Human Need or Capitalist Greed

It is not only absurd, but dangerous, to believe that jobs are good just because losing a job is undesirable (See the Cry For Jobs, Ruthless Criticism). Of course it is terrible to lose ones income and material security. But simply demanding jobs generally results in compromises and sacrifices in order to get that paycheck rolling in again. Workers accept lower wages, longer working hours, more dangerous conditions, less autonomy, longer commutes just to get back to work.

Jobs do not even necessarily provide material security, particularly if the wages aren’t sufficient to cover living expenses. Even when times were “good” and unemployment was low, prior to the start of the economic crisis, wages and living standards had been spiraling downwards for more than 30 years. Working hours had been increasing, stress growing and leisure time shrinking.

Why do we need jobs? We don’t. We need the things that we can purchase with the income that jobs provide. If these goods and services can be produced in less than 40 hours per week we should all be happy—more leisure time, right?

But it never works that way because the goods and services don’t belong to us, they belong to the bosses, and we don’t get paid the value of the goods and services we produce, but only a fraction of that. Our pay is an expense to the bosses. The more work they can get out of us and the less they have to pay for it, the greater their profits. Therefore, the purpose of work is not to meet human need, but capitalists’ greed and increased worker productivity does not result in more leisure time or increased wages, it results in increased profits.

Obama Digs His Own Grave, Promises To Maintain Status Quo

Obama’s Jobs speech should have been no surprise to anyone. In fact, the only thing that was surprising was how redundant and tedious it was. “You must pass this bill now,” he said at least half a dozen times, suggesting that he expected to fast track the legislation without debate or criticism.

He did channel FDR with offers to put Americans back to work rebuilding roads and bridges. However, FDR created 11-12 million jobs through massive spending on the order of $1-2 trillion in today’s dollars. Obama, in contrast, is only offering a few hundred billion. By appealing to Republicans with the promise that the legislation will not cost a penny, he ensured that the best he will accomplish is maintaining a status quo of stagnant growth and relatively high unemployment.

This was probably Obama’s last opportunity to do anything to actually help struggling Americans and he blew the opportunity, thus ensuring that by election time he will be as unpopular as he is today. He essentially dug his own grave by not offering a plan that was much more bold and aggressive.

The aspect of his plan that should be of most concern to working Americans, however, is his commitment to cutting payroll taxes for businesses that start hiring. He said there were only two conditions for this gift: businesses must create jobs and do it in the communities most in need. However, this leaves open the possibility that the jobs will be dangerous, low paid, tedious, short-term and lacking in benefits.

In fact, Obama’s jobs bill sounds a lot like a plan to exploit the large army of unemployed workers to drive down wages and working conditions for everyone else.

We Want Jobs! (Regardless of Pay and Safety)

As Obama gets ready to give his jobs speech, unemployment remains stagnant at 9.1% officially, according to Democracy Now, with unemployment for African Americans having jumped 1% over the last year to 18%. The rate for African American teens, however, leaped a staggering 7.3% to 46.5%. Meanwhile, the White House budget office is saying that unemployment will not drop below 6% until 2017 (if even then), which should be no surprise at all when it is cutting spending and investing almost nowhere except in warfare.

Obama has been channeling FDR in a desperate attempt to save his presidency: "We’ve got roads and bridges across this country that need rebuilding.” In other words, there is plenty to invest in the petroleum-automotive industrial complex, perpetuation of oil dependency and the generation of more greenhouse gasses, but little or nothing toward green energy.

He also pandered to the dying labor movement (and the flourishing business community), saying “We’ve got more than one million unemployed construction workers ready to get dirty right now. There is work to be done, and there are workers ready to do it. Labor is on board. Business is on board. We just need Congress to get on board. Let’s put America back to work."

Teamsters President James Hoffa told Obama that his people were Obama’s “army” and that they were “ready to march.”

Ready to march for what, and why?

“We want one thing,” Hoffa continued: “Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s what we’re going to tell him."

Apparently, jobs are all Hoffa cares about, more than anything else. Jobs at all costs! Any sort of work is good, regardless of pay, working conditions, workplace safety, or benefits. With Obama threatening to “streamline” government regulation and remove “dumb” regulations, many of the new jobs will no doubt be unsafe for workers and the communities where they work.

So, as long as we’re only interested in putting people to work, why not also invade a few more countries and institute a draft? That would put a lot of young people to work. While we’re at it, we could invest in mercenary armies and employ more Americans to help insurgents throughout the Middle East and Africa. We could also put them to work running CIA black sites and secret prisons or helping city police to quash protests or riots by those who have not found work.

We could create a lot of jobs by building more radioactive waste storage facilities and increasing the number of reactors, especially along the Eastern Seaboard and South, where they would be prone to hurricane damage, and along the West Coast, where they would be at risk of earthquake damage, or in river floodplains. It would be a growth industry: each time a disaster hit, we could put more people to work cleaning up the mess.

How about more mountaintop removal and strip mines? More explosions, mine collapses, black lung, and watershed contamination? More coal ash floods? More deep water oil spills? We can put America back to work digging deeper into the ground for more climate-destroying carbon to fuel our insatiable lust for energy.

In all seriousness, though, people who have been unemployed for any length of time are certainly desperate for a steady income and many no doubt are feeling unproductive and desirous of meaningful occupation. However, with unions under attack and wages steadily declining over the past 40 years, simply demanding jobs is not enough. Low wage, dead end jobs merely perpetuate poverty and privation, while jobs that destroy the environment jeopardize our long-term material and physical security and need to be replaced with greener alternatives.

It’s time to consider not only which jobs are worth doing at all, but also whether we are willing to compensate people sufficiently to live decent lives. Work for the sake of work is not worth the trouble. Likewise, it is not worth fighting for jobs that makes people sick or shorten their lives and do not even provide enough for healthcare, vacations, decent food and housing.

California Alternative Budget--Make the Rich PAY!

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Duane Campbell, from the Sacramento Progressive Alliance, and the Choosing Democracy blog, sent California Gov. Jerry Brown an alternative budget proposal, in response to the request for budget suggestions he made in his State of the State speech. He notes that California now ranks 47^th among all states in per-pupil spending, ($2,856 less per pupil than the national average) and correctly argues that we need to increase educational spending, not cut it or even keep it steady.


His Specific Proposals:

(1) Enforce the current California law taxing the sales of goods by out of state companies ( such as Amazon) over the internet. Gain: $1.2 billion. There is already legislation to do this.

(2) Pass the $10.1 billion jobs package as proposed in the Assembly last year. This would pay off debts to local governments and keep teachers in classrooms to avoid massive layoffs. Pay for the Jobs package with a new oil severance tax. California is the only oil producing state in the country that imposes no taxes on the pumping of oil. The proposed tax was to be 6% of the sales price of oil. Alaska and Louisiana both charge 12.5%.

(3) Establish a public state bank such as the Bank of North Dakota. Initially move 25% of all state revenue, receipts and reserves into this bank and 25% of all PERS and STRS funds. Manage the bank as a public service. Over time, finance state borrowing from our own bank. Gain: 6% of the budget.

(4) Continue efforts to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse where it exists. There may be legitimate savings here. Employees, particularly managers should not be able to inflate pay in the year or two before retirement in order to receive an outsized pension benefit. While these cases are not the major source of financial stress of pension systems, abuses are frequently publicized and undermine confidence in the administration and fairness of public employee pensions.

(5) Repeal the 2009 and 2008 tax cuts for corporations passed to gain the extra Republican votes for the budget. Savings: $1 billion.

(6) As a consequence of the just passed federal tax reductions, including the reduction of taxes to the wealthiest taxpayers, Washington-based Citizens for Tax Justice estimates that California’s richest taxpayers will be saving about $14 billion annually on their federal taxes. The next wealthiest 4 percent, with an average income of $310,000, will save another $6.5 billion. State taxes should be increased on these two groups to secure this available 20.6 Billion dollars to fund the necessary jobs creation projects.

(7) Sell state bonds to gain funds for investment. At present, we pay bond holders a market rate. Rates are so low at present we should borrow and invest. To achieve a stimulus, we could sell many more bonds in particular to the public employees retirement system PERS and STRS.

(8) The legislature could also place on the ballot a “split roll” property tax initiative to deal with the present inequities of taxation. In virtually every county, commercial property is paying a far smaller share of the property tax since Proposition 13 passed in 1978.


Commercial property is able to exploit huge loopholes in the law to avoid reassessment upon change in ownership.

Here Are A Few More of My Own Suggestions:
(1) Tax marijuana

(2) Abolish the death penalty (it costs far more to hold prisoners on death row than to hold them for life without possibility of parole)

(3) Release all nonviolent drug offenders and get them into rehab

(4) Increase gasoline taxes (and use revenues to increase mass transit and alternative energy investments)

(5) Most Importantly: Tax the hell out of the rich and the corporations. Make them pay more than everyone else, much more. They can afford it. They’ll still be rich. It won’t change the status quo, but it will prevent the rest of us from losing any more ground