On September 6, 1936, the day before Labor Day, President Roosevelt addressed the country in one of his fireside chats:
[Workers] deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.... The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom -- a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.
At a time when our nation's elected office holders (one is loathe to call them "representatives" or "officials") prefer to punish the electorate--not to mention their children and dependents or the nation's very economy itself--by "sequestering" public funds in an extraordinary demonstration of bad faith and political oneupmanship, which is only part of a much larger abdication of civic duty and public interest, this Rooseveltian example from an earlier time not only confirms that we have indeed fallen but begins to suggest how far.
It is an unspeakable idiocy that those in possession of government office do not comprehend (or perhaps care) that unemployed individuals, who are denied unemployment insurance benefits, are former and potential consumers no longer contributing to the economy or the collection of income taxes, because these "benefits" are understood, after all, as taxable income.
The distinction between "benefits" and "taxable income," in this case, is far from meaningless and verging on the perverse; moreover, to give it another turn of the screw, most unemployed individuals, having been employed taxpaying individuals in the past, have in some sense--and a very real sense indeed--funded the benefits they are--or are no longer--receiving. The unemployed individual is then taxed on this income that is the outcome of his tax burden, in an ever-dwindling eternal return of taxation on taxed income renamed as "benefits." The term "benefits" here is a perjoration suggestive of something wholly unearned--and which is distributed parsimoniously and rebukingly as if it were a handout--which is manifestly not the case. This is only scratching the surface of the nearly systematic dismantling of the American economy by deregulation, the coddling of the financial sector, the movement of jobs overseas, and the abjection of the American consumer. A healthy economy requires consumers to purchase goods and services which allow businesses to stay open and employ individuals who are themselves consumers and taxpayers. Now, re-read the quote from FDR.
The distinction between "benefits" and "taxable income," in this case, is far from meaningless and verging on the perverse; moreover, to give it another turn of the screw, most unemployed individuals, having been employed taxpaying individuals in the past, have in some sense--and a very real sense indeed--funded the benefits they are--or are no longer--receiving. The unemployed individual is then taxed on this income that is the outcome of his tax burden, in an ever-dwindling eternal return of taxation on taxed income renamed as "benefits." The term "benefits" here is a perjoration suggestive of something wholly unearned--and which is distributed parsimoniously and rebukingly as if it were a handout--which is manifestly not the case. This is only scratching the surface of the nearly systematic dismantling of the American economy by deregulation, the coddling of the financial sector, the movement of jobs overseas, and the abjection of the American consumer. A healthy economy requires consumers to purchase goods and services which allow businesses to stay open and employ individuals who are themselves consumers and taxpayers. Now, re-read the quote from FDR.
[Workers] deserve practical protection in the opportunity to use their labor at a return adequate to support them at a decent and constantly rising standard of living, and to accumulate a margin of security against the inevitable vicissitudes of life.... The Fourth of July commemorates our political freedom -- a freedom which without economic freedom is meaningless indeed. Labor Day symbolizes our determination to achieve an economic freedom for the average man which will give his political freedom reality.
Happy late Labor Day, everyone.
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