David Brooks on PBS last night grudgingly admitted that the nine US States with no collective bargaining rights for State/Municipal workers have the nine biggest budget deficits in the country. There is NO correlation between public sector... unions and financial troubles with state budgets.
The budget crisis around the country, both state and federal, is directly caused by the lowest corporate taxes in the history of US tax collection, while at the same time corporate profits are at the highest ever and real wages of their employees are 2% less than they were in 1979! Which by the way is when the federal assault began against labor unions. There IS a direct correlation between declining union membership and declining wages, both union and non-union.
There were two pillars on which the biggest economic expansion in the history of the world were built: The right to collective bargaining and the GI Bill. World War II vets were allowed to make a good living, with pensions and benefits, and get an education. Those realities grew our country into the world power it once was. The entire nation, perhaps even the world, benefited by those investments. For the record, during that same economic expansion US corporations paid the highest tax rates in the history of US taxes and they still made enormous profits. Everybody's boat floated up.
The Oligarchy in which we now live has stacked the deck against American citizens. They have spent billions to dismantle those pillars in order to re-distribute that shared wealth to themselves alone. As a result, we are living through the beginning of the end of our Republic and the destruction of the American middle-class.
That's not directly the fault of Democrats, Republicans or Unions; the blame lays squarely on the US Supreme Court. SCOTUS decisions going back to the late 70's equating speech with money right on up to the Citizen's United decision last spring giving corporations (which are nothing more than tax documents and a public record) the same protections under the constitution as citizens. Those realities have guaranteed the end of our "democratic experiment".
The budget crisis around the country, both state and federal, is directly caused by the lowest corporate taxes in the history of US tax collection, while at the same time corporate profits are at the highest ever and real wages of their employees are 2% less than they were in 1979! Which by the way is when the federal assault began against labor unions. There IS a direct correlation between declining union membership and declining wages, both union and non-union.
There were two pillars on which the biggest economic expansion in the history of the world were built: The right to collective bargaining and the GI Bill. World War II vets were allowed to make a good living, with pensions and benefits, and get an education. Those realities grew our country into the world power it once was. The entire nation, perhaps even the world, benefited by those investments. For the record, during that same economic expansion US corporations paid the highest tax rates in the history of US taxes and they still made enormous profits. Everybody's boat floated up.
The Oligarchy in which we now live has stacked the deck against American citizens. They have spent billions to dismantle those pillars in order to re-distribute that shared wealth to themselves alone. As a result, we are living through the beginning of the end of our Republic and the destruction of the American middle-class.
That's not directly the fault of Democrats, Republicans or Unions; the blame lays squarely on the US Supreme Court. SCOTUS decisions going back to the late 70's equating speech with money right on up to the Citizen's United decision last spring giving corporations (which are nothing more than tax documents and a public record) the same protections under the constitution as citizens. Those realities have guaranteed the end of our "democratic experiment".
President Eisenhower warned us, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
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