By Sidney Secular
July 20, 2024
The system is rigged and the cards are stacked against the bottom 50% of American workers who make less than $27,000 annually. Outside of sports and entertainment, upwards mobility is a catchphrase that used to be associated with the elusive American Dream. You can’t live decently or independently even in much of flyover country and that’s why families subsist on two or more jobs and people are moving back to their parents’ basements if their parents still have a home, that is. Many of these unfortunates aren’t snowflakes and would do the jobs our beloved immigrants do with the same great work ethic they supposedly have if they were being paid a living wage. We got along without “off the book workers” for much of our history and would do so again if they weren’t here. We have enough books and videos on YouTube to tell us how to do many things. We just need the time to do them instead of working on two or more jobs in order to simply survive.
We also need to be able to do things without getting [1] a license from the local, state or federal government or [2] permission from neighborhood Karens who want to be able to tell you what you can and can’t do with your house or your car or your life! The service industries we rely on now for many jobs cannot pay the decent salaries they used to when we had an industrial base. America can’t keep up the pretense for much longer that everything is fine and dandy without an industrial base or a secure border. We once had a significant presence of unions that even with their corruption and mob influence helped create higher wages and good benefits. Even non-union employers had to keep up with the salaries and benefits unionized workers enjoyed or they would have fallen by the wayside. If the Left was truly progressive and if there was a populist still around, their number one issue would be the massive disparity of wealth in America instead of constantly harping on DEI or race and gender issues that either cannot (or should not) be changed, anyway. The four wealthiest Americans have as much collective wealth among them as the bottom half of the population! And this at a time when supposed “leftists” are in charge! Over 70% of workers are living paycheck-to-paycheck and about the same percentage have less than $1,000 savings in the bank. Back in the day, workers had strong private pensions and Social Security payments were just a supplement. Now the paltry SSI payments, which are not even properly adjusted for the rising cost of living, are what most retirees have to live on! Furthermore, those “benefits” never return anywhere near what those workers paid into the system, and yet they are frequently characterized as an entitlement.
The only past populist of importance who developed a system based on treating workers fairly was Huey Long, but his system smacked a bit of socialism, so he was assassinated just when his program called “Share Our Wealth” was garnering a large following, and he was challenging FDR for the presidency. The consolidation of wealth and power has only grown steadily and conspicuously stronger since Long’s demise and it was exacerbated by the COVID lockdowns. It would be very difficult to significantly deconstruct this concentration of power, but some simple measures could begin to ameliorate the sharp discrepancies in wealth. Some things to be considered would be “means tests” for Social Security and Medicare, subjecting all income to social security taxes, isolation of social security funds and make it a crime to commingle them with the general revenues; in other words, keep Congress’ hands out of SSI! If you have to have a minimum wage, tie it to a “maximum wage.” Sixty years ago, a company president made about 20 times what his lowest wage employee made. Now “CEOs,” a new-fangled term to increase their importance, make hundreds of thousands, if not millions of times more than their lowest paid employees, and are often half as competent as past “presidents” who were paid reasonably.
Another measure that could be adopted would make all those outrageous “performance bonuses,” that are often completely unrelated to performance, subject to taxation as is any other income. The national debt should be repudiated. It is created out of thin air and we never signed off on it. Most government spending is waste anyway as reported by The Grace Commission during the Reagan Administration. All the unconstitutional government agencies should be eliminated. Foreign aid giveaways should be eliminated or be restricted to technical assistance that would help America as well as the country receiving assistance; it should also be subject to repayment. All the troops should be brought home from the over 150 countries they are illegally stationed in, and place them where they are needed here as, for instance, on the borders.
The vast majority of the masses are barely making it and our children’s standard of living – something that has always been a point of pride with Americans – is demonstrably lower than that of their parents for perhaps the first time in history. It’s time for the people to get something in return for all those taxes. Consider it a “piece dividend” to get a decent piece of the pie. We can work and pray for proper treatment of the people, and we can also pray that people wake up from their near death state and demand justice.
© 2024 Sidney Secular – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Sidney Secular: Success_Express@yahoo.com
