A new workers party, a people’s party is what we need. The dems will never platform our ideas and needs. The donors won’t let them and the dems are too weak.
Today's (Tu 3/4) blog by Jim Hightower covers similar themes. With humor and pithiness, he notes how Bernie Sanders is out talking to everyone outraged by billionaire oligarchy, including in red states, and compares this to responses of the D elite. Like how Rep. Hakeem Jeffries went to Cali, (the biggest D vote state,) to reassure... the Silicon Valley tech bros! The comments on the Hightower Lowdown site are great; critical of the corporate lite Ds and lauding Bernie's efforts. Which really are little more than what the D party should have been supporting all along: the New Deal!!!
Since I'm in the middle of reading about MMT and re-reading books on New Deal economics, I've been reminded what FDR had to say about these same issues. Like his rousing Oct. 1936 speech (it's on YouTube) where he promises to continue the New Deal. Despite vehement opposition by those for "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering...they are united in their hatred for me and I welcome their hatred!" In that same speech he said these same powerful interests were used to considering government as "a mere appendage to their own affairs...but we now know government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."
Can you imagine any of the current mealy, corporate and 1%er sponsored so-called D leaders ever saying such things? I just got a tee shirt with the face of FDR and it says: I WELCOME THEIR HATRED. I plan to wear it proudly and will welcome the opportunity to explain why.
Excellent article and analysis, Les! The "War on Workers" has been going on for centuries, but it picked up momentum in the U.S. during the late 1970's and the 80's with Reagan's firing of the PATCO workers, deregulation of the transportation industry by Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, and the "hostile takeover" crowd like Mitt Romney's company, et al. And the Biden/Pelosi threat to railroad workers in December of 2023 if they went on strike for better working conditions and paid sick days. Now we have Musk with his phony DOGE department, which Congress did not create, going after civil service workers with the recent firings.
Unless the average American worker understands what is going on and how they are being fleeced and culled, and then unite as workers did in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, and form or join strong labor unions, their standard of living will continue to decline while the insatiable greed of the super-rich increases to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens.
Read the 3/5 edition of The New Republic article by newly ex-Sen. Sherrod Brown! The title: "Democrats Must Become the Workers' Party Again." He subtitles it by saying "reconnecting the Democratic Party to the working class is a moral imperative, and it will be my mission for the rest of my life."
In it, he describes how bitter the working class is about their betrayal by a party that was once FDR's and once theirs, too. He also quotes them directly because he spends time among real people. BTW, he says the disgust with Dems is rooted in NAFTA.
I'd date it as starting with the neolib takeover in the late '70s and subsequent dumping of the New Deal and abandonment of labor. Although exact dates don't matter--it's the effects that do. I'd be ecstatic if he succeeds!!! But after 40+ years, I seriously doubt the party will change its stripes from corporate camo to worker denim blue.
Les, Could you explain how mass layoffs or even closing factories or other workplaces helps billionaires pay off their debts? Isn’t the exploitation of those workers ‘ labor the basis of their profits?
That's the traditional understanding to be sure. But via financialization the game has changed. The goal is to extract wealth from corporations as fast as possible. When a private equity company buys up a corporation it does so with about 90 percent financing which it places on the company it is buying. That debt has to be service and reducing the payroll is the best way of covering the new costs. In the long run the company may collapse and private equity purchases have a much higher rate of failure. But by then they have made their money and have fled. So you need to change your focus from the corporation to Wall Street.
There are plenty of strong good companies that have been around and listed on the stock exchange for hundred years or more . You act like every capitalized business and investor is evil ?
This guy is either a troll or a shallow defender of something he doesn't really understand--Wall St. I engaged with him last L.L. post. It went on ad nauseam; not once did he answer any of my substantial points. Including the word "financialization;" he believes it's synonymous with investing.
A new workers party, a people’s party is what we need. The dems will never platform our ideas and needs. The donors won’t let them and the dems are too weak.
Today's (Tu 3/4) blog by Jim Hightower covers similar themes. With humor and pithiness, he notes how Bernie Sanders is out talking to everyone outraged by billionaire oligarchy, including in red states, and compares this to responses of the D elite. Like how Rep. Hakeem Jeffries went to Cali, (the biggest D vote state,) to reassure... the Silicon Valley tech bros! The comments on the Hightower Lowdown site are great; critical of the corporate lite Ds and lauding Bernie's efforts. Which really are little more than what the D party should have been supporting all along: the New Deal!!!
Since I'm in the middle of reading about MMT and re-reading books on New Deal economics, I've been reminded what FDR had to say about these same issues. Like his rousing Oct. 1936 speech (it's on YouTube) where he promises to continue the New Deal. Despite vehement opposition by those for "business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering...they are united in their hatred for me and I welcome their hatred!" In that same speech he said these same powerful interests were used to considering government as "a mere appendage to their own affairs...but we now know government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob."
Can you imagine any of the current mealy, corporate and 1%er sponsored so-called D leaders ever saying such things? I just got a tee shirt with the face of FDR and it says: I WELCOME THEIR HATRED. I plan to wear it proudly and will welcome the opportunity to explain why.
Excellent article and analysis, Les! The "War on Workers" has been going on for centuries, but it picked up momentum in the U.S. during the late 1970's and the 80's with Reagan's firing of the PATCO workers, deregulation of the transportation industry by Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy, and the "hostile takeover" crowd like Mitt Romney's company, et al. And the Biden/Pelosi threat to railroad workers in December of 2023 if they went on strike for better working conditions and paid sick days. Now we have Musk with his phony DOGE department, which Congress did not create, going after civil service workers with the recent firings.
Unless the average American worker understands what is going on and how they are being fleeced and culled, and then unite as workers did in the 1930's, 40's and 50's, and form or join strong labor unions, their standard of living will continue to decline while the insatiable greed of the super-rich increases to the detriment of the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens.
Hey, defenders of the majority working class;
Read the 3/5 edition of The New Republic article by newly ex-Sen. Sherrod Brown! The title: "Democrats Must Become the Workers' Party Again." He subtitles it by saying "reconnecting the Democratic Party to the working class is a moral imperative, and it will be my mission for the rest of my life."
In it, he describes how bitter the working class is about their betrayal by a party that was once FDR's and once theirs, too. He also quotes them directly because he spends time among real people. BTW, he says the disgust with Dems is rooted in NAFTA.
I'd date it as starting with the neolib takeover in the late '70s and subsequent dumping of the New Deal and abandonment of labor. Although exact dates don't matter--it's the effects that do. I'd be ecstatic if he succeeds!!! But after 40+ years, I seriously doubt the party will change its stripes from corporate camo to worker denim blue.
Les, Could you explain how mass layoffs or even closing factories or other workplaces helps billionaires pay off their debts? Isn’t the exploitation of those workers ‘ labor the basis of their profits?
That's the traditional understanding to be sure. But via financialization the game has changed. The goal is to extract wealth from corporations as fast as possible. When a private equity company buys up a corporation it does so with about 90 percent financing which it places on the company it is buying. That debt has to be service and reducing the payroll is the best way of covering the new costs. In the long run the company may collapse and private equity purchases have a much higher rate of failure. But by then they have made their money and have fled. So you need to change your focus from the corporation to Wall Street.
There are plenty of strong good companies that have been around and listed on the stock exchange for hundred years or more . You act like every capitalized business and investor is evil ?
Sorry Mark...we have entered a new "gilded age" where money talks and the people walks...
Over exaggeration of a problem scares people into not solving the problem.
Mark: Please offer your deeper analysis with examples. Thanks.
This guy is either a troll or a shallow defender of something he doesn't really understand--Wall St. I engaged with him last L.L. post. It went on ad nauseam; not once did he answer any of my substantial points. Including the word "financialization;" he believes it's synonymous with investing.
Myself and many other small investors have done well .
The stock market still consistently out performs other vehicles.
Did research like Warren Buffet, did not gamble but picked value companies. It is a big ocean you don't have to swim with the sharks .