Open letter to 99ers: "Stop whining and start fighting intelligently"
99ers, how do you think this happened: “Corp profits account for 92% of growth in real national income.” .
A recent study by a team of economists at Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies argues that the current economic recovery is the worst since World War II for worker pay and job growth — but the best for corporate profits. The headline:
Over this six-quarter period [from Q2 of 2009 to Q4 of 2010], corporate profits captured 88% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries accounted for only slightly more than 1% of the growth in real national income.
That’s right. Of the $528 billion in real national income gained between the second quarter of 2009 and the fourth quarter of 2010, pre-tax corporate profits accounted for $464 billion, while wages rose by just $7 billion. If you extend that out to the first quarter of 2011:
[C]orporate profits accounted for 92% of the growth in real national income while aggregate wages and salaries declined by $22 billion and contributed nothing to growth.
Ninety-two percent of the national income increase in the last two years has ended up in the pockets of Wall Street because millions of people are working too much, while millions of other people like you are unemployed. The statistics gather by Northeastern University demonstrate that by keeping you unemployed, the corporations gained a massive share of income in this “recovery”.
This why Obama doesn’t care about you; this is why he did not take one question on the subject during his Twitter Town Hall.
The unemployed are the deadweights being used in this crisis to hold down the wages of the employed. As long as hours of work are not changed, neither will this. There is nothing difficult to understand about this: Obama is using you to line the pockets of Wall Street.
Can I put this is simpler terms — terms even a grade school child will understand? Keeping you hungry, keeps wages down! Obama doesn’t want to reduce hours of work because he knows longer hours of work provide massive profits to corporations.
The two parties have their talking points: “It is too costly to stimulate the economy to reduce unemployment, we have to balance the budget.”
And, they can point to the 2009 stimulus bill to prove their point” In 2009, it cost nearly $300,000 to produce one measly $25,000 job. But this is a complete distraction: It doesn’t cost a dime to create jobs by reducing hours of work. Cutting hours of work, so everyone has a job, does not cost a dime and can completely eliminate unemployment forever. If the work week was 20 hours long, the unemployed would have a job, and the overworked population would have more freedom from work. While Washington would have fewer idle resources for its wars of aggression.
At some point 99ers will have to realize the two parties have deliberately locked you out by using the excuse that ending unemployment is expensive — even as they limit our options to only the most expensive kinds of stimulus measures. The entire deficit debate is designed to distract the nation from the plight of the unemployed. Obama is working with Boehner to do this.
Ending unemployment doesn’t cost a dime!
Ending inequality doesn’t cost a dime!
All it takes is a reduction in hours of work. Either 99ers learn this lesson, or you will continue to suffer.
There are now enough 99ers to prevent Obama’s reelection in 2012. So you should stop whining and start trying to defeat him. The moment a group starts called “99ers to defeat Obama in 2012″ is the moment Washington starts taking your plight seriously. 99ers need to stop whining about being ignored and start fighting for a complete abolition of unemployment. You are bigger than the Tea Party and Moveon.org combined. You need to show your power.
The only way to get Washington’s attention is to make sure Obama goes down in flames in 2012. Almost all the battleground states in 2012 are experiencing massive unemployment and huge numbers of 99ers. No party will get elected if 99ers refuse to support them in these states.
It is time you stop whining about Obama, and make his life a complete misery — you need to change the terms of the debate. If 99ers would, for one minute, start thinking intelligently about unemployment, Obama and Boehner could be stopped.
No one is coming to your rescue. Only you will save yourself and the rest of the employed, who are working more hours for less income. As long as 99ers spend their days begging on their knees for a job, the two parties will ignore you.
Stand up for yourselves! If Obama gets reelected in 2012, he will be the GOP’s man in the White House — and 99ers will be screwed again.
2:55 pm
Just make everyone work less is your magic solution? First of all, how would you force employers to lower working hours? By pointing guns at them?
Further if I were to work 20 hours a week instead of 40 in order for it to cost nothing then I’d have have to take a 50% paycut. Oh wait that costs me something, not nothing. This means I can no longer afford to live where I live and still feed my family.
This is a pretty poorly thought out solution. I expected more intelligence from Gonzo times.
5:37 pm
Hey Matt,
First, I am not sure what you mean by “make everyone work less”. I thought having time away from work was the entire point of holidays, vacations and retirement. If, however, we have to force people to enjoy leisure time, my proposal could not work. As for employers, who forces them to observe the forty hours work week now? What gun is pointed to the head of an employer to make them limit a work week to forty hours? A twenty hour work week would not be forced on anyone, the employer would simply have to do what they do now: increase the workers pay by a set amount for additional hours of work over twenty hours — say triple or even quadruple normal work pay.
Is this unreasonable? Or, rather, is it reasonable for employers to work some for very long hours, but leave millions to beg the public for handouts? The labor market is as much a common resource of society as is a public swimming pool or the oceans — if you allow private capitals to dump their “human waste” into it, the effect is just the same as private individuals urinating in a public facility, or private companies dumping toxic waste into public waterways.
You are making a misleading argument about the effects of a shorter work week on wages. We already know higher unemployment leads to lower wages, now you want to claim lower unemployment must also lead to lower wages? Which is it?
The supply of labor is not simply a function of the number of individuals, but also the number of hours they work. Reducing hours is the same as reducing the number of individuals — it must lead to higher wages. Just as the supply of money is a function of the absolute quantity of paper in circulation times its velocity, so the absolute labor supply is a function of the number of individuals times the hours worked.
So, it is not my solution that is poorly thought out, but your argument.
6:07 pm
Why would anyone other than unemployed people voluntarily agree to do any of these things?
Obviously if i could work 20 hours a week and make the same amount of money, I would do that. However I think I would have a difficult time convincing my employer that they should pay me the same amount of money to do half as much work.
Are you saying that employers should be forced to pay overtime for any work over 20 hours a week? Who would force them to do this? the government? the unemployed? if the work could be easily be shared between an employed person and an unemployed one then current workers have no leverage since they could simply be replaced completely by one of the masses of unemployed.
6:55 pm
It seems you are saying wage slaves should remain
wages slaves because ending their slavery involves forcing their
exploiters to observe a 20 hour work week consistent with an end to the
horror of unemployment?
Is this correct? Are you stating the use of force to end slavery is the same as the use of force to maintain it?
7:53 pm
No one is using force to keep people employed, anyone can quit anytime they wish. They are only slaves voluntarily.The use of force to stop people from interacting in a voluntary manner is the domain of government. If that’s what you want then just be honest about it.
The unemployed could start competing businesses if governmental regulatory/licensing anti-competition laws were removed. This would be a better solution than pointing guns at employers who employ people on a voluntary basis. If you threaten employers you’ll probably end up with less of them.
8:33 pm
Matt,
You should read the last part of my critique of Kevin Carson’s Mutualism.
(http://www.gonzotimes.com/2011/06/a-critical-examination-of-kevin-carson%e2%80%99s-mutualism-final-part/)
I agree with you — No one forces anyone to be a wage slave. People are wage slaves because they enjoy benefits from it. However, to keep being wage slaves they constantly enlarge the Fascist State and bring more of society under its domination. They do everything to keep it going — including taxation, debt, printing dollars and war
So, to get rid of the Fascist State, you have to get rid of wage slavery.
3:44 am
A top computer scientist says we don’t have be 40 hour wage slaves anymore.
THAT MEANS WE ARE FREE!Memo to America: Stop waiting for Democrats and Republicans to save you. It’s bad for your health and your future.”WAKE UP PEOPLE!” – “THE REVOLUTION HAS STARTED”Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org ) FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM”Spread the News”FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM”Spread the News”
for your health and your future.
“WAKE UP PEOPLE!” – “THE REVOLUTION HAS STARTED”Read “Common Sense 3.1” at ( http://www.revolution2.osixs.org )
FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM”Spread the News”
FIGHT THE CAUSE – NOT THE SYMPTOM
“Spread the News”
3:52 am
Good article!
6:53 pm
I like my 24 hour work week. Going strong for years and loving it! (It’s easy, stop buying shit you can’t afford. No car lease, no home lease no furniture or computer leases and don’t build debt. EASY).
8:07 pm
The problem is the Fascist State still diverts billions of hours of labor and other resources to its own purposes. This is labor time that could be used to satisfy real human needs or returned to society in the form of leisure. Some of us have the option to avoid overwork — I myself enjoy this — but ending the Fascist State, improving the material conditions of several billion co-inhabitants of the planet, and ending overwork and unemployment for everyone requires more drastic, social solutions.