Rich Guy’s Inequality Fix: Raises for Workers. Just Kidding! It’s ‘Give Free Stuff to Rich Guys’

[Judi Lynn]

Tuesday, Oct 6, 2015, 1:32 pm

Rich Guy’s Inequality Fix: Raises for Workers. Just Kidding! It’s ‘Give Free Stuff to Rich Guys’

BY Leo Gerard, United Steelworkers President

Republicans and the rich guys who imposed on American workers 35 years of stagnant wages now offer a prescription for easing this pain.

Their solution for robber-baron-level income inequality is not the obvious: Give workers raises. They don’t want to increase the minimum wage, which would eventually push up pay for everyone else as well. They don’t intend to provide paid sick leave or decent pensions or fewer unstable contract jobs. They have no intention of strengthening unions so workers can collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.

Instead of any of those straightforward measures, rich guys and corporate-owned Republicans assert that the solution is more free stuff for corporations! The government, they say, should provide that free stuff. The government, the very organization they deride and despise and denounce as incompetent and deserving of nothing but cutting and shrinking and destroying! Yes, they actually contend that very same government should take the taxes paid by workers and give that money to corporations to improve worker wages and working conditions!

This rich guy, Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus of the PR firm Young & Rubicam, said in a New York Times op-ed in August that he feared the current grotesque level of income inequality would provoke major social unrest or oppressive tax levies on the rich – unless the rich did something about it right away. To avert restoration of the higher income tax levels that the rich paid from 1935 to 1985, Georgescu recommended that the federal government give money to businesses to raise the wages of workers earning less than $80,000 a year.

More:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/18476/more_free_stuff_for_corporations

[brewens]

1. I'm supposed to be all up in arms over some mere "burger flipper" making $15 an hour. As if he or

she is like a peasant, and I'm so much more worthy of my $18 and hour. The only thing is that, there really isn't much else for that fastfood emplyee to do. They can't all fabricate bootstraps and pull themselves up with them, go to college and get high paying jobs. We have to either bring back manufacturing for those people or pay them a living wage.

If fastfood guys pay is doubled, I expect to get a little bump out of it at least. I did my time down there. I don't think they should immediately catch up to me. I'm supposed to feel that anything they get, has to come out of my hide though. Maybe that's true a little bit, but their having more money and benefits also helps me keep my job.

The 1% is like the ruling class in the middle ages now. We don't hear much about how many of them are actually way in the black as far as taxes go. With the right career and investments, they take in way more of our tax dollars than they pay out. It makes what the welfare people they bitch about getting a joke. It's really the upper middle class guy that thinks the 1% is on their side, that might be getting screwed the worst! They don't have the offshore tax havens and pay full bore. Buddy, if the shit hits the fan and stays hit, you aren't getting into the gated community. They hold it over their heads though. Play ball with us, or you'll be dragged down. Like slave owners did with their house slaves and overseers.

[forest444]

2. Divide and conquer. Works every time.

[Judi Lynn]

3. So glad you brought this response to the top of the page. Missed it when it was posted. n/t