
They not only lack the spine, but also the sense of fairness and common sense.
Hey gang, bummer couple of weeks for the Left, huh? Americans are definitely beginning to understand how Big Labor works. But I have a question:
Why should we allow public sector employees to have union privileges?
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