David Podvin: LABOR DAY

[Caro]

LABOR DAY

By David Podvin

Another Labor Day has arrived, making it the perfect time to examine how American workers are victimized by those who pledge friendship. Conservatives never betray laborers, if only because it is impossible to betray people you openly despise. It is progressives who seduce the working class with false promises of fidelity.

In recent decades, American workers have seen their wages steadily lose ground to inflation while the monied elite have prospered. The national distribution of wealth now skews higher than ever, the byproduct of tax policies and trade agreements and illegal immigration. Conservatives have faithfully promoted the interests of the GOP’s aristocratic benefactors while liberals have failed to represent the peasants who vote Democratic.

When the Democrats took control of Congress, new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that working people had won a great victory. Thus far, that victory has yielded a largely symbolic minimum wage increase benefiting entry level service industry employees and few others. The Democratic Congress refuses to consider repealing the Bush tax cut that provided the upper class with cash and the working class with debt. The Democrats still support trade agreements that encourage business to replace American blue collar workers with foreign slave labor.

Then there is illegal immigration, the means by which Corporate America is repealing the labor gains of the last century.

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Posted by Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

The excerpt above is posted with the full knowledge and permission, even encouragement, of the author, who wants his essays to be read by as many people as possible.