Question: What do the most “successful” countries in the world—i.e., the “happiest,” fairest, most enlightened, most optimistic, and most generous—have in common? Answer: The majority of them have quasi-socialist governments/economies, and their labor forces are highly unionized.
Actually, there’s a third commonality as well. Unlike the U.S., they are unburdened and unravaged by the largest, most bloated and debilitating military budget in the history of Earth—an advantage that permits them to treat medical care as a “right” rather than a “privilege,” and to offer free college tuition to those who wish to attend, working off the premise that an educated electorate is an “investment,” not a “luxury.”
In the 2016 Democratic Primary, when Bernie Sanders advocated free college tuition, people (Hillary Clinton, for one) not only ridiculed him, they practically laughed him off the podium, as if the concept of not punishing a poor person who wants to continue their education were an exercise in unchecked extravagance.
Yet, in regard to “unchecked extravagance,” we didn’t hear so much as a peep from those same people when it came to the F-35 fighter plane. Not only is the F-35 prototype the most expensive weapons system in the history of mankind, which is a mouthful (the fleet’s estimated cost is upwards of $379 billion), but the damned thing doesn’t work. That’s not hyperbole. As of this writing, and after nine years of development, the F-35 has been deemed “not acceptable for combat.”
Just imagine what this country could have done with an extra $379 billion dollars if we’d decided not to develop this airplane. Because we’ve become inured to the word, we’ve forgotten how much a billion dollars is. Consider: If you gave a person a million dollars and told him to spend $1,000 per day, and come back after he spent it all, he’d return in 3 years. If you gave him a billion dollars, and told him to spend $1,000 a day, he’d return in 3,000 years.
Maybe we use that extra $379 billion as a down-payment on single-payer health care? Or for underwriting free college tuition? Or for putting a sizable dent in those much needed repairs of our infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, aqueducts, canals, ports, power plants, etc.)? In any event, it would have been money well-spent.
Which brings us to labor unions. The only foreseeable way for the vaunted American middle-class to make a comeback is by having the “average American worker” once again earn a livable wage and enjoy decent benefits. And the only way that’s ever going to happen is by workers rising up and insisting on it.
I realize that choice of idiom has the slightly nutty, early 20th century ring of proletarian idealism to it, but it happens to be true. Resistance is the only solution. Resistance is the only way that working people are going to improve their circumstances. It’s obvious that the “free market” won’t do it, the U.S. Congress won’t do it, and the Church and philanthropic organizations won’t do it. It’s the workers themselves who must once again coalesce and assert themselves. What is so “radical” about demanding that we regain our middle-class status?
Fortunately, the apparatus for resistance is already in place. The only thing that people need to do is stand on their hind legs and utilize that apparatus. Unions are legal. Labor laws are on already the books. The NLRB, wimpy as it is, already exists. Everything is in place.
And if you’re looking for proof that Corporate America is scared shitless over the potential rise of organized labor, it is represented by fact that they will do anything in their power to keep unions out. They’re terrified of us.
If Wall Street didn’t regard worker solidarity and collectivism as dangerous, they wouldn’t care. They wouldn’t give a hoot about unions. But they do care. Which is why they spent hundreds of millions of dollars on those toxic “right-to-work” campaigns.
Again: The apparatus is already in place.
