Solutions to big problems don’t fit on a bumper sticker.
Working Missourians need comprehensive and proven policies that will build shared prosperity for everyone in America who works hard and plays by the rules.
It can’t be a nip here or a tuck there. We need policies with the scale and boldness to turn around our economy, so it isn’t run by and for the richest Americans any more.
In Missouri, 7.2 percent are out of work while average CEO pay in the state is $4,172,950.
Good people can disagree, but America has not had honest and meaningful debate for a long time. Here are some ideas to consider.
There’s a blueprint to work from. It’s called “Prosperity Economics: Building an Economy for All” and was written by two professors from Yale University, Jacob Hacker and Nathaniel Lowentheil. The core idea that underpins each of the policy recommendations is that broadly shared prosperity produces better long-term economic strength than inequality.
“Prosperity Economics” contrasts sharply to the austerity urged by leading Republicans for the past 30 years and endorsed wholeheartedly by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Austerity is a failure. It has lowered wages and degraded the wealth of our families.
Decades of government cutbacks have decimated the agencies that protect us. Oil spills and other environmental catastrophes are too common and too destructive. Too many people are being hurt and injured on the job. Food safety has suffered. And austerity endangers core American programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Why have we followed this path? It’s not a noble mission, we can promise you that. We did it to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, and to allow Wall Street and corporate CEOs to enrich themselves at our expense.
Our vision is different. It offers a solid program for a bright future. We can rebuild a healthy economy by reconnecting wages to productivity. The key and best way to do that is by protecting the right of working people to organize and bargain collectively through a union on the job.
The time for action is now. Our economy is sagging. To turn this slowdown into growth will require ambitious workforce training and huge investments in basic research in emerging technologies. We’ll need to rebuild crumbling roads, bridges, and airports. And we’ll need to restore U.S. manufacturing by reforming our trade policies. We need to end tax incentives for outsourcing and give states the financial help to hire back teachers, first responders and other public service workers.
Our main goal should be a path to financial security for everyone in America. Every student must have an opportunity to attend college or acquire the skills needed to reach his or her full potential. We must strengthen Social Security and commit to a secure and dignified retirement and access to quality health care for all Americans.
We can do all of this, and we can clean up our economy. We have the resources. America remains a fantastically wealthy and productive nation.
We can break the lock that Wall Street and the richest one percent have held on our democracy.
Our policies offer a chance for today’s young people — and the generations after them — to inherit good jobs and a growing middle class. These are the solutions that offer a light at the end of our long economic tunnel.
Those seeking the support of working people in November and beyond should take notice. The American public is smart and tough. We have a vision. Will you embrace it?
It’s time for real solutions to the real problems we face. America wants prosperity, not another round of austerity.
Richard Trumka is AFL-CIO president and Hugh McVey is Missouri AFL-CIO president.
Charles Purvis
9 months, 2 weeks ago“Get off the sofa; get a job” fits nicely on a bumper sticker.
Do you have any idea how many problems that would solve? Instead of people drawing money out of the system, they’d be contributing.
George Hunsucker
Northland
9 months, 2 weeks agoThe authors of this post have done MORE to screw the American worker then any overpaid executive….
What states are growing jobs faster. Answer RIGHT TO WORK STATES.
When these highly paid union bosses are out of the picture, it will be much better for the American worker and s/he will be much more competitive with the rest of the world.
I have an idea for the great rebuilding of America’s infrastructure. Let’s do away with Davis-Bacon rules which require government to vastly OVERPAY for a project. Let government get bids and choose the best one for the price. Will tumpka support that- I would wager mucho dinero the answer is NO.
These self-serving union bosses are pretty damm funny…..
George Hunsucker
Northland
9 months, 2 weeks agoI especially liked the “decades of government cutbacks”..
What nation are they referring to—certainly not America where the big 0 has added 170K new federal bureaucrats—libs are funny!!!!
Kent Mueller
9 months, 2 weeks agoIt’s interesting they want to reconnect wages with productivity, yet their solution is collective bargaining which results in everyone being paid the same. Well, not the same, but differences having to do with tenure, not productivity.
And I am amused that they say the economy is sagging. Shouldn’t they be telling that to their presidential candidate? Obama would argue that point.
Phil Cardarella
9 months, 2 weeks agoActually, Soviet Communism was a rollicking success in one very important way: It scared the bejesus out of the rich and corporate. Enough so that the free world got social legislation, labor unions, wage & hour laws and an income tax that flattened wealth, created a middle class, funded massive infrastructure and education improvements.
Actual progressive income taxes — the kind we had under that Commie Eisenhower? — serve a VERY useful purpose of — yes — preventing the easy accumulation of vast wealth without use for socially-desirable purposes. High tax rates on the rich and corporate forced investment in things that created jobs, not just trading money.
They mean a rich country, not just a few rich people. The kind of income Mitt gets — especially at theat level — ought to be taxed at HIGHER than salary income, not lower. Making money from cutting jobs and bankrupting companies yu take over ought to be DISCOURAGED by the tax code.
FDR saved the rich from the consequences of their greed — not by making them poor, but by making them share wealth and power, something his Republican cousin Teddy started. They never forgave FDR for being such a “traitor to his class.” But it was FDR that made them safe in their mansions by giving the rest of their fellow citizens a stake in the nation’s economy.
Communism may have kept Russians poor, but fear of it made Americans prosperous