12-05-08, 9:27 am
Who says there are no slaves in America? The greatest domestic issue facing President-elect Obama is not the bailout of the bankers and insurers but the task of lifting tens of millions of hard-working American wage-slaves out of dire poverty. These are the folks who hold one – and sometimes two or even three low-paying jobs, work their tails off 60 hours or more a week, and are still stuck in poverty on payday with no hope of climbing out.
Indeed, if enough workers were getting paid a living wage Wall Street and Detroit would not find themselves begging Washington for billions. Homeowners would have enough money to pay their mortgages and buy new cars. Today’s crisis is the bitter payback for decades of corporate greed. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has written, “Most of what’s been earned in America” in the past 35 years “has gone to the richest 5 percent.” Result: 37 million Americans are said officially to live in poverty but Catholic Charities of Saint Paul-Minneapolis notes a more realistic accounting puts the poor at 50 million.
During the Bush regime, five million more Americans slid into poverty, and the unemployment figure, charitably put at 6.5 percent (but actually much higher counting discouraged workers,) hit a 14-year high in October. And at least five million people are working part-time because they can’t find full-time jobs. What’s more, those fully employed have seen their overtime pay disappear and their working hours shrink as demand tanks for their goods and services. Each day, thousands of pink slips are being handed out.
