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Workers class in USA

Monday 15 August 2011, by Robert Paris

Using the Debt Crisis to Attack Our Lives

August 1st, 2011

For weeks now Obama and the Congress have been arguing over what to do about raising the US government debt ceiling. The US debt is now more than $14 trillion – meaning this is how much more the US government has spent than it has taken in.

There is a real crisis of the economy. And it is true that those who run the government have spent trillions of dollars more than the tax dollars collected. But is there a real analysis and discussion of how the money has been spent? Of course not!

The news is full of reports about the crisis and concerns that if Congress doesn’t approve raising the limit on debt spending, it could trigger a deeper economic crisis. And this is probably true. But, like the current crisis, it is really a manufactured crisis and one that those who really control the government – the banks and large corporations – intend to take full advantage of.

What are the solutions being discussed – by both Democrats and Republicans? They say cut social spending. Cut Medicare. Cut Social Security, Cut Federal funding for state programs. The only disagreement is over how much these programs should be cut.

There is no discussion of some of the major causes of the debt. How about the more than 12 trillion dollars used to bailout the banks, insurance companies and large corporations during this last economic crisis? How about spending on the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan that has cost close to 1.5 trillion dollars? (That is $1,500,000,000,000!)

These wars are huge moneymakers for the arms manufacturers and all companies linked to the military – from production of vehicles, weapons and uniforms to the oil used for transport, building and running bases and everything else. Maintaining a soldier in these wars costs one million dollars each.

And beyond that, the banks and the wealthy are the ones who lend the money to the government. They buy the government debt. It is not just China and other countries that are owed. So, those who created the economic crisis three years ago and were bailed out, using trillions of dollars of our tax money, are the ones the government is in debt to.

Not only do large amounts of our tax dollars go to support the rich and their corporations, they pay less in taxes than in the past. Up until the 1970s for every dollar that individuals paid in income tax, corporations paid $1.50. Today for every dollar that individuals pay in federal taxes, corporations pay 25 cents. And many of the biggest corporations pay no taxes at all. The super rich, those who control hedge funds or CEOs who get large bonuses, often in stock, are taxed at only 15 percent – a little more than half of what a worker pays.

The Democrats talk about raising taxes on the very rich – just a small amount. But there will be no tax increases on the rich or their corporations. Members of both parties say that increasing taxes on the corporations and the rich will threaten the economic recovery. But just who is recovering and from what? The corporations are reporting record profits; the gap between the rich and the rest of us is greater than ever.

That is their problem, not ours. We should not pay for the crisis of a system that serves them by having programs we have paid for cut to add to their riches. That is theft. Saying that we are not entitled to these programs after we have paid for them with our taxes is like saying we don’t have the right to money we put in the bank!

Whatever so-called solution the politicians come up with, it won’t benefit us. They will continue to follow the golden rule that guides their actions – those with the gold make the rules. It is disgraceful. But it is the way capitalism system functions – protecting the interests of the wealthy at the expense of those who really do the work of the society. It couldn’t be clearer – we need a different system. We need a system that benefits us all, not just a wealthy few.

The Summertime Blues: Working More For Less

July 18th, 2011

The summertime is advertised as the perfect months to spend more time with family and friends. Many workers save their vacation every year knowing that their children are out of school and have more free time. Others wait all year to travel back to the places where their families live, some perhaps only seeing their families once a year. This year many workers are being forced to cancel plans to travel or to even take time off. As we all know from our own lives, and when the news mentions it once in awhile, there are fewer workers at every workplace and yet the amount of work that has to be done has actually gone up. So, getting time off for a vacation is even harder and it usually means even more work for the rest of us who don’t get time off.

Corporations avoid hiring more workers by pushing the extra work onto the workers already hired. This tactic is called a “speed-up” and all indications show clearly that we are speeding up. Workers in the U.S. work on average an extra ten weeks a year compared to their German counterparts. Our wages have declined by 1.1 percent since the start of 2007 and yet the amount of work each worker does has increased by over six percent. The last time each worker was doing this much more work was in 1929.

We see examples of this in every industry and in every country. Teachers are being laid off and those that are still teaching are being required to teach larger classrooms and for less pay. Bus drivers have seen their wages cut and work hours increase. Nurses are being asked to treat more patients and cover more medical stations, sometimes as much as three times what’s normal. Break times are being shortened. Workers often either work through their break or just eat their lunch while staying at their station. The list is endless.

For many of us the speed up is difficult to notice because it has been added so slowly. While there are instances of bosses telling workers that they have to do more than one job, what typically happens is managers tell us that times are tough and we all have to do a little more. This little more adds up over a period of time, and so each year we are doing more than the year before.

Another defense the bosses use is the idea that we are lucky to have a job and shouldn’t complain if there is a little extra work. In fact, the idea of complaining about having to do too much work is frowned upon amongst most workers. None of us want others to think we are lazy or are slackers. This has led many to quietly accept extra duties, which over a three-year period has meant we are doing the work of two or three people.

For those of us in the working class this doesn’t come as a huge surprise. We have all been under attack the last few years. We have watched as people retire and aren’t replaced. When people call in sick or take vacation and their shift isn’t covered. Everyday we feel the pressure of the mounting work that only seems to grow with each passing day.

In reality the joblessness and the speed up that has followed is easily fixed. If we are working on average an extra ten weeks a year, it seems simple to hire more people and have them do this extra work. Right?

Well that may sound like a sensible solution to the people doing the work but to the bosses this would be unacceptable. At the same time as we are being pushed to do more, corporations are reporting record profits. Last year, corporations made the most profits ever recorded in U.S. history. When the politicians say the economy is recovering and growing again – what they mean is that profits are being made, and that’s it. The corporations are only interested in squeezing every possible cent from us. The idea of hiring more people to ease the burden on the workers is a threat to them. It is a threat to their profits, their way of life, their entire system.

That’s what this recession and speed up have shown clearly; that the system we live in is based on the exploitation of millions for the benefit of a few. It works for them – not for us. It’s about time we made it work for us.

Holding Our Lives Hostage to Pay for Their Debt

July 11th, 2011

Over the past weeks the government has been discussing ways to deal with its massive $14 trillion dollar deficit. The threat from both Republicans and Democrats is the same – if Congress doesn’t increase the amount of debt the US government is allowed to take on (the so-called “debt ceiling”), the entire US economy may collapse. At the same time both Democrats and Republicans say the only way they will agree to raising the debt ceiling is to impose massive cuts to social programs.

So far the Obama administration has said it would agree to as much as $4 trillion dollars in spending cuts and has proposed to cut Medicare (the federal program providing medical coverage to the elderly) and Medicaid (the federally funded health care program for the poor) by at least $340 billion over ten years. And has proposed cuts to Social Security that would push at least 250,000 more people below the federal poverty line in the future.

So there you have it, if the debt ceiling isn’t increased, the economy will collapse even further. And the only way to raise the debt is to make huge cuts to the most important federal programs for working people.

Doesn’t this sound familiar? This was the same doomsday logic that was used to hand over trillions of dollars to the banks in the federal bailout. Then, as now, Democrats and Republicans said if the banks didn’t get our money, the economy would collapse.
It was the same reasoning given right after Obama became president and supposedly bailed out the auto companies. The argument then was if the auto companies don’t get bailed out, it will mean financial ruin for the whole auto industry. But the only way to bail out the auto companies was to impose massive cuts on auto workers. The Obama administration imposed wage cuts, health care cuts, pension cuts, and massive layoffs on auto workers. And a year later, auto companies made record profits because they pushed more work onto fewer workers and paid them less to do it.

This is the same logic being used in nearly every state across the country. If the states don’t balance their budgets, their entire economies will collapse. But the only way to balance their budgets is to impose enormous attacks on working people, through cuts in heath care, education, social services, and further attacks on public workers. This was the argument given by Governor Brown when he passed the latest California budget with massive cuts to working people.
And it is the same arguments being given all across Europe as well – the only way countries will receive loans to help with their debts is if they impose massive attacks on working people and social spending. These so-called “austerity” cuts are what’s happening in Greece, England, Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal, some of which have seen the largest protests in decades.

In case after case, the strategy is the same – the politicians threaten economic disaster unless working people pay with their lives. We have seen the results of these threats, in the US and across the world, banks and corporations, through their politicians, are trying to solve their crisis by making working people pay for it over and over again.
Most of the attacks working people face are cuts to services or wages or health care that were won through social struggles in the 1930s, 1960s and 1970s. This crisis is being used as the excuse to take away as many of these gains as possible. The banks and corporations are making out like bandits, trying to get away with as much as they can. And so far it’s been working. CEO pay has gone up 23 percent last year, with most CEOs making 280 times the average worker. Profits in 2010 were the highest ever recorded in the US. But the ruling elite haven’t gotten enough yet – they seem to want it all.
It was only through massive struggles by working people that we were able to win the gains that are being taken away from us today. And it will take the same level of fight back by working people to hang on to them now.

Revolutionary Workers Group, USA

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