Randy Walburger writes:

"Corporations, Poverty and Homelessness"
Randy Walburger


          Isn't this the richest nation on earth? Aren't we forever reminded how humane this country is? How can so many Americans be left out on the cold street at night to suffer, without homes or shelter, in hunger, sickness and death year after year in growing numbers in a nation that preaches 'justice and a humane democracy'!? Today here in Los Angeles County there are upwards of 100,000 homeless people on the street each night! That number has been growing every year since Ronald Reagan and the defeat of labor in the 1980's. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "Recent studies suggest that the United States generates homelessness at a much higher rate than previously thought." According to the Urban Institute in 2003 there were approximately 3.5 million homeless in the United States.


          During the 1960's and 70's most goods were still produced in America. Labor unions had been able to obtain good wages and benefits for their workers through strikes and strong contract bargaining. Labor unions were plentiful, manufacturing was mostly unionized and workers were getting health insurance, retirement benefits and a living wage. Workers were able to afford vacations, homes and other middle class amenities like sending their children to college for higher education so that they had a chance to rise above their parents blue collar status.


          Since America did virtually all its own manufacturing, which provided good union scale wages, existing households were more able to shelter their mentally and physically disabled family members. There were more jobs available to people with disabilities as well, but for those with more serious disabilities there were State and County Hospitals. These hospitals took on the fulltime needs of the severely disabled providing complete housing and care. As a result, in comparison to today, there were fewer disabled homeless people living on the street. Homelessness existed, but not to the large degree that exists today.


          In the 1960's there were leaders like Martin Luther King and John Kennedy who believed that everyone was important and that 'we weren't free until everyone was free'. . . from poverty and racism. Civil Rights leaders were able to rally huge public demonstrations and marches that demanded equal treatment and justice for all races and groups in America. The nation's people believed that social progress was lifting poor Americans up out of poverty and that a "New Frontier"
was at hand. Young people joined Kennedy's Peace Corps and eagerly went overseas to help poor people abroad build better living conditions and improve their health. Strikes, peace demonstrations and protest rallies were constant popular democratic change agents of reform that linked people and groups together in mutual solidarity and support.


          But then came the 1980's and the 'Big Business' Republicans took over with Ronald Reagan. Under his two term Presidential reign labor unions like the Air Traffic Control Workers Union were destroyed. Labor in general had their wages and benefits rolled back. Reagan encouraged manufactures to produce abroad and China, still a communist
Dictatorship, was given Favorite Nation Trading Status. Manufacturing unions began to disappear as their jobs were outsourced to China and other third world countries where dictatorship flourished and wages were less than $3 a day.


        Today not only has most manufacturing gone overseas, but service jobs are being exported as well. Try to get tech support or make a reservation and realize you are speaking to a person in India or some other foreign country. "Profit maximizer's" seek the maximum profit in the shortest period of time. This Quarters earnings are basically all that count to an all shareholder "profit maximizer" Board of Directors. These Boards of Directors have complete control of our economy's biggest corporations. These shareholder "profit maximizer's" attack labor as though working people are simply line items on a profit and loss sheet.


          "Profit maximizer's" were able to dump the unions and their workers for jobs they could now buy for pennies, with no benefits of any kind! The Republicans sponsored economic agreements like NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allowed American producers access to cheap Mexican labor, and that spelled doom for many American factory workers. Plants closed at home and their workers were laid off permanently. As a result whole communities died that had relied on manufacturing to support its citizens. Low pay service jobs replaced manufacturing jobs and benefits, health care, overtime, vacation pay and 401Ks disappeared or were greatly lowered.


          To make matters worse the Federal Government looks the other way and allows millions of illegals to take our jobs at home and dilute America's labor market. As a result for American workers there is a greater demand for jobs then there is employer demand for workers. Employers are able to avoid Federal and State Payroll Taxes all together by hiring illegals under the table, below the minimum wage. American workers are forced to take any job they can get regardless of the pay or working conditions. This is a veritable "profit maximizer's" dream come true. The "profit maximizer's" can either ship work out of the country and pay no tariffs when importing those goods back into this country or they can hire starving workers at home who are willing to take any job just to stay alive. "Profit maximizer's" hold all the cards, make all the profit and labor has no union and no power to deal with this situation. "Profit maximizer's" are in profit dividend heaven!


          Ronald Reagan viewed Government programs that provided social support as something bad which had to be eliminated. He said that "Government had gotten too big" and that "it had to be reduced." So government institutions that cared for mentally and physically disabled were dismantled in the 1980's and the disabled were basically tossed out on the street to suffer the harshness of homelessness. This happened because governments reduced taxes, which rolled back necessary financial support for social programs, as a result hospitals for the disabled had to be abandoned.


          The attack on labor and the attack on the disabled are a single attack on working people and their families by taking away any safety net lower working class people have. Homelessness threatens all working class people who lose their jobs for any reason, especially if they strike for better wages and benefits. If they lose their jobs, they too will fall into this gaping abyss created by the 'Big Business'
Republicans and Ronald Reagan.


          The Democrats, too are controlled by the money that an all shareholder/profit maximizer class dominates. Democrats, too have to have that corporate financial sponsorship to fund an expensive electoral process. Democrats, too must go along with the dictates of wealth over workers interests in order to fund their electoral needs.


          It used to be that workers prospered as well as manufactures through an economic loop that nurtured both the consumer and the seller. Manufacturing concentrated on household goods and through mass sales to America's middle and working class consumers these companies made good profits. Today many of the economies most profitable businesses are military defense manufacturing. Fewer workers produce weapons that do nothing to support the middle or working classes.
This years military budget is over half a trillion dollars! Our government, under Bush, spends more on military industrial than the rest of the world combined! That money could be used to better society's communities, such as, schools, hospitals, parks and infrastructure. But by spending this money on war only the "profit maximizer's" are getting something and working people get nothing! This County built a hundred B2 bombers at 2 billion dollars a piece. Bush is spending a trillion dollars on an anti-missile system! In other words labor has been completely disenfranchised. Workers work for increasingly less and less, while military spending and deficit spending by the government goes higher and higher!


              Now the shareholder/profit maximizers want to take it up a notch by dismantling Social Security and Medicare as well. Social Security is the essential lifeline between homelessness and having a bed to sleep in at night. If Bush is able to dismantle Social Security then working people will have the cold hard street to sleep on in their old age.


            The answer is not violent revolution. The answer is 'checks and balances'. Capital and Labor must be valued equally. The Boards of Directors of all publicly owned corporations must elect their Boards 50% from their employees and 50% from shareholder/profit maximizers.
That way shareholder/profit maximizers have to share control with labor. That way their power would not be absolute and their ability to corrupt our economy would be held in check by the values of working people and their family and community interests. After all do profit maximizers represent the public? I think not! Who better to act as a check and balance for publicly owned corporations than the corporations employees.


          If employees had 50% of the Board of Directors of these publicly owned corporation's homelessness would be addressed because families, workers and average people want to create a society where people aren't just left to on the street. There is no benefit to labor to see people live homeless!


          It is the voter who must demand this legislation! It is the voter that can apply democratic leverage on Congress that can establish a humane check and balance over these corporations. Didn't Congress legislate the eight hour work day? Didn't Congress pass legislation that outlawed child labor abuses? Isn't it the job of Congress to stop this corrupt exploitation by simply passing legislation that would bring working people into equal voting rights with the shareholders?


          Shareholders and employees both want the corporation to survive. They both want the corporation to profit. Both employees and shareholders have the corporation's interest at heart. Employees simply bring to the Board many more interests than simply short term profit.


          The shareholder/profit maximizers aren't inherently bad people. Their interests are simply unopposed. Even they must sense the corruptness of their domination. They and their families must yearn for a society that is less harsh, where the gap between rich and poor does not cause continual violence and strife. They just can not bring themselves to voluntarily give up their good short term thing. It's like any addiction. Rich people aren't inherently bad. It's just a lopsided system that needs true democratic reform.


          The long term message is that people just don't give up power voluntarily. Its not that they are bad, it's that society is naïve to think that those with power will give it up willingly. People just aren't that altruistic. Man didn’t get here after millions of years of evolution, killing animals to survive, by sharing all the food with the forests creatures.


          We Americans are naïve to believe our leaders when they tell us not to worry, just let the President take care of the people and we'll be alright! As a people, Americans are about as naïve as any group of people in history! Here we Americans are on a downward slide into death and destruction and most of us think we're ‘Number One’ on an amusement park ride. When we hold an election and only 15% of the eligible voters vote, like the Los Angeles Primary this Spring, you know we are naïve or indifferent or in denial to the point of unconsciousness.


          Move the clock ahead twenty years at this pace. If the U.S. hasn't been bombed out of existence by countries it's attacked or harmed, there will be more and more American's left on the street to die in the cold. There will be more Americans in prisons and fewer educated Americans. Basically a polite fascist government will reward its people with pseudo moralism and religious fundamentalism. Your reward will come in Heaven, just like the Jihadist's who blow themselves up today. Your dignity will be in your patriotism. And so labor will have devolved to third world conditions and America's working poor will be able to compete with any third world country on a wage basis.