(As of tomorrow, September 2, my new book, A Different Jesus, will be available online at Barnes and Noble and other places. I hope those of you who want a copy will purchase it there, directly from Sweetgrass Books/Farcountry Press (1-800-821-3874), or anywhere other than Amazon. I say that because of the way Amazon treats its employees, as I will explain in a future Blog.)
Today is Labor Day, a perfect time to examine just how well the American workforce is doing.
Here are some facts to consider. As I write this more than 20 million Americans who are looking for a job cannot find one.
If they do it will likely pay less than $20,000 a year, which is the average pay of most jobs recovered since the economy went bust.
Here in Minnesota which has done better than most states the average weekly salary for a worker before the bust was $1,145. The jobs being created today pay on average $500 a week, with NO benefits. None. No healthcare. No paid vacation. No sick leave. Miss work and you don’t get paid.
These are not fast food jobs, either. Most of them are in healthcare and other industries. So on Labor Day, 2014, Americans are working more and being paid less than they were 10 years ago.
These are the facts that should expose the propaganda promoted by all the talking heads who say people don’t want to work, are lazy, are not looking for jobs, won’t take “good” jobs being offered to them.
Now, put those facts next to the nearly 2 trillion dollars American corporations are sitting on without investing in greater production or expansion.
Why? Because demand is low. Why? Because so many people are still unemployed, and those who have found jobs are being paid half what they were once paid.
Which exposes a popular belief that businesses are the “job creators” for the myth it is. Corporations don’t create jobs. Consumer demand does.
But business does control the pay, and when pay is low, demand is low, creating a vicious circle that squeezes the life out of American families.
But to hear corporate leaders talk, their companies are suffering because of high corporate taxes, 35% – the highest in the industrialized world, except, none of them pays 35%. None! When all the existing tax deductions, write-offs and credits are factored in, these companies are actually paying around 13%, which is the lowest in the industrialized world.
That’s lower than what you and I pay. On top of that, in 1952 33% of all tax revenues came from corporations. Today that figure stands at 9%.
But they say they need to move their headquarters abroad to avoid the egregiously high tax rate none of them pays.
Talk about brass…
So on this Labor Day, if you are like me and are doing just about as well as you were before the economy tanked, join me in being thankful, and at the same time remember that millions of our neighbors are not doing very well.
And then tomorrow evaluate on the basis of facts, not fiction, any proposal being made by your local, state, and national political leaders that is supposed to help them.
linnposts.com 
Great job, as usual, of telling it like it is. I wish the public would understand this, instead of just complaining about the “thieving corporations”. And I wish corporations would quit crying crocodile tears about their “horrific” tax burden, which very few, if any, of them are paying. I do think that we do need to reduce corporate tax rates, not because of corporate tears, but to bring America in line with the rest of the industrialized world, thus bringing high priced tax lawyers down at the level of working folks. The current tax code primarily benefits tax lawyers. In other words, let’s get realistic about this whole issue, fix it, and go on to the next problem, of which Americas has an ample supply. Unfortunately, our politics have reached a point where money buys those who have to make these fixes, so I view the possibility of all this getting fixed any time soon as VERY slim.
The other point you make about who or what creates jobs is also right on. I’m sick of hearing about the wealthy creating jobs, and about if corporations could just make more money they could, and would, create more jobs. That is pure baloney. This is still a capitalist society, NOT a socialist society, as many claim. The only thing that creates jobs is demand for products & services. Corporations are NOT, and should not be, social welfare organizations.
One other factor we need to fix is the current obscene ratio of average worker pay to typical executive pay. Again, here we run into the same problem of who buys the fixers.
Wally, your comments raise the question as to why things don’t get changed, and the answer, of course, is that these same corporations buy political favors in order to keep their tax breaks and loopholes, all the while whining about the taxes they never actually pay.
Ugh.. makes ya crazy. Thanks for your post, Jan. And here’s to hope’n you’ll be on the NY Times Best Sellers list shortly!
Hopes springs eternal!