My first diary, woo!
• Attacking sex education, funding for birth control, and abortion has one goal: returning women and the poor to a permanent political and financial underclass. A girl growing up in poverty is five times more likely to become a teenage mother. One quarter of families with a teenage mother is below the poverty line (and remains so). The likelihood of someone ever recovering financially from an unintended pregnancy is low. The two biggest factors in escaping poverty is educational attainment and economic opportunity, both things unlikely to occur when struggling to feed and house your family.
• Vilifying our education system and teachers leads to lower funding and quality for both. As the public education system declines, the wealthy turn to private schools, which in turn leads to a lower respect for public funding of education. As we can see in the current protests, if something doesn’t personally benefit you, most people feel the money is being wasted. As the gap between education grows, so does the gap in the have and have nots. For the last 150 years, one of the greatest contributions to the rise of the middle class has been public education. To destroy such as system leads to a permanent haves and have not class system. Much like the 19th Century, you were either an owner or a laborer.
• Attacking labor unions reduces pay, benefits and workplace safety for all employees across the board. It is well known that anti-union, “Right-To-Work” states lead the way in poverty levels in the U.S. In Right-To-Work states:
Poverty is 20% higher
21% less people have health insurance,
Infant mortality is 17% higher
Workers earn an average of $10,000 per year less
States spend an average of $2,000 less per pupil
Workplace death is 51% higher
With this three pronged attack against women, education, and labor, I believe the Corporate Conservative movement is trying to ensure that with the exception of the wealthy, everyone will only be concerned with feeding, housing, and keeping their families healthy. Someone who worries where their next meal is coming from has no energy to spare about wastewater dumping or corporate tax rates. They have no ability to escape what will become a permanent underclass. They have no power to object to their gradual lowering of standard of living. At a best case, they are clamoring for a return to the era of Robber Barons. At worst, feudalism.
What is odd about this whole situation is that this is a doomed proposition. Have they not connected the dots? Yes, by reducing labor costs and cutting out pesky things like workplace safety and environmental regulations, your profits at your Bounty Paper Towel plant will soar. However, your customer base will plummet. People living below the poverty line and unable to afford to visit the doctor when they get hurt working at your factory will not buy paper towels. They cannot afford food.
Our economy, for better or worse, is dependent on a steady demand for consumer staples and discretionaries. What happens when the basis for our economy goes from 90% of the population spending to 10% of the population spending? People who are better educated get better jobs, and can afford more spending. That spending, in turn, creates more jobs and therefore, more pay to spend on more things. Are they really that short-sighted?
