Wages

HAPPY NEW YEAR! As we say goodbye to 2022, we can look back at a year with some notable victories, as well as some difficult hardships. While COVID is still with us, it has receded from being the oppressive plague that shrouded humankind in fear and mourning. And while Vladimir...

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  • January 1, 2023

There is an old saw that goes; there is your side, my side, and the truth is in the middle. The liberal perspective advocates a humanitarian view, finding a way to feed, house, and clothe people fleeing inevitable death by gang violence, drought, and starvation. The more conservative view is...

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  • December 28, 2022

This is the sixth set of notes for a reading group on Marx’s Capital, and includes a Volume I refresher for further reading of Volume II. There are links to earlier posts and texts that may be useful. Marx is probably too taken with a kind of scientism by proposing...

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  • October 25, 2021

Voting for the current crop of Republicans is like brushing your teeth with the water running. It is a waste of resources, has no purpose, but all your friends do it. Nothing was more symbolic than the displays of blubbering pique by Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan. The House...

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  • October 22, 2021

From that moment in November of 1969, when former President Richard Nixon asked for a “silent majority” to support his ‘Vietnamization’ effort, utilizing the peace with honor strategy; America’s shotgun wedding to the GOP marriage of silent loyalty and moral obedience was consummated. Between the Nixon and Reagan administrations, Republicans...

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  • August 13, 2021

Democrats, since the time of Franklin Roosevelt, have fought the accusation of wanting a Nanny State; equal access to housing, healthcare, fair wages, and education have been guiding tenets of the Democrats since the New Deal, the War on Poverty through the Covid Recovery Act—not always successful—but good principles, nonetheless....

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  • July 30, 2021

We all love how effective Jen Psaki has been as President Joe Biden’s White House Press Secretary. This was not her best moment. Jen Psaki had the perfect opportunity to swing hard See full episodes here. It was clear why the question tripped. This type of question will continue to trip up...

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  • June 5, 2021

MSNBC Host Stephanie Ruhle did not mince her words. She pointed out that businesses should pay more if they want more workers. Full stop. Stephanie Ruhle makes a lot of sense. See full episodes here. Today’s jobs report is out and it is not what was expected. Many thought that over one million...

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  • May 8, 2021

Joe Biden did not allow the GOP to drive a narrative blaming the rescue plan and lazy workers. He came out swinging. Biden gets ahead of the false employment narrative x x YouTube Video See full episodes here. So far, President Joe Biden are making mostly the right moves. Today’s jobs...

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  • May 7, 2021

Why is McConnell destroying the GOP? Why is Trump popular with his base? What does a low birth rate mean? Is capitalism the epidemic’s Achilles heel? Is McConnell oblivious to what he is unleashing? Politics Done Right Live weekdays @ 3:00 PM Central Video Zoom: LINK — Live Calls: (346)248-7799...

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  • May 5, 2021

I have heard Democrats touch trickle-down economics on the edges. But they always seem to fear hitting it not only head-on but for decimation. Biden takes trickle-down economics to the cleaners See full episodes here. The construction of this segment of the president’s speech was perfect. Understand this. It isn’t that  Republicans...

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  • April 29, 2021

“As in the Times Op-Ed from which the book originated, the title refers to the results of studies conducted in Germany from the mid-nineteen-eighties onward, which reported, among other intriguing findings, that eighty per cent of East German women always experienced orgasm during sex, compared to sixty-three per cent of...

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  • April 8, 2021

I read “Biden Can Go Bigger and Not ‘Pay for It’ the Old Way” by Economics Professor and MMT advocate Stephanie Kelton. It is an important read that we need to understand. Stephanie Kelton hits the nail on the head. See full episodes here. Ironically Professor Kelton shared some concerns with former...

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  • April 7, 2021

You’d think that a scholar in psychology, however flawed, would understand projection, and that fascism is more than making trains run on time, even when they didn’t. Hail Hydra, because parody is meta-criticism and perhaps we’ll see some plagiarism lawfare over self-help brand infringement. Apparently Jordan Peterson got offended that...

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  • April 6, 2021

Ted Cruz continued his “Hey, look! I’m not in Cancun!” tour yesterday, traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border in search of a thatch of reeds that in no way made him look like a serial killer floating freshly harvested bodies down the river on jerry-rigged rafts comprised of peat bog residue and...

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  • March 27, 2021

Have some weekend reading for you. The Atlantic has a great piece out about U.S. Senate candidate, Lt. Governor John Fetterman (D. PA), that’s worth a ready. Here’s a taste: Fetterman has already raised lots of money—$500,000 in just the first 72 hours he was in the race—in part as...

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  • March 12, 2021

A worthwhile article in the NYT Some highlights: Amazon has embarked on an advertising blitz this winter, urging Congress to follow the company’s lead and raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. American workers “simply can’t wait” for higher pay, the company said in a recent blog post....

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  • March 5, 2021
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From The Hill: Spoiler: Passing laws would indeed make my flags go away. Just not that one. Let’s do the right things for Pennsylvania. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇸 — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) February 24, 2021 Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic Senate candidate, has replaced the pro-weed and LGBTQ rights flags hanging from...

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  • February 25, 2021

Democrats look for solutions, and Republicans look for blame. I am not sure where I heard that phrase and I probably rejected it as just political rhetoric.  Recent events have given me reasons to examine and not dismiss the statement. Democrats are not perfect as demonstrated by the wavering support...

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  • February 22, 2021
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Recovering memory and historical revisionism in sex work might be the sad product of many repressive regimes. What becomes worse is the complicity of academic institutions in white-washing crimes against humanity.  Harvard is no stranger to items like Alan (buddy of Jeff Epstein) Dershowitz’s attempt to move the statutory rape...

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  • February 20, 2021

Received this e-mail today from the progressive organization, Indivisible: When we woke up this morning, Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) was trending on Twitter. And you should be pissed off. Yesterday, she told Politico that she’s opposed to including raising the federal minimum wage to $15 in the COVID-19 relief package moving through...

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  • February 13, 2021

Let real wages (of $15+/hour) grow faster than labor productivity for some years, undoing the wage repression of the last decades. We have been misled by neoliberal economics for now many decades, it’s time to turn many things around in what is becoming a second-rated US economy, recently crippled by the...

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  • February 9, 2021

It’s easy to see why the minimum wage is unacceptable The minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.2  If it had been indexed to the consumer price index since 1968, the minimum wage would now be $10.15. If it had kept pace with executive-level pay increases, it would be $23.3 So...

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  • February 6, 2021

Many Progressives are  excited about the upcoming prospective “Green New Deal” which is already taking shape, even before formal Green New Deal legislation.   Multi-billion dollar manufacturing plants for electrical vehicle batteries, providing 2000 jobs per plant, are already rising in Michigan and Georgia.  Fossil fuel  pipelines, already partly built like...

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  • January 31, 2021

The best explanation of short selling (as it applies to GameStop) that I've read pic.twitter.com/o9ZL5HqsKf — John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) January 28, 2021 1/2Short selling means borrowing shares and immediately selling them. When the price goes down, they buy them back for cents and return them to the lender. This...

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  • January 31, 2021

Received this e-mail today from Lt. Governor John Fetterman’s (D. PA) potential U.S. Senate campaign: All work has dignity. All paychecks must, too. That’s why, as a U.S. Senator, I’d fight to raise the national minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.  The minimum wage wage in Pennsylvania hasn’t...

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  • January 26, 2021

This post in the Anticapitalist Chat supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. #GoodMorningMarx #WeeklyMarx Reproduction and accumulation Capital is “self-valorising value”. But for capital to continue to generate new value and create surplus-value, this surplus-value must itself by reinvested back into production – that is, surplus-value must be...

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  • January 4, 2021

This post in the Anticapitalist Chat supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. #GoodMorningMarx #WeeklyMarx. Not quite this type of commodity, but more like a pork barrel. x “Ah, pork bellies, I knew it.” ~Louis Winthorpe @dan_aykroyd https://t.co/yeVcYIYtqF— Stephen Bates (@batess) December 3, 2020 M. Proudhon has the misfortune of...

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  • December 4, 2020

Received two e-mails from former President Barack Obama. The first one is in support of Jon Ossoff’s (D. GA) U.S. Senate campaign: Jon Ossoff (D. GA) & Raphael Warnock (D. GA) If Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are going to deliver the change we need to get this pandemic under...

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  • December 1, 2020

Received this e-mail today from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) in support of Jon Ossoff (D. GA) & Rev. Raphael Warnock’s (D. GA) U.S. Senate campaigns: Jon Ossoff (D. GA) & Raphael Warnock (D. GA) Jon Ossoff and Rev. Warnock’s runoff races in Georgia are our last chance to...

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  • November 21, 2020

This story supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. #GoodMorningMarx #WeeklyMarx This covers chapters 14, 15, 16.  Chapter 14 will provide further evidence of alienation in the division of labor and manufacturing in the capitalist reorganization of labor.  Chapter 15 describes more closely the production process and...

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  • November 4, 2020

This story supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. #GoodMorningMarx #WeeklyMarx This covers chapters 11-14. Today’s supporting summary is at the very bottom, below the fold. Set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry, Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley caused a sensation when it...

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  • November 1, 2020

This story supports a group reading of Karl Marx’s Capital Vol 1. This covers chapters 11-14. Set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry, Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley caused a sensation when it was published in 1849 – under the pseudonym ‘Currer Bell’. Robert Moore is...

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  • October 28, 2020

Here’s the latest news today out of Arizona courtesy of OH Predictive Insights: In the state’s other race with national consequences, former astronaut Mark Kelly maintains his advantage over incumbent Sen. Martha McSally. Half (50%) of Arizona voters prefer Kelly while 45% prefer McSally. One of the unique aspects of...

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  • October 27, 2020

This diary is for discussing chapters 9 and 10 of Capital Volume I by Marx. In it the explication of how surplus value as a concept is viable with certain reasonable, historical assumptions. apologies in advance for diverging from an established format. Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only...

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  • October 4, 2020

Received this e-mail from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) in support of Barbara Bollier (D. KS), Sara Gideon (D. ME), Theresa Greenfield (D. IA), MJ Hegar (D. TX), and Paulette Jordan’s (D. ID) U.S. Senate campaigns: We need to flip four seats to take back the Senate and remove...

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  • September 16, 2020

Trump’s constant pimping of the stock market numbers is not the same as a sign that the economy has returned to the level of “winning” even before Trump took office. Like voting twice, Trump’s not being a good minimal-state libertarian where all debt resolves itself in a ‘free market’. Instead,...

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  • September 4, 2020

Hurricane Laura is now a strong Cat 4, with winds up to 150 MPH (Cat 5 is 158 MPH, and it may get there). Storm surges are expected to push creeks and maybe rivers to reverse their flow. A meteorologist on MSNBC just predicted 15-foot flooding in Lake Charles, LA.,...

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  • August 27, 2020

Received this e-mail from former First Lady, U.S. Senator, Secretary of State and presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton: x I wish Donald Trump knew how to be a president, because America needs a president right now. Let's save our country, and our democracy, by electing @JoeBiden. My full speech from last...

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  • August 21, 2020

Received this e-mail just now form former presidential candidate, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D. MA), in support of the Biden-Harris ticket: I was honored to address the Democratic National Convention last night from the Early Childhood Education Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. In case you didn’t get a chance to watch...

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  • August 20, 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) got just over a 60sec window to say her piece. She was able to fit the entire Progressive movement within that time. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) did it. x x YouTube Video Watch the full episode When AOC was concerned that she only got a minute or so...

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  • August 19, 2020

As the grandson of a Teamster Truck Driver, I’m very proud to announce this: The 1.4 million member trade union the International Brotherhood of Teamsters endorsed Joe Biden for president Tuesday, its board unanimously voting to throw its support behind the Democratic ticket. The Teamsters’ announcement comes after two other...

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  • August 19, 2020

Received this e-mail from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) in support of John Hickenlooper’s (D. CO) U.S. Senate campaign: John Hickenlooper (D. CO) We need to win in Colorado if we’re going to take back the Senate this November and remove Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from power. Former Colorado...

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  • August 14, 2020

Deranged Trump syndrome: a dictatorial Trump now confronts his losing with even more autocratic attempts to consolidate power. Sabotaging the postal service to thwart voting…plus another attempt to loot social security.  Republican scorched earth on the way to the bunker. This defunds Medicare. This defunds Social Security. Tax collection is...

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  • August 8, 2020

In his latest screed, Trump made the usual nonsense claims, hoping to gain support from independents who might be afraid of PoC and poor people. Because no one’s heard of the FHA, Trump wants people in McMansions to vote for him, even if his claims about higher home prices is more about...

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  • July 29, 2020

Received two e-mails this week from U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D. OH) in support of his fellow Ohio Democrats. First, here’s his e-mail in support of these Democrats running to flip some red districts blue: Ohio is a key battleground for 2020. If we’re going to fight for values like...

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  • July 25, 2020

The problem with any natural disaster, whether it be wildfire, tornado, hurricane, or global pandemic, is that the immediacy of dealing with the disaster obviously commands all attention. And the longer the disaster persists, the longer attention is focused solely on the disaster. And things that would have been obvious...

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  • July 24, 2020

More Trump shtick, recycling old material, but he still loves trucks. The president is ranting about shower heads, dishwashers, and light bulbs. Now Fox News is fact-checking IMPOTUS*. x Cool. Now do one for the weight of 135,000 dead Americans. And 30 million unemployed workers. https://t.co/kKPThOG7za— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July...

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  • July 16, 2020

Some big news today: Joe Biden’s presidential campaign on Wednesday rolled out the policy recommendations reached by its joint task forces with supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders ahead of the Democratic National Convention, which is slated for next month. The 110-page document has been submitted to the Democratic National Committee’s...

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  • July 8, 2020