After yesterday’s, er, ‘delays’ I will endeavor to be more timely with today’s post.
I’d like to begin today’s offering by being abundantly clear that there is NO VERSION, however benign, (which is, naturally, an oxymoron) of capitalism that is capable of repairing our badly broken social model.
As I have stated before (repeatedly), the ‘unemployment problem’ is a mechanical one that can be fixed, partly by adjusting the workweek and partly by restructuring the payroll process.
In fact the biggest ‘fix’ to overall ‘social inequity’ lies in the Human Anti-exploitation Law.
How many of you believe we successfully ended slavery in 1863, here in the US?
You would be dead wrong.
Outlawing the ‘bill of sale’ merely made ‘Massa’ no longer responsible for the welfare of the, er, ‘named property.’
It is now up to the property to maintain itself…and if he/she is incapable of doing that on what Massa pays that is NOT Massa’s problem, it is and remains to this day the PROPERTY’S PROBLEM!
Some of you will object to the ‘broad brush’ being used here and you’d be correct, not ALL employers are penny-pinching skinflints. I’ll even take that one step further and ‘opine’ that most employers would relish the idea of being able to brag about how well they treat their people…but Wall Street won’t let them!
Most of you are unaware of this, er, ‘historic event’ but nearly thirty years ago there was a Supreme Court decision handed down on that controversial subject of ‘the purpose of commerce’.
Worse, most of you remain ignorant of what the Supreme Court decided.
Ironically, this goes back to the days (presidency) of Ronnie Reagan and a supposedly ‘liberal leaning’ Supreme Court…although I believe Ronnie had just succeeded in putting an end to that liberal bias due to the death of a noted liberal jurist that King Ronnie got to replace.
But enough suspense…in fact you SHOULD KNOW this.
For reasons unknown the issue of the ‘purpose of commerce’ had again been dragged before the Supreme Court…and this time the court found for the plaintiff!
By declaring unequivocally that the ‘sole responsibility’ of a corporation was to earn ‘profits for the shareowners’.
So a CEO who, er, ‘lavished’ pay and benefits upon their employees could be SUED (by, er, ‘activist shareowners’) for fiscal irresponsibility!
Keep that in mind as we delve into the subtext of this article that was written by a man smart enough to know better but apparently not interested enough in finding a solution to care…
We begin with the first paragraph of ‘tripe’:
The American Jobs Act proposed by President Obama in September includes subsidies in the form of re-employment services, wage insurance, work-sharing benefits and self-employment assistance. Stephen A. Wandner of the Urban Institute and the W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research testified before the Senate Finance Committee this month and offered a number of other ideas that have been successful on an experimental basis. Among them are comprehensive job search assistance and re-employment bonuses.
IF the above named programs comprise the ’central platform’ of the Obama jobs program then I, for one, am pleased that they have been blocked!
‘Re-employment services’ do not and CAN NOT ‘create’ jobs that don’t exist…so what are these services being ‘paid’ to do? They are being paid to fit square pegs into round holes.
How will they accomplish this ‘temporary at best’ measure? With ‘Wage Insurance, of course! Naturally nobody is asking what happens when the ‘wage insurance’ fund runs dry. If the worker would have starved to death on the wages the job paid before wage insurance, how is he/she supposed to survive on it once ‘wage insurance’ is no longer available?
Next on the list is an aspect of one of my own proposed solutions…but with a key ingredient missing!
Work Sharing is the only way the unemployment crisis will be solved…but I may be speaking too soon as there are plans in the works to significantly reduce the, er, ‘surplus population’ (via famine.)
It is an ancient curse but effective…and it plays directly to the huge inequity that currently exists…and YOU thought it was all ‘accidental’!
But I digress, back to ‘work-sharing’.
You can, er, ‘subsidize’ workers who ‘share’ a job…the job may pay ‘good money’ but no so good that you could live on half a week’s pay…and therein is the main difference between my proposal and the idea of, er, ‘subsidizing’ people who will ultimately be forced to ‘share’ work.
Work sharing doesn’t float if there isn’t a proportionate reduction in the expense picture!
If you intend to ‘halve’ someone’s pay you had best halve their expenses as well!
Mr. Schiller continues:
The stakes are very high here, and they are not just economic. As anger rises in today’s economy, I’m reminded of Thomas Jefferson’s words about the danger of “angry passions” arising between the North and South over the question of extending slavery to the Missouri territory. In an 1820 letter, he wrote that “this momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror.” He went on to predict, from his observations of such rancor, the secession of the South that was to come 40 years later.
Our country is a much more stable and just society now than it was in 1820. Still, we should regard the current economic dispute as another fire bell in the night. It is important to recreate the sense of a just society, without anger — and an important step in that direction is to ensure that there are enough jobs.
What proof does Mr. Schiller offer that this nation is either ‘more just or more stable’? Just his own opinion, which he is perfectly entitled to.
But I quibble, let us move on.
How many of you have already discerned the reason I chose these two particular paragraphs to close with?
Pretty bright crowd around here! Most of you got it.
Naturally, the ‘tie-in’ comes from my earlier query regarding the ‘alleged abolition’ of slavery.
Just because nobody has a bill of sale with your name on it is insufficient proof that you aren’t a slave.
How fortuitous is it that we currently have the potential to end once and for all vast social inequity (a certain degree is unavoidable but those differences should always be restricted to qualitative rather than quantitative ones.)
The human anti-exploitation law facilitates work sharing by greatly reducing the worker’s expense picture, thereby guaranteeing them a ‘living wage’.
Simply put, the anti-exploitation law prohibits anyone from making their living off of someone else’s labor.
Free a last good citizen! No more landlords, no more utility bills, hell, if it’s a service, it’s free to you (just like it used to be free to the owner!)
And prices will finally ‘stabilize’ because commerce IS NOT AND NEVER SHOULD BE a ‘for profit’ venture.
See good citizen, there IS a sustainable/workable social model available…and we still get to ram it up the 1%’s ass too!
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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