We Must Choose The Path To Leave Our Children

American Dream Becoming A Nightmare

Much is being made about the loss of the “American dream” with the crash of major financial groups like Lehmann Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and a waiting list of many others. Pundits today try to tell us how all this came about without anybody knowing until the last minute. Try again. This deck of cards, just like the savings and loan crash (which one, John McCain played a major role in), the tech crash and Enron and Tyco, was bound to crash.

Lack of governmental oversight, or should it be said governmental complicity, was a sure formula to this outcome. Now American taxpayers are proud owners of two wars, Fannie and Freddie and AIG costing more than a trillion or so. That doesn’t include bailouts of other corporations via reduced taxation or no taxation. And the biggest supporter of no regulatory oversight of American multi-national corporations has been John “Wane” McCain. The “free market economy” has become just that, free. Free rides, free of prosecution, free of conscience and free of any responsibility.

The popular excuse for all this has become the foreclosure rates, which have reached record rates all across the nation. If only the peasants, desperately seeking to own their own homes and willing to be recklessly financed at absurd rates and conditions, had paid their mortgages this crisis wouldn’t have occurred. If only the lazy peasants hadn’t demanded a living wage they could still be working instead of watching their jobs go to places willing to enslave children and adults in sweat shops to garner more and more American corporate contracts. If only the socialist, Marxist agitators joining unions had realized the corporations know best, companies would have stayed in Detroit and all those other places that insisted on unions.

Instead, the American workers and dreamers of owning homes betrayed all of us. They quit paying mortgages and walked away from their homes. They took their families to homeless shelters and relatives’ homes for shelter rather than stay house poor and unable to eat, buy clothes and school supplies. They were selfishly trying to give their children adequate diets and clothing that fit while the poor investors in the Dow and the other markets that make America great saw their portfolios shrinking.

Without the markets where would we be in this country? All patriotic Americans invest and trade to keep the economy strong. The slackers and scofflaws have ruined it for those who invest in the future. And if they can’t invest at least they can run up their credit cards, so liberally given them, to keep the economic engine running strong.

So how many of you invest in the markets out there? Hold up your hands. Right. The monopoly game called the stock market is about as safe as a Vegas slot machine. The investors play a game with the lives of workers and the middle and lower classes throughout the world. If they invest in hostile takeovers costing thousands of jobs they don’t care as long as their “bet” gives them a payoff. Corporate deals and corporate steals take place every day without a whit of conscience about it harming thousands or millions of people.

Markets Are Responsible For the Growing Hunger

A report came out this week indicating 925 million people are living in hunger. Millions of the wealthier Americans live in homes worth more than half a million dollars. The square footage of those homes is larger than needed and equal to five to ten homes in most parts of the world living in poverty. The absurdity of two to three people living in homes that could house 20 is lost on most Americans. In fact, that absurdity is the “American dream”. For the 925 million living in hunger, it’s more than absurdity; it’s obscenity.

The American stock markets, combined with those in the rest of the world, are more than economic engines. They are exploiters. They determine the numbers of people who live in poverty. They determine the numbers who live in hunger. They determine who go homeless. The addition of 75 million people living in hunger this year is a result of increased food prices.

Increased food prices are a result of speculators in oil and other products which affect the prices of food. The insane use of corn to create ethanol fuels is an example of a boondoggle. The creation of one gallon of ethanol costs more for the consumer than one gallon of fossil fuel after transporting and processing the corn. The loss of corn to the food chain has caused dramatic increases in the costs of food worldwide. High fructose corn syrup is an ingredient in thousands of food items sold to millions despite possible health risks.

Speculators in the oil market, for the purpose of greed, have been a greater cause of increased gas prices than availability issues. Of course, the increased prices of gas have dramatically increased food prices and consumer costs for most things such as clothing and transportation. The increased price of transportation along with all the other increases has effectively decreased the incomes of most people in the world. Except the reckless speculators of the stock markets.

In the tradition of Reaganomics trickle down theory, the trickle down has been the increase of the misery index. The foreclosure rates are a direct result of the many factors created by Wall Street and the equivalents around the world. The selling off of American banks and insurance providers, like AIG, to foreign buyers is a direct result of speculation for greed taking place on Wall Street. Lack of governmental oversight and regulation to provide a free market provided lost homes, increases in poverty and hunger and a worldwide financial crisis, instead.

The Workers Have Become Slaves

Let’s not be fooled into believing the companies claiming they lack funding to go on are going poor. They are once again taking advantage of the taxpayers to fund their foolish and reckless way of doing business. The companies claiming a need for bankruptcy will not be without profit. Backdoor deals with the feds are going down at the same time others are being publicly bailed out. The Bank of America buyout of Merrill Lynch seems clear cut but the hidden part of the deal is the federal dollars that go for making this deal.

What has become clear is the American worker will be diminished to lower paying jobs as their higher paying jobs leave the shores of the US. The greatest consumer nation in the world will be reduced to a service industry for financial markets of the world. Slave labor will become a norm in the guise of employment dictated by employers without worry of strong unions or other employee advocates.

We can deny we are slaves but if most Americans lose one week’s pay, they fall into financial crisis. We are slaves to our jobs and subject to termination if we speak out, we develop medical problems, family members on our insurance (if we have it) develop problems or we grow older with higher wages and benefits.

In my particular profession of nursing, employers can now demand we work 12 or 16 hour shifts. As long as we don’t exceed 16 consecutive hours and 40 hours each week there are no limits. Employers advertising for RNs and LPNs advertise for these shifts. If applicants aren’t willing to work such shifts (fearing the quality of care will decrease), they won’t be interviewed.

Hospitals in my area frequently have reductions in force layoffs. The nurses laid off are frequently senior nurses. Almost within a week, ads for new positions at the same hospital appear. Most frequently new grads and nurses with limited experience are hired for much lower wages than those laid off. My advice to friends and family is never stay in a hospital one minute longer than necessary and always take someone to be with you when in a hospital.

Are nurses slaves to their jobs? They make decent wages. Without power and ability to challenge management, nurses are no better off than a factory worker. We have all become serfs to a system lacking humanity or morality.

And when things go astray and the market crashes, it is the serfs that get blamed because they can’t pay their mortgages or their hyper-inflated credit card rates. The purveyors of greed and promoters of obscene consumerism get the bail outs and we, the serfs, look toward shelters or family for our bail out. We have been played by the stock market world of monopoly 90% of us have nothing to do with. But our world and our lives are at the mercy of the merchants of greed and false dreams.

Organizing The Workers Is Necessary

In the end, Wall Street will always trump Main Street. The dollar will always rule over humanity. It’s a game to the players at the markets but for the rest of us its life and a way out seems impossible. Once, there were strong unions that challenged the robber barons and demanded worker’s rights.

Today I hear nurses and workers all across the US talk about unions as if lepers trying to steal money from them. They’ve been programmed by management to believe owners will give them a fair deal and the union only wants their dues.

I wonder how many more years of the crashes, the wars and the loss of jobs it will take before workers start to believe management isn’t going to come through with that fair deal. I wonder how much longer workers around the world will allow themselves to be exploited by rich men playing board games on Wall Street and then demanding the workers be taxed more to make up for their failed gambles.

Don’t we, the workers, have to start asking who has our welfare and well being in mind? Haven’t we, the workers, seen we’re no more than interchangeable parts to the rich owner classes of this world? Exploit, exploit, exploit and discard. That’s the business plan. So why should the worker dismiss organizing unions to seek redress from the exploiters?

A majority of nurses claim unions would jeopardize patient care if a strike were called but go along with management constantly allowing them to work short staffed and assigned too many patients to care for. They allow management to demand shifts that are too long and bound to cause medication and judgment errors. I always ask my colleagues how bowing to such demands is producing good patient care.

The workers are on the bottom of the feeding chain that starts in the markets like Wall Street. We aren’t humans; we’re assets or risks to the bottom line. It will remain that way until the workers determine they are the backbone of any business. The worker must determine they are the actual makers of the product. Their skills are needed to produce any product sold on the market. Their work is noble and should be valued. That will only happen if they organize and meet the owner class on terms that are more equitable than master to slave.

Unions are not the problem, they can be a solution. Leadership has always been problems for management and labor. A CEO getting rewarded for failure is a cognitive dissonance for most of us. Union bosses cozying up to management or seeing opportunity for personal gain are traitors and gangsters. The workers need to hold management and their own leadership accountable. Participation is necessary beyond just paying dues and leaving decisions to elected proxies.

Government should protect the worker with oversight of business and workers should protect themselves with oversight of their leadership. Cooperation of the owners with the workers requires energy and patience. It will require compromise and openness.

Either Utopian Dream or Draconian Nightmare

As American workers enter the new century there is much to be done. The necessary infrastructure of the nation is rotting away. The environment is in a danger zone that only gets worse unless humans decide to develop new sources of energy that are not polluting the planet. Technology exists to do what’s necessary but isn’t utilized for anything much beyond entertainment purposes.

The worker and the management and owners can choose to cooperate or the crash and burn cycles will continue until there is nothing to be saved. Increases in homelessness, hunger and lost pensions and healthcare is a recipe for revolutionary violence. It is a sure way to anarchy and police state beyond what is already in place.

American workers can’t confine unions and organizing to just the US any longer. We live in a world that must cooperate to survive. We can communicate in ways never available in past generations. What happens in the US affects all parts of the world economy but what happens in China, Japan, Mexico and all other nations affects the US economy. We must work to ensure all workers are valued and their labor rewarded in an equitable way. If a union in Mexico determines a need to take a job action or strike against a multi-national corporation, all unions across the world must honor that action. A world wide labor movement is not only preferable but absolutely necessary to establish peace and justice and put an end to the oppressive poverty faced by a majority of the humans on the planet, Earth.

It may seem like a utopian dream to propose such things but the draconian opposite of such a dream is the continued oppression, hunger and death coming from wars and slave labor. The nightmare is the destruction of the environment to a point it no longer sustains life. That may be the wishes of the end of times radicals but we shouldn’t allow radicals and fanatics to rule our lives. Rational and cooperative efforts to overturn the rule of the corporations and establish parity across this world isn’t only revolutionary it is absolutely a necessity.

We are at the tipping point of doing what’s right for the survival of the planet, Earth, or continuing to spiral down the drain of doomed consequences for our failures to cooperate. Future generations may look back at the time this generation chose to cooperate and create a new and better world or there may be no future generations in a very short time. Now is the time we must choose the path for our children and grandchildren to follow. Their future depends on our choices.