Not all jobs are equal

[marmar]

from the LA Times:



Not all jobs are equal
A lower unemployment rate isn't enough. Americans need work that pays the bills.

By Jonathan Tasini
January 24, 2012


Politicians bickering over private equity's impact on jobs and how to bring down the high unemployment rate are entirely missing the point about the crisis facing working Americans. The predicament we face isn't simply that there are too few jobs; it's also that an increasing number of workers don't have the kind of job that can pay the bills.

While productivity has grown by more than 80% over the last 30 years, wages have effectively been flat for 80% of Americans. So, although we're making stuff faster and more efficiently, the benefits of that hard work have not trickled into the pockets of the people who do it.

Let's turn first to the intensifying debate over Mitt Romney's role as a private equity manager. It's of course ludicrous that Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry — two veteran advocates of a vehemently anti-union, free-market agenda that laid the foundation for the newly coined "vulture capitalism" — condemned those principles while campaigning in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

But equally absurd is Romney's defense that, at the end of the day, his company, Bain Capital, created more jobs than it destroyed. Even if he's telling the truth by some measures, the fact is that private equity buyouts often enrich those who arrange them by sharp cost-cutting, including dismantling pay and benefits for most of the workers who remain or new hires who join the more "efficient" enterprise. It's simple math: To service the huge debt taken on in virtually every buyout, workers take cuts. And the new jobs aren't necessarily a path to the American dream. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-tasini-high-unemployment-is-just-part-of-the-20120124,0,4204870.story

[rug]

1. Needs are.

[NNN0LHI]

2. All workers pay and benefits were once patterned after union workers pay and benefits

Even if you didn't belong to a union your wages were higher and benefits were better because of union members going on strike.

Now everyone's pay and benefits are patterned after what non-union workers are receiving.

Seen this coming 30 years ago.

And the rich get richer.

Don

[TheMastersNemesis]

3. 80% Goal

The way the GOP wants the job market 75% to 80% of the jobs will be bare subsistence if that. The deregulation push is about ending the Fair Labor Standards Act. That act was passed during the New Deal. It covered the 40 hour work week, 1 1/2 time for overtime, the 8 hour day, federal minimum wage and other fair labor standards practice. On top if top of that the GOP has said that child labor laws are unconstitutional and they will end those as well.

If the GOP and Romney wins the American labor force will be no better off than the peasants of the middle ages. We will have reached the era of the "totalitarian capitalistic state". And the GOP will use the military to kill any opposition. We will become Syria.

We are dealing with a bunch of economic racist bigoted murderers who use any means to gain complete power.