i was reading an opinion piece on Bloomberg the other day that was saying employees are not your customers. The author went through some math calculations she had dreamed up to prove that Ford wouldn’t have made money if all his employees made enough to buy his cars.
What she failed to consider was that when an employee makes more money he/she can then afford to borrow. Borrowing money was not a consideration in her calculations.
Wage stagnation was supposed to change as more people got college degrees, health care costs were contained, and the economy improved...but this isn't happening. Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass claims that wage growth has been pushed down by powerful forces including by those that are harping austerity, austerity, austerity. Tecnological innovation and global competition makes it hard but he says government sponsored infrastructure projects would help.
i continue to find it absurd that paying wages so low that people have to go on food stamps to make ends meet is OK with conservatives. Why is a government handout under this kind of working circumstance acceptable? Why are taxpayers monetizing corporate profit?
The IMF(international Monetary Fund) advocates public government spending around the world in its latest World Economic Outlook. Usually an austerity heavy organization and normally very conservative the IMF has re-evaluated the benefits to an economy of government spending on infrastructure.
The IMF is now claiming that public infrastructure spending will reduce rather than increase government debt burdens. They claim that for every government dollar spent three are created in the economy. Three private dollars created for every one government dollar spent…think about that.
The reality is that deferring infrastructure spending places a huge burden on future generations. It just warms the cockles of my heart that an institution(IMF) so bent upon austerity has come full circle and now believes that government infrastructure investment is good for the economy.
As Noam Chomsky said, “The modern concept of the Common Good that is being relentlessly driven into our heads demands that we focus on our own private gain, and suppress normal human emotions of solidarity, mutual support and concern for others.”
Wouldn’t the public sphere be a much better place if we started investing in it again?
i was in KMart yesterday and thought how nice it is to have
See ya next week
No comments:
Post a Comment