Reading about and personally experiencing the current problem of

unemployment in the US has made me realize that on the sixth day

God did not create Adam and Eve the first two human beings, but
Adam and Eve the first two human resources. It is a global issue that
people are valued only if they can be exploited.

Workers in the US are the most productive in the world according to

many sources, mostly due to working longer hours. As a reward for
our efforts, many of us are now unemployed or under employed after
working for 20-30 years. Many of us are too young to qualify for
Medicare or Social Security, or as the song goes, “Too old to work and
too young to die.” While official employment statistics put the
unemployment rate at 10% it is actually closer to 20%. At the same
time there are many needs that are not being met because private
industry has no interest in rebuilding New Orleans, fixing a badly
crumbling infrastructure of levees and bridges, adequately staffing the
nation’s schools or rationally and adequately feeding and sheltering
the nation’s people. The spread of “American Culture” around the
world through Mc Donald’s and war has disrupted the lives of people in
many other countries. These people are forced to emigrate legally and
illegally to escape violence and poverty.

In any solution for the above issue that involves planning or

government intervention the rabid cry of Socialism is heard loud and
wide. When government interference takes the form of subsidies to
industry including weapons manufacturers, deregulation, or allowing
an American company to send jobs offshore or build factories in other
countries, putting the burden of increased poverty on the government,
no cry is heard. When companies in India and Africa take water from
the ground while the people have to pay outrageous sums or when the
World Bank imposes penalties on a country that are guaranteed to
keep them impoverished forever everyone feels really bad and some
movie stars adopt a child or two, but nothing is done to stop it.

For the problems abroad the solutions are:

• Stop supporting dictatorships, interfering in elections and the
business of sovereign countries.
• Stop military aid to all countries in a civil war.
• In a court of law, try corporations who give aid and comfort as
well as facilities to governments engaged in the murder of labor
and human rights workers.
• Educate the American people on the real history of their country
so they can be aware enough to object to these practices.

For the problems in the US, I propose the following:

Education
Public education should be federally funded. Teachers should be
trained to find and enhance a child’s’ innate abilities and interests from
an early age, communicating them to each subsequent teacher. The
goal of education should be a well rounded, happy person who can be
productive in an area that serves the needs of society while also being
fulfilling to the individual.

Manufacturing
The car, while fun, has been one of the most destructive inventions
ever made. Its destructive not only to the environment but to the social
fabric to have everyone riding around I their own little bubble or more
often than not, huge boat. Instead of bailing out GM and letting them
decide what they would produce the government should have tied the
bailout to lighter rail and mass transit. GM bought up and dismantled
mass transit in many American cities, was given a very small fine when
found guilty and circumvented environmental laws by producing SUV’s
on truck bodies. The government should have seen this bailout as an
opportunity for progress. More jobs would have been provided because
transit workers would be needed and railroad workers would be
needed to rework or rebuild abandoned rails all across the country.

Federal Prison Industries (Unicor) employed 18,972 “inmate workers”

according to their 2009 annual report. They make everything from
clothing and textiles to office furniture to electronics. They make many
statements about improving peoples’ lives and teaching them skills
while they are in prison. I believe that poverty is the main cause of
crime and that most of the people in US prisons are poor people there
for drug related, non-violent crimes. If they and their parents had
decent paying productive jobs on the outside, they probably wouldn’t
be in jail. Given the trend of runaway shops and jobs over the past 40
years they are not likely to get a decent job when they get out. While I
think working is a good idea for everyone, work release to a decent
paying job outside the prison walls along with education and
counseling is what should be done.

We have a free source of energy that everyone has access to: the Sun.
Many new solar panels have been developed including roof tiles that
look just like normal roofing but have solar panels incorporated in them
and super thin solar film. This industry should be eligible for research
and capital equipment grants so they can produce as soon as possible
a reasonably priced product. This industry would employ engineers,
workers to assemble and install.
Farming
Factory farming does not work, is inefficient and causes environmental
and medical problems for the people of this country. The water crisis in
the artificially fertile state of California and the outbreak of e-coli in
corn fed beef are just two examples of this.
Food should be grown locally and organically. Experienced farmers
could be hired to set up and run cooperative farms in every county.
Workers of various abilities could be trained and hired to work while
continuing their education in related fields. This would not only solve
part of the unemployment problem but also stop pesticides from
leaching into the water supply and cut down on the amount of plastic
packaging and pollution from diesel fuel from the trucks that bring
your lettuce from California. This will also help in efforts to stop a
chemical company responsible for the manufacture of Agent Orange
from creating pesticide laden, dead, seeds.

Building
The documentary “America Betrayed” documented that the problems
with levees built by the Army Corp of Engineers does not stop with
New Orleans and Katrina. Bridges and levees built to protect many
cities across the country are in danger of collapsing. Given the current
water crisis and what we now know about the problems with damming
a river rebuilding in these areas might take the form of restoring then
to their previous state in order for the land to be able to protect itself.
In a country of this size this would be a massive public works project
employing thousands of laborers as well as engineers and scientists.

Many beautiful and salvageable buildings in our inner cities are vacant
while ticky tacky housing is built on farmland that could still be
productive. Rehabbing takes more labor than putting up new housing
but labor is in abundance now. Working with the farming community to
stop rezoning of farmland for new construction would help to use all
these resources in a more rational way.
Hire and train field agents to assist homeowners to refinance their
mortgages at a fare rate. If a homeowner had paid 50% of the value of
his or her home, forgive the balance owed.

There superfund sites in every state in the union. In addition to this

there are many other polluted areas that need to be cleaned up and
the pollution itself needs to stop. The EPA should hire enough field
agents to be able to deal with these issues.
Social Life and Art
Since the 1950’s non-representational art has taken a front seat in our
culture. Black painted tarpaulins titled “Thanatos”, white canvases
titled, “Untitled”, and a slab of black countertop leaned up against a
wall, also “Untitled.” (My suggestion for a title was “On Sale at Home
Depot, Cheap) abound in contemporary art museums. Painters like
Irving Norman, photographers like Milton Rogovin are not everyday
names to most people. People are missing from contemporary art as if
we are nothing. I recently saw an exhibit of WPA art in Washington
and it was wonderful. Part of the devaluation of people is in raising art
to a “higher” level. I believe that each of us has an artist in us but we
are rarely given a chance for it to emerge. Art should surround us. It
should be projected onto blank brick walls, performed in every public
space on a regular basis. Instead of buying schlock institutions should
display art made at home by their students, patients, workers. Art
therapy should be a growing field. Although most Americans have not
experienced the horrors of war as Judith Herman showed in her book
“Trauma and Recovery,” many have been traumatized at a young age.
In addition to this many of the new immigrants from the former
Yugoslavia and the African continent have experienced horrors that my
have to be suppressed as they get on with their lives. I think art can go
along way in helping people overcome these experiences. The
American Visionary Art Museum many times exhibits art by people who
have been hurt in some way. A man who was mugged and beaten
severely made art from matchsticks, a woman whose house burned
down with some of her family in it painted on discarded doors; a
woman whose childhood was marred by an abusive, alcoholic father
makes tiny dresses out of scraps of fabric showing how resilient people
are and how much is untapped within them.

I started this article by saying that American workers were the most
productive in the world mostly because they work longer hours. It has
been 100 years since workers fought for and won the right to an 8 hour
day. “8 hours work, 8 hours rest, 8 hours for what we will,” was the cry
of these workers. In 2010 people who still have jobs are working at
least that much if not more. We are human beings. We are not here to
serve industry nor to be chewed up and spit out when we re no longer
necessary to them. We have a right to live and a need to work, but our
work should be meaningful. We cannot be real participants in this
democracy unless we have the time to read, speak and meet about our
social problems. After 100 years of the 8 hour day we should have a 4
hour day with no reduction in pay.
How do we pay for this?

• Return the tax rate to pre-Reagan levels 70% for the top income
levels.
• End the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and all interference in the
internal politics of sovereign countries.
• Stop the research, production and purchase of drones and other
weapons of mass destruction.
• Reinstate the Environmental Superfund contributions from
polluting industries.
• Instate a Medical Superfund to fund Universal Health care.
Industries such as coal, oil, pesticide manufactures should
contribute since they cause a number of preventable illnesses.
Also contributing should be the Pharmaceutical companies.
• Time phase the nationalization of the medical insurance
companies. As long as the private insurance companies continue
to operate tax them at a high rate.
• Stop all foreclosures. Cap credit card interest rates at 4% and
allow people to restructure their debt.

These solutions may seem like pipe dreams and for the most part they
are. Not because they are outrageous or unreasonable but because the
power that stands in the way of solving the problems of poverty and
ignorance is enormous. Every town, every state courts business.
People say you need corporations to give you a job. These companies
are not giving you job out of charity. They are making a profit from
your labor. They are not necessary entities. People exist like all the
other wonderful things on this planet. We need to learn to celebrate
ourselves and use our talents, our abilities, our bodies and minds to
make the world a better place, safe from the vampiric ravages of
corporate entities.