Automation is often cited as the reason we lost manufacturing jobs. Not true.
Imagine for a moment where we would be as a nation today, had we not sent the machinery of making things overseas.
Our exports would be strong, our citizens well employed, and our needs would be met as well as our wants, leaving us as the free people we are supposed to be...
In such a state of wealth, and remember wealth is measured in time, where wealthy people have more "want to do time" than "must do time", our culture would be free to advance to a higher state, more equitable, more advanced, more just.
We, as a nation, closed the door on equality and self-governance, when we allowed Reagan to open the door to feeding raw greed. Instead of a society where we are equals, agreeing to self-govern so that the product of our labors serve us, empower us to be free people, the most desirable state, we decided to entertain another experiment as bold as the founding of the nation was; namely, raw greed as a force for the greater good, competition as the equalizer, productivity freeing us instead of equality freeing us.
Look where we are now! The greedy conspired to move the means of production away from the society, so they may benefit, denying us the culture, the freedom, the wealth we labored so hard to innovate and build.
Look at the greedy, who claim innovation has rendered ordinary labor useless, and who deny the many labors, by all, required to build the enabling technology behind that automation. Aren't those labors worth something? Shouldn't we get a cut of the wealth such innovation brings to the table?
Taxing the most productive? Really? On whose backs is that wealth generated? Ordinary people, that's who. It doesn't matter whether it's in China, or here, automation simply means everybody is able to work smarter, live longer, and enjoy more robust lives, unless...
...we somehow come to lose respect for the common man as we have today.
No matter the level of automation, or of technology in general, basic labors will always be necessary. The stalls need to be cleaned, laundry done, ditches dug, and all manner of basic human things need to happen for the machinery of society to serve us to our mutual benefit.
Our lives are short people. We only get one shot that we know of, and where is the justice in so much labor, yielding so little personal freedom?
The cheap labor policy of greed has devalued us as people, denying us our future. It is literally a theft of our lives, our potential to love, do build, innovate, realize, entertain. It's all being done to build kings, fiefdoms, and dominions where once again, we are living the lessons our founders lived, squandering the gift of equality and personal liberty, just as they saw others do, driving them to build the American Experiment --the US.
This cannot stand!
No matter what the state of the world, we must compensate people for their time, so that their labor is just. We all have families, desires, needs, dreams, and a days work needs to return enough to pursue a modest life, or the society in which we live does not serve us, enslaving us instead, and that's unjust according to our founding principles.
Corporations --big corporations act as kings today, planning our futures in the board room, denying us the fruits of our labor just as kings did before the United States was realized. It was wrong then, having the people enslaved economically so that the lords and their dominion over them went unchallenged, justified then by divine right, or some idea of nobility.
Our media frames this constantly in noble terms. Most productive, more substantial, etc... painting these CEOs, industry titans as some super people, without whom, we would die, or live horrible lives.
Truth is, when our labor does not return enough to live a modest life, we are being exploited, enslaved, used as tools to some greater end, not of our design, and often against our best interests.
That is what greed does, and that is what justifies taxes to return some of the wealth to the people, so they may once again build, grow, do love, and live free, as our founders intended.
Equality is a powerful lens. When we look through it, how does the CEO, or wealthy person differ from that of the local janitor, or craftsman?
Look hard. There is no difference!
So then, why do we allow wealth to run out of the nation, and up to the top, unchecked?
Automation is a diversion, a lie in this way. The product of it is real, make no mistake, but the lie is in the denial of our share, the trading of our future for some numbers on a chart.
Free markets enslave people, pollute the world, encourage wars, and deny us the mutual respect for our time and living state, necessary for a equitable and just society.
Ask yourself whether or not the real important things in your life would be different if it were all gone. I can't say that I would be living any less. So much labor today being traded for trinkets and toys, while kids grow up apart from their parents, people denied education and the opportunity to live freely, following their desires is worth what exactly?
Not much, that's what.
Those asses that ask, "why have a minimum wage?" do not believe in the American dream, and didn't take the founders to heart, and have no respect for anybody that isn't bought and paid for, choosing to dominate, discriminate, and devalue ordinary people, so they may rise above that, wealthy, greedy, on the backs of their peers.
How did we get here? I didn't grow up in a "I got mine, fuck you get yours!" culture. Very few people I know did!
Greed, and the idea of "magic markets" leading us to a socially just state is how we got here. The idea of us all fighting for our share somehow balancing out to a just society is madness, if you think about it!
Laboring together, having respect for one another, and understanding the basic needs we all have, is the justification for self-governance in the first place! We allow government so that we may better enjoy our freedom, not to have it hand the power over to those who would dominate and exploit us for their own ends!
Progressive Democrats are the only ones in Washington who see this. "free markets" don't work. They enslave. Government isn't the problem, but a solution, a balance of value, so that we can have somebody take out our trash, knowing they too can care for their family, perhaps sending the next Einstein to school, just as we are.
I'm not saying we all should be rich. That's all about dollars. I'm saying that we all labor enough to be wealthy --able to spend our time equitably between the machinery of society, and our personal freedom, families, and dreams.
Wealth isn't measured in dollars. It's measured in time, with the dollars being only necessary to enable trade, and advance society, not be some means to a end.
I'm growing more poor, despite the highest and longest labor output I've ever seen, and most everybody I know is the same. Doesn't matter if we are programmers, machinists, or janitors, or builders. A days work needs to be valued properly, leaving people "want to do time", or they are slaves, serving the "noble", not free people, laboring for their common good.
Our party is divided along these lines, and that makes it impotent, weak, and frustrating. Many Democrats have forgotten the founding ideas, instead believing in the idea of greed being good.
It's not.
We need to end this idea of unbridled greed as a force for good, and return to the balance of regulation that insures that we all are compensated for our time in a equitable way.
Build the movement, take the seats, own the party, return social justice to the people, insuring that a days work pays enough to grow a family, build for the future, and retire to a modest life well lived. This is our party, we need to do the work to own it again, fully and completely, and that means doing the work to seat more Progressives.
If there is a justification for taxing the wealthy, that is it. They got that wealth on the backs of ordinary people, who have the same families they do, the same needs they do, the same wants they do, and actually labor more than they do. Everybody deserves a return on their labor sufficient to live as free people, not slaves.
The real politics in play here are, as a Kossack said to me recently, "the powerful people" against the "not powerful people." We are equal as people, living in a unjust economic climate, and that needs to change.
That is our common ground needed to build the movement, to take some of it back, and it is our incentive to do our civics, building the mindshare needed to express our desire for the common good.
If we don't do that, we will be dominated, exploited, enslaved, and forgotten by those that do.
Citizens United equates dollars to votes. That burden on us then, is time for votes, and we all need to invest some of our time, taking a risk, to get along with, form bonds with our fellow Americans and take it back!
We get to do that. The laws have not changed. The power is still there. We see other nations do it, we must do it, and that's work, and the alternative grows increasingly grim. Know that the powerful people will not suffer for not doing that work. We will. Fact.
The money never rests, and neither can we.
UPDATE: From the comments: "you've never worked in a factory", stated with the idea that automation does eliminate jobs.
Here's the truth. Automation is a product of labors to build enabling technologies required to realize the automation, and it simply increases the labor product per laborer. That's it.
What we do with that additional product is a civics matter. We could reinvest that labor, and additional wealth toward advancement of new technology, advancement of culture, and or simply labor less, freeing time, making the society as a whole more wealthy.
When we choose to devalue the laborer, we are denying ourselves the product of our innovation, and the society as a whole grows more poor. That is the "greed is good" choice, and it's a big part of why we are where we are today.
If we the people do our civics, bond together on economic grounds, we can regulate that greed, and insure that we all benefit from the innovation we all worked together to realize, and that's a fact.
When we don't do our civics, the product of that shared labor and innovation is sequestered away, for the benefit of a few, at the expense of the many, and that's unjust.
Do not believe the only choice is to eliminate jobs making people poor. That's just the choice the big corporations find most favorable, because devalued labor means people are poor, unable to do their civics, and get their share of the spoils.
We can instead require that new wealth be reinvested into our society, for our mutual benefit instead. That is the least desirable choice for the corporations, who simply want the max dollars possible. It is the most just choice for all who labor to live our lives however, and that should serve as the incentive to do the civics to insure we all get a fair share of the profit of labor and automation, not just a select few.
Dealing with this matter is the primary motivation for strong support of labor unions, who brought us labor equity, and in return for that, have been attacked without relief for nearly 40 years. They are diminished now, struggling in the face of economic policy designed to destroy them, and with their fall, goes our standard of living, and the just society this nation was founded to realize for us.