Worker unity died with ten thousand cuts, many cruelly inflicted by those with much who want more, and others the result of demographic changes, the internet, and the post-deregulation economy.
People don't stay at the same job for very long. Labor unions have been systematically mutilated by labor's monocled enemies. The tradition of worker unity is something for the history books. Millennials will never know it.
Unity among those taking in all but a morsel of every new dollar is all that remains. While there are voices in the monied wilderness warning their spectacularly wealthy neighbors that the economic status quo can only end in societal disaster, the call by one percenters for more economic austerity is in one voice. Some in the ruling class want more trickle-down policies with a side of religious imposition that crushes the rights of LGBTQ people, for instance. Other ruling class members stand mildly opposed to such fundamentalism. Still others advocate for civil rights, as long as they don't get in the way of profits.
But they all want the same thing: more money, at any cost.
On the airwaves of NPR and in the pages of The New York Times -- critical truth-telling tools as trumpeted by The Resistance -- millionaires and billionaires promote myriad myths about how the United States might unleash tidal waves of economic activity that will surely benefit everyone. They carefully create a reality in which massive tax cuts for the wealthiest are the only means of stimulating our stagnant economy, much like when governments craft a reality in which war is the only answer.
Working people are told that corporations are staggering beneath the hideous weight of sky-high corporate taxes. This, of course, is the opposite of what one might call true, as the Economic Policy Institute recently pointed out. Corporate taxes "paid as a share of the whole economy" are indeed historically low, according to EPI.
The country has never gotten by on fewer corporate tax dollars, as armies of lawyers hide away mountains of cash to the nation's detriment. Ninety billion in corporate taxes are dodged every year. But it's immigrants who drain the nation's coffers, we hear.
Working people tuning in to trusted news outlets are reminded in no uncertain terms that ours is among the world's highest corporate tax rates. And it is. On paper. The United States' effective corporate rate -- what the masters of the universe actually pay -- is less than half the official rate, per EPI research. Translation: our corporate tax rate is in line with other western nations.
And while you dutifully pay your taxes for programs you hate and people you loathe, some of the nation's richest corporations -- Verizon, Boeing, General Electric -- didn't pay one solitary dime in taxes in the years after the 2008 economic crash, while profits soared.
What's dare not uttered in mainstream media -- the insane right-wing variety or those favored by left-leaning people -- is that corporate profits today are at an all-time high. There is no golden age for which to strive for corporations because this is the golden age. Yet they demand more, with a gleaming smile, wearing finely tailored suits, caring not for the repercussions of their lobbying for crushing unfairness. They construct lies and spout them into a million-watt megaphone.
The result: I argue at a cookout with a guy barely scraping by, working 50 hours a week, who believes corporations have the raw end of the deal. A worker, advocating for those who siphon every penny while the country's safety net is shredded, while our roads and bridges crumble. A worker, repeating the slick lies he's been told by the collective vampire squid that will take and take until there's nothing left. A worker, swallowed whole by propaganda from the last unified group of earth.
Hence, from 96 Ways to Rise and Grind: "Rise and read the news today, oh boy, that the only tried-and-true unity is between psychopaths in the Fortune 500, and grind."
Working people might note that unity works. If you don't believe me, look up.