This is a section of the book:

US

Everything is Done By US

We Can Make it For US

by Tom Cantlon

The list of links to chapters can be found at:

http://tomcantlon.com/us_on_rsn

This time, good wages are a good indication of improvement but we also must have the power to address the thousand other ways the system has been stacked against US. And, maybe it's true that there just isn't enough money to do all of this? Or is that just smokescreen?

It's Not Just Wages. Or, What Good Will it Do if...?

Raising wages is referred to frequently in this book, but think of it as shorthand for much more than just that. It's the thousand ways that workers and consumers and citizens need to be treated with respect. It's about the other two words used a lot here, leverage and power. Leverage and power because, while we do need to be treated with respect, we cannot expect that to happen just because.

There are many good people in government and business who do treat others with respect because they are people of character, but far too often profit motives in business override respect, or the interests of the powerful override respect as they warp government. We won't get consistent respect simply out of niceness. We'll get it by using our leverage and power to require it.

We need respectful treatment across issues much broader than just wages because it does little good if all we get is decent wages. Here are just four items plucked from recent news to suggest the breadth of issues that need change. It's not the intention here to make a definitive list or a case for any particular issue, rather just to give some idea of the range of issues.

A court case found a company that worked with asbestos had no responsibility to warn workers about asbestos particles spreading from their work clothes to their family members at home, leading to cases of cancer. This was despite the company knowing the workers needed to be informed about this.

Safety guidelines for companies that deal with dangerous chemicals were relaxed despite the fact that accidents were happening nationwide at a rate of more than once every couple of weeks. These included incidents reported as "2.5 million pounds of pollutants released", "kills four workers", "emissions that cover nearby homes, cars and an elementary school playground", "Shelter-in-place orders for two elementary schools" and "explosions...evacuation of more than 70 square miles". (Details for this list are in the Notes section at the end of this book.) The official who was in charge of relaxing the rules justified it by saying that it would save industry "roughly $88 million a year". Hardly a sum worth mentioning compared to the danger involved.

A company that was "the top federal contractor in the call-center industry" had, for years, been under paying what the federal contract had required them to pay by using a simple trick. When employees were given higher levels of work, they would still be categorized as lower-level workers.

An official study of public water supplies listed many that had been contaminated by leaks from nearby chemical plants or military installations. However, the report was hidden because of the "potential public relations nightmare this is going to be".

What good does it do to have more jobs that promise good wages if the employer can get away with carelessly causing cancer, releasing toxic chemicals onto your neighborhood or schools, shortchanging the pay you're supposed to get, or contaminating the water in your home? The decades of powerful interests whittling away at things has permeated into every aspect of life and can only be corrected by a long, sustained time of working at undoing it. No single election of a favorable person or handful of changes of law or changes in policies or programs is going to correct it. It has to be a system wide regaining of our leverage and power, and then that has to have its effect over time.

In addition to wages, it's about other aspects of employment, like whether you can be denied advancement or let go for reasons of prejudice and whether issues of harassment are treated seriously and properly. It's the fine print in employment contracts that bars you from going to work for another company even for low-level jobs. It's consumer issues like the fine print that bars you from suing if wronged. It's citizen issues like whether companies near your neighborhood can carelessly release pollutants and whether policing operates the same for all people and all neighborhoods. It's whether good rules already on the books are enforced, wage-theft being a prime example of what happens when they aren't.

So, yes, wages are important, and if we have the power and leverage to get full-value wages, then we probably have the power to address these other issues, but many of these other issues must be addressed too. Wages are a good example topic and a good issue to focus on for regaining our power and leverage, but it is only if this broad range of issues are addressed that it becomes a country that is truly for US.

Is There Enough Money for US to Have More?

Isn't the idea of everyone getting noticeably better wages just wishful thinking? Isn't there simply not enough money in the economy? Or it would take extracting so much out of the rich they wouldn't want to own or run businesses anymore?

No. That kind of problem would only happen if this were about making promises about how big your paycheck should become or promises of huge handouts such as a guaranteed income. That kind of problem would only happen if this were about making promises the economy might not be able to meet. But that's not what this is about. This is only about how the money in the economy, however big or small the economy is, how that money is divided between workers and those getting business profit.

The kind of programs that give fixed promises which the economy might not be able to keep up with already exist. There already are at least some programs that might not keep up under the worst circumstances. For instance, Medicare really is a program that taxes current working-age people in order to help retired people have health care. If the number of retired people compared to the number of working-age people got to be too out of balance or a bad downturn in the economy had too many people out of work for too long, it's possible the taxes on working people couldn't keep up with senior’s medical bills. (Medicare is not like a medical savings account because most people who live to old age draw more out of Medicare than they put in. The tax on working people is what really keeps it going.)

But proposals of the sort that are in this book are nothing like that. They are just about dividing the economic pie in a fair way. They're about empowering people to be able to negotiate with their employers like equals, so that a fair compromise is found which gives working people their full value while still leaving enough profit in the system to make it worth being in business. Whether the economy grows much faster than expected or shrinks because we hit a rough patch, however big or small the pie is, this is about dividing it fairly, as sorted out by free-market negotiations. Negotiations that are between equals. That is between the business owners, and the working people organized in ways that bring them up to equal leverage.

There may be other social programs that are needed, but that's not the topic of this book. Some social programs might be needed as a temporary bridge while people regain power, but then those programs might be reconsidered after power is more balanced. Some social programs that are talked about as possibilities for the future might be best considered only after power is balanced, so it can be determined at that point if there is even still a need or if the empowering of people has already solved the problem.

So no, the question of whether there's enough money is not a problem, because it's not about making promises of fixed dollar amounts.

Here are a few other side points.

• This is not about taking money from the rich in any way like taxing them more. Whether that needs to be done is a separate question but has nothing to do with what's suggested here.

• Other parts of this book describe how we are not dependent on the rich for a strong economy or thriving business. If that still sounds shocking or wrong, go back and read that section again. Even if the wealth of the wealthy was lessened some, it doesn't matter. If people having more leverage leads to the wealthy having less wealth (it's possible it will actually make them richer because an economy full of working people who are well rewarded would become a stronger, larger economy) but if it reduced their wealth at all it would not mean there's less money in the economy overall. It would just mean a little less of it is in wealthy hands and a little more is in working hands. The money would still be in the economy being spent and being saved and put into 401(k)s. Money spent ends up as profit for companies, and money saved is all in the pool of finance available for investment. So there would be no reduction in money available for doing business.

• Some of the changes that need to be made are not about money but about simple fairness, like ending wage theft or things that have nothing to do with money, like dealing seriously with harassment.

• Some changes save money. For instance, raising typical wages, even of the lowest paid jobs, will mean fewer people qualifying for food stamps. But there are further kinds of savings. For instance, couples earning more of what their work is worth would have more options for one spouse to stay home or work part time while the kids are little, leading to the kids being in less trouble, going farther with their education, and becoming more productive adults.

• Some changes actually boost the economy. Getting more money into the hands of working people probably means they're going to spend a lot of it on things they've needed to do but have been putting off. That means business will sell more and that more goods and services will need to be produced. The overall economy will grow bigger to meet those demands.

• Regarding changing how the pie is sliced, we know from our own fairly recent past that having more going to employees worked very well and still allowed the rich to be fabulously rich.

Yes, there is room for working people to get more. You just haven't been getting your share.

Next

The argument about less or more government is inaccurate. The need is for less government in the ways it's used as a tool of power against US, more government in the form of citizens using it as the way we ensure a fair space for US to thrive in, the way we naturally do when powers aren't manipulating US.

Tom Cantlon is a business owner and writer in a small western town. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it