Listen. That sound you hear is the shredding of the social contract.
"The people at the bottom are going to be continually squeezed, and I don't see this ending anytime soon," said Harvard economist Richard Freeman. "If the economy were growing enough or unions were stronger, it would be possible for the less educated to do better and for the lower income to improve. But in our current world, where we are still adjusting to globalization, that is not very likely to happen."
What if the White House had, at any point over the past four or so years, mobilized the full force it now deploys for permission to bomb Syria on behalf of a measure to deal with the tenacious joblessness and growing economic insecurity we see around us every day?
We let companies close factories here, move the equipment to China, bring the same goods back to sell in the same stores, and call that “trade.” But we don’t just “let” companies do this, we give big tax breaks that practically force companies to do this.
Quote of the Day - Michelle Alexander: Dr. King was speaking out against the Vietnam War, condemning America's militarism and imperialism;
Reader's Comments: March on Washington; Black Unionists; Full Employment; Bradley Manning; Syria; Wal-Mart Workers Winning; U.S.'s 1 Percent So Much Richer; Visualization of Every Protest Since 1979;
Announcement - Memorial for Margrit Pittman - New York - Oct. 6
Incredibly, when King called for full employment in 1967, the national unemployment rate was under 4 percent. Flash forward to today: 56 consecutive months of unemployment above 7 percent, among African Americans above 13 percent, above 9 percent among Latinos. At our current rate of job creation, it would take another seven years to get the national unemployment rate down to 5 percent, where it was at the end of 2007.
"we still have tremendous work to do for our nation’s jobless and, in particular, for the long-term unemployed."
How federal policy and Big Auto drove black blight and white flight. Detroit's first black mayor, Coleman Young, and those that followed may not have known it, but Detroit was already on life support and they were the hospice team.
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