Since I was a child the term “minimum wage” has been heard from the mouths of many around me as a plea, as a protest, and as a demand for a way to be more than slaves to labor. Daily the working poor seemed to be asking, “How can we be so poor when we give so much?” To a young person it was a puzzle that was painted by their voices with broad strokes of poverty. Throughout the world its diction changed but not the colors of the “have not’s”. They were the colors of hunger, class division, repression, pain, and ignorance that all developed in my mind into a painting of wretched proportions. I remember crying one night as I wondered who could or would want to hold such a paintbrush that brought so little to so many. Yet, without a doubt the artists existed. So began my search for an answer to the destitution in business that allowed for working poverty. First I had to explore the nature of the beast, define who the potential artists are, and what could possibly be a solution to problem.
The question on how to define the right of a human worker seems to be answered in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Namely, “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care, and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age, or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Would it be reasonable to say that a certain individual that worked full-time should be able to, with all of their wages if necessary, cover this minimal standard of human rights, even if there was nothing left over for personal extra’s? As a minimal standard, shouldn’t the full-time labors of that individual be considered adequate? Or, would it be better for food and shelter to be a privilege rather than a right? Should shelter be marketed so high that banks have to liquidate in order to cover dropped mortgages? And finally, when did we as a society make these choices for our laborers?
Some have argued that what we call capitalism and free enterprise was abandoned, “long ago in the aftermath of WW I in favor of Mussolini's "corporatism," where Big Business, Big Government, and Big Finance form combines to exploit the people with monopolized prices and corrupted dollars.” (EFES, pg.1) Regardless of the cause, the byproduct is clear, social inequality. Richard Freeman, author of America Works, boldly states that, “If there were a gold medal for inequality, advanced country division, the United States would win hands down.” (Pg. 43)
With the decline of the middle class in the 1980’s, a polarization emerged in the United Sates, which became more dramatic in the 1990’s. This was due to the enormous increase in earnings of those in the top income bracket, and the stagnation of the wages of those in the bottom income bracket. (pg.49) Freeman goes on to state that, “Inequality in earnings in the United States increased so massively over a quarter-century or so of economic growth that the main beneficiaries were a small number of super-rich individuals and families.” In addition, the CPS survey ranked the top 10 percent of earners were the only group whose earnings grew at a pace comparable to the nation’s growth in productivity. But, “the CPS earnings survey understates the increase in earnings for persons with high earnings. It top-codes high earnings so that persons making more than the top-coded value (150,000 per year in 2005) are reported as earning the top amount rather than what they actually earned.” (Pg. 39) The direct result of this is inaccurate accounting of the top 10 percent and their earnings; and the growing gap is the number of people living below the poverty line, which has been steadily increasing. Richard Freeman states that, “In other words, the United States, alone among the advanced countries, lost its war on poverty.” (Pg. 53) As this gap broadens with the disparity between those that have money and those that do not, societal ills emerge; in fact it could be called the progenitor of societal ills.
Allow me to share how this looked to me when I was a ten-year-old child. My father had no insurance and shortly before my mother was admitted into the hospital paralyzed, he lost his full-time job. It was a desperate time for my family as my five older siblings and I waited for word on our mother’s condition. Eventually our father returned from the hospital and told us that our mother had a brain tumor. For years she had gone to doctors trying to gain relief for her headaches, but they never ran any tests nor did a CAT scan because we didn’t have good enough insurance. Frustrated over finding out so late, having so few choices with no insurance, my father waited nearly a week before he finally gave the “okay” to take my mother off of life-support. There was not going to be any life-saving operation. As it was, father was going to have to appeal to the state for a poor-man’s grave for my mother.
As for the next fifteen years, they are pretty much a write off for my entire family. Within a year, all I knew was gone. My family blew apart like leaves on the wind and I didn’t see them for many years to come. At the age of twelve I started working to help support myself. At fourteen I labored full-time, paid rent, and endeavored to put myself through school. My brothers had moved to Arizona and had gotten involved in dangerous things like gangs and drugs in their perceived quest of survival. My eldest sister married and moved to California, while the younger sister had difficulty in base survival. It’s hard to explain all the usable skills, contagious smiles, and brilliant minds that they had before mother died to someone who never knew them. But it is safe to say that had you seen them before and compared them to after, you would not have thought they were the same people. The point of this story is that it is not a unique one. This happens all the time in America. Over 47 million Americans in 2005’s statistics did not have health insurance. Between 2005 and 2006 the number of uninsured rose 2.2 million, with nearly 1.3 million of those being full-time workers. Over 80% of all uninsured are native or naturalized citizens. Over 80% of all uninsured are from working families. And over 70% of all uninsured Americans are from families with one or more full-time working family member. (NCHC 2008) Uninsured workers in America are becoming an epidemic. It is one of the colors of poverty that slashes into even the best-intended family and can neutralize them to the point of destitution and even homelessness.
Last year I was involved in a point-in-time homeless count for the state of Washington. It was understood and quoted in all of the coalition documents that the majority of families in America are two paychecks and/or one crisis away from being homeless. Our group’s goal had been to organize resources for the homeless, fund a homeless drop-in center, and raise social awareness with an anthology of homeless stories and artwork. As we interacted with the homeless we found their local statistics to coincide with Washington States overall statistics. For example, over half of the homeless were employed, many at more than one job; thirty percent of the homeless were veterans; and over half of the homeless were women, most of which had children either with them or couch surfing with a relative. (TYHP 2006) One of the women that I met during that time had been juggling two jobs and two kids when she fell a behind on her rent. Unfortunately, she was evicted and ended up moving her family into a motel that cost thirty dollars a night. The reason I mention her is because I had known her before she was homeless at my daughters after-school care program. She was one of those people that is well put together and works steady and hard, even with a bunch of little ones going crazy around her. She lived humbly and was not addicted to any substance, and yet, working two jobs was not enough for her to support her family here in Washington. The struggle she was going through trying to have housing for her family was not as simple as raising enough funds to move into another apartment, as if that wasn’t hard enough with first, last, and deposit. But because she was evicted it went on her credit report and now she having great difficulty finding an apartment complex that would rent to her, and will for seven years to come. According to the Department of Labor, in 2003 nearly a quarter of all workers were earning poverty level hourly wages, and in King County it takes at least four minimum wage earners to afford a two-bedroom apartment. (AW, Pg. 13; TYHP 2006) When all the facts are considered, there is little surprise that working homelessness is on the rise.
Although these stories and statistics in America are hard to stomach, our country does not hold an exclusion on working poverty. An example of the working poor outside of America would be Sufia Begum of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Sufia is illiterate but has a strong work ethic and usable skills. She borrows five taka (22 US cents) from the paikars (creditor) to buy bamboo. She then weaves the bamboo into stools, which she sells back to the paikars for a profit of fifty paisa (2 US cents). This is an example of the dadan system, traders advance loans against standing crops or product for the compulsory sale of the crops or product at a predetermined price, which is lower than the market price. (BTTP, pg. 8) This system is similar to what was used in the US after the emancipation proclamation for the laboring freed slaves. For the freedmen it became a new form of slavery, an economic one. (TSBF, Du Bois) In Chittagong, the fact is that less than twenty-seven US dollars of investment capital was preventing forty-two people in that area from progressing beyond their economic subjection. Muhammad Yunus said in regards to this situation, “It seemed to me that the existing economic system made it absolutely certain that her [Sufia’s] income would be kept perpetually at such a low level that she could never save a penny and could never invest in expanding her economic base.” (BTTP, pg. 9) This system not only holds her down but also consigned her children to live a life of penury with no exploration of knowledge, genius, or skills outside that of base survival. But the problem is greater than how it affects her home. All of her valuable skills, genius, intellect has not been developed and will never contribute to the elevation of her society as a whole. Society is not being newly enriched with new genius and therefore has become stagnant due to the grip of those in power, or the usurers.
It has been said that, “There are usurers in every society. Unless the poor can be liberated from the bondage of the money-lender, no economic programme can arrest the steady process of alienation of the poor.” (BTTP, pg. 8) It is perhaps the easiest tool of subjection because the laborer has to labor for survival, and when that consumes all their time, there is no genius or power to contest with those in whose grip they are held. With law on the employers side under the ‘employment at will’ doctrine for easy job elimination, many US workers are offered little to no security and have to jump from job to job in order to survive. This ultimately reduces the power of the individual to provide for their families in the US corporate system.
Throughout history there has been some form of subjection: be it religious, culture, race, or gender. The brightest color of subjection of our time is one of economic subjection, which is played out by our businesses, by our governments, and by our banks. I think John Stewart Mill said it best when he stated that, “There is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation; and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary, to grow more an more formidable…and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world to see it increase.” (OL, pg. 13) With the increase of working poor, one often wonders what has happened to the champions of rank and file? Or, who will stand up to the increase of economic subjection? The truth is that we can’t count on our Unions to turn this tide.
In The Future of Global Unions, Alan Howard says that, “Unions may have lost so much ground on the international playing field and have been so weakened over the past half century that they will no longer be able to provide an effective counterweight to the inequalities of capitalism. This is a race against time, and the stakes are very high. As weak as it is, organized labor, with it’s global reach, its billions in assets, tens of millions of members, thousands of employees, and historic vocation for uplifting the downtrodden, is the largest social movement on the planet and perhaps the last, best hope we have for averting the rendezvous with disaster that our profit-crazed economic system seems determined to keep.” (Pg. 64)
In some ways the answer is simple and in other ways it is complex, but what is obvious is that, “the abuse of power cannot be very much checked while the power remains,” and that, “the love of power and the love of liberty are in eternal antagonism.” (SW, pg. 85; OL, pg. 105) This paper is not about overthrowing the government but it is about the restructuring of labor to conform with universal human rights. It is about the solution that no one wants to hear; it is about placing a cap on profit.
This idea came to me one day when I was pondering the problem. As researched the possibility I realized I wasn’t the only one to come up with the idea. Harry Bridges, a rank and file union leader, once said that the labor problem could be averted if there was a cap placed on profit. At the time the corporate representative laughed wanting to think that he had just made a clever jest, but he hadn’t. It is as with history that until the subjection is contested, societal balance will be unachievable. “The matter is certainly not improved by laying down as an ordinance of law, that the superstructure of free government shall be raised upon a legal basis of despotism on one side and subjection on the other; and that every concession which the despot makes may, at his mere pleasure, and without any warning, be recalled.” (SW, pg. 43) So we need to look at this from the bottom up rather than the top down, and step outside of the current governing system.
Lets say that I work full-time for a company where everyone who works there earns within 10% of each others wages, regardless of position, experience, and education. As productivity and profit increase, the excess trickles down to the employees until their wages and benefits are within 10% of those at other businesses in their city. At this point the excess profit goes into a city holding tank where it is used to assist other companies with the community reach the same level of productivity. Where the money goes would be determined by a board represented by the contributing company members, social members, education leaders, and those people within the community that would petition use of such funds in the generation of their ideas, companies, or education. Now imagine all the companies within the city using this trickle-over and profit-balance until over-lapping business efforts blanket the entire community. So what happens when the cities profit-excess exceeds that of other cities within the state? Well, it trickles into a state capitol tank to work in conjunction with other cities to assist with their productivity and profit elevation. As you can probably see by now that an equalizing is taking effect that would inevitably spread from company, to city, to state, to country, and to the world until all human rights, education, and labor are equalized. What would be the results of such liberation from economic subjection?
Business creation would not be for a selfish reason, but rather a social one. As the social aspects of society are more awarded then the alienation of man from their labor will be reduced, along with many of the social diseases that are created by this accumulation competitiveness of a capitalistic society. As the world becomes more productive, so will their benefits become more lucrative due to the increase in societal productivity. By the expansions back into genius from strict capitol gain, productive behavior will not exist solely in business and where it does it will branch out into untested waters due to liberation of thought from under the suppression of money. Through the increase of intellectual diversity our societies and freedoms will be improved upon. New outlets will be explored, previously forgotten due to the repression of wages and rule of the dollar. The challenge would not exist for accumulation of wealth, but who can contribute more through genius to society – ultimately leading to the improvement and progression of the society, rather than the harnessing of the poor for greater capital gain. In the words of Muhammad Yunus, “Poverty can be eradicated in our lifetime. We only need the political will.” (BP, pg. 23)
It will not be known exactly what will emerge from such a broad range of explored genius, because it has never been done. True opportunity has not been available to society as a mass and cannot until we reach as a society our universal human rights, which includes equality of economics. But as once people doubted the contribution women could make to society, I imagine our communities will be greatly advanced with the whole of the global society having increased opportunity to explore their natural gifts in a socialist structure. “The real wage-productivity paradox is not about accounting. It is about another aspect of America’s exceptional labor market: the economics that put so much of the growth of productivity into the pockets of so few.” (AW, pg. 40) This is where the battle should begin, by the distribution of profit to all the laborers that generated it in the first place. And perhaps, as society becomes stronger through it’s individuals, the painting of the worker will be full of so many rich colors’ that poverty’s colors will disappear along with the paintbrushes that put them there to begin with. That is if we have the courage to embrace the “unwanted” solution.
Bibliography
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