Wall Street and enormously rich individuals have gained political power to organize the market in ways that leave most Americans behind.
On February 10, 2015, Robert Reich writes on AlterNet:
My recent column about the growth of on-demand jobs like Uber making life less predictable and secure for workers unleashed a small barrage of criticism from some who contend that workers get what they’re worth in the market.
A Forbes Magazine contributor, for example, writes that jobs exist only “when both employer and employee are happy with the deal being made.” So if the new jobs are low-paying and irregular, too bad.
Much the same argument was voiced in the late nineteenth century over alleged “freedom of contract.” Any deal between employees and workers was assumed to be fine if both sides voluntarily agreed to it.
It was an era when many workers were “happy” to toil twelve-hour days in sweat shops for lack of any better alternative.
It was also a time of great wealth for a few and squalor for many. And of corruption, as the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of cash on the desks of pliant legislators.
Finally, after decades of labor strife and political tumult, the twentieth century brought an understanding that capitalism requires minimum standards of decency and fairness – workplace safety, a minimum wage, maximum hours (and time-and-a-half for overtime), and a ban on child labor.
We also learned that capitalism needs a fair balance of power between big corporations and workers.
We achieved that through antitrust laws that reduced the capacity of giant corporations to impose their will, and labor laws that allowed workers to organize and bargain collectively.
By the 1950s, when 35 percent of private-sector workers belonged to a labor union, they were able to negotiate higher wages and better working conditions than employers would otherwise have been “happy” to provide.
But now we seem to be heading back to nineteenth century.
Corporations are shifting full-time work onto temps, free-lancers, and contract workers who fall outside the labor protections established decades ago.
The nation’s biggest corporations and Wall Street banks are larger and more potent than ever.
And labor union membership has shrunk to fewer than 7 percent of private-sector workers.
So it’s not surprising we’re once again hearing that workers are worth no more than what they can get in the market.
But as we should have learned a century ago, markets don’t exist in nature. They’re created by human beings. The real question is how they’re organized and for whose benefit.
In the late nineteenth century they were organized for the benefit of a few at the top.
But by the middle of the twentieth century they were organized for the vast majority.
During the thirty years after the end of World War II, as the economy doubled in size, so did the wages of most Americans — along with improved hours and working conditions.
Yet since around 1980, even though the economy has doubled once again (the Great Recession notwithstanding), the wages most Americans have stagnated. And their benefits and working conditions have deteriorated.
This isn’t because most Americans are worth less. In fact, worker productivity is higher than ever.
It’s because big corporations, Wall Street, and some enormously rich individuals have gained political power to organize the market in ways that have enhanced their wealth while leaving most Americans behind.
That includes trade agreements protecting the intellectual property of large corporations and Wall Street’s financial assets, but not American jobs and wages.
Bailouts of big Wall Street banks and their executives and shareholders when they can’t pay what they owe, but not of homeowners who can’t meet their mortgage payments.
Bankruptcy protection for big corporations, allowing them to shed their debts, including labor contracts. But no bankruptcy protection for college graduates over-burdened with student debts.
Antitrust leniency toward a vast swathe of American industry – including Big Cable (Comcast, AT&T, Time-Warner), Big Tech (Amazon, Google), Big Pharma, the largest Wall Street banks, and giant retailers (Walmart).
But less tolerance toward labor unions — as workers trying to form unions are fired with impunity, and more states adopt so-called “right-to-work” laws that undermine unions.
We seem to be heading full speed back to the late nineteenth century.
So what will be the galvanizing force for change this time?
http://www.alternet.org/robert-reich-wealthy-have-pulled-america-back-19th-century
Robert Reich remains stuck in his one-factor labor worker view of the world and the empowerment of government rather than the empowerment of individuals as capital owners to meet their own consumption needs. The alternative to Reich’s approach would mean that government would become more dependent on economically independent citizens, thus reversing current global trends where all citizens will eventually become dependent for their economic well-being on the State and whatever elite controls the coercive powers of government.
Reich talks about the “toil” days, which to this day remain, though not as severe, as “minimum standards of decency and fairness––workplace safety, a minimum wage, maximum hours (and time-and-a-half for overtime), and a ban on child labor” were imposed by government over hoggist greed capital owners (employers). And while Reich calls for “a fair balance of power between big corporations and workers,” his proposals remain patched attempts by government to apply “minimum standards” to “protect” workers. This effectively means that the best Reich thinks can be achieved is just a bit better standard for workers lessing their plight as wage slaves.
Reich, as noted in numerous previous critiques, NEVER addresses the need to reform the system to abate concentrated capital ownership––the wicked result of greed capitalism and why income and wealth ownership inequality persists. Nor does he call for broadened personal capital ownership even though clearly tectonic shifts in the technologies of production are destroying jobs and devaluing the worth of labor, as global job competition spreads with foreign workers willing to work for far less with no benefits and no protections.
Rather than call for a “galvanizing force” and paradigm shift to reform the system to empower EVERY citizen to become a capital owner, he offers no such policy direction that would accomplish this objective so that we can build a future economy that can support general affluence for EVERY child, woman, and man.
If Reich really wants us not to relive the late nineteenth century, he should be advocating the call for Every Citizen An Owner” and support the proposed Capital Homestead Act, the Just Third Way, and Monetary Justice.
If Reich wants to remain bent toward socialistic structuring and government empowerment, but you see differently, then step us and support the Agenda of The Just Third Way Movement at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/, http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/jtw-graphicoverview-2013.pdf and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
Support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice
Support the Capital Homestead Act at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/. See http://cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ and http://cesj.org/…/uploads/Free/capitalhomesteading-s.pdf.
