On the Sunny Side of the Street — Biden and the new New Deal brings about new hope

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 16th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about why, if the economy is doing so well, a lot of people are sour on it. I discussed the six-pronged attack of the fascist movement designed to strip workers and consumers of power and hand it to corporations and plutocrats: Deregulation; Tax “Reform”; “Tort Reform”; State’s rights; Freedom of (certain) religions; and the Takeover of channels of information by moneyed interests and fascists.

The result is that average people like you and me have been stripped, not just of power and security, but even agency. We have been told for decades that questioning the right of the rich to having it all amounts to treason. I know I’ve been called a communist for arguing for public campaign funding, or improving public schools. I’m sure most of you have, as well.

Dating back to the White Revolution in 1917, the aristocracy have worked hard to utterly control the lot of both employees and shoppers. When their excesses caused the Great Capitalistic Collapse of 1929 (the original Black Friday and subsequent Great Depression) they had to back off from the mess they themselves had created and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was able to implement his New Deal. The result was the strongest and richest economy in the history of the world, since his reforms and the rise of unions help mold a vast middle class, and what I call “demand-side economics,” unlike trickle-down, really did raise all boats—including, paradoxically, the rich.

Unfortunately, the rich tend to be stupid and greedy, and can never understand that ripping off the rest of society undermines their own wealth and power. They would rather have 90% of grinding poverty than 20% of massive abundance. 90% of almost nothing is better than 20% of a lot, right? As I said, stupid and greedy. When a society’s wealth concentrates to a small enough portion of the population, the whole thing implodes. Over and over, throughout history. The Great Depression wasn’t a fluke; it was a built-in design flaw.

Yes, their depredations sour the rest of us. But there are signs that even here, change is coming, and with any luck at all, we won’t need another Great Depression or communist revolution to effect that change.

Workers are taking back their power. Backed by President Biden, unions scored a massive victory when the government implemented a new rule that any company caught tampering or interfering with workers’ efforts to organize would immediately become a union shop. No ifs, ands, or buts. It won’t stop sleazy employers like Amazon or Starbucks, but it will make them a hell of a lot more careful. This NLRB directive (https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-issues-decision-announcing-new-framework-for-union-representation), which got almost no attention at all in the captive corporate press (let alone in the fascist propaganda outlets, except for the Wall Street Journal, who were alarmed!) was hailed by organizers. The NLRB took a victory lap, writing, “The new standard will promote a fair election environment by more effectively disincentivizing employers from committing unfair labor practices.”

Unions are on the rise already, with resounding victories in recent months against the Big Three Auto Makers, American Airlines, Kaiser Permanente, UPS and other delivery services, the LA School District, and Providence Hospitals in Portland, OR. According to the Guardian, “Feeling angry and emboldened, workers have been flexing their muscles. There were 301 strikes in the first nine months of his year, up from 172 over the same period in 2021, according to ILR Labor Action Tracker.” Even Tesla, with some of the worst labor abuses in the world, is in deep trouble, with union sentiment growing not just in the US, but in Europe as well.

This is partially why for the first time in ten years, average wages this year rose faster (4.2%) than the rate of inflation (3.2%).

Democrats in Congress have been pushing to make the ongoing thievery of so-called “contract workers” a thing of the pass. If they gain control next year, expect to see the sleaziest and most abusive outfits either have to give their workers decent pay and rights, or go out of business. (And any outfit that can’t afford even minimum wage and overtime pay needs to go out of business and won’t be missed.)

Consumers are starting to make their voices heard. Biden is still challenging the organized theft and ruination known as ‘student loans’ and bringing pressure to bear on those usurious payday-loan and other predatory outfits. Other protections are taking effect in blue states. I benefited from one such: a medium-sized snow storm caused my solar panels to crash to the ground last March, and the contractor’s response was “Gee, hope you have home owners’ insurance.” But California mandates full warranty of home construction projects for a period of ten years. A friend made me aware of the law (again, not mentioned in the media) and as a result, not only were the panels repaired, but the installation beefed up so as to survive similar storms in the future—at no cost to me.

And another sign of emerging change: the fascists are learning that they cannot lie to us with impunity. Fox News shelled out $787 million in damages for the lies they told about Dominion Voting Systems and the election supposedly being stolen from Trump. (I’m amused how fast Fox gets rid of the lying clowns—including the ex-President—who come on and still try to claim the election was stolen. But then, they have other lawsuits pending for their lies. So do some of the other propaganda outfits). Giuliani just got dinged to the tune of $148 million for defaming and ruining the lives of two election precinct volunteers. Trump himself lost a suit for battery and defamation to E. Jean Carroll, and now faces another suit for $50 for repeating the same lies he told about her that led to the first case.

The United States is willing to fight for its right to exist in the face of the “I-live-America-but-hate-the-US” crowd. Over a thousands individuals participating in the January 6th insurrection have been fined or imprisoned.

Mainstream media, for all its faults, sees the writing on the wall, and some have dropped the pretense that “conservatives” or “libertarians” are anything other than fascists, and are using the word. It’s about time.

Trump, beset on all sides by the fruits of his vile actions, is watching his support slowly erode. You can only lose so much before your followers start noticing and wondering if it really is all a deep-state conspiracy.

The Solstice is coming, and I always write a piece where the central theme is “the sun will be back, don’t lose hope.” Well, I’ve already written the one for this year (and you’ll have to wait until the 21st to read it. Deal), but hope is definitely a factor in discussion about how people feel about living in America today. There is hope, and the reason for the hope gets stronger by the day.

Never lose hope.

The Economy is Great — Except for 90% of us, that is

The Economy is Great

Except for 90% of us, that is

Bryan Zepp Jamieson

December 4th 2023

www.zeppscommentaries.online

One thing I hear fairly often—and I wager you do, too—is a plaint from liberal and/or Democratic pundits that goes something like this: “The economy is doing great. Unemployment is down, inflation is down, productivity is up, and the stock market is roaring. Why doesn’t Biden get credit for that?”

That’s all true as far as it goes. Part of it is that the media doesn’t much report good news because it’s boring. Having some idiot on Faux News winge that he paid $90 for a turkey is much more entertaining than noting that turkeys cost less than they have in five years. (We paid $23 for ours, and it was a damned good turkey). It’s easier to remember what some overpriced bird cost some overstuffed and self-important pundit than what people’s own turkeys cost in the checkout—or that such things as eggs, milk, and veggies had shown similar declines.

Part of it is a historical oddity in social psychology: societies as a whole become more discontented and restive as things begin to improve. We really are making our way back from the twin disasters of COVID and Trump. The dim light of early dawn is somehow more depressing than the depth of darkness a few hours earlier.

The main part of the answer is in the part of that quote, “productivity is up, and the stock market is roaring.” Both usually come at the expense of middle class people. They aren’t good news for the very people who are most sour on the economy.

The indicators cited really don’t speak to the welfare of the working class. Yes, there are more jobs. But by the standards of other developed nations, they remain shit jobs. Minimum wage remains $7.25 an hour in the most backward states. Most jobs don’t offer health insurance (and shouldn’t—that should be a public sector function). Many offer no vacation time. Maternity benefits remain crappy even as the GOP moves to outlaw abortion and birth control. There’s no job security; in most states an employee can be laid off without warning, and for no reason given. Then there’s the sleazy low-end outfits that call their victims “independent contractors” which eliminates otherwise legally required things such as overtime, minimum wage, or scheduled hours, and the shittiest ones even require their subjects to provide and/or pay for work related items, such as computers. Because regulation was pared down beginning with Reagan, the government does little to combat such abuses as wage theft, cheating employees on overtime, and job safety and health measures. The lowest states are fighting to bring back child labor, an absolute disgrace in what is purportedly the richest country on Earth. Who can love a system that enslaves children but where plutocrats whine loudly about having to pay to provide those children with food? Even in the Confederate south, most slaveowners had more decency than that, and man, is that one fucking low bar!

Even with full employment, 80% of full-time workers have less than $400 in their bank accounts in case of emergency. Most have none, and are skipping meals to pay rent, feed the kids, and pay $150 a month for TV so rich assholes can pontificate to them about how good they have it, riding on the backs of beleaguered billionaires.

Plutocrats spend billions on that propaganda, and on the legalized bribery of elected officials to push the notion that only they are deserving and that the poor are nothing but a burden. Faux News has spent billions and billions of dollars persuading us that single mothers on welfare are the problem and carefully don’t mention the thousand or so billionaires who have been dismantling the economic system and raping it to death.

The Koch brothers tried rebranding fascism as “Libertarian Party” and when that failed, simply started taking over the once-sane GOP and populating it with the same broken and twisted creatures and fought so hard against civil rights, worker rights, compassion or fairness, beginning with Donald Trump. Those crazy bastards that have paralyzed Congress didn’t come out of nowhere; they were homegrown by the fascistic plutocracy. Most of the mainstream media is owned by corporate entities that are part of this same cabal, and they lean heavily on their “journalistic” outlets to complain that the problems are liberalism and throwing money at social problems, and not Wall Street types dismantling, destroying, and packaging out once-useful companies. Look at what Musk has deliberately done to destroy Twitter, once a semi-respectable source of information. Everyone has tales to tell of good companies that provided decent jobs and good service that fell apart after being bought out by some semi-anonymous hedge fund entity.

Most people sense the system is deeply flawed and purposefully broken. And the very worst problems remain unaddressed.

This attack on the US has been going for decades, and featured six major prongs by the interests that wanted to create a power vacuum by destroying the peoples’ government:

Deregulation: lots of whines about the burden of regulation that somehow failed to create the richest and most powerful country on Earth. Now we have deregulation. Feeling particularly rich or powerful now? Ninety-nine percent of you will say no.

Tax Reform: AKA trickle down, or supply side. Top tax brackets fell from 90% to 20%. Working people made up a bit of the difference. But we’re still $23 trillion in the hole. It wasn’t school lunches for kids that caused that: it was billionaires cheating the country.

Tort Reform: essentially makes it impossible for regular people to sue major corporations.

State’s rights: take power from the federal government and give it to corrupt, petty, venal states like Mississippi or Louisiana. Gape in amazement as civil rights vanish along with worker rights and environmental protections.

Freedom of religion: Make pets out of gullible zealots and promise to let them inflict their idolatry on others in return for their votes. Notice that you aren’t free from religions you don’t believe in any more?

Combine liberalism and social justice with communism and other authoritarian regimes in the public mind. Spend billions on propaganda to promote this and all the other prongs.

It all leads to plutocratic authoritarianism.

A lot of people, including one of the main architects of this attack, David Koch, have looked at Donald Trump and his followers, and the vicious excesses of the so-called Christian Right, and realized that, in line with historical precedent, their movement has attracted a dark element of broken and twisted creatures who revel in the suffering of others and live only to serve their masters and share a few crumbs from the table. Scratch a strutting and bellicose MAGAt and find a cold concentration camp prison guard, or the block party commissar.

Fascist regimes, like theocratic regimes, begin as cruel and incompetent, and go downhill from there.

I’m not sure it can be reversed. But it must be if we are to avoid the fate of such regimes.

But even though Biden can’t wave a magic wand and fix all these things, he at least wants to. And you can bet your life (and you probably are) that Trump and his lot in the GOP will only make things worse.

You want a decent job that pays for a good home, security and decent medical care? Reject the GOP.

And yes, that includes people who cheered for that six pronged attack and expected a sane outcome. The dream is over. Time to wake up.

Return to Oz: In Australia, $7.75 an hour is for children

Return to Oz

In Australia, $7.75 an hour is for children

 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

February 26th 2013

 

About 18 months ago, I wrote about Australia’s minimum wage laws, and with Congress poised to reject out of hand a presidential suggestion that the minimum wage should be raised to $9 an hour in the world’s richest country, it’s time to revisit Australia.

I wrote at the time, “Australia passed the Fair Work Act of 2009, which took effect in the form of the National Employment Standards on January 1, 2010. The act covers roughly 2/3rds of Australia’s workers (about 27% of the workforce are deemed “casual workers” defined by a tautology; they are called casual workers because they are paid as casual workers). Some of the provisions are, by American standards, utterly amazing.”

The minimum wage was $569.90 per week, then. Now it’s $606.40, based on a 38 hour work week, or $15.96 an hour. “Casual employees” (part timers) get a minimum of $21.66 an hour, which encourages employers to hire full-time workers and save money.

Continue reading “Return to Oz: In Australia, $7.75 an hour is for children”

The Business of America

The Business of America

…is not business. It’s being a society.

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 20th, 2012

A favorite stance by Republicans and libertarians, especially this time of year when voter registrations are being trashed by Republican party operatives and the son of the Republican candidate owns the company that counts the votes in most of Ohio is that America should be run like a business. Just like they’re trying to do with the voting.

Why, by lying, cheating, and using economic force to get their way, they’re already trying to run America like a business, and this should be a clear and explicit warning to anyone who doesn’t want to end up as corporate chattel.

The notion, one that Mitt Romney explicitly stated during the second debate, is that if America is run like a business, by a businessman, it will be far more efficient. Efficiency’s a good thing, right?

The notion is one that rests very comfortably on bumper stickers and in Republican brains, but doesn’t bear any actual examination.

Running a country like a business is an absolutely horrible idea. It’s been tried before, you see. Holland tried it in the 15th century and eventually crashed, never to be a major power again. Italy tried it in the 1930s and 40s, with dismal results. The trains did NOT run on time. Indeed, they barely ran at all. Then Italy went to war for national glory, and all the trains got blown up. Spain has never quite recovered from the Franco years. China, while mouthing communist platitudes, is as business-oriented a country as you can find, and it is a huge-scale social and economic disaster waiting to happen. When that bubble bursts, hundreds of millions will die, and the rest of the world will be forced to see the conditions under which the Chinese lived as peons in a business state.

Continue reading “The Business of America”

Labor Day 2011

America isn’t working

September 3rd 2011

The labor situation in America this Labor Day weekend? Rotten. Dire. Devastating. Grim. Or, in economic terms, “less than optimal.”

The top problem, of course, is unemployment. The U3, the standard measure the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses to measure unemployment, stands at 9.1%. However, the twelve million people in that bleak number are only part of the tale. The U6, which includes “discouraged workers” and people who got moved from full-time jobs to positions paying less than 33 hours a week, stands at 18.9%.

There are two million or so for whom the 99 week extension on Unemployment Benefits have run out, and so are no longer even considered part of the labor force. Then there are the twelve million unemployables who aren’t disabled but are unable to get work because of criminal records, disfigurements or lack of education. And of course, the three million or so who are in the American gulags at any given time.

Continue reading “Labor Day 2011”

The Wizards of Oz

Down under, they know how to work people!

June 11th 2011

 As American labor drifts slowly into outright servitude, Australia is trying something different, and it seems to be working.

Australia passed the Fair Work Act of 2009, which took effect in the form of the National Employment Standards on January 1, 2010. The act covers roughly 2/3rds of Australia’s workers (about 27% of the workforce are deemed “casual workers” defined by a tautology; they are called casual workers because they are paid as casual workers). Some of the provisions are, by American standards, utterly amazing.

The minimum wage is $569.90 per week. (In Australian dollars, which are presently a bit over $1.05 in US dollars, so that wage is $600.56). A work week is defined as being 38 hours, and for part timers, the minimum wage is $15 an hour. It’s higher for temps.

Continue reading “The Wizards of Oz”

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