The Devalued American Worker
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2014/12/14/the-devalued-american-worker/Green was already 12 hours into his workday. He rose at dawn to lay tar on the highway. As the sun sank, he switched uniforms and drove to BB&T Ballpark, where he runs the custodial crew for a minor-league baseball team. Now it was dark and his radio was crackling. It was his boss, asking him to head back downstairs. Green walked onto the first-base line and into a surprise. In front of 6,000 fans, the Winston-Salem Dash honored him as the teams employee of the year.
The crowd applauded. The game resumed. Green walked back upstairs. The trash wasnt going to empty itself.
Green once held a middle-class job. Now, to make enough money to send his children to college, he works the equivalent of two full-time jobs: one maintaining highways for the state of North Carolina and one ushering fans and collecting trash for a variety of sports teams around Winston-Salem.
The American economy has stopped delivering the broadly shared prosperity that the nation grew accustomed to after World War II. The explanation for why that is begins with the millions of middle-class jobs that vanished over the past 25 years, and with what happened to the men and women who once held those jobs.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)And so very true.
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)Corporate America hated regulations and worker power in the 70s and decided to fight back
Corporate America has, in its war on workers:
Decimated the power of labor unions
Heavily funded high technology and automation
Have government allow and promote moving jobs overseas as well as outsourcing
Have government allow them to hire illegal immigrants, and prison labor
What would you expect would be the result of this?
appalachiablue
(41,182 posts)the young ones, what they've been left with, college debt, scarce jobs, loss of union & worker rights, the toxic environment, food & water, and the related diseases & illnesses. Weakened, ineffective government; looming climate change. Cruel and overwhelming.
The low skilled workers, next the mid level, are being replaced with very recent computer advances in AI, robotics software, 3D printing and soon driverless vehicles. I've seen tech experts say the factories in Asia were just a temporary 20 year platform set up. New equipment is being brought in now to take those jobs.
On DU Home Page is a *video of Thom Hartmann interviewing Mathew Scmid with basicincomeforall.com. They discuss growing global income inequality, struggle, poverty and the older idea of a guaranteed basic income for everyone. The concept has been around since Thos. Paine or earlier. Alaska has one from oil revenues. There's some talk in Switzerland now, but it's a small, fairly wealthy country. The mere thought of this in the US with our conservative powers and broad dysfunction is pointless it seems.
raccoon
(31,127 posts)But I think if the USA doesn't get it one of these days, 90-something percent won't have money to buy anything.