mykeystrokes.com

"Do or Do not. There is no try."

“Preserving The Race To The Bottom”: Just How Much Do Republicans Hate Unions?

If you ask Republicans about their antipathy toward unions, they’ll say that letting workers bargain collectively reduces a company’s ability to act efficiently in the marketplace. If you knew anything about business, the market advocates will patiently explain, you’d understand that unions, with all their rules and conditions and strike threats, only make it harder for the company to make its products. Let management make decisions about things like wages and working conditions, and the result will be higher profits and more jobs, which will benefit everyone. In almost all cases, the corporation agrees; after all, union workers always earn better wages than their non-union counterparts, and they give power to the employees, which no CEO wants.

What most people probably don’t realize is that this inherently hostile relationship between management and unions isn’t something that’s inherent in capitalism. In fact, in many places where there are capitalists making lots of money, corporations work—now hold on here while I blow your mind—cooperatively with unions. One of those places is Germany, and one of the biggest German companies, Volkswagen, is right now embroiled in a union election in Tennessee that has turned into a bizarre spectacle that is showing the true colors of American conservatism. If you thought conservative were just laissez faire capitalists, seeking freedom for businesses to create prosperity, you’re dead wrong. What they actually want is something much uglier.

On Monday, our own Harold Meyerson explained the context and history driving this election, but the short version is that in its Chattanooga plant, Volkswagen wants to create a “works council” of the kind that companies in Germany use, which is a system where management and workers come together to set policies, plan strategy, and solve problems. The details of U.S. labor law require a union if such a council is going to be created, which is one reason VW has seemed supportive of the United Auto Workers organizing the plant. Although VW hasn’t come out and said they support the union, the signals they’ve sent strongly suggest that they do. “Our works councils are key to our success and productivity,” said the VW executive who runs the Chattanooga plant.

So faced with a union-friendly corporation, what have Republicans in the state done? One might expect them to say, “Every company should have the freedom to decide how to deal with its own workers; we may not be big fans of unions, but that freedom is what capitalism is all about,” or something like that. But no. The Republican governor and state legislators have begun issuing threats that there won’t be any future tax incentives for the company if the union wins the election. In other words, tax incentives are vital to bring jobs to the state—but if they’re union jobs, we don’t want them. We’d rather see our constituents unemployed than see them get jobs with union representation. So what you now have is Republicans fighting against a corporation to try to impose their vision of management-labor relations, one the corporation doesn’t want.

Then yesterday, Republican Sen. Bob Corker claimed, “I’ve had conversations today and based on those am assured that should the workers vote against the UAW, Volkswagen will announce in the coming weeks that it will manufacture its new mid-size SUV here in Chattanooga.” There are two things to understand about Corker’s statement. First, it doesn’t pass the smell test: the Chattanooga plant is the only Volkswagen factory in the world that doesn’t have a union, and the company has already made its good relationship with unions in general, and its desire for a works council there in particular, quite clear. And second, that kind of blatant attempt to intimidate workers into voting against the union when the election is going on is probably illegal, and could result in the election being halted and rescheduled.

What this issue has revealed is that while one might have thought that as far as conservatives are concerned, the creation of workplaces in which employees are given low wages and few benefits, and generally treated like crap, was merely a means to an end, the end being corporate profits and maximum freedom for business owners. But what we’re now seeing is that a powerless and beaten-down workforce isn’t a means to a larger end, and it isn’t a byproduct. It is the end in itself. It’s the goal. Here you have a highly profitable company that wants to have a more cooperative relationship with its workers, and obviously sees a union as a path to that relationship, because they know that they can work that way with unions, since they do it already all over the world. But the Republican politicians don’t care about what the corporation wants. They are so venomously opposed to collective bargaining that they’ll toss aside all their supposed ideals about economic liberty in a heartbeat.

One of the absurd arguments they’ve made is that other companies, like suppliers, won’t want to come to Tennessee if there’s a unionized auto plant there, as though it were some kind of infection others would fear they might catch. That’s ridiculous, of course—if you have a company that makes car parts, and VW wants to buy thousands and thousands of your parts, you’re damn sure going to set up shop next to their factory if that’s the best way to make money. What Republicans are really afraid of is that the union will come in to the Chattanooga plant and things will work well. If that happened, the rationale for the race to the bottom would be severely undermined. And the idea that corporations can do well by treating their employees like partners and not like enemies might indeed spread.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, February 13, 2014

February 14, 2014 Posted by | Collective Bargaining, Unions | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“Raising The Minimum Is The Bare Minimum”: What America Needs Is To Shift Income From Capital To Labor

In 1995, when John Sweeney ran the first and as-yet-only insurgent campaign for the presidency of the AFL-CIO, his platform took the form of a book entitled America Needs a Raise. If that title rang true in 1995, it clangs with deafening authority today.

Which leads us to the only problem with the current campaigns to raise the minimum wage: It’s not just workers at the low end of the wage scale who need a raise. It’s not just the work of the bottom 9 percent of labor force that is undervalued. It’s the work of the bottom 90 percent.

Conservatives who oppose raising the minimum wage argue that we need to address the decline of the family and the failure of the schools if we are to arrest the income decline at the bottom of the economic ladder. But how then to explain the income stagnation of those who are, say, on the 85th rung of a 100-rung ladder? How does the decline of the family explain why all gains in productivity now go to the richest 10 percent of Americans only? And are teachers unions really to blame for the fact that wages now constitute the lowest share of Gross Domestic Product since the government started measuring shares, and that corporate profits now constitute the highest share?

We need to raise the minimum wage, but that’s only the start. Even more fundamentally, we must reverse the deeper and more profound redistribution of wealth that has now plagued the nation for several decades: that from capital to labor.

For as income from work declines for the nation as a whole—inflation-adjusted median hourly wages are now more than $1.50 lower than they were in 1972—income from investment soars. The stock markets are hitting record highs, and major corporations are using the $1.5 trillion they have lying around to raise not wages but dividends. They are also using some of that cash to buy back their own stock, which raises the value of the outstanding shares, to which, happily, most CEO’s compensation packages are linked.

The institutions that once ensured that American workers actually got their share of the pie—unions—have been so thoroughly battered down that they can no longer effectively bargain for raises. That leaves that other instrument of the popular will— the state—as the sole remaining institution that can bargain for workers. That’s why the minimum wage, the living wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit have taken on a greater significance than they previously held: They not only raise the incomes of the poor, but are the last remaining vehicles for raising wages.

That’s why just stopping with raising the minimum, important though that be to the nation’s economic and moral health, is nowhere near enough. Making it safe again for workers to try to join unions is a necessity, too, but that’s a fight that labor has been waging for half-a-century with nothing to show for it. The left needs to battle on other fronts as well.

We could begin by shifting the tax burden from labor to capital—after all, income in America has long been shifted from labor to capital.  We could abolish the payroll tax on the first $25,000 that people make, substituting for it a higher threshold on taxable income. We could raise the tax rates on capital gains and dividends not just to the same levels as income derived from work but higher still. And we could explicitly designate some of the revenue from capital income to go to a much expanded Earned Income Tax Credit—expanded not just by making the payments more generous, but also by raising the criterion for eligibility well above the government’s poverty threshold.

By explicitly taking back from capital some of the wealth it has taken from labor, government would begin to address the root causes of economic inequality. Not all of them, to be sure: The stratospheric salaries that top corporate executives and Wall Street traders command aren’t capital income as such. One way to rein in executive pay might be to set corporate tax rates by the size of the gap between top executives’ and median workers’ pay, the data on which the Securities and Exchange Commission is supposed to make public under the terms of Dodd-Frank. Or it might be to set corporate tax rates based whether the corporation has a stakeholder or a shareholder board. In Germany, corporations are required to have equal numbers of employee and management representatives on their boards, which has effectively reduced CEO pay at most German companies to a multiple of 10 or 12 times that of its median employee, not the 200 or 300 times that’s the norm in the U.S.

If we want to address economic equality, we need to follow the money. In recent decades, as a result not just of globalization and technology but also of the decline of unions and the rising political power of the rich, the money has almost entirely gone to the rich—in the current recovery, fully 95 percent of income growth to the top 1 percent. So by all means, raise the minimum wage. But don’t stop there.

 

By: Harold Meyerson, The American Prospect, January 22, 2014

January 24, 2014 Posted by | Economic Inequality, Minimum Wage | , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

“Pope Vs. Rush”: Pope Francis Threw A Rock Into A Bunch Of Dogs And The One It Hit Is Now Hollering

I like capitalism.

Specifically, I like the idea that if I write a better book, have a better idea, build a better mousetrap, I will be rewarded accordingly. A system where everyone gets the same reward regardless of quality or quantity of work is inconsistent with excellence and innovation, as the mediocrity and inefficiency that beset the Soviet Union readily proves.

The woman who is successful under capitalism gets to eat steak and lobster whenever she wants. That’s never bothered me. What does bother me is the notion that the unsuccessful man who lacks that woman’s talent, resources, opportunities or luck should not get to eat at all. There is something obscene in the notion that a person can work full-time for a multinational corporation and not earn enough to keep a roof over his head or food on his table. The so-called safety net by which we supposedly protect the poor ought to be a solid floor, a level of basic sustenance through which we, as moral people, allow no one to fall — particularly if their penury is through no fault of their own.

Maybe you regard that opinion as radical and extremist. Maybe it is. But if so, I am in excellent company.

Martin Luther King, for instance, mused that “there must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.”

The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 8:13-15, that it’s wrong for some to live lives of ease while others struggle. “The goal is equality, as it is written: ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much and the one who gathered little did not have too little.’” In Acts 4:32, Luke writes approvingly of the early church that: “No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”

Which brings us to the Pope — and Rush Limbaugh. As you may have heard, the former has issued his first Apostolic Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, in which, among other things, he attacks the free market and what he calls an “economics of exclusion.” This had the latter up in arms last week on his radio show.

Pope Francis writes that poverty must be “radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality…”

“This is astounding … and it’s sad,” says Limbaugh. “It’s actually unbelievable.”

“How can it be that it is not a news item,” writes the Pope, “when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”

“This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the Pope,” fumes Limbaugh.

Trickle-down economics, writes the pontiff, “expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power…”

Maybe, says Limbaugh, his words were deliberately mistranslated by “the left.” No, seriously, he said that.

But then, some of us are fine with faith so long as it speaks in platitudinous generalities or offers a weapon to clobber gay people with, but scream bloody murder when it imposes specific demands on our personal conscience — or wallet.

It is perfect that all this unfolds in the season of thanksgiving, faith and joy, as people punch, stun-gun and shoot one another over HDTVs and iPads and protesters demand what ought to be the bare minimum of any full-time job: wages sufficient to live on.

This is thanksgiving, faith and joy? No. It is fresh, albeit redundant evidence of our greed — and of how wholeheartedly we have bought into the lie that fulfillment is found in the things we own.

Some of us disagree. Some us feel that until the hungry one is fed and the naked one clothed, the best of us is unfulfilled, no matter how many HDTVs and iPads he owns. This is the radical, extremist ideal embraced by the human rights icon, the Gospel writers, the Bishop of Rome — and me.

 

By: Leonard Pitts, J., Featured Post, The National Memo, November 4, 2013

December 9, 2013 Posted by | Economic Inequality, Pope Francis | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“The Corporate Predator State”: This Isn’t The Free Market, It’s A Rigged Market

Bipartisan agreement in Washington usually means citizens should hold on to their wallets or get ready for another threat to peace. In today’s politics, the bipartisan center usually applauds when entrenched interests and big money speak. Beneath all the partisan bickering, bipartisan majorities are solid for a trade policy run by and for multinationals, a health-care system serving insurance and drug companies, an energy policy for Big Oil and King Coal, and finance favoring banks that are too big to fail.

Economist James Galbraith calls this the “predator state,” one in which large corporate interests rig the rules to protect their subsidies, tax dodges and monopolies. This isn’t the free market; it’s a rigged market.

Wall Street is a classic example. The attorney general announces that some banks are too big to prosecute. Despite what the FBI called an “epidemic of fraud,” not one head of a big bank has gone to jail or paid a major personal fine. Bloomberg News estimated that the subsidy they are provided by being too big to fail adds up to an estimated $83 billion a year.

Corporate welfare is, of course, offensive to progressives. The Nation and other media expose the endless outrages — drug companies getting Congress to ban Medicare negotiating bulk discounts on prices, Big Oil protecting billions in subsidies, multinationals hoarding a couple of trillion dollars abroad to avoid paying taxes, and much more.

But true conservatives are — or should be — offended by corporate welfare as well. Conservative economists Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales argue that it is time to “save capitalism from the capitalists,” urging conservatives to support strong measures to break up monopolies, cartels and the predatory use of political power to distort competition.

Here is where left and right meet, not in a bipartisan big-money fix, but in an odd bedfellows campaign to clean out Washington.

For that to happen, small businesses and community banks will have to develop an independent voice in our politics. Today, they are too often abused as cover for multinational corporations and banks. The Chamber of Commerce exemplifies the scam. It pretends to represent the interests of millions of small businesses, but its issue and electoral campaigns are defined and paid for by big-money interests working to keep the game rigged.

An authentic small-business lobby has finally started to emerge, as William Greider reports in the most recent issue of the Nation. The American Sustainable Business Council, along with the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority, are enlisting small business owners to speak for themselves — and challenging the corporate financed propaganda groups such as the Chamber and the National Federation of Independent Business. Their positions often align with those of progressives. They loathe the big banks and multinationals that work to undermine competition.

Greider reports on the antipathy these small business owners have for the big guys. Camille Moran, president and chief executive of Caramor Industries and Four Seasons Christmas Tree Farm in Natchitoches, La., rails against the “Wall Street wheelers and dealers.” They knew, she argues, that they “ would get no sympathy saying that ending the high-income Bush tax cuts would hurt them, so instead they pretend it would hurt Main Street small business and employment. Don’t fall for it. . . . That’s a trillion dollars less we would have for education, roads, security, small business assistance and all of the other things that actually help our communities.”

ReShonda Young, operations manager of Alpha Express, a family-owned delivery service in Waterloo, Iowa: “We’re not afraid to compete with the biggest delivery companies out here, but it needs to be a fair fight, not one in which big corporations use loopholes to avoid their taxes, stick our business with the tab.”

Polls show these aren’t isolated views. The ASBC, the Main Street Alliance and the Small Business Majority sponsored a poll by Lake Research of small business owners. Ninety percent believe “big corporations use loopholes to avoid taxes that small businesses have to pay,” and three-fourths said their own businesses suffer because of it.

The ASBC and its allies have the potential to become what Jamie Raskin, a Maryland state senator, dubbed a “Chamber of Progress,” a small-business voice that is willing to take on the big guys that tilt the playing field.

The possibilities are endless. Wall Street argues for rolling back financial regulation on the grounds that it hurts community and small banks. What if community and small bankers joined the call of conservative Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher to break up the big banks?

Multinational executives have just launched the “LIFT America” Coalition to push for a territorial tax system that would exempt from U.S. taxes all profits reported abroad. ASBC and its allies could rally small businesses to demand closing down overseas tax havens and imposing a minimum tax on profits sitting abroad, so that they didn’t face a higher tax burden that their global competitors.

In today’s Washington, powerful corporate interests stymie progress on areas vital to our future. Can a right/left, small-business/worker odd bedfellows alliance emerge to counter the predatory interests? We can only hope so.

 

By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 26, 2013

March 27, 2013 Posted by | Corporations, Wall Street | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

“He’s Not One Of Us”: Why Mitt Romney Is Organizing His Entire Campaign Around “You Didn’t Build That”

Now that we’re having a real debate about the fundamentals of capitalism and success, it’s worth considering another part of the now-infamous “You didn’t build that” speech President Obama recently gave. When he was accused of taking Obama’s words out of context, Mitt Romney’s defense was that “The context is worse than the quote.” As evidence, he cited not the actual context of “You didn’t build that” but what Obama said a paragraph before, about the role of fortune in success. And it’s that idea—that success has to do not only with hard work and talent but also with luck—that really got Mitt Romney steamed. Here’s the passage in question:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there

You might think that this would be hard to argue with, but as David Frum observed, many successful people find the idea that luck played a part in their success to be deeply offensive. And it makes me wonder whether Mitt Romney himself believes that the fact that his father was a wealthy industrialist and governor had nothing to do with his financial success. Does he think that if he been born to a poor single mother in backwoods Appalachia, he would have grown up to be the same private equity titan he turned out to be?

I’m guessing he does, but it would be interesting to hear what he said if someone asked him, “Governor, what role do you think luck played in your success? Do you think you had more of a chance to succeed because of who your parents were?”

Don’t know about you, but I’m happy to admit that luck played a large part in whatever success I’ve had. I was fortunate in my parents; we weren’t rich, but they valued education highly, created an environment with lots of opportunities for learning, and moved us to a town with excellent public schools. Had I been born in more deprived circumstances, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have had anything like the opportunities I did, and I seriously doubt I would have pulled myself up by my bootstraps unless some other piece of luck fell my way. Luck played some part in getting most of the jobs I had, even if it was just knowing someone who knew someone who had an opening. I work hard enough, but I’m not such a jerk that I don’t understand how lucky I am to have a career as a writer, which is absurdly cushy compared to the jobs of people who stand on an assembly line or run around a distribution center or change bedpans. In my youth I had just enough exposure to a series of not-particularly-pleasant jobs like waiting tables and working a cash register in a supermarket to make me never forget how absurdly lucky I am to make a living doing what I do.

Mitt Romney is right about one thing: it’s hard to start and maintain a business. And it’s particularly hard if, unlike someone like Mitt Romney, you can’t live off your stocks when you do it. So I understand why some business owners would get their backs up when Romney tells them that Barack Obama told them they didn’t actually build their business. I’d hope they’d take the time to figure out that Romney is actually lying to them about that, but what can you do. But what I struggle to understand is the rich guy who thinks that luck played absolutely no part in him getting where he is. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t hear that coming from a guy who built up a construction business from the ground up. People like that have usually had exposure to enough bad luck to know good luck when they see it. It’s only the people whose entire lives have been nothing but a string of good luck who so angrily assert that there’s no such thing. It’s the Wall Street tools who got six-figure jobs in their uncle’s firm fresh out of Wharton who insist so vehemently that everything they have is because of their own talents. Only if you think that could you genuinely believe that an increase in your income tax of a few points constitutes some kind of communist attack on success.

 

By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 31, 2012

August 1, 2012 Posted by | Election 2012 | , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »