It’s Labor Day, so I’m just going to take this opportunity to point out the fact that the rich-poor gap in America is worse than it was during the great depression.
The only thing that saved us then was labor unions, and the only thing that will save us now is labor unions.
There is no earthly reason for a boss to make more than 300 times what their average worker makes, and yet they do. They make even more than that. And that’s not just some of them. In America the average CEO makes 303% more than the average worker.
I’ve seen it with my own eyes as a business owner myself. Business schools are pumping out these under-educated sociopaths who think that the key to success in the marketplace is to pay their employees and contractors as little as humanly possible, or not at all when that’s even remotely an option. They’re told that leaving their lowest paid employees in poverty is their moral imperative as a company owner, and this isn’t a new idea.
Employers would sooner leave their workers to die; let them be maimed, injured, starved or exposed to the elements if it made them even a dollar more than they made the year before. Regardless of how much money they already make. Labor unions are the only reason we have health and safety regulations at work today.
They’re the only reason we have anything at all, from the 40 hour work week (which employers have successfully been eroding for decades at this point) to the concept of paid vacation (another luxury almost no one has anymore). It isn’t a coincidence that these hard-won concessions are disappearing. As the unions weaken, the employers take away anything they can.
You think a man who makes 300 times more than your boss makes can relate to you on a human level? It’s impossible.
If you feel like $15 an hour is too high for an entry level worker to aspire to, you need a union. If you think the fact that you work or have worked more than 40 hours a week to scrape by at any point in your life means that other people should have to do the same, you need a union. If you’ve ever been told to do something unsafe or illegal at work and you had to do it in order to keep your job, you need a damn union.
Union today. Union tomorrow. Union forever.
And yes, I am aware that unions have their own problems. But none of them are as bad as having some CEO making several hundred times what their employees make throwing them away like trash every day because it’s easier to make the tax payer take care of them.
The super rich do not benefit from investing in this country, unless it is to invest in our continued poverty and ignorance.