Over 100 years and nothing has changed. Payday lending and credit for basic needs have gone through the roof. Debt has even become a substitute for Charity
Today is Giving Tuesday, so here’s a 1913 article by Eugene V. Debs, never before republished, about why the charity balls of the rich will never deliver justice for the poor. As Debs declared, “What the poor need is that the rich shall get off their backs.”
Who remembers when one wage supported a family of 4 living in their own yes their own suburban home. Work today is rapidly being redefined so as not to be defined seen as modern-day slavery. So much so a family of 4 is increasingly in debt and can’t any longer support themselves on 2 wages in some cases more. Who no longer will ever dream of owning their own home and needing to work 2 or 3 jobs without benefits. We are redefining their circumstance as the new “norm” and not slavery.
Workers are taking advantage of the competitive labour market to make some extra cash, with 900,000 people working two or more jobs.
“(The system) is just not delivering that strong responsible sustainable wages growth that we need to see, which has been absent from our economy for the best of the decade,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.“
We’re not naive about this issue being contentious.”
Dr Chalmers said working Australians had gone backwards under the current enterprise bargaining system while businesses were recording large profits.
Recently released Australian Bureau of Statistics data for the June quarter showed pay packets were falling behind the rising cost of living.
The business community has broadly opposed the multi-employer bargaining proposal.
“Poverty and racism are systemic problems that need systemic solutions. We are that solution,” said Jamilla Allen of Durham, North Carolina, one of the testifiers who spoke Saturday at the online event.
Entitled the Mass Poor People’s Assembly and Moral March on Washington, the event—moved online in light of the coronaviurs pandemic—was sponsored by The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival.
In both of these cases though, from grad students and college athletes to prisoners and welfare recipients, workers are being told that they aren’t workers, and don’t get the rights of workers, and to shut up and work.
These are not the only examples of this type of coercive work. For example, the proliferation of noncompete clauses is giving employers expansive, punitive power over even more traditional workers. And then you have for example undocumented immigrants who are typically under contacts with one employer, and if they leave that job for any reason, they can be deported. As with the other examples I’ve identified, this gives employers an unusual degree of power, and that power often leads to a great deal of abuse.
Years of flatlined wages and now a request for more? The well off haven’t faced this and have seen a rise in their income. So why are the Economists voting for those the worst off to carry the load yet again? The threat do you want to keep your job? Well, we saw the increasing precariousness of work and now it’s being asked even more needs to be done. It’s a threat that we’ve seen repeatedly with a variety of excuses over and over again (ODT)
olddogthoughts 
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