Class warfare? Really, who's really committing "class warfare"

Weekend is over it is time to throw your nose to the grind stone and start all over. Ah, yes, the start of another 40 hour work week, a fresh five days of rants, facts. So where to begin.

CLASS WARFARE:

A new term that Republicans started throwing around Monday. Here is the correct definition of "class warfare:"

"Refers to a class conflict, or tensions between members of different social classes."


To summarize what the means is say the upper, or lower classed bickering, or actually fighting over who is in control, or one fighting back against oppression. There were numbers that have come out over the past few days that are very interesting, and a Ed Schultz pointed this out. In this chart it showed that the upper 4% of Americans, those making in excess of one million dollars a year, over all wealth increased by a whopping 42%. Meanwhile those in the lower ranks, their wealth actually decreased by 8%. This is a growing disparity in this country, and it doesn't show signs of stopping any time soon.


President Obama finally spoke out though yesterday, saying that they will not make any cuts to Medicare without having some kind of tax raise, and that Social Security is untouchable. It is about time he has said this. Obama also said that we can't keep going on this cutting spree and intend it to work. He also said that this kind of approach is just simple math, and the Republican theory is illogical to fix it. 


Now, let me put this into perspective on how the republicans want to fix things on a very small, personal scale.


You are a working, you make your own hours, which effects how much you make. You also like to spend money frivolously too. For the longest time this has not been a problem, you are able to cover all your costs, as in housing, food, and your kids going to college. Now after a while you have a, what you think is, large surplus of cash. With this surplus, you decide to start cutting your time working (taxes) which decreases your income. However, this does not change your spending habits. Then you open a high limit credit card, and think this now gives you more money, so again, you cut back your time working, and again your over all income take a hit. The credit card reaches its peak, and now you can't pay off your bills, so you immediately start cutting things, and don't pick up your hours at work, you cut off your kids on college, you drop your health care, and all almost essential things that we pay for, but still continue to buy excessive things. 


That is basically how Republicans work things. Continue spending money on excessive things, like two unfunded wars, and disregard the fact that the rich 2% in this country pay almost nothing in taxes. Meanwhile, the Warren Buffet rule is starting to become a hot topic. Buffet's secretary currently pays a larger percent of their income in taxes than Mr. Buffet who is a billionaire. Buffet has spoken out and said that he, and a bunch of other million, and billionaires would pay a more fair share in taxes, they don't need that much money. Mark Cuban, owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, said the if he had to pay higher taxes, he said it would hurt at first, but then he would feel really good about it because he knows he is helping millions of Americans.


So Republicans really need to re-think their stance and calling raising the taxes on the rich, "class warfare." Why? The rich aren't the ones being oppressed, the lower classes are being held down by these ridiculous tax laws, and loopholes. In a previous blog I talk about the parallels George Orwell's novel "1984." In the book, the reason why the current government was in place was because the lower classes got fed up with the capitalists, and their stranglehold over the lower classes. Obviously it didn't work out that well in the long run, but that is where we are heading. There will be true class warfare in the coming years if we don't fix our current ways.       

There is power in a union

The union. A term that many Republicans fear. Why? They are groups of people that they don't particularly like forming groups that force fat cat corporations to give them what they want, and have to spend extra money. Before I go on, there are downsides to unions. Biggest is is a union goes on strike, sometimes members don't have control over it, and they may lose their job. Then of course, there is the fact that a worker may have to pay X amount of dollars from their pay check to the union. It is a small price to pay when the union will step in if you are fired without a legitimate reason, or treated unfairly. There has been corruption in unions before, but not so much these days.

Without a union there is no 40 hour five day work week, minimum wage, or even a weekend. There is one candidate that is running on abolishing minimum wage, Ron Paul. What Paul is reading is flawed economics. He believes if there is no minimum wage, employers will pay more. However, that is not the case. They would pay an employee nothing because they can. Paul is not really much of a factor in this talk. There are two battle grounds right now, Ohio, and Wisconsin.

Let me side track for a moment.

Arizona is a "right to work state." According to legal-explanations.com a right to work state is:

"State labor law that permits someone to determine for himself/herself whether or not to join a labor union. The law avoids employers from making union membership a condition of employment" 

Basically what that states is that you don't have to join a union in order to be employed. What that seemingly brilliant law forgets to mention is that a employer can terminate a worker without reason, or cause. They could fire a worker because they don't like them as a person, racial, or thousands of other reasons. It is a law created to water down unions, and make these protective unions all but go away.

As we know, the state of Wisconsin had no real choice in what happened. Tea Party governor Scott Walker forced his union busting agenda down the peoples throat, and said unions are bad, and are hurting the state budget. Now Ohio is facing something very similar. Watching the Ed Schultz Show earlier, Ed seemed like he wanted to strangle governor Kasic of Ohio for his lack of courage to come and talk to him.

They want to do away with higher pay, and benefits for public workers. The have this strange notion that by creating these union busting laws, that it will somehow help their states dire budget situations, There are other ways to fix those problems. All these Republicans say they have a better job plan than Barack Obama, but meanwhile they keep on coming up with legislation that will destroy jobs, not create them.

Now just if you take one thing from this know this. Unions have downsides, but their upsides out weigh the bad 10-1. They protect your job, they help you get the pay you deserve, and they support you if treated badly. We lose unions, we will lose so many things that we have become to accustomed to. Don't let them keep the middle class down, lets not lose out minimum wage just so some billionaire can count his money in his high rise glass tomb. We're better than this!