First, watch this video:
This, along with watching Maddow tonight, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, and paying attention in my Early American Working Class history class has brought me to this rant. First, a small history lesson:
In Colonial America, we had something called an “assize of bread.” This set the weight and price of a loaf of bread in the colonies. This ensured that every working American could afford to feed their family. If anyone proposed anything like today, they would be called a socialist. We also had laws against these actions:
• “forestall”: Buy provisions before they reach market
• “regrate”: Buy at market and resell at a higher price
• “engross”: Buy a crop still in the field (speculating)
Again, today, if you suggest any regulations like this, or any regulation in general to be imposed on businesses and corporations, you’re a socialist.
Back then, working people really felt like they were entitled to a voice and a piece of this country. They knew their power and acted on it by forming unions and striking for fair pay and shorter hours. They participated in their government. We don’t do this anymore, at least not until the situation is too dire to really do anything.
Yes, the Boston Tea Party was an act of revolt against the British telling the colonies what to do. Yes, the colonies wanted their own government and they participated in it. But they also wanted to do so to impose a moral economy, which is clearly not the task of today’s Tea Party. Moral economy, above all, opposes free-riders, people who only take and do not give. What’s one of the biggest tenants of the tea party? Don’t tax the rich. Working class people, unionized people, formed the core of resistance against the British. What does the Tea Party want to do? Attack the middle class and take away collective bargaining. When you lower the taxes on the haves, the have-not’s have to pay for it. The national debt is going anywhere, and republicans aren’t going to budge on cutting some defense funding. The money has to come from somewhere, and it’s going to be the middle class.
Trickle down economics doesn’t work. Corporations take the money they save and raise their own salaries. If you want to give tax breaks, keep an eye on the corporations you give it to. Require proposals. Make them tell you how many jobs they promise to create.
You can try to make a case that our county now is not our country then, and I completely agree. But if you’re going to claim one piece of the American Revolution, you had better take a look at the whole picture. And we do need regulation, right now, because our largest corporations aren’t living a couple houses down the street, where we can talk to them about our concerns or have any real input on how they do business. They are huge entities with a strangle-hold on this country. They’re not committed to a moral economy. They don’t have a conscience that would make them possible candidates for self-regulation.
One of my coworkers said, “Corporations should regulate themselves. They’re not going to do things to hurt us because they would lose money.” On the contrary, they constantly do things to hurt us because it saves them money, and no one cares enough to pay attention. Halliburton, case and point. Mountain top removal corporations. Wal-mart.
I don’t get what’s so hard to understand. If they want to move oversees, whatever. There’s always someone else to do the job, and you can provide incentives for them that you were wasting on the ones that left. Let’s grow businesses that care about workers. Deal?
This, along with watching Maddow tonight, the recent Occupy Wall Street movement, and paying attention in my Early American Working Class history class has brought me to this rant. First, a small history lesson:
In Colonial America, we had something called an “assize of bread.” This set the weight and price of a loaf of bread in the colonies. This ensured that every working American could afford to feed their family. If anyone proposed anything like today, they would be called a socialist. We also had laws against these actions:
• “forestall”: Buy provisions before they reach market
• “regrate”: Buy at market and resell at a higher price
• “engross”: Buy a crop still in the field (speculating)
Again, today, if you suggest any regulations like this, or any regulation in general to be imposed on businesses and corporations, you’re a socialist.
Back then, working people really felt like they were entitled to a voice and a piece of this country. They knew their power and acted on it by forming unions and striking for fair pay and shorter hours. They participated in their government. We don’t do this anymore, at least not until the situation is too dire to really do anything.
Yes, the Boston Tea Party was an act of revolt against the British telling the colonies what to do. Yes, the colonies wanted their own government and they participated in it. But they also wanted to do so to impose a moral economy, which is clearly not the task of today’s Tea Party. Moral economy, above all, opposes free-riders, people who only take and do not give. What’s one of the biggest tenants of the tea party? Don’t tax the rich. Working class people, unionized people, formed the core of resistance against the British. What does the Tea Party want to do? Attack the middle class and take away collective bargaining. When you lower the taxes on the haves, the have-not’s have to pay for it. The national debt is going anywhere, and republicans aren’t going to budge on cutting some defense funding. The money has to come from somewhere, and it’s going to be the middle class.
Trickle down economics doesn’t work. Corporations take the money they save and raise their own salaries. If you want to give tax breaks, keep an eye on the corporations you give it to. Require proposals. Make them tell you how many jobs they promise to create.
You can try to make a case that our county now is not our country then, and I completely agree. But if you’re going to claim one piece of the American Revolution, you had better take a look at the whole picture. And we do need regulation, right now, because our largest corporations aren’t living a couple houses down the street, where we can talk to them about our concerns or have any real input on how they do business. They are huge entities with a strangle-hold on this country. They’re not committed to a moral economy. They don’t have a conscience that would make them possible candidates for self-regulation.
One of my coworkers said, “Corporations should regulate themselves. They’re not going to do things to hurt us because they would lose money.” On the contrary, they constantly do things to hurt us because it saves them money, and no one cares enough to pay attention. Halliburton, case and point. Mountain top removal corporations. Wal-mart.
I don’t get what’s so hard to understand. If they want to move oversees, whatever. There’s always someone else to do the job, and you can provide incentives for them that you were wasting on the ones that left. Let’s grow businesses that care about workers. Deal?
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