The painfully out-of-touch Jeb Bush could not have set Bernie Sanders up any better if he’d tried when he told the editorial board of a New Hampshire newspaper a few days ago that Americans needed to work longer hours. Sanders, as you might expect, didn’t waste any time firing back. His succinct yet brilliant response, which began “Unfortunately, Governor Bush does not seem to understand what is happening in our economy today,” can be seen above… Is it really any wonder Berine’s surging in the polls?
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Bernie Sanders is the only major party candidate who is serious. He is the only major party candidate who talks about real issues … and attempting to come up with real solutions.
Therefore, he doesn’t seem to have a chance.
“Mainstream” voters and (what’s left of) the “mainstream” press seem already to have written him off as a left-wing (Socialist!) kook … in contrast to the oh-so-respectable, oh-so-mainstream, and most important oh-so-“electable” Hillary Clinton.
What the “establishment” really seems to be ignoring is that, if Hillary is nominated to run against Walker, or Jeb!, or Cruz, or whomever … millions of liberal and “Democrats” will simply stay home again this time.
JEB! is backtracking (or depending on your point of view, sidewinding) now by saying that what he MEANT was, America needs more 40-hour full time jobs, not 30-hour part-time jobs with no benefits, and of course he blames the Affordable Care Act. (Even though the trend toward hiring part-timers with no benefits, “independent contractors,” and having adults working unpaid “internships” rather than hiring full-time workers started in the 1980s.)
How the 1% sees the other 99%.
JEB! can suck me.
I may have recommended this book before, so bear with me, but the book is called “Sea Glass” and it is set during the “roaring 20s” (right before and during the Crash). It is in a mill town and it deals with the lives of the workers, as well as a couple of 1%ers and union folks. Basically, the workers had to live in substandard housing and got to work either 6:30am until 6:30pm or vice-versa. If you were late, or missed a day, you were fired. You got 1/2 hour lunch and one break. When there was talk of a union forming, the management sped up production with no increase in pay. Oh, and hey–your husband died? Better grab your 8 year old kids and throw them into the mill to help you afford your shitty housing. Needless to say, profits were off the hook for the owners.
I truly believe that JEB! and his ilk want this set up to come back; he was just crazy/stupid enough to say it out loud.
He’s also said that we should raise the retirement age to 70.
Marco Rubio on China: “Prospects of political freedom for regular citizens are extinguished as elites with connections to the party become economic oligarchs.”
Rubio on the Koch Brothers: “I would love to earn their support.”
One of the things that I find to me most disturbing about this is that technology, globalization, and people working longer hours out of a fear of being fired have been creating a worker surplus for the past 30 years and it is a trend that is likely to get worse. In other words, we have too many workers.
People are also much more motivated to work when they are at the bottom and must work in order to ensure their own survival. So if you have a surplus of workers and if you can dismantle the social safety net so that those workers don’t have any other options, you get situations such as the one described by teacherpatti in that Sea Glass novel. And for those who think that is just a work of fiction, I remember talking to my grandmother once about how when my grandfather worked in a coal mine, there was a terrible accident and the nine collapsed. She was telling me this story about how worried she was for my grandfather but then, even after she found out he was safe, she was still worried about what their family was going to eat. You see, back then, they didn’t pay the miners unless they were digging coal. If the mine was shut down and they were spending their days digging out their co-workers, they didn’t get paid. To them, coming to Detroit for my grandfather to work in an auto factory with a union and *benefits* was a dream come true. They were able to put 4 kids through college and one through medical school on a factory salary!
Here is the thing though, if you don’t care about people and only care about profit, having a system where people would starve if not for the job you have results in people pretty much doing whatever you ask and for very little money.
They’ve always referred to the Republicans as the party of cheap labor.
My daughter’s lousy low-paying PT job won’t let her work more than 24 hours. At 30 hours, they would have to give her benefits. The days/hours are also erratic, so she can’t even look for a second PT job. I pretty much support her on my social security and army widow’s pension.
(P.S. She has a 4-year degree from an accredited state college.)
Interesting observations.