 |
 |
|
| The Cupcake Hostess | |  |
Hostess CupCake is a brand of snack cake most recently produced and distributed by Hostess Brands. Its most common form is a chocolate cupcake with chocolate icing and vanilla creme filling, with eight distinctive white squiggles across the top. This is a costume simulating said snack food. | Photo: Archives |
|
|
Hostess Corporation entered bankruptcy for the third time in ten years, and of course it was the workers' fault. Don't mention the $2.1 billion in revenues they made and mismanaged last year, hefty increases in executive salaries, and the hiring of "restructuring" managers; that layoff and essential wind down a business, so that business can skip out on its financial responsibilities, such as pensions and retirement benefits to former employees through bankruptcy court.
Wal-Mart just faced the first wave of strikes by store workers, and warehouse workers across the country on "Black Friday". The reason for the strikes, lack of wages paid, especially to the full-time workers who do not make $16,000 a year.
Both Hostess and Wal-Mart are prime examples of why a wage-labor system, especially under corporate influence is unsustainable and failing America miserably. Workers cannot afford to eat properly on a weekly basis, pay essential bills (shelter, utilities, medical care), or save money. Our economy suffers, as the main catalyst, consumers, do not have the resources to spend and keep our economy flourishing. Social structures are beginning to fray apart due to this giant drain on our nation's Treasury.
Wal-Mart's workers received over $220 billion in welfare assistance last year, and people have the unmitigated gall to hail Wal-Mart as a huge success. Maybe in a socialist country, but in a socialist country those workers would have full health care and free education. Here in America we have a "free market" and "capitalism", where mega corporations like Wal-Mart can receive billions in subsidies from unwilling tax payers, gain huge advantages over competitors (local stores) due to government interference, and pass their costs onto their workers and consumers via the welfare state, while hoarding the profits for only a few - got to love neo-corporatism, I mean "capitalism".
This is an issue that all political parties can rally around, and is a uniquely American problem that will require a solution soon, as our national debt cannot climb much higher without serious consequences for us all.
For the Liberals, this is it; this is your moment to push an issue that actually matters to the majority of our populace, wage equality and government spending. You're the "good-guys" perhaps you can start proving it by supporting a living-wage act, end corporate subsidies, and while yo
| Wal-Mart's workers received over $220 billion in welfare assistance last year... | | |
u're at it, make sure corporations can't use these stolen profits to buy politicians to ensure their supremacy reigns supreme, by overturning Citizens United and capping campaign spending.
For the Republicans, this is it, this is your moment to finally capture back the minority vote, reduce taxes for everyone, while shrinking the size of government, and maintaining profits for your corporate cronies. By supporting the crazy notion of respecting the laborer's rights to reap the wealth their labor produces, you can help inspire your biggest party supporters to make the changes required on the front-lines. If Wal-Mart was to raise the prices on their products to reflect a $20 increase over a year worth of shopping, they could start paying full-time employees a living wage without sacrificing corporate profits. Which means they could then stop being subsidized by our collective taxes, lessening the burden on us all, and turning you back into conservatives. Since those workers would actually have a chance to purchase health care with their earned wages, you might even be able to get rid of "Obama-Care" while you are at it.
| | |
For the Libertarians, Green Party, and Independents, this is it; this is your moment to finally get what you want, a more autonomous populous and society. Supporting self-owned enterprises over corporations, and a self-owned workforce, is the quickest way to financial equality and freedom for everyone.
A wage labor system allows for a few people to collectively steal and disproportionately hand out the wealth a worker earns from her/his labor, and it creates tremendous social strain and costs upon our nation, it's undeniable.
