Instead of Tea Parties, Why Not Switch to "We Need Jobs" Rallies?
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High taxes don't seem to be the main problem in the U.S., the lack of employment opportunities is undermining our social fabric.
"Let them eat cake," said France's Marie Antoinette when she was told the common people had no bread.
That same kind of cake that the aristocratic Frenchwoman alluded to is now being served at tea parties all over the country.
With 95 percent of Americans paying less taxes under the Obama Administration, according to government claims, the tea party movement seems to have the wrong target.
Writers around the country, including Paul Krugman in The New York Times and Thom Hartmann of Commondreams.org in the Huffington Post, have noted that the tea party movement is promoted by ultra conservatives and funded by wealthy corporate interests.
According to those writers, politics underlies the tea parties. They also point out that the original Boston Tea Party in 1773 was aimed at the largest Wal-Mart type corporation of the time, the East India Company of England.
The East India Company, with its monopoly on shipping tea to the English colonies in America, was forcing small entrepreneurs out of business.
Much like today, failures of small businesses proliferated and unemployment soared in colonial America.
High taxes don't seem to be the main problem in the U.S., the lack of employment opportunities is undermining our social fabric.
Much like those days more than 230 years ago, thousands of Americans are out of work. Many young people have never worked. Illegal aliens in some cases hold the manual labor jobs that for decades provided young people their start in the working world.
Recent statistics indicate more than 6,000 unemployed in Bay County, nearly 11,000 in Saginaw and more than 29,000 in Flint. Michigan unemployment is tallied at 615,000, approaching 13 percent of the labor force.
The figure of 12 percent unemployment is an illusion since perhaps a like number may not even be listed as seeking employment. An accurate calculation might approximate the 25 percent unemployment recorded during the Great Depression.
And those figures don't include the numbers of people who have left their homes Michigan in hopes of finding employment elsewhere.
Current jobless rates continue to rise under recent trends of moving jobs "offshore" and hiring illegal immigrants instead of U.S. citizens. It seems that rather than corporate-backed anti-tax tea parties there needs to be a movement for jobs for Americans.
The wealthy corporate interests apparently have no interest in the future of working class America. They think their money made on hedge funds and sophisticated investment strategies is safe from the hurly burly of the domestic labor market.
Without realizing it, these wealthy folks have undermined their own sources of wealth in this nation. Eventually, if the employment infrastructure of the nation continues to weaken, the golden goose will die.
The greatest corporation in the history of the world until perhaps 20 years ago was General Motors. Hundreds of communities like Bay City and Saginaw grew and thrived mainly because of GM factories.
These communities were able to provide high levels of education, health care and social services because of the tax base provided by GM and supplier firms.
Now GM is a shadow of its former self, staggering under foreign competition and government policies that allowed unfair trade.
And the companies like Wal-Mart that feed off virtual slave labor in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and other dictatorial regimes, are thriving.
This cruel twist of globalization has weakened America by impoverishing its working class. It's time to have tea parties to promote jobs for Americans, don't you think?###
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Dave Rogers |
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