America’s Toilet Paper Economy
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The pundit class is so desperate to put a happy spin on the nation’s faltering economy they have resorted to this: toilet paper.
Forget tea leaves. Now we are told the state of the economy can be divined by the shift in consumer purchases from one-ply to two-ply—and even three-ply!—toilet paper. The more ply people buy, the better the economy. Clearly then, we as a nation are on a roll.
America’s 27 million jobless also see the economy in terms of toilet paper. But they’re not counting the number of tissue layers.
In May, some 6.8 million U.S. workers were out of a job for 27 weeks or longer, up from 4 million a year ago. More than 250,000 people a week are losing their unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP).
So, what is Congress doing about it?
Trumka Warns ‘Forces of Hate’ Fanning Flames of Workers’ Economic Anger
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An economy that seems to work for just a privileged few, 11 million vanished jobs and a bailout for banks and Wall Street—but not working families—is fueling justified anger in workers. Speaking last night at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka told an audience about the “forces of hate” and “radio voices” that are frantically fanning the flames of that justified anger to divide working people.
There are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis. Most of all, those forces of hate seek to divide working people—to turn our anger against each other.
Trumka said a progressive movement that includes mobilizing union members and electing public officials “committed to bold action to address economic suffering” and can fight back against the forces of hatred. But he told the Harvard audience that an “alliance between working people and public minded intellectuals is also crucial.”
It is all about standing up to entrenched economic power and the complacency of the affluent. It’s an alliance that depends on intellectuals being critics, and not the servants, of economic privilege.
Sweeney: ‘Working People Want Action on Creating New Jobs’
The nation’s political leaders have a choice: They can strike out on a new economic course for America that will turn around the nation’s economy or they can give in to political paralysis and yield to the demands of the financial and corporate elites.
Speaking Friday before a Harvard University study group on “Working Class Revolt,” AFL-CIO President Emeritus and Harvard Fellow John Sweeney and AFL-CIO Policy Director Damon Silvers said policymakers failed to heed the union movement’s warnings against a campaign of radical federal deregulation and corporate empowerment—one that celebrated private greed over public service.
