We're in the grasp of oligarchs who think they owe nothing to a public that has made them so wealthy
By Jim Hightower c
Where Labor Day Comes from, and Where It's Headed
We are in the grasp of oligarchs who think they owe nothing to a public that has made them so wealthy.
Why are working people still so far down? Take a peek at those new jobs the economists are hailing. They're really "jobettes," paying only poverty-level wages, with no benefits or upward mobility. In the recession, about 60 percent of the jobs we lost were middle-wage positions, paying approximately $14 to $21 an hour. Most of those jobs have not come back. Instead, of the jobs created since the recovery began, nearly six out of 10 are low-wage, paying less than $14 an hour. A central fact of the new American economy is that working-class people are increasingly unable to make a living from their jobs.
To grasp this widening inequity, befuddled economists might bite into a burger or pizza. Seven of the 12 biggest corporations that pay their workers the least are fast-food giants. Yum! is one. It's a conglomerate that owns Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell. Workers don't find these chains so yummy; for pay averages $7.50 an hour, with no health care, pensions, etc. In contrast, Yum!'s CEO hauls off about $20 million a year, even as even as he dispatches lobbyists to oppose any hike in our nation's miserly minimum wage.
This is no way to run a business, an economy, or a society. Fast-food giants are hugely profitable. (Yum! quaffed down $1.3 billion in profits last year alone.) They are more than able to pay living wages and decent benefits, as many local, independently-owned fast-food businesses do. Deliberately and unnecessarily holding down an entire workforce by funneling rightful wages into the coffers of a few ultra-rich executives and big investors is shameful—and dangerous. After all, even a dog knows the difference between being stumbled over ... and being kicked.
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http://www.alternet.org/labor/where-labor-day-comes-and-where-its-headed
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This:
Despite their bloated sense of self-importance, notice that the American people do not celebrate a CEO Day. Indeed, as Abraham Lincoln put it, the real makers are the many ground-level workers who actually do the making: "Labor is prior to and independent of capital," Abe declared in his first state of the union address. "Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration."
Also, labor is an exchange of your time, your life. For this reason alone, it should be taxed at a much lower rate than investment income.