More pain for the working class

More pain for the working class

Ever wonder how the rich have managed to increase their incomes while the rest of us have had our incomes stagnate?

Here's how.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill that passed last December gives massive giveaways to the wealthy and gives Wall Street unregulated rights to gamble with saving and retirement accounts. That same bill clobbers the middle class when the pensions of truck drivers and construction workers were slashed by 30 percent.

Not everyone has the same chance to succeed in education and in life. Children who attend disadvantaged schools live in low taxing areas. This means that those schools are not funded, equipped and staffed as equally as those in higher taxing areas. The privateers come into the low taxing areas with charter schools while their CEOs make millions for themselves from your taxes and have no moral commitment to those children other than big profits.

We have seen a deliberate attempt to deny unions. People have fought and died for the right for safety in the workplace, the forty hour workweek, a livable wage with a secure retirement and health care. The new "business model" designed by corporations and enabled by politicians require workers to work overtime without being reimbursed (wage theft) and work without benefits that, ultimately, lower wages.

Our country has been undermined by tax-avoiding corporations and business friendly governments. Privatizers are poised to take over public education with charter schools, roads, railroads, water supplies, prisons, airports and power plants. They are all designed to pay workers less and charge more for these services.

As a society, we cannot afford to elect more politicians whose policies of giving more relief to the wealthy and more pain to the working class.

Joni Lindgren

Elgin