Why do I bring this to your attention? Because we had a decline for over half a century of something that a clear majority of Americans think about was not a good thing. So it didn't happen, the decline of labor, because the American people didn't Want labor unions, as the right wing asserts. On the contrary, Americans wanted labor unions. Americans then and now believed they did more benefit to our society than harm, which is more than you can say from any other institutions. Unions were victims of a concerted effort by business and the government it controls to weaken working people's ability to get a decent job, to get a secure job. And let's not lose sight of one big fact. Where did the business community get the money to run these campaigns and to persuade and lobby the politicians? The working people produced the profits with their labor that were used by their employers to undercut those workers ability to get properly paid for what they did. There's more than a little irony in that reality. Another example of where people want one thing, but where the capitalist system gives them something else had to do with statistics out about what corporations did with that enormous tax cut they got last December. Well, it turns outand this is from NBC News, it turns out that the bulk of the money saved by the big companies who got a cut in their profits tax from 35% to 21%, that's a big cut. The bulk of that did not go to hire more workers and did not go to raise wages, neither of which have happened in proportion to the tax cut they got. Here's what they did do. They bought back shares of stock. That's right. A company can use the money it no longer gives Uncle Sam in taxes to go into the stock market and buy its own shares back from the private companies and the private individuals who own those shares. And you know what this does? It drives up the value of shares. And why would the executives of these companies do that? Because it turns out for many of them, their pay package depends on how well the shares do in the market. So they're taking the money they don't give to Uncle Sam, which therefore can't provide us with public services. And they're using that money to boost the values of the shares so they take home more money. You live in a system that makes that attractive and that makes it possible. And guess what? The result of businesses being able to use the tax savings to boost their share prices is to make the rich richer. And the rest of us, not so much. 1% of shareholders own 65 or more percent of all shares. So when the price of shares goes up, it's really good news for the 1%, not for the rest of us. Inequality gets worse. And why am I telling you this? Because poll after poll, not just by the Pew folks, but by everybody, Gallup and everybody Else says Americans would prefer less inequality than what we have now. The tax cut, which was sold to the American people or something we all want, produced the very greater inequality that every poll shows Americans don't want. We didn't want labor unions to disappear, and we didn't want inequality to grow worse. And we have a government and a business community that gave us both of those things we don't want. And now let's talk about a really big event that we also don't want. A trade war. We're already in one. It kind of started on the 6th of July when the Trump tariffs went into effect against China. We already had some increase in tariffs before that, and the Chinese immediately retaliated, which the Europeans are doing, the Canadians are doing, the. The Mexicans are doing, and so on. Let me talk to you about what a trade war is so we all understand what is being done to us First. Every country, for as long as we have historical records, manipulates its foreign trade. It tries to get advantages for its own people at the expense of other companies, other individuals in other countries. The United States has not been greater or lesser in doing this than anybody else. I'm going to just give you a few examples. Are we a country that allows others to send their stuff over here without putting a tax, which we call a tariff, on them? The answer is no. We have been doing that all along. The entire history of the United States is the up and down of these tariffs. Do we have them today? You bet. I've given you some examples in the past. I'm going to give you one right now just to give you an idea. Light trucks, a kind of vehicle that Americans really want to have in the countryside, on the farm, but also in the suburbs and indeed everywhere. Light trucks carry a 25% tariff applied by the United States government, ready for the last 50 years. That's why light trucks are made here, because foreigners can't bring them in here. We don't let them, since we slap them with a tax that raises their price, which is why they are produced here. Is the United States the only one who does this? Of course not. Europeans do it and the Japanese do it, and you name it, they do it. Likewise, we put quotas. In the 1970s, we told the Japanese automobile companies, you can't bring more than a certain number of cars here, no matter what the price is. That was something we did. Countries do that. Typically in the history of capitalism, there are periods when they bring down the tariffs because they think free trade, opening trade is profitable. The more Profitable way to go. Those usually are interspersed with periods when they go the other way. That's called protectionism rises. Then they put high tariffs. These things come and go. When you've exhausted the money making possibilities of a period of free trade, you shift to protection and vice versa. All that Mr. Trump is doing is reacting to what? To a period of relative free trade, from roughly the 1970s to roughly four or five years ago. It was a period when tariffs came down and taxes came down because American corporations wanted the whole world as their oyster, to sell wherever they could, to buy wherever they could, so we would get cheap clothing from abroad and fuel that we needed and so on. In the course of that free trade, as we all know, companies made a fortune. We've had the biggest rise in the stock market in American history. Profits were made, which is why that was done. But in the course of that process, some companies lost out and large numbers of American working people lost their jobs as companies moved abroad. And so guess what? What happened is what has always happened, the victims of free trade began to be bitter and angry and to look for a change. To what? To what capitalism always changes to. When the upset around one phase leads you to shift to the other one. And Mr. Trump is now trying to build his political career on being the champion of a shift to protection. Will the companies that invested in free trade let him? That's what the next few months and years will show us. Will it go back to protection? Maybe. But here's something that's so important for everyone to understand. This is a fight between one set of companies that sees more profit in a free trade arrangement versus another set of companies that sees more profit in a protectionist arrangement. They're fighting it out. Each side hopes that the government will go their way. The protection type companies want higher tariffs like the steel and all aluminum companies got. The companies that don't want that, like the car companies that just built enormous plants in China and India, which they want to sell those cars back here in the United States. They don't want it. They're fighting. Each side will come to the mass of the American people and say, you should support us because it's in your interest. This has been going on back and forth for centuries. It's time we stop being fooled. This has nothing to do with working people. Working people are going to be badly affected by the automation that happens, whichever way it goes, by the profit growing strategies, whichever way they go. Believe me, if we don't have cheap workers abroad that American companies can hire or low paid workers, bringing them in as immigrants. If that's blocked, if American companies have to pay high American wages, you know what that means? It means the incentive to replace those workers with machines will be greater than ever. And you're going to see a spurt of computerization and robots and artificial intelligence in this country, the likes of which we can't even imagine. Capitalism is based on saving money off of working people. It always was. And whether you're protectionist or free trade makes very little difference. Well, folks, we've come to the end of the first half of this program before introducing you to my guests, and I think you will be really interested. I want to remind you, please, to subscribe to our YouTube channel. It's very important. And to follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and also to make use of our website, democracyatwork.infox where you can get much more information and get involved. I want to particularly thank you, those of you in the Patreon community that support us, and also to remind you that if you're interested in participating in our local groups or Even in starting one, go to action.democracyatwork.info and there you will find a way to participate with us locally. We'll be right back.
C (17:03)
I think the first thing that we have to do if we're going to go about this whole thing is we have to eliminate the assumption that this is a teachers strike. What happened in West Virginia is not solely a teachers strike, and it's sort of irresponsible, I guess, from our side of it. If you're within the state, of course, if you're outside, you might not understand as much. The media showed us a lot of red shirts and blue shirts and purple shirts, and those things were by design. It was not coincidence. This was a collaboration that went across party lines and across job lines. So it's teachers, service personnel, public employees. You might have saw more of teachers because there are some folks, corrections officers, for example, who simply cannot walk off the job. And it's not to say that that's what we wanted to do, but the implications of those actions are a bit different, I think we could say. Right, right. So you, you have this. That happens, and then the, the, the other, the other thing to consider is that something really, really important happened. And it almost seems sort of silly. Unions used to be a force to be reckoned with. Right. Like, it was huge. Now they're more decorative in fashion. Right. And you sort of have this idea that, oh, it's this bill that I'm going to pay. So that way, you know, make sure everything's good. And what people forget is that if you want to talk to a union boss and you're a union member, you get up and you go look in a mirror. Because if you're in a union, you are the you in union. And when you are in a climate that is that. That is often stagnant and then turns into something that can be really devastating toward the state. And you just see this blatant abuse on the children in the state through the mistreatment of its employees. At that point, people start to wake up and they start saying, okay, we have to do something, and we start reaching out to our unions. But people, before they start talking to strangers, they talk to each other. And in West Virginia, you're just. I mean, a lot of times it can be very isolating. And the people that you have to talk to are the people at work. You start there and you start talking to other people and you say, what are we going to do? What can we do? What are the ramifications of some of the actions that we might take? You know, what can happen just so that way we know exactly what it is that we stand to lose.
C (19:51)
We love our kids. Listen, that cannot be overstated. There is. I mean, if you're a teacher, that is worth your salt. You love your kids. And it's not just love. You have a passion for what you do, and you are dedicated to what you do. And with the wages that we get paid, you better be dedicated. I mean, we often miss a lot of time with our family just to be with these kids, and that's evident in your practice. So we're not talking pedagogy here. We're just talking about how you roll into work, how you connect with the students, how you follow up with parents. A lot of our students are so far below the poverty line that you cannot teach just content. You cannot teach to an elbow or an earlobe. You have to teach the whole student. So you need to see to all of their needs. So that means that even though my job might be reading, writing, and science and those sorts of things, at the same time, I need to figure out a way to make sure that my kids have food, that they have access to books. Because at home, if you can't afford to pay the lot bill, you can't afford to go out and buy developmentally appropriate content and books and things that are interesting and that are going to sort of get rid of this whole achievement gap thing that people like to talk about. So just in that. And sort of things that we do and the way that we connect with our kids and follow up with our families, you just sort of become like just. Just a cohesive unit. You can't nod. It's really inevitable. And I mean, we have students who are. Our kids are talented, they're performers, they sing, they dance. And we. And you got to go. You got to go and see them, and you have to encourage those. Those sorts of things.
