That’s an easy question; yes, it ought to be fair. The problem, what is fair? We all have our notions of fairness. As a principle, I believe that we should all be compensated in accordance with the effort, skill and dedication we put into our task and relative to the benefit that task is to our society. However, anyone working a forty hour a week job should be paid enough to live above the poverty line. They should have enough to meet basic needs for food, clothing, housing, medical care, and child care. Our U. S. minimum wage does not come close to accomplishing this. It is not fair.
There are still millions of women who are getting paid less for satisfactorily doing the same job that men do for higher pay. What’s fair about that? People with the same experience and qualifications get discriminated against for jobs and promotions because of their race, sex, or even sexuality. That, too, is unfair.
Wouldn’t we all be better off, if we took as much of the unfairness out of our economy as possible?
Wal-Mart keeps its employees underpaid, and they, in turn, need assistance through Medicaid and Food Stamps. However, Wal-Mart executives and stock holders get ever-bigger pay checks and profits. Are these corporate gurus not raiding our under-nourished U. S. treasury and putting the money into their own pockets? Is it fair?
Republicans, aided by some Democrats, cut taxes for eight long years to benefit the very wealthy; ran two wars on the National credit card; increased the National debt in eight years more than the previous 42 Presidents did in 224 years. Now they suddenly worry about the National debt. They insist we cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, aid to education, food stamps, etc. It that fair? Isn’t that taking money out of the pockets of those who need it most and giving it to those who need it least? How stupid do they think we are?
Our country is not broke; it is simply mismanaged. The problem is not runaway spending; it’s runaway tax breaks for those who don’t need them.
Return the tax rates to those of the Truman or Eisenhower Administrations, and there would be no debt. The Clinton Administration tax structure created more jobs, while the George W. Bush tax breaks–that were supposed to get the “job creators” to create more jobs–actually lost jobs. The rich got immensely richer and everyone else poorer. It was a very unfair economic system, and the result is a lot of pain.
So what is the answer? On Meet the Press, Erskine Bowels suggested that we should reduce spending on “entitlements.” He reasoned that in 1935 when the Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, there were 13 workers contributing to Social Security for every one worker who would retire in 1941. Today, he explains, there are only three workers contributing for every retiree. That sounds convincing, but is it?
Worker productivity has greatly increased due to a number of factors. Unfortunately, worker compensation has not kept up with worker productivity. Today our GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is 249.9 times greater than it was in 1935. In 1935 the average earnings per year amounted to around $3,000 dollars. Had earnings kept up with productivity and their distribution been about the same, the average earnings would be about 250 times that–or $750,000 per year. That money would be subject to a 15.3% payroll tax. Social Security and Medicare would be floating in money!
Cutting government spending is not going to make the economy appreciably better, quite the opposite. It has been tried before with disastrous results. Greece is not better. Spain is not better. Ireland is not better.
Worthless spending does need to be cut, but productive spending needs to be increased and paid for by progressive tax increases. Wealth needs to be redistributed downward.
Mr. Hershey realized this when building a new factory; he saw a huge machine digging the basement. He ordered the machine replaced by 200 workers who dug it with shovels. After all, if they didn’t have pay checks, they wouldn’t be able to afford to buy his candy bars. His economics was not so bad.
We can argue over what is fair, but it is obvious that the solution to our economic problems lie more in achieving a far more fair economy than we presently have. We create enough wealth. We just are not spreading it around fairly. We are not using this wealth wisely. Should our economic system be fair?
Fairness–whatever it is–is a must. We need to find it.