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"We stand for a living wage.
Wages are subnormal if they fail to provide a living for those who devote their time and energy to industrial occupations.
The monetary equivalent of a living wage varies according to local conditions, but must include:
enough to secure the elements of a normal standard of living--
a standard high enough to make morality possible,
to provide for education and recreation,
to care for immature members of the family,
to maintain the family during periods of sickness,
and to permit of reasonable saving for old age."
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Theodore Roosevelt Nomination Acceptance Speech, 1912 -- Social and Industrial Justice to the Wage-Workers
Teddy Roosevelt was one heck of a Progressive Republican!
Too bad haven't seen such Champions for the Middle Class, like Teddy Roosevelt -- in such a long time.
In case you haven't noticed:
The meager Gains that Middle Class workers have made in the last Century, have been not-so-quietly eroding away in the last several Decades, as these recent stats confirm.
Workers are NOT happy campers -- Here's 22 Reasons Why:
22 Statistics That Prove The Middle Class
Is Being Systematically Wiped Out Of Existence In America
Michael Snyder, Business Insider -- July 15, 2010
01 ) 83% of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1% of the people.
02 ) 61% of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49% in 2008 and 43% in 2007.
03 ) 66% of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
04 ) 36% of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
05 ) A staggering 43% of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
06 ) 24% of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
07 ) Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32% increase over 2008.
08 ) Only the top 5% of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
09 ) For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
10 ) In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to 1.
11 ) As of 2007, the bottom 80% of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
12 ) The bottom 50% of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1% of the nation’s wealth.
13 ) Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17% when compared with 2008.
14 ) In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
15 ) The top 1% of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
16 ) In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
17 ) More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
18 ) For the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
19 ) This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
20 ) Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16% to 7.8 million in 2009.
21 ) Approximately 21% of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
22 ) The top 10% of Americans now earn around 50% of our national income.
Wow that's some list!
I found myself in way more of the losing ends of those statistics, than I would like to admit.
Those Economic Inequities just continue to grow deeper. While the Party of No Ideas would just continue to offer us the "faux dream" that one day -- WE too, could be Rich! ... just follow their lead.
(some observations Michael Snyder, from that previous Link, on what it all means:)
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects.
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
[...]
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
These topics were not "news" to me, as I've often written on the issues of the Middle Class. It's just now, finally those Middle Class Topics are going mainstream ...
Why America's Trade Imbalance will Bleed us Dry
by jamess -- Feb 08, 2009
Would YOU work for $3000 a year?
by jamess -- Dec 05, 2009
News you could use -- Obama's "Middle Class Task Force"
by jamess -- Jan 31, 2009
Union Busting 101: Pay no attention to that Man behind the Curtain.
by jamess -- Jan 24, 2009
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I was listening to Thom Hartmann's Radio Show a while back, when Walmart worker "Sarah", called in to explain how she had to go to a Food Bank for the first time this year -- just to be able to "afford a Christmas" for her kids. Even though she works Full-time, she still can not "afford" to buy the Health Insurance "Benefit" that Walmart "offers" to sell to its employees.
Sarah has had to rely on other forms of public assistance too, like food stamps, just to make ends meet ...
Thom of course, has his take on her all-too-common situation ...
Thom Hartmann: You know what this means, that the tax-payers of the United States are subsidizing Walmart, basically. They're providing Wal-mart with a cheap labor pool, by providing these subsidies.
And yet on the other hand if we were to say 'OK were going do away with all these social safety net programs' -- which is what the conservatives want -- then you would really be in desperate straits, not to say you're not already.
Thom Hartmann continues with the Hartmann "Living Wage" rant:
It's just like Republican President Teddy Roosevelt argued for:
"if somebody going to work a 40 hours a week
they should be able to, Put their kids through school,
they should be able to have and keep their home,
they should be able to take a vacation,
they should be able to cover 100% of their medical expenses, without any problems,
and they should be able to set aside enough, that they will be able to retire with grace and dignity.
THAT is the American Dream ...
The American Dream IS having a Living Wage.
(and I'm telling ya, 28 years of Republican have stolen it from us!)"
Progressive Economics 101: A Living Wage (for Walmart refugee, Sarah's call-in clip)
by jamess -- Jan 17, 2009
The Employee Free Choice Act, putting the Power where it Belongs ...
by jamess -- Jan 10, 2009
We Need a New WPA, to "Bridge" Workers with Hope
by jamess -- Oct 25, 2009
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America's Workers deserve MUCH better -- than we've gotten ...
And the paycheck-to-paycheck struggle ... just continues ... in quiet desperation, far removed from the DC navel-gazing scenes.