Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.[*] Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go.
We've been trained to conflate capitalism with private enterprise, and worse yet, with political freedom. Making the difference clear would help our cause. Private enterprise is the private ownership of physically real goods and services. That includes co-ops and worker owned businesses. Whereas capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money and its manipulation by the now dominant financial sector--the true non-producers. Politically, especially since Citizens United, it amounts to one dollar, one vote.
There is nothing wrong with private enterprise ("free" enterprise is an econ propaganda term from the '50s.) It includes the barber shop, the corner grocery store, artists selling their own works, fix-it places, the veterinary clinic, a local bookstore, small organic farms, a bar and the band playing in it. All by their own effort providing services that benefit local residents. And the money stays local, too.
Today's newsletter from /Inequality.org/ has a research piece dated Aug. 29 titled "The Low-Wage Corporations That Blew Half a Trillion Dollars to Inflate CEO Pay." You know what that's about. It quotes Sean Fain as saying "Corporate greed turns blue collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street buybacks and CEO jackpots." Exactly.
So a big YES to a New Populist political movement. I'd look to the many diverse organizations that participated in the 1999 anti-WTO "Battle of Seattle." Last Fri (Oct 4) Jim Hightower's blog was "Hightower on Rural Voters, Populism Resurgences, and Texas Politics." He's adamant that TX is something very different from the gerrymandered mess the right wing has remade it into. TX is the historical birthplace of Populism! I noted that the farmer-labor coalition in WA state elected a Populist governor in 1912. And mentioned a 2007 book //Deer Hunting with Jesus (Dispatches from America's Class War)// by Joe Bageant. About how poor rural whites--his own western VA and W. VA hill billy relatives--are treated by the people with money and power. Book cover has endorsements by Sherman Alexie, Howard Zinn, and Studs Terkel. I corresponded with Joe for awhile.
PS--When this subject or something similar comes up on Hightower's site, I'll quote you. That should help bring labor into contact with the Ag guy.
When capitalist pigs see green ($) I see red.
We've been trained to conflate capitalism with private enterprise, and worse yet, with political freedom. Making the difference clear would help our cause. Private enterprise is the private ownership of physically real goods and services. That includes co-ops and worker owned businesses. Whereas capitalism is the privileging of that abstraction known as money and its manipulation by the now dominant financial sector--the true non-producers. Politically, especially since Citizens United, it amounts to one dollar, one vote.
There is nothing wrong with private enterprise ("free" enterprise is an econ propaganda term from the '50s.) It includes the barber shop, the corner grocery store, artists selling their own works, fix-it places, the veterinary clinic, a local bookstore, small organic farms, a bar and the band playing in it. All by their own effort providing services that benefit local residents. And the money stays local, too.
Today's newsletter from /Inequality.org/ has a research piece dated Aug. 29 titled "The Low-Wage Corporations That Blew Half a Trillion Dollars to Inflate CEO Pay." You know what that's about. It quotes Sean Fain as saying "Corporate greed turns blue collar blood, sweat, and tears into Wall Street buybacks and CEO jackpots." Exactly.
So a big YES to a New Populist political movement. I'd look to the many diverse organizations that participated in the 1999 anti-WTO "Battle of Seattle." Last Fri (Oct 4) Jim Hightower's blog was "Hightower on Rural Voters, Populism Resurgences, and Texas Politics." He's adamant that TX is something very different from the gerrymandered mess the right wing has remade it into. TX is the historical birthplace of Populism! I noted that the farmer-labor coalition in WA state elected a Populist governor in 1912. And mentioned a 2007 book //Deer Hunting with Jesus (Dispatches from America's Class War)// by Joe Bageant. About how poor rural whites--his own western VA and W. VA hill billy relatives--are treated by the people with money and power. Book cover has endorsements by Sherman Alexie, Howard Zinn, and Studs Terkel. I corresponded with Joe for awhile.
PS--When this subject or something similar comes up on Hightower's site, I'll quote you. That should help bring labor into contact with the Ag guy.