@panama18 wrote:
It's a free market. Let's leave it that way.
Yeah, we're FREE to organize and demand or work together to improve wages!
No one is saying to get rid of the free market folks. (not directed at you panama18, but to all...just re:ing you, since you're the last person who wrote in the thread heh heh)
Gonna re: with longer responses later. In the meantime, I am going to just say that wages have been flat and have not grown after accounting for inflation for over 40 years in America. The average middle-class family and median household income is still around $~45,000/year. The difference is that inflation has skyrocketed the price of housing, transportation, and healthcare during that same period of wage stagnation. So, everyone is now broke!
Meanwhile, corporate CEO pay went from 30 to 1 to 300 to 1 (with NO correlation to how well they did their jobs and their company's profitability - feel free to Google all of this), unions have declined (see article I posted earlier) in direction correlation with middle-class wages taking a steep dive, the U.S. social safety net has deteriorated, and corporate welfare and profits have gone up through the roof. Companies like Amazon and Walmart pay their workers so low that they have to use food stamps, Section 8 Housing, etc. to survive, which we milddle-class tax-payers have to pay for - thus giving them corporate welfare. Sadly, those same workers use their wages to buy their essentials from their own bosses, increasing Walmart and Amazon's profits even more!
Why has this taken place in America? Go back to 1978's First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti case. It gave corporations "free speech" to donate to political campaigns. That opened the door to legalized corporate, political bribery in our nation and was put on steroids with 2010's Citizen's United case. That's why scholars say we live in an oligarchy in America. The rich rule the country and in many ways we are not free.
We don't have an entirely free market. Wages can be suppressed (for us, while corporations and the rich get tax cuts and corporate welfare) through political lobbying. When we don't have good job and wage options, we're forced to work for a pittance. Our economy is free in name, but not in practice. Is that true with every employer and sector of the economy? No. But it is for many industries. Americans are working longer hours, harder than ever, and later into their senior years than ever before for lower wages than can't cover the basic costs of living. 50% of Americans don't have $1,000 for an emergency. That's living paycheck to paycheck (or, if you take Robert Reich's numbers from the earlier article, it's 80% who live that way).
The "free market" arguments are not so sound when you delve deeper into them people!
I'll clarify what I meant too by collaborating and educating folks, but BirdyC did a good job of representing me above. Of course, I'd like to defend my comments myself as well. Need to get supper started for now!