My Little Ideas about the International Fight against Poverty.
There is hardly a place on the worlds surface out of the reach of corporations, and an International Minimum Wage is called for.
It is ridiculous for the US, or a state like North Carolina to simply raise the minimum wage when the competition between workers for jobs is between North Carolina and China.
If nations actually do want to wipe out international poverty, they will have to protect the wages of their Working Classes by agreeing to an International Minimum Wage, determined as equavalent, by currency rates of value, by an International Institution such as the World Bank.
Some of this reality is reflected in the valuation in comparison with US Dollars and the Yuan, or whatever it is the Chinese call their money.
Basically we now live in a world where everyone needs money to live which means that for workers who support all who don’t work, their wages for common jobs starting with the necessary infrastructure for the world we now have need to all pay the same.
In the past I have made the comparison of a human being to a light bulb that needs the Watts it needs to work, and if it doesn’t get them, it blows the circuit.
In this world, there are essential infrastructure jobs.
I suggest that nations and states agree to pay first all of their infrastructure workers a living wage, minimum wage as a basis, for the International Minimum Wage.
This would give economists the true value of the currency being used in each nation.
One of the better things about the United States is that in daily life Bribery is not typical.
Corruption on the part of Institutionally Empowered Officials, named Kleptocracy at its zenith, insures poverty until an Institution like the UN has Courts and Laws and Force that are able to protect workers from the corrupt and powerful, who are simply robbing them.
To follow along wth the comparison of a human being to a light bulb that needs the electricity it needs to work or it blows the circuit, the corruptions of the systems are equavalent to resistance in the wires, and things heat up in advance of the breakdown.
Certainly there are corrupt policemen who only extort through bribery enough to get them and their family along, but it is the greedy who insure poverty.
Knowing the acceptable level of graft within the police force of a nation that is corrupt would help determine what the infrastructure worker minimum wage would be.
Fair Pay for Honest Work, concrete internationally, as an International Minimum wage started with Infrastructure Workers across international boundaries, would do more to raise all boats, than the Trickle Down Economy that really amounts to getting pissed on by the venal rich for the Working Classes
It is a Corruption on a different level, but is the cause of many of the rest of the shit.
Forgive me. The word just fit…
At any rate and International Minimum Wage based on what the Infrastructure Workers needed to live would be the first thing I would do to help cause an end to poverty.
Second I would work to end corruption on the Macro, and Micro level, recognizing it as impossible without an International Minimum Wage.
Off Book Accounting would be ended.
Theft and Corruption are examples of Off Book accounting.
The Earth is actually commonly owned by all of humanity, and air and water are rightly maintained to a standard for all.
There is enough work cleaning the world up, maintainance, at this point, to insure 100 percent employment for all workers.
It is the nations and the corporations and all of the rest of government and institutions that think they can get something for nothing, or that they can defer maintainance for later, or that God will take care of it, or a scientist will provide a silver bullet, or their soldiers can kill better than all of the other soldiers and warriors, that are simply wrong.
If all of the people who provide clean water to New York City and Moscow Bejing, Paris, Rome, and Caracus demanded that an International Minimum Wage was set for all Water Workers, or they would cut the water off, I expect it would happen.
In conjunction with the determination of an International Minimum Wage, workers need papers that allow them to move themselves and their families to where the work that fits their current skills.
In the perfect world all of us would have the ablity to do anything and live anywhere, but we will not ever have a time when all of us can do everything.
Still all of us can do something, and honest work ought never be illegal.
It is the abuse of workers that is the underpinning of poverty, and poverty will not be ended unless a worker can work for fair pay anywhere they go, or stay.
All other plans are bullshit.
Love,
Russell