Fair Wage Quotes

I cook better than you," Nick corrected absently. "I think monkeys can probably be taught to cook better than you." "I'd like to have a monkey that cooked for me," said Jamie. " I would pay him in bananas. His name would be Alphonse." "I agree, that would be awesome." Mae said. "People would come for dinner just to see the monkey chef." "You're raving," Nick said, defrosting chicken in the microwave. Mae was a bit impressed with how he seemed to look at the appliance and instantly comprehend its mysteries, when she'd been heating up ready-made meals for years by a method of pressing random buttons and hoping. " I know that's the only way Jamie communicates with people, but I expected better of you, Mavis." "We're cutting out the whole Mavis thing right now, Nick," Mae said warningly. "How many bananas would be good payment for a monkey?" Jamie wanted to know. " I would want to pay Alphonse a fair wage.

All the stuff our fathers took for granted as long as you worked hard, the great safety net and the fair wage and the gold watch at the end of it all? That's all gone around here, my friend.

The widely accepted assertion that, only if you let markets be will everyone be paid correctly and thus fairly, according to his worth, is a myth. Only when we part with this myth and grasp the political nature of the market and the collective nature of individual productivity will we be able to build a more just society in which historical legacies and collective actions, and not just individual talents and efforts, are properly taken into account in deciding how to reward people.

Spare a copper for our cause?" the girl with the coin cup asks, her voice weary. "I can spare more than that," I say. I reach into my purse and giver her what real coins I have, and then I press my hand to hers and whisper, "Don't give up," watching the magic spark in her eyes. "The tragedy of the Beardon's Bonnet Factory!" she shouts, a fire catching. "Six souls murdered for a profit! Will you let it stand, sir? Will you look away, m'um?" Her sisters-in-arms raise their placards again. "Fair wages, fair treatment!" they call. "Justice!" Their voices swell into a chorus that thunders through the dark London streets until it can no longer be ignored.

In no state today does a full-time job paying minimum wage allow a family to afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent.

Equality before the enemy -that is the main condition to fight a fair duel. Where you have contempt, you cannot wage war; where you are in command, where you can see someone beneath you, you should not wage war.

...Maybe it's low-wage work in general that has the effect of making feel like a pariah. When I watch TV over my dinner at night, I see a world in which almost everyone makes $15 an hour or more, and I'm not just thinking of the anchor folks. The sitcoms and dramas are about fashion designers or schoolteachers or lawyers, so it's easy for a fast-food worker or nurse's aide to conclude that she is an anomaly — the only one, or almost the only one, who hasn't been invited to the party. And in a sense she would be right: the poor have disappeared from the culture at large, from its political rhetoric and intellectual endeavors as well as from its daily entertainment. Even religion seems to have little to say about the plight of the poor, if that tent revival was a fair sample. The moneylenders have finally gotten Jesus out of the temple.

She had a hard time making herself let go and they waged a short, silent, silly little battle that he won, which she reluctantly conceded was probably only fair since it was part of his body.

Recall that the minimum wage was initially conceived as a method to exclude undesirables from the workforce.

Arthur spake, 'Behold, for these have sworn   To wage my wars, and worship me their King;   The old order changeth, yielding place to new;   And we that fight for our fair father Christ,

Right now, we are in a peak cycle. There’s tremendous energy out there, directed against the state. It’s not all focused, but it’s there, and it’s building. Maybe this will be sufficient to accomplish what we must accomplish over the fairly short run. We’ll see, and we can certainly hope that this is the case. But perhaps not. We must be prepared to wage a long struggle. If this is the case then we’ll probably see a different cycle, one in which the revolutionary energy of the people seems to have dispersed, run out of steam. But – and this is important- such cycles are deceptive. Things appear to be at low ebb, but actually what’s happening is a period of regroupment, a period in which we step back and learn from the mistakes made during the preceding cycle.

Wages and housing costs have diverged so dramatically that, for a growing number of Americans, the dream of a middle-class life has gone from difficult to impossible. As I write this, there are only a dozen counties and one metro area in America where a full-time minimum wage worker can afford a one-bedroom apartment at fair market rent. You’d have to make at least $16.35 an hour—more than twice the federal minimum wage—to rent such an apartment without spending more than the recommended 30 percent of income on housing. The consequences are dire, especially for the one in six American households that have been putting more than half of what they make into shelter. For many low-income families, that means little or nothing left over to buy food, medication, and other essentials.

MEN WAGE WARS for profit and principle, but they fight them for land and women. Sooner or later, the other causes and compelling reasons drown in blood and lose their meaning. Sooner or later, death and survival clog the senses. Sooner or later, surviving is the only logic, and dying is the only voice and vision. Then, when best friends die screaming, and good men maddened with pain and fury lose their minds in the bloody pit, when all the fairness and justice and beauty in the world is blown away with arms and legs and heads of brothers and sons and fathers, then, what makes men fight on, and die, and keep on dying, year after year, is the will to protect the land and the women.

It’s not convenient,” said Scrooge, “and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-used, I’ll be bound?” The clerk smiled faintly. “And yet,” said Scrooge, “you don’t think me ill-used, when I pay a day’s wages for no

Besides, he’s mine, and I want the triumph of seeing my descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers’ lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!

It's WW2 and there are wage controls in place. Instead of health care, companies decide to offer employees shoes. Having absorbed those costs, they later lobby for every company to be required to offer shoes. That calls forth regulation and monopolization of the shoe industry. Shoes are heavily subsidized. Every shoe must be approved. Producers must be domestic. They must adhere to a certain quality. They can't discriminate based on foot size or individual need. Prices rise, and some people lack shoes, so the Affordable Shoe Act forces everyone to buy into an official shoe plan or pay a fee. Here we have a perfect plan for making shoes egregiously expensive. The entire country would be consumed with the fear of being shoeless if they lose their job. The left wing calls for a single shoe provider to offer universal shoes and the right wing meekly suggests that shoe makers be permitted to sell across state lines. Meanwhile, libertarians suggest that we just forget the whole thing and let the market make and deliver shoes of every quality to anyone from anyone. Everyone screams that this is an insane and dangerous idea.

Progress in human welfare has been driven by progressive political movements and governments that have managed to harness economic resources to deliver robust public goods and fair wages. In fact, the historical record shows that in the absence of these forces, growth has quite often worked against social progress, not for it.

Solve these two problems- Encourage the rich and protect the poor, abolish pauperdom, put an end to the unjust exploitation of the weak by the strong, and a bridle on the innate jealousy of the man who is on his way for a man who has arrived, achieve a fair and brotherly relationship between work and wages, associate compulsory free education with the bringing up of the young, and make knowledge the criterion of manhood, develop minds while finding work for hands, become both a powerful nation and a family of contented people.

...[I]t doesn't take an advanced degree to figure out that this education talk is less a strategy for mitigating inequality than it is a way of rationalizing it. To attribute economic results to school years finished and SAT scores achieved is to remove matters from the realm of, well, economics and to relocate them to the provinces of personal striving and individual intelligence. From this perspective, wages aren't what they are because one party (management) has a certain amount of power over the other (workers); wages are like that because the god of the market, being surpassingly fair, rewards those who show talent and gumption. Good people are those who get a gold star from their teacher in elementary school, a fat acceptance letter from a good college, and a good life when they graduate. All because they are the best. Those who don't pay attention in high school get to spend their days picking up discarded cans by the side of the road. Both outcomes are our own doing.

God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God’s requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) deems a family that is spending more than 30 percent of its income on housing to be “cost burdened,” at risk of having too little money for food, clothing, and other essential expenses. Today there is no state in the Union in which a family that is supported by a full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent without being cost burdened, according to HUD.

Argument 4: Affirmative action is unfair to white men because it causes them to lose opportunities to less qualified women and people of color. As with argument 3, remember that these are representational goals, of which we are falling far short. When you say that a representational number of women or people of color cuts out more deserving white men, you are saying that women and people of color deserve to be less represented in our schools and our companies and that white men are deserving of an over-representational majority of these spots. We see the disparities in jobs and education among race and gender lines. Either you believe these disparities exist because you believe that people of color and women are less intelligent, less hard working, and less talented than white men, or you believe that there are systemic issues keeping women and people of color from being hired into jobs, prompted, paid a fair wage, and accepted into college.

Identity politics forces those who ask for our support to do their jobs: To understand that the self-made man got zoned into a good school district and received a high-quality education, one that wouldn’t have existed if his zip code changed by a digit. To recognize that the woman on welfare with three kids is the product of divorce in a state where she risks losing food stamps if her low-wage job pays her too much. Or that the homeless junkie is an Iraq War veteran who was in the National Guard but lost his job due to multiple deployments and didn’t qualify for full VA care. And that the laborer is a migrant farmworker who overstayed his visa to care for his American-born children. Single-strand identities do not exist in a household, let alone in a nation.

The oligarchy was divided into Liberals and Conservatives, who were united in their terror of communism after the success of the Cuban Revolution, especially since many of them had had interests in the brothels and casinos of Havana; others had had interests in pharmaceutical companies that manufactured drugs to cure the diseases spread by the former, and some in supplying guns to be used by gangs struggling for control of the latter. However, the Liberals and Conservatives differed over how to combat the spread of such appalling beliefs as “equality,” “fair pay,” and “democracy.” The Conservatives believed in coming down hard on them; this involved being curt with your campesinos, keeping them illiterate, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week. The Liberals, on the other hand, believed in being jolly with your campesinos, teaching them to read bits of paper with instructions on them, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week. In this way they hoped that the peasants would become too contented to bother to be Communists. The whole situation became infinitely confused by the Conservatives’ habit of describing the Liberals as “Communists.

There is no law of progress, and everything will depend on ourselves. But the actual situation is briefly and fairly summed up by Parkes36 in one sentence: ‘Low wages, long hours, and child labour have been characteristic of capitalism not, as Marx predicted, in its old age, but in its infancy.

This is the apotheosis of capitalism, the divine sanction of the free market, of unhindered profit and the most rapacious cruelties of globalization. Corporations, rapidly turning America into an oligarchy, have little interest in Christian ethics, or anybody’s ethics. They know what they have to do, as the titans of the industry remind us, for their stockholders. They are content to increase profit at the expense of those who demand fair wages, health benefits, safe working conditions and pensions. This new oligarchic class is creating a global marketplace where all workers, to compete, will have to become like workers in dictatorships such as China: denied rights, their wages dictated to them by the state, and forbidden from organizing or striking. America once attempted to pull workers abroad up to American levels, to foster the building of foreign labor unions, to challenge the abuse of workers in factories that flood the American market with cheap goods. But this new class seeks to reduce the American working class to the levels of this global serfdom. After all, anything that drains corporate coffers is a loss of freedom—the God-given American freedom to exploit other human beings to make money. The marriage of this gospel of prosperity with raw, global capitalism, and the flaunting of the wealth and privilege it brings, are supposedly blessed and championed by Jesus Christ. Compassion is relegated to private, individual acts of charity or left to churches. The callousness of the ideology, the notion that it in any way reflects the message of the gospels, which were preoccupied with the poor and the outcasts, illustrates how the new class has twisted Christian scripture to serve America’s god of capitalism and discredited the Enlightenment values we once prized. The

Veronica, after discovering that most women in prison in developing countries are incarcerated for poverty-related crimes, established the Copenhagen-based fashion label Carcel—which enables women in prison to turn wasted time into skills and paid jobs so they can support themselves, send their children to school, and save up for a new, crime-free beginning, in the hope, ultimately, of breaking the cycle of poverty and crime. Each product carries the name of the woman who made it and is manufactured inside women’s prisons that pay fair wages to the women to help them support themselves and their children.

The history of black workers in the United States illustrates the point. As already noted, from the late nineteenth-century on through the middle of the twentieth century, the labor force participation rate of American blacks was slightly higher than that of American whites. In other words, blacks were just as employable at the wages they received as whites were at their very different wages. The minimum wage law changed that. Before federal minimum wage laws were instituted in the 1930s, the black unemployment rate was slightly lower than the white unemployment rate in 1930. But then followed the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938—all of which imposed government-mandated minimum wages, either on a particular sector or more broadly. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which promoted unionization, also tended to price black workers out of jobs, in addition to union rules that kept blacks from jobs by barring them from union membership. The National Industrial Recovery Act raised wage rates in the Southern textile industry by 70 percent in just five months and its impact nationwide was estimated to have cost blacks half a million jobs. While this Act was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 was upheld by the High Court and became the major force establishing a national minimum wage. As already noted, the inflation of the 1940s largely nullified the effect of the Fair Labor Standards Act, until it was amended in 1950 to raise minimum wages to a level that would have some actual effect on current wages. By 1954, black unemployment rates were double those of whites and have continued to be at that level or higher. Those particularly hard hit by the resulting unemployment have been black teenage males. Even though 1949—the year before a series of minimum wage escalations began—was a recession year, black teenage male unemployment that year was lower than it was to be at any time during the later boom years of the 1960s. The wide gap between the unemployment rates of black and white teenagers dates from the escalation of the minimum wage and the spread of its coverage in the 1950s. The usual explanations of high unemployment among black teenagers—inexperience, less education, lack of skills, racism—cannot explain their rising unemployment, since all these things were worse during the earlier period when black teenage unemployment was much lower. Taking the more normal year of 1948 as a basis for comparison, black male teenage unemployment then was less than half of what it would be at any time during the decade of the 1960s and less than one-third of what it would be in the 1970s. Unemployment among 16 and 17-year-old black males was no higher than among white males of the same age in 1948. It was only after a series of minimum wage escalations began that black male teenage unemployment not only skyrocketed but became more than double the unemployment rates among white male teenagers. In the early twenty-first century, the unemployment rate for black teenagers exceeded 30 percent. After the American economy turned down in the wake of the housing and financial crises, unemployment among black teenagers reached 40 percent.

It's an insidious twist of thought that leads one to demand women to give up their reproductive rights to force unwanted pregnancies but then, once birthed from the womb, to deny them access to basic necessities required for even a mediocre life like education, clean air, healthcare, and a fair wage. And these people have the audacity to call their position pro-life. These same people who bemoan the welfare state, yet refuse to require business to honor a fair wage, appear to want to create the very circumstances that they ceaselessly complain about. I dare say that by perpetuating this condition, by feeding the apparatus of poverty, they are satiating their narcissism. With poverty securely entrenched, these lucky few can sit back and smile with smug superiority. Because of course, they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, they worked harder, and they have earned what they have. It's a meritocracy, they say, if only by merit of their parent's color of flesh or social standing. So yes, let's churn out more children who will be unable to claw their way out of poverty, and if they just happen to defy the odds, let's brainwash them into believing this tripe called the American Dream so they will assist us as we throw their less fortunate fortunate siblings into the hungry machine of conservatism. Because we are really only interested in conserving the status quo.

In a 2007 cable about Nauru, made public by WikiLeaks, an unnamed U.S. official summed up his government’s analysis of what went wrong on the island: “Nauru simply spent extravagantly, never worrying about tomorrow.” Fair enough, but that diagnosis is hardly unique to Nauru; our entire culture is extravagantly drawing down finite resources, never worrying about tomorrow. For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere - because we can’t see them - will have no effect whatsoever. Or if they do, we humans, brilliant as we are, will just invent our way out of whatever mess we have made. And we tell ourselves all kinds of similarly implausible no-consequences stories all the time, about how we can ravage the world and suffer no adverse effects. Indeed we are always surprised when it works out otherwise. We extract and do not replenish and wonder why the fish have disappeared and the soil requires ever more “inputs” (like phosphate) to stay fertile. We occupy countries and arm their militias and then wonder why they hate us. We drive down wages, ship jobs overseas, destroy worker protections, hollow out local economies, then wonder why people can’t afford to shop as much as they used to. We offer those failed shoppers subprime mortgages instead of steady jobs and then wonder why no one foresaw that a system built on bad debts would collapse. At every stage our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing - a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us.

[O]ne macroeconomic study of the FairTax—a study that assumed that the employer’s share of the payroll tax is the only tax savings that will be used to lower prices—estimated that prices would rise by 24.8 percent but wages would increase by 27.4 percent, more than compensating for the increase in prices. By these calculations, disposable income is expected to increase by 1.7 percent.

With effort, he concentrated on an editorial. It told of widespread industrial unrest in the Midlands and asserted that it was imperative to pay a fair wage for a fair day’s work. Another article lamented that the huge industrial machine of England was operating at only half capacity and cried that greater new markets must be found for the productive wealth it could spew forth; more production meant cheaper goods, increased employment, higher wages. There were news articles that told of tension and war clouds over France and Spain because of the succession to the Spanish throne; Prussia was spreading its tentacles into all the German states to dominate them and a Franco-Prussian confrontation was imminent; there were war clouds over Russia and the Hapsburg Holy Roman Empire; war clouds over the Italian States that wished to throw out the upstart French King of Naples and join together or not to join together, and the Pope, French-supported, was involved in the political arena; there were war clouds over South Africa because the Boers – who had over the last four years trekked out of the Cape Colony to established the Transvaal and the Orange Free State – were now threatening the English colony of Natal and war was expected by the next mail; there were anti-Semitic riots and pogroms throughout Europe; Catholic were fighting against Protestants, Mohammedans against Hindus, against Catholics, against Protestants, and they fighting among themselves; there were Red Indian wars in America, animosity between the Northern and Southern states, animosity between America and Britain over Canada, trouble in Ireland, Sweden, Finland, India, Egypt, the Balkans  . . . ‘Does na matter what you read!’ Struan exploded to no one in particular. ‘The whole world’s mad, by God!

That’s just the way life is. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness—they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy or the periodic table. They’re completely alien notions to the way things happen out there in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to contribute back to the world for giving us the gift of life—not birthrights we should expect and demand every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate, and there is no safety net. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard-trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers—they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veterans Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recentlypurchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot box is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating little green men from the Devil Star. In conclusion, Class of Ninety-seven, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get in the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to….

Would there ever be a woman who would be his equal? I scowled. Equal? From where? As an athlete I wasn’t allowed to compete against men. We accelerated—but so did they. The performance gap between the sexes stood in most sports. The wage gap stood in every industry. The gaps were everywhere. Why did everyone insist on pretending, all the time, that anything was fair? Fairness only existed if you started in the same place, with the same tools and the same resources.

However, the Liberals and Conservatives differed over how to combat the spread of such appalling beliefs as “equality,” “fair pay,” and “democracy.” The Conservatives believed in coming down hard on them; this involved being curt with your campesinos, keeping them illiterate, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week. The Liberals, on the other hand, believed in being jolly with your campesinos, teaching them to read bits of paper with instructions on them, and paying them a fixed wage of 150 pesos a week.

While it is not always clear what is fair, and people’s judgments of fairness can be biased by their self-interest, there is a growing sense that the present disparity in wages is unfair. When executives argue that wages have to be reduced or that there have to be layoffs in order for corporations to compete, but simultaneously increase their own pay, workers rightly consider that what is going on is unfair. That will affect their effort today, their loyalty to the firm, their willingness to cooperate with others, and their willingness to invest in its future.

Prayer to an Unseen Friend My special friend, thank you for listening to me. You know how hard I am trying to fulfill your faith in me. Thank You, also for the place in which I dwell. Let neither work nor play, no matter how satisfying or glorious, ever separate me for long from my precious family. Teach me how to play the game of life with fairness, courage, fortitude and confidence. Provide me with a few friends who understand me and yet remain my friends. Allow me a forgiving heart and a mind unafraid to travel though the trail may not be marked. Give me a sense of humor and a little leisure with nothing to do. Help me to strive for the highest legitimate reward of merit, ambition and opportunity, and yet never allow me to forget to extend a kindly, helping hand to others who need encouragement and assistance. Provide me with the strength to encounter whatever is to come, that I be brave in peril, constant in tribulation, temperate in anger and always prepared for any change of fortune. Enable me to give a smile instead of a frown, a kindly word instead of harshness and bitterness. Make me sympathetic to the grief of others, realizing that there are hidden woes in every life, no matter how exalted. Keep me forever serene in every activity of life, neither unduly boastful nor given to the more serious sin of self-depreciation. In sorrow, may my soul be uplifted, by the thought that if there were no shadow, there would be no sunshine. In failure, preserve my faith. In success, keep me humble. Steady me to do the full share of my work, and more, as well as I can, and when that is done, stop me, pay me what wages Thou wilt, and permit me to say, from a loving heart... A grateful Amen

Let me illustrate what I mean by “the opportunity costs of working.” I was recently in the market for domestic help, and a young woman I wanted to hire as a housekeeper refused the job because I wouldn’t pay her under the table. No, she wasn’t an illegal alien—she just wanted me to treat her as one. The reason she made this unusual demand was that if she had income to report, she would suddenly have to start making student loan payments and paying taxes. To work for me would have cost her hundreds of dollars every month, creating a big enough hit to her bottom line that it wasn’t worth working anymore. (Perhaps she wasn’t savvy enough to apply for all of the available government programs, but she could have just as well pointed out that my hiring her would have cost her thousands annually in food stamps and other welfare payments.) Just imagine—there are so many unemployed people today, and yet government is making it too expensive for anyone to come and clean your floors for a fair wage. (By the way, the job I offered paid close to $40,000 per year.) Here was someone who admitted that reality quite bluntly—and I still regret the fact that I couldn’t hire her legally.

U.S. settler citizens expected Mexico’s labor migrants to bow to the settler order. As Victor S. Clark, the first Anglo-American economist to study Mexican labor migration to the United States, explained in a 1908 report for the Department of Labor: “The Mexican laborer is unambitious, listless, physically weak, irregular, and indolent. On the other hand, he is docile, patient, usually orderly in camp, fairly intelligent under competent supervision, obedient, and cheap. If he were active and ambitious, he would be less tractable and would cost more. His strongest point is his willingness to work for a low wage.”38

But privatisation has another important function in the neoliberal world view, and that's to assist wage suppression. If you're a private company, you've got one overriding obligation, and it's not to your workers, to your country or your community - it's to make a profit, in order to return it in dividends to your shareholders. That's it. And the means to increase that rate of return to its greatest possible margin is cutting the cost of your operation. You do this by increasing your productivity, expanding your market, raising prices on your offered commodities, and by reducing the wages and conditions of the people who work for you.

Welcome to Sanctuary, my home and the focus of the Imperials, whom I serve and direct. This is an island of force in Free Alaska, of the planet Earth, and the system of mankind. We are those who wage eternal war against tyranny. We are those who choose death over submission. Freedom over oppression. And honor always. Choose our values, and you will have found a friend. Choose to control a free spirit and we will control you. Decide for others and we will decide for you. Use force against the vulnerable and our force will render you helpless. Practice coercion and we will oppress you. Bring strife to mankind and we will bring you war! Now is the time for your misgivings and complaints. Now is the time for you to voice your concerns and your apprehensions. Stand now and speak in freedom. Speak your mind and you will be heard. If you be injured, say now by whom. If you seek redress and your cause be just, I will stand with you. If a wrong can be righted, I will undertake that task. If it is I that have offended, show me my error and I will correct it. This is also the time for blood, if blood is what you seek. Here you can fight, if only combat will give you satisfaction. Here you can win in trial by ordeal, but here too you can lose. If your cause be as important as life itself to you, it is here you can wager your life. Fairness is intended, but beware that here lies the intent to prevail.| Your cause, if true, would be better served by reason, for with reason the Imperials can be moved. Force is the resort of passion, but passion may serve evil or good. Here it serves us and we will stand by its consequences even if it takes us all from the Earth. It is said where you find those who live by the sword you will find those who die by the sword. Look no further. You have found those who make such a choice for their life. You have found the Imperials. I am their Voice. Speak for yourself now if you will.

According to Vedder and Galloway, prior to the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act, black and white construction unemployment registered similar levels. After the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act, however, black unemployment rose relative to that of whites.[31] Vedder and Galloway also argue that 1930 to 1950 was a period of unprecedented and rapidly increasing government intervention in the economy. This period saw enactment of the bulk of legislation restraining the setting of private wage, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, Davis-Bacon Act, Walsh-Healey Act, and National Labor Relations Act. The Social Security Act also played a role, forcing employers to pay for a newly imposed fringe benefit.[32] Vedder and Galloway also note that this period saw a rapid increase in the black/white unemployment ratio.

The essence of the neo-classical argument is that competition for productive factors — land, labour and capital — forces entrepreneurs to pay an amount equal to the value that the marginal (last employed) unit of each factor creates. Given a particular technological state and relative factor supplies (scarcities), then competition ensures that each factor 'gets what it creates', that 'exploitation of a factor cannot occur.' It is then a short step to infer that the distributive shares of rent, wages, interest, etc., are socially just fair shares. The political implication is that there is no point in, or call for, class struggle, and that government intervention should be confined largely to ensuring that perfect competition prevails. In the lexicons of many Marxist writers, this qualifies as 'vulgar political economy' with a vengeance.

Disparity, Education and Economy Every dollar spent on luxury is a dollar of disparity. Citizens of earth could force big tech to pay their employees fair wages tomorrow, if they just stop buying their fancy, overpriced products and go for humbler alternatives unless the companies bring down their disparities in salary. The CEO may enjoy certain benefits of their position, but not until those working at the bottom can afford the fundamentals of life for their family. I'll say it to you plainly. An employee wronged is a company wronged. You see, trying to build a disparity-free economy pursuing revenue is like trying to achieve pregnancy through vasectomy. So long as greed drives the economy, it's not economy, but catastrophe. So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization. Ambition to climb the ladder of status so that you could be on the affluent side of disparity, is no ambition of a civilized human, it's the ambition of a caveman. So, before you pursue an ambition in life, educate yourself on a civilized definition of ambition. Yet the situation in our world is so pathetic that that's exactly the kind of ambition educational institutes sell. Schools and universities don't teach you to build a civilized society free from disparity, they teach you clever tactics to be on the affluent side of disparity. This is not education, this is castration. Concern for the society should be the bedrock of education - collective welfare should be the bedrock of economy - if not, we might as well start living as hobos on the streets, because with greed as the driving principle of education and economy, sooner or later all of us will end up on the streets.

In the bourgeois democratic countries the need for using intrinsically good means to achieve desirable ends is more clearly realized than in Russia. But even in these countries enormous mistakes have been made in the past and still greater, still more dangerous mistakes are in process of being committed today. Most of these mistakes are due to the fact that, though professing belief in our ideal postulates, the rulers and people of these countries are, to some extent and quite incompatibly, also militarists and nationalists. The English and the French, it is true, are sated militarists whose chief desire is to live a quiet life, holding fast to what they seized in their unregenerate days of imperial highway-robbery. Confronted by rivals who want to do now what they were doing from the beginning of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, they profess and doubtless genuinely feel a profound moral indignation. Meanwhile, they have begun to address themselves, reluctantly but with determination, to the task of beating the Fascist powers at their own game. Like the Fascist states, they are preparing for war. but modern war cannot be waged or even prepared except by a highly centralized executive wielding absolute power over a docile people. Most of the planning which is going on in the democratic countries is planning designed to transform these countries into the likeness of totalitarian communities organized for slaughter and rapine. Hitherto this transformation has proceeded fairly slowly. Belief in our idea postulates has acted as a brake on fascization, which has had to advance gradually and behind a smoke screen. But if war is declared, or even if the threat of war becomes more serious than at present, the process will become open and rapid. "The defence of democracy against Fascism" entails inevitably the transformation of democracy into Fascism.

(from chapter 19, "Willi Ossa") "...when I did [become a pastor], I knew that it was a vocation, not a job. I told my friends in the Company [of Pastors] the story of Willi...We were honing our observational skills in discerning the difference between vocation and job. As we were seeing pastors left and right abandoning their vocations and taking jobs, we were determined to keep the distinction clear for ourselves. A job is an assignment to do work that can be quantified and evaluated. It is pretty easy to decide whether a job has been completed or not. It is pretty easy to tell whether a job is done well or badly. But a vocation is not a job in that sense. I can be hired to do a job, paid a fair wage if I do it, dismissed if I don't. But I can't be hired to be a pastor, for my primary responsibility is not to the people I serve tu to the God I serve. As it turns out, the people I serve would often prefer an idol who would do what they want done rather than do what God, revealed in Jesus, wants them to do. In our present culture, the sharp distinction between a job and a vocation is considerably blurred. How do I, as a pastor, prevent myself from thinking of my work as a job that I get paid for, a job that is assigned to me by my denomination, a job that I am expected to do to the satisfaction of my congregation? How do I stay attentive to and listening to the call that got me started in this way of life - not a call to make the church attractive and useful in the American scene, not a call to help people feel good about themselves and have a good life, not a call to use my considerable gifts and fulfill myself, but a call like Abraham's 'to set out for a place...not knowing where he was going', a call to deny myself and take up my cross and follow Jesus, a call like Jonah's to go at once to Nineveh, 'a city he detested', a call like Paul's to 'get up and enter the city and you will be told what to do'? How do I keep the immediacy and authority of God's call in my ears when in entire culture, both secular and ecclesial, is giving me a job description? How do I keep the calling, the vocation, of pastor from being drowned out by job descriptions, gussied up in glossy challenges and visions and strategies, clamoring incessantly for my attention?

Brandishing a green mallet, Hannah grinned at John. “We’ll take sides. You and me against Andrew and Theo.” Hannah went first. Theo and I watched her knock her ball through the first two wickets and aim for the third. She missed and stepped back to let Theo take his turn. I leaned on my mallet and waited. It had taken me a while to understand the game, but once I learned the rules, I’d become a pretty good strategist. As soon as I had the opportunity, I planned to knock John’s ball clear off the court, maybe all the way into the poison ivy at the bottom of the hill. In a few minutes, I saw my chance. My ball rolled through a wicket and hit his. To keep mine steady, I put my foot on it and whacked my ball hard enough to drive John’s into the poison ivy. “It’s dead,” I crowed. “I got you!” Hannah gave me one of her vexed looks. Turning to John, she said, “I swear he’s getting more like his old self every day.” At the same moment, Buster went tearing into the poison ivy and emerged with the ball in his mouth. Waging his tail proudly, he ran off with it. He’d lost Mrs. Armiger’s hat, but he wasn’t going to give up the ball. Ignoring our commands to drop it, he dashed under the rose trellis and disappeared behind the hedge. “Drat,” Hannah said. “That stupid dog must have buried a dozen croquet balls by now.” I glanced at John, hoping he’d be a bad sport. Maybe he’d say I cheated. Maybe he’d say it wasn’t fair. Maybe he’d disgrace himself by refusing to play. Instead, he slapped my back and said, “Well, it looks like you’ll win this game, Andrew.” Hannah glowed with admiration. Frank Merriwell himself couldn’t have been a finer gentleman.

If Nixon set out to be the man who redefined the Republican political center in the post–New Deal, post–Fair Deal age, he did not, nor did any other young Republican politician, dare campaign by suggesting a return to the America that had existed before the New Deal. The phrase “creeping socialism” was about as close as they got to attacking the New Deal on its domestic reforms. Rather, the catchphrases were about a need to return to Americanism. It was better to attack Communism and speak of domestic treason than it was to be specific about reversing the economic redistribution of the New Deal. In fact, Nixon’s essential response to all issues was to raise the specter of Communism: “The commies,” Nixon told the Chicago Tribune’s Seymour Korman during his harsh 1950 senatorial campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, “don’t like it when I smash into Truman for his attempted cover-up of the Hiss case ... but the more the commies yell, the surer I am that I’m waging an honest American campaign.” He was, he liked to say, the number one target of the Communists in America. In those early campaigns, he was, it seemed, a man who needed an enemy and who seemed almost to feel that he functioned best when the world was against him. Such men, almost surely, eventually do get the enemies they so desperately want. If the leaders of a nation as powerful as the United States needed, above all, personal confidence—Oliver Wendell Holmes once said of the young Franklin Roosevelt that he had a third-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament—Nixon was ill-prepared for his long journey in American politics. Emotional strength and self-confidence were missing from him. Everything with Nixon was personal. When others disagreed with him, it was as if they wanted to strip away his hard-won veneer of success and reduce him to the unhappy boy he had once been. In political terms that had bitter consequences: He would lash out at others in attacks that seemed to go far beyond the acceptable norms of partisanship; if others struck back at him, he saw himself as a victim. Just beneath the surface of this modern young politician was a man who, in Bob Taft’s phrase, seemed “to radiate tension and conflict.” He was filled with the resentments of class one would have expected in a New Deal Democrat.

If one looks at modern society, it is obvious that in order to live, the great majority of people are forced to sell their labour power. All the physical and intellectual capacities existing in human beings, in their personalities, which must be set in motion to produce useful things, can only be used if they are sold in exchange for wages. Labour power is usually perceived as a commodity bought and sold nearly like all others. The existence of exchange and wage-labour seems normal, inevitable. Yet the introduction of wage-labour involved conflict, resistance, and bloodshed. The separation of the worker from the means of production, now an accepted fact of life, took a long time and was accomplished by force. In England, in the Netherlands, in France, from the sixteenth century on, economic and political violence expropriated craftsmen and peasants, repressed indigence and vagrancy, imposed wage-labour on the poor. Between 1930 and 1950, Russia decreed a labour code which included capital punishment in order to organise the transition of millions of peasants to industrial wage-labour in less than a few decades. Seemingly normal facts: that an individual has nothing but his labour power, that he must sell it to a business unit to be able to live, that everything is a commodity, that social relations revolve around market exchange… such facts now taken for granted result from a long, brutal process. By means of its school system and its ideological and political life, contemporary society hides the past and present violence on which this situation rests. It conceals both its origin and the mechanism which enables it to function. Everything appears as a free contract in which the individual, as a seller of labour power, encounters the factory, the shop or the office. The existence of the commodity seems to be an obvious and natural phenomenon, and the periodic major and minor disasters it causes are often regarded as quasi-natural calamities. Goods are destroyed to maintain their prices, existing capacities are left to rot, while elementary needs remain unfulfilled. Yet the main thing that the system hides is not the existence of exploitation or class (that is not too hard to see), nor its horrors (modern society is quite good at turning them into media show). It is not even that the wage labour/capital relationship causes unrest and rebellion (that also is fairly plain to see). The main thing it conceals is that insubordination and revolt could be large and deep enough to do away with this relationship and make another world possible.

No sound strategy for studying fascism can fail to examine the entire context in which it was formed and grew. Some approaches to fascism start with the crisis to which fascism was a response, at the risk of making the crisis into a cause. A crisis of capitalism, according to Marxists, gave birth to fascism. Unable to assure ever-expanding markets, ever-widening access to raw materials, and ever-willing cheap labor through the normal operation of constitutional regimes and free markets, capitalists were obliged, Marxists say, to find some new way to attain these ends by force. Others perceive the founding crisis as the inadequacy of liberal state and society (in the laissez-faire meaning of liberalism current at that time) to deal with the challenges of the post-1914 world. Wars and revolutions produced problems that parliament and the market—the main liberal solutions—appeared incapable of handling: the distortions of wartime command economies and the mass unemployment attendant upon demobilization; runaway inflation; increased social tensions and a rush toward social revolution; extension of the vote to masses of poorly educated citizens with no experience of civic responsibility; passions heightened by wartime propaganda; distortions of international trade and exchange by war debts and currency fluctuations. Fascism came forward with new solutions for these challenges. Fascists hated liberals as much as they hated socialists, but for different reasons. For fascists, the internationalist, socialist Left was the enemy and the liberals were the enemies’ accomplices. With their hands-off government, their trust in open discussion, their weak hold over mass opinion, and their reluctance to use force, liberals were, in fascist eyes, culpably incompetent guardians of the nation against the class warfare waged by the socialists. As for beleaguered middle-class liberals themselves, fearful of a rising Left, lacking the secret of mass appeal, facing the unpalatable choices offered them by the twentieth century, they have sometimes been as ready as conservatives to cooperate with fascists. Every strategy for understanding fascism must come to terms with the wide diversity of its national cases. The major question here is whether fascisms are more disparate than the other “isms.” This book takes the position that they are, because they reject any universal value other than the success of chosen peoples in a Darwinian struggle for primacy. The community comes before humankind in fascist values, and respecting individual rights or due process gave way to serving the destiny of the Volk or razza. Therefore each individual national fascist movement gives full expression to its own cultural particularism. Fascism, unlike the other “isms,” is not for export: each movement jealously guards its own recipe for national revival, and fascist leaders seem to feel little or no kinship with their foreign cousins. It has proved impossible to make any fascist “international” work.

Unconditional blame is the tendency to explain all difficulties exclusively as the consequence of forces beyond your influence, to see yourself as an absolute victim of external circumstances. Every person suffers the impact of factors beyond his control, so we are all, in a sense, victims. We are not, however, absolute victims. We have the ability to respond to our circumstances and influence how they affect us. In contrast, the unconditional blamer defines his victim-identity by his helplessness, disowning any power to manage his life and assigning causality only to that which is beyond his control. Unconditional blamers believe that their problems are always someone else’s fault, and that there’s nothing they could have done to prevent them. Consequently, they believe that there’s nothing they should do to address them. Unconditional blamers feel innocent, unfairly burdened by others who do things they “shouldn’t” do because of maliciousness or stupidity. According to the unconditional blamer, these others “ought” to fix the problems they created. Blamers live in a state of self-righteous indignation, trying to control people around them with their accusations and angry demands. What the unconditional blamer does not see is that in order to claim innocence, he has to relinquish his power. If he is not part of the problem, he cannot be part of the solution. In fact, rather than being the main character of his life, the blamer is a spectator. Watching his own suffering from the sidelines, he feels “safe” because his misery is always somebody else’s fault. Blame is a tranquilizer. It soothes the blamer, sheltering him from accountability for his life. But like any drug, its soothing effect quickly turns sour, miring him in resignation and resentment. In order to avoid anxiety and guilt, the blamer must disown his freedom and power and see himself as a plaything of others. The blamer feels victimized at work. His job is fraught with letdowns, betrayals, disappointments, and resentments. He feels that he is expected to fix problems he didn’t create, yet his efforts are never recognized. So he shields himself with justifications. Breakdowns are never his fault, nor are solutions his responsibility. He is not accountable because it is always other people who failed to do what they should have done. Managers don’t give him direction as they should, employees don’t support him as they should, colleagues don’t cooperate with him as they should, customers demand much more than they should, suppliers don’t respond as they should, senior executives don’t lead the organization as they should, administration systems don’t work as they should—the whole company is a mess. In addition, the economy is weak, the job market tough, the taxes confiscatory, the regulations crippling, the interest rates exorbitant, and the competition fierce (especially because of those evil foreigners who pay unfairly low wages). And if it weren’t difficult enough to survive in this environment, everybody demands extraordinary results. The blamer never tires of reciting his tune, “Life is not fair!

My conclusion is that technological capitalism is by far the best system for giving entrepreneurs and workers their “fair share.” This fair share, whether measured in terms of profits or wages, is precisely what people are entitled to as a result of the value they create for their fellow citizens. While short-term inequality frequently results from the dynamic energy of a capitalist economy, that energy also produces mass affluence that ultimately raises life expectancy and living standards for everyone.

Slavery is legal in prisons under the Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”49 Prisoners are not covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act requiring workers to be paid the minimum wage. The highest hourly wage in prison rarely exceeds $2 and most prisoners earn less than a dollar an hour. In Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Texas most prisoners are not paid for their work. Once you enter prison you become, in essence, a slave of the state.

There is no fair fight to be waged about the past.

When it comes to salvation, there are no wages. In fact, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6: 23). So if we want to talk about getting what we deserve, we’re in for a rough ride. Salvation is a gift, not a reward (Rom. 4: 4–5). Is election fair? Hardly. But who wants fairness in this matter? After all, if God were to give everybody what is deserved, nobody would be saved. He could leave every one of us in our spiritual death and the condemnation that we have chosen for ourselves.

Meantime the producers, receiving less and less in exchange for their products, were impoverished and discouraged. Naturally they tended to produce less, since they would get no fair return; in fact, effort from which there is no net return automatically must cease. They consumed their own products instead of putting them into exchange. With that the taxes began to dry up. Taxes must come from surplus. The bureaucrats inevitably came down on the producers, with the object of sequestrating the energy directly at the source, by a planned economy. Farmers were bound to the soil; craftsmen to their workbenches; tradesmen were ordered to continue in business although the taxes and regulations did not permit them to make a living. No one could change his residence or occupation without permission. The currency was debased. Prices and wages were fixed until there was nothing to sell and no work to be had. "The reforms of Diocletian, A.D. 260-268, made still heavier the already unendurable load of citizenship."1 Men who had formerly been productive escaped to the woods and mountains as outlaws, because they must starve if they went on working.

Was i Doomed from the Start? Some pundits have also said my campaign was doomed from the start, either because of my weaknesses as a candidate or because America was caught up in a historic wave of angry, tribal populism sweeping the world. Maybe. But don't forget I wan the popular vote by nearly three million, roughly the same margin by which George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in 2004. It's hard to see how that happens if I'm hopeless out of step with the American people. Still as I've discussed throughout this book, I do think it's fair to say there was a fundamental mismatch between how i approach politics and what a lot of the country wanted to hear in 2016. I've learned that even the best plans and proposals can land on deaf ears when people are disillusioned by a broken political system and disgusted with politicians. When people are angry and looking for someone to blame, they don't want to hear your ten-point plan to create jobs and raise wages. They want you to be angry, too.

During the FDR administration, economic policy was set from the top; ignoring the injunction by economically laissez-faire thinkers that no set of individuals can know more than the entire market at large, FDR and his cadre of geniuses lengthened the Great Depression by nearly a decade by manipulating the currency, setting wages and prices, and bullying those who objected into silence.

Taking into account fair labor wages for fishermen and canning employees- and the damage inflicted to the ocean through overfishing and the ecological impact of the slow annihilation of sharks- a single can of tuna isn't the bargain it's often made out to be

Every single Australian benefits from superannuation, Medicare, the weekend and the minimum wage - these were all won by our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents taking non-violent, so-called illegal industrial action. Working people only take these measures when the issue is one of justice, like ensuring workers' safety on a worksite, a fair day's pay for a fair day's work or to uphold or improve the rights of working people. Without the Australian trade union movement our country would look like the US where these rights are inadequate or do not exist.

She let him into the house secretly, saw him privately, and kept him out of his father’s sight.53 And yet, even Corneil, this creature of deceit, could not deny the truth about himself. He alternated his bombast with references to “my shame & mortification & sorrow.” He was literally fatalistic about his hope of reform. He wrote to Greeley of his “determination to humbly forfeit my life as the penalty of further vice.” It was the one prediction about himself that would come true.54 ON FEBRUARY 15, 1866, the locomotive Augustus Schell chuffed onto the Albany bridge and rolled westward along its 2,020-foot span, over a total of nineteen piers, across an iron turntable above the center of the river below, and rattled down into Albany itself. Following this symbolic inauguration, the first passenger train crossed one week later. After four years of construction (and many more of litigation), the bridge gave the New York Central a continuous, direct connection to the Hudson River Railroad, and thus to Manhattan. But its completed track became a lighted fuse.55 The Commodore’s cold response to Corneil’s backsliding revealed the icy judge who had always lurked behind the encouraging father. So, too, did the implacable warrior remain within the diplomat who had negotiated with Corning and Richmond. In December 1865, for example, the New York Court of Appeals handed down final judgment in the long-running court battle between Vanderbilt and the New York & New Haven Railroad over the shares that Schuyler had fraudulently issued in 1854. Over the years, weary shareholders had settled with the company—but the Commodore refused. He had waged his battle until the court ruled that the company owed $900,000 to Schuyler’s victims. “The great principle is now settled by the highest court in this State,” wrote the Commercial and Financial Chronicle, “that railroad and other corporations are bound by the fraudulent acts of their own agents.”56 It was, indeed, a great principle—but businessmen also saw a more personal lesson in the Schuyler fraud case. “The Commodore’s word is as good as his bond when it is fairly

The day we signed the first agreement in the late fifties, I went from 90 cents an hour to a buck and a quarter,” he recalled. “That 35 cents is what made me where I’m at today, still union. “If you really grasp unionism, you are a socialist,” he said. “Because we’re for the little people. Fair representation. Antidiscrimination. Wages. Benefits. It all comes hand in hand. There’s strength in numbers.

To be fair, later, when I read through the scientific literature, I realized this is not a failing of DuPont’s. It seems to be standard for scientists in this field, even the very best. They overwhelmingly focus on biochemistry and the brain. The questions Bruce and Gabor look at—how people use drugs out here on the streets—are ignored. Nobody, I kept being told, wants to fund studies into that. Why would this be? Professor Carl Hart at Columbia University is one of the leading experts in the world on how drugs affect the brain. He tells me that when you explain these facts to the scientists who have built their careers on the simplistic old ideas about drugs, they effectively say to you: “Look, man—this is my position. Leave me alone.” This is what they know. This is what they have built their careers on. If you offer ideas that threaten to eclipse theirs—they just ignore you. I ask Professor Hart: Can our central idea about drugs really be as hollow as that? “Can it be as hollow? I think you have discovered—it is as hollow as that . . . Look at the evidence. It’s hollow . . . It’s smoke and mirrors.” But why, then, do these ideas persist? Why haven’t the scientists with the better and more accurate ideas eclipsed these old theories? Hart tells me bluntly: Almost all the funding for research into illegal drugs is provided by governments waging the drug war—and they only commission research that reinforces the ideas we already have about drugs. All these different theories, with their radical implications—why would governments want to fund those?

but money is not the primary driver for either. We focus on adding value to our readers, listeners, viewers, followers, clients, and customers without undermining our values. We treat our employees fairly and pay them fair wages. We focus on quality, not quantity. We don’t run advertisements on any of our platforms.

that God dispenses gifts, not wages. None of us gets paid according to merit, for none of us comes close to satisfying God’s requirements for a perfect life. If paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell.

The two of us waged a silent war. The territory was the marital bed. He wanted to make love, and I wanted to get f*cked. He wanted to connect and I wanted to check out.

SANDINISTAS. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional—FSLN), more commonly known as Sandinistas, ruled Nicaragua from 1979 until 1990, attempting to transform the country along Marxist-influenced lines. The group formed in the early 1960s, and spent the first two decades of its existence engaged in a guerrilla campaign against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, receiving backing from Cuba which remained a close ally when the Sandinistas took office. With popular revulsion towards Somoza rising, in 1978 the Sandinistas encouraged the Nicaraguan people to rise up against his regime. After a brief but bloody battle, in July 1979 the dictator was forced into exile, and the Sandinistas emerged victorious. With the country in a state of morass, they quickly convened a multi-interest five-person Junta of National Reconstruction to implement sweeping changes. The junta included rigid Marxist and long-serving Sandinista Daniel Ortega, and under his influence Somoza’s vast array of property and land was confiscated and brought under public ownership. Additionally, mining, banking and a limited number of private enterprises were nationalized, sugar distribution was taken into state hands, and vast areas of rural land were expropriated and distributed among the peasantry as collective farms. There was also a highly successful literacy campaign, and the creation of neighborhood groups to place regional governance in the hands of workers. Inevitably, these socialist undertakings got tangled up in the Cold War period United States, and in 1981 President Ronald Reagan began funding oppositional “Contra” groups which for the entire decade waged an economic and military guerrilla campaign against the Sandinista government. Despite this and in contrast to other communist states, the government fulfilled its commitment to political plurality, prompting the growth of opposition groups and parties banned under the previous administration. In keeping with this, an internationally recognized general election was held in 1984, returning Ortega as president and giving the Sandinistas 61 of 90 parliamentary seats. Yet, in the election of 1990, the now peaceful Contra’s National Opposition Union emerged victorious, and Ortega’s Sandinistas were relegated to the position of the second party in Nicaraguan politics, a status they retain today. The Marxism of the Sandinistas offered an alternative to the Marx- ism–Leninism of the Soviet Bloc and elsewhere. This emanated from the fact that the group attempted to blend a Christian perspective on theories of liberation with a fervent devotion to both democracy and the Marxian concepts of dialectical materialism, worker rule and proletariat-led revolution. The result was an arguably fairly success- ful form of socialism cut short by regional factors.

CHAPTER TWO Brystle isn’t just a witcher-friendly rideshare app. Its existence is an ongoing protest against the Limit-12 Law. We offer a safe, affordable alternative to public transportation. As the country’s largest witcher-owned employer, we pay our drivers fair wages and are 100 percent committed to their safety. Movement is progress. That’s our motto. Join us for the ride. —Khalil Robinson, CEO of Brystle Audio excerpt of a 2019 commercial

Advocate for Progressive Taxation: Support policies that promote progressive taxation, where the wealthy pay their fair share. Engage with advocacy groups and contact your representatives to push for tax reforms that reduce inequality. Support Regulatory Frameworks: Advocate for robust regulatory frameworks that protect consumers, workers, and the environment. Join organizations that work towards strengthening regulations and hold policymakers accountable. Defend Public Services: Stand against the privatization of essential public services. Support initiatives that prioritize the public good over profit and work to ensure that services like healthcare, education, and infrastructure remain accessible to all. Promote Economic Justice: Engage in efforts to reduce economic inequality by supporting policies that increase the minimum wage, expand access to affordable healthcare, and provide opportunities for education and training. Join movements that fight for economic justice and social equity. Educate and Mobilize: Spread awareness about the risks of Project 2025’s economic policies. Host discussions, share information on social media, and participate in grassroots movements to mobilize others in the fight for a fairer economic system.

Rather than a fair rise in the value of labour, they saw what the Statute of Labourers called ‘the malice of servants who were idle and unwilling to serve after the pestilence without taking outrageous wages’.5

You!” she snarled, her glower intended for Narian. He walked unflinchingly toward her, keeping me close to his side. “You knew of this plot! Confess the part you have played and I will perhaps spare your life.” Narian put a hand on my shoulder, telling me to stay where I was, then took a few steps closer to the woman who had been like a mother to him. I stood frozen, waiting along with her to hear his answer. What was going on? What had Narian done? “I am not a part of this,” he declared. Nantilam quickly closed the remaining distance between them. She was infuriated, her green eyes flaring as vividly as the flames outside. “But you know more than you have told me.” Her voice was low, dangerous, rumbling with anger. “I know that the Hytanicans’s first rebellion was meant to distract us, and that those captured willingly sacrificed their lives. I know that right now, the men you wanted to execute are waging one last fight to reclaim their kingdom.” My head was spinning, both at the news and at my own idiocy. How could I have failed to see this? How could I not have known it would happen? I had chosen to be blind, even when Narian had all but begged me to come to Cokyri with him. I hadn’t wanted to see it. But the clues had been there. Now people were dying in Hytanica. Someone, probably London, had set the fires here in Cokyri to hinder the arrival of messengers from the province with word of the revolt and to forestall the High Priestess from sending reinforcements. We were trapped and helpless, able only to imagine the battle taking place on the other side of the river. “I knew something was amiss,” the High Priestess simmered. “I knew it the moment I saw Alera with you. You’re a traitor, Narian.” He shook his head, his expression hard. “I am no traitor. I did everything you asked of me. I conquered Hytanica for you and the Overlord, I administered the province as you wanted for months, and I did not plot against you.” Narian’s voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “I am not to blame for what is happening today--for giving the Hytanicans a fair chance at retaking what is rightfully theirs. My only sin is that I did not try to stop them.” Nantilam scrutinized him for what seemed an eternity. “I listened to you,” she vehemently said at last. “I loved you, and I trusted you, and I fought not to lose you after my brother’s death.” “You never trusted me,” Narian contradicted, interrupting whatever else she had intended to say. “And with good reason. You believe the only way to repay a betrayal if with a betrayal. You betrayed me in the worst way imaginable. You lied to me my entire life, trained me and used me as a weapon, never telling me the real reason I was of value to you.” His blue eyes flashed, their sapphire brilliance rivaling the ever-changing emerald sparks in hers. “But I will no longer be manipulated for your causes, and I will not become another warlord. You can consider yourself repaid.

Favor isn't fair. You've probably heard that saying a thousand times before, but did you know that it is a biblical truth? That's right, God's favor is not fair. And I, for one, am extremely grateful that it's not. If God gave us what we deserved, that would be fair. If He gave us the proper and earned wages for our sin, that would be just. But, He said, “No! I will send My Son to receive the remuneration of their sins so that I can close the book on their accounts." And once that price was paid, God was free to lavish His goodwill and loving kindness all over us. However, it is only available to those who allow Jesus to receive God's wrath in their stead.

Watching the tides put a hole in my pocket,’ Oscar said. ‘So I found a job here at the dairy. The wages were low, but the work came with a bed and meals, and I got so I liked it. When Old Man Tarver died, he left the dairy to his daughter over in Houston. She didn’t want the life, said ten cows were ten too many for her. She set a fair price and I bought it from her.’ He paused. ‘Cleared my debt three years ago.’ A point of pride, I thought. ‘You’re a self-made man.’ ‘That’s the shined-up version of stubborn.

W.A. supported fair wages, even opposing wage reductions when copper prices fell, and as a result he didn’t suffer from strikes. He also offered model healthcare for workers, and when Daly opposed a law requiring safety cages in the mines, Clark supported it—even if only for political advantage. He also supported voting rights for women.

One American political figure saw Russia for the growing menace that it was and was willing to call Putin out for his transgressions. During President Obama’s reelection campaign, Mitt Romney warned of a growing Russian strategic threat, highlighting their role as “our number one geopolitical foe.”[208] The response from President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and other Democrats was not to echo his sentiment, but actually to ridicule Romney and support the Russian government. President Obama hurled insults, saying Romney was “stuck in a Cold War mind warp” [209] and in a nationally televised debate mocked the former governor, saying “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back…” [210] When asked to respond to Romney’s comment, Secretary Clinton refused to rebuke the over-the-top and false Obama campaign attacks. Instead, she delivered a message that echoed campaign talking points arguing that skepticism of Russia was outdated: “I think it’s somewhat dated to be looking backwards,” she said, adding, “In many of the areas where we are working to solve problems, Russia has been an ally.”[211] A month after Secretary Clinton’s statement on Romney, Putin rejected Obama’s calls for a landmark summit.[212] He didn’t seem to share the secretary’s view that the two countries were working together. It was ironic that while Obama and Clinton were saying Romney was in a “Cold War mind warp,”[213] the Russian leader was waging a virulent, anti-America “election campaign” (that’s if you can call what they did in Russia an “election”). In fact, if anyone was in a Cold War mind warp, it was Putin, and his behavior demonstrated just how right Romney was about Russia’s intentions. “Putin has helped stoke anti-Americanism as part of his campaign emphasizing a strong Russia,” Reuters reported. “He has warned the West not to interfere in Syria or Iran, and accused the United States of ‘political engineering’ around the world.”[214] And his invective was aimed not just at the United States. He singled out Secretary Clinton for verbal assault. Putin unleashed the assault Nov. 27 [2011] in a nationally televised address as he accepted the presidential nomination, suggesting that the independent election monitor Golos, which gets financing from the United States and Europe, was a U.S. vehicle for influencing the elections here. Since then, Golos has been turned out of its Moscow office and its Samara branch has come under tax investigation. Duma deputies are considering banning all foreign grants to Russian organizations. Then Putin accused U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of sending a signal to demonstrators to begin protesting the fairness of the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections.[215] [Emphasis added.] Despite all the evidence that the Russians had no interest in working with the U.S., President Obama and Secretary Clinton seemed to believe that we were just a Putin and Obama election victory away from making progress. In March 2012, President Obama was caught on a live microphone making a private pledge of flexibility on missile defense “after my election” to Dmitry Medvedev.[216] The episode lent credence to the notion that while the administration’s public unilateral concessions were bad enough, it might have been giving away even more in private. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that Putin didn’t abandon his anti-American attitudes after he won the presidential “election.” In the last few weeks of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, Putin signed a law banning American adoption of Russian children,[217] in a move that could be seen as nothing less than a slap in the face to the United States. Russia had been one of the leading sources of children for U.S. adoptions.[218] This disservice to Russian orphans in need of a home was the final offensive act in a long trail of human rights abuses for which Secretary Clinton failed to hold Russia accountable.

Today there is no state in the Union in which a family that is supported by a full-time, minimum-wage worker can afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent without being cost burdened, according to HUD. When Jennifer moved in with Isabelle, even

If rural migration was sufficiently large, it tended to repress wage growth. This made it fairly common for worker productivity to grow quickly as less productive rural workers and peasants moved to the industrial centers, where their productivity was much higher, but for wages to fail to keep pace. When this happens wage growth will lag productivity growth and the worker’s share of total income will decline, even as total income might rise.

great peril abroad. Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, setting a limit on hours worked and a minimum wage. The federal government began a system of parity payments to farmers and subsidized foreign wheat sales. In

An example of the laissez faire adage “let the market decide” can be seen in the way employees at Walmart are treated. Among other things, the anti-union behemoth pays low wages to its employees in the U.S. and supports near slave conditions in Bangladesh garment factories.43 Recently, Walmart had to pay more than $4.8 million in back pay and damages to workers for overtime pay they did not receive. There have been at least three previous settlements with the Department of Labor due to unpaid overtime wages.

What would you have me do, Hunter?” He lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. Keep him?” Her lips parted. “Keep him? You think I can simply keep him? Just like that?” “Sure.” “And I suppose you think that’s possible because I am, after all, a woman?” “Well, yes.” He tried to keep the exasperation from his voice, but didn’t quite manage it. “And just how, exactly, would I do that?” She jerked her arm out of his grasp. “I’d have to quit my job in order to take care of him. And if I did that, I’d have no source of income. Then he and I would both end up living in this mess.” He shook his head. “Not if you got married.” Her eyes widened. “Got married? To whom?” “I don’t know. I’m sure I could find you somebody.” She narrowed her eyes. “Well, I don’t want a husband, Hunter. Because husbands don’t much like it when their wives have ambitions and earn wages.” “But don’t you see, that’s the whole point.” Grabbing a bandanna from his pocket, he swiped it across the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t have to earn wages. Once you married, your husband could take care of you, and you, in turn, could take care of the baby.

Yet we are currently not really in a crisis for capitalism. We must merely recognize that capitalism must live within certain rules. Indeed our whole view of the economy, with all of those animal spirits, indicates why the government must set those rules. It may be true that in the classical model there is full employment. But in our view the waves of optimism and pessimism cause large-scale changes in aggregate demand. Since wages are determined largely by considerations of fairness, these changes in demand translate not into shifts in wages and prices but into shifts in employment. When demand goes down, unemployment rises. It is the role of the government to mute those changes.

Our short-term aims,” said Hermione, speaking even more loudly than Ron, and acting as though she hadn’t heard a word, “are to secure house-elves fair wages and working conditions. Our long-term aims include changing the law about non-wand use, and trying to get an elf into the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, because they’re shockingly underrepresented.

Outrageous grace is God’s goodness that comes looking for you when you have nothing but a middle finger flipped in the face of God to offer in return. It’s a farmer paying a full day’s wages to a crew of deadbeat day laborers with only a single hour punched on their time cards (Matthew 20:1 – 16). It’s a man marrying an abandoned woman and then refusing to forsake his covenant with her when she turns out to be a whore (Ezekiel 16:8 – 63; Hosea 1:1 — 3:5). It’s the insanity of a shepherd who puts ninety-nine sheep at risk to rescue the single lamb that’s too stupid to stay with the flock (Luke 15:1 – 7). It’s the love of a father who hands over his finest rings and robes to a young man who has squandered his inheritance on drunken binges with his fair-weather friends (Luke 15:11 – 32). It’s God’s choice to save a slave trader knowing full well that it would take a decade for this man to recognize the wretchedness of his ways. It’s one-way love that calls you into the kingdom not because you’ve been good but because God has chosen you and made you his own. And now he is chasing you to the ends of the earth to keep you as his child, and nothing in heaven or hell can ever stop him.

Because the American public never did—and, I believe, never will—voluntarily choose the scarcity and rationing of socialized medicine, its proponents have always resorted to trickery, telling lies about the legislation they introduce and hiding their agenda for expanding it. For that reason the left doesn’t call it “socialized medicine.” They prefer the more innocuous, sterile term of a “single-payer system.” The “single-payer” is of course the government, which would then pay every doctor and health-care provider in the country. And when the government pays, it decides: what health care you receive; which doctor you see; how much is a fair price for a product or service in an elaborate scheme of wage and price controls.

Our communities basically want the same things—safe, clean environments; affordable, adequate housing and transportation; educational opportunities; accessible, quality health care; meaningful work at a fair wage; and equitable services for everyone. So, in the spirit of warmth and energy that our campfire metaphor brings, I invite each of you to be the spark that ignites your community to be safer, healthier, and fairer—and fired up for change.

Growing hops is one of the most labour-intensive parts of the brewing process, and all the workers, at every step of the way, are grossly underpaid. It’s good that we have the chance these days to buy Fair Trade bananas and coffee. Why not extend the scheme to British produce, too? Why not pay more for beer, and pay the highly skilled men and women who work in the gardens the minimum wage?

Take Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), who waged an unsuccessful campaign to regulate the multitrillion-dollar derivatives market. Soon after the Clinton administration asked her to take the reins of the CFTC, a regulatory backwater, she became aware of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives market, a rapidly expanding and opaque market, which she attempted to regulate. According to a PBS Frontline special: "Her attempts to regulate derivatives ran into fierce resistance from then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, and then-Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who prevailed upon Congress to stop Born and limit future regulation." Put more directly by New York Times reporter Timothy O'Brien, "they ... shut her up and shut her down." Mind you, Born was no dummy. She was the first female president of the Stanford Law Review, the first woman to finish at the top of the class, and an expert in commodities and futures. But because a trio of people who were literally en-titled decided they knew what was best for the market, they dismissed her call for regulation, a dismissal that triggered the financial collapse of 2008. To be fair to Greenspan et al., their resistance was not surprising. According to psychologists Hillel Einhorn and Robin Hogarth, "we [as human beings] are prone to search only for confirming evidence, and ignore disconfirming evidence." In the case of Born, it was the '90s, the markets were doing well, and the country was prospering; it's easy to see why the powerful troika rejected her disconfirming views. Throw in the fact that the disconcerting evidence was coming from a "disconfirming" person (i.e., a woman), and they were even more likely to disregard the data. In the aftermath, Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the SEC, said, "If she just would have gotten to know us... maybe it would have gone a different way."12 Born quotes Michael Greenberg, the director of the CFTC under her, as saying, "They say you weren't a team player, but I never saw them issue you a uniform." We like ideas and people that fit into our world-view, but there is tremendous value in finding room for those that don't. According to Paul Carlile and Clayton Christensen, "It is only when an anomaly is identified—an outcome for which a theory can't account that an opportunity to improve theory occurs."13 One of the ways you'll know you are coming up against an anomaly is if you find yourself annoyed, defensive, even dismissive, of a person, or his idea.

I exhaled in a breath of despondent irritation. “But that means I’ll have two jobs, the design side of things plus this,” I jabbed an unhappy finger at the screen. “This yuckiness. That doesn’t sound fair.” It wasn’t, come to think of it. Jared’s mouth slanted to the corner and I expounded on my point. “You run the business side, Kevin and Elspeth do designs, yet I’m doing designs plus the business shit now? That sucks.” Jared smirked. “You’re cute.” “Thank you.” I agreed with the sentiment. “As are you, but my cuteness has no bearing on this.” “I know,” he wrapped his arms around my waist and leaned back in the chair. “But I wanted to throw it out there. You’re very cute when you try to shirk your responsibilities.” “Does this new role come with a pay raise?” I drawled. Jared let one of his hands slide to my ass where he landed a light pat. “Wages are fixed for the near future, besides you get extra payments in kind almost every single day. What would Kevin and Elspeth say if they knew about the additional incentives I give you?

Today, although many such strikes continue—the Walmart strike of 2012, for example—many industrial work sites have been moved offshore to Mexico, China, Vietnam, and elsewhere. Other forms of social conflict have arisen in different theaters. One theater animates the politics of the left. It focuses on conflict in the private sector between the very richest 1 percent and the rest of America. Occupy Wall Street has such a focus. It is not between owner and worker over a higher wage or shorter hours of work. It is between haves and have-nots, the ever-more-wealthy 1 percent and the other 99 percent of Americans. What feels unfair to Occupy activists is not simply unfair recompense for work (the multi-million dollar bonuses to hedge fund managers alongside the $8.25 hourly rate for Walmart clerks) but the absence of tax policies that could help restore America as a middle-class society. For the right today, the main theater of conflict is neither the factory floor nor an Occupy protest. The theater of conflict—at the heart of the deep story—is the local welfare office and the mailbox where undeserved disability checks and SNAP stamps arrive. Government checks for the listless and idle—this seems most unfair. If unfairness in Occupy is expressed in the moral vocabulary of a “fair share” of resources and a properly proportioned society, unfairness in the right’s deep story is found in the language of “makers” and “takers.” For the left, the flashpoint is up the class ladder (between the very top and the rest); for the right, it is down between the middle class and the poor. For the left, the flashpoint is centered in the private sector; for the right, in the public sector. Ironically, both call for an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.

The kind of rhetorical slight of hand that had become a staple of the conservative pundits everywhere, whatever the issue. Taking language once used by the disadvantaged to highlight a societal ill and turning it on its ear. The problem's no longer the discrimination against people of color the argument goes it's "reverse racism" with minorities "playing the race card to get an unfair advantage". The problem isn't sexual harassment in the workplace, it's humorless "feminazis" beating men over the head with their political correctness. The problem's not bankers using the market as their personal casino or corporations suppressing wages by busting unions and offshoring jobs, it's the lazy and shiftless along with their liberal Washington allies intent on mooching off the economy's real "makers and doers". Such arguments had nothing to do with facts, they were impervious to analysis, they went deeper into the realm of myth redefining what was fair, reassigning victimhood, conferring on people like those traders in Chicago, that most precious of gifts, the conviction of innocence as well as the righteous indignation that comes with it.

Workers deserves fair wages.

Economists such as Ross Gittins refer to the period subsequent to the White Paper policy [1945] as a 'Golden Age'. When wages fairly remunerated labour, and incomes were spread more evenly throughout the economy, more people had greater purchasing power, and stronger internal markets were created for goods and services to be sold.

When public service jobs are outsourced or privatised, and when the alternative to a job on the corporate sector's terms becomes no job at all, competition in the labour market disappears, allowing wage and job conditions across the board to be driven down.

Mulaney’s right: the bit has a lot going on beneath the surface. It speaks to our selfishness, our laziness, our child-like craving for fairness and revenge. It speaks to the ease with which we dehumanize others, and the system that makes it even easier by forcing us into transactional relationships. After all, it’s the theater company that rips us off, that sells us the “overpriced, oversized crap we shouldn’t be eating to begin with.” We get even by leaving our popcorn buckets behind, but it’s not the company that cleans our trash. It’s the minimum wage employee, who works two jobs just to keep her kids in school. But that doesn’t stop us, does it?

Either you believe these disparities exist because you believe that people of color and women are less intelligent, less hard working, and less talented than white men, or you believe that there are systemic issues keeping women and people of color from being hired into jobs, promoted, paid a fair wage, and accepted into college.

If the Empire of Dageis ever has to pay everyone who keeps it running a fair wage, it will fall flat on its face the first day.

college boys working to return to school down South; older advocates of racial progress with Utopian schemes for building black business empires; preachers ordained by no authority except their own, without church or congregation, without bread or wine, body or blood; the community "leaders" without followers; old men of sixty or more still caught up in post-Civil-War dreams of freedom within segregation; the pathetic ones who possessed nothing beyond their dreams of being gentlemen, who held small jobs or drew small pensions, and all pretending to be engaged in some vast, though obscure, enterprise, who affected the pseudo-courtly manners of certain southern congressmen and bowed and nodded as they passed like senile old roosters in a barnyard; the younger crowd for whom I now felt a contempt such as only a disillusioned dreamer feels for those still unaware that they dream -- the business students from southern colleges, for whom business was a vague, abstract game with rules as obsolete as Noah's Ark but who yet were drunk on finance. Yes, and that older group with similar aspirations, the "fundamentalists," the "actors" who sought to achieve the status of brokers through imagination alone, a group of janitors and messengers who spent most of their wages on clothing such as was fashionable among Wall Street brokers, with their Brooks Brothers suits and bowler hats, English umbrellas, black calfskin shoes and yellow gloves; with their orthodox and passionate argument as to what was the correct tie to wear with what shirt, what shade of gray was correct for spats and what would the Prince of Wales wear at a certain seasonal event; should field glasses be slung from the right or from the left shoulder; who never read the financial pages though they purchased the Wall Street Journal religiously and carried it beneath the left elbow, pressed firm against the body and grasped in the left hand -- always manicured and gloved, fair weather or foul -- with an easy precision (Oh, they had style) while the other hand whipped a tightly rolled umbrella back and forth at a calculated angle; with their homburgs and Chesterfields, their polo coats and Tyrolean hats worn strictly as fashion demanded. I could feel their eyes, saw them all and saw too the time when they would know that my prospects were ended and saw already the contempt they'd feel for me, a college man who had lost his prospects and pride. I could see it all and I knew that even the officials and the older men would despise me as though, somehow, in losing my place in Bledsoe's world I had betrayed them . . . I saw it as they looked at my overalls.

Here you have the right to be paid for your labor, and fairly. You have the right to a living wage, but you have to fight for it. They won’t just give it to you. They care more about their wallets than your survival. We have to join together. Men, women, and children who pick their crops. We have to band together and rise up and say NO MORE. We won’t be treated as worthless. We are going to make a stand on the sixth of October. Pass the word. We will be peaceful. That’s critical. This is a protest, not a brawl. You will go into the cotton fields and sit down. Simply that. If we can slow the means of production, even for a day, we will get their attention.

What happened in 1970 in Los Angeles was the worst economic episode I’ve ever had to fight through. Unlike the post–Cold War Recession, we did not have the waves of in-migration from Mexico, nor were drug sales as great. I believe the underground economy was a silent savior of Los Angeles during 1990–94. The Kent State Massacre and the Pentagon Papers scandal didn’t help the 1970 scene. Furthermore, things didn’t get better in the early 1970s. The sharp recession of 1970 was followed by a sudden inflation caused by Vietnam spending. Nixon “slammed the gold window shut.” From 1945 to 1971, the U.S., under the Bretton Woods Agreement, had agreed to back its currency to a limited extent with gold at $35 per ounce. Other nations’ central banks were withdrawing our gold so fast that Nixon had to renege on the promise. This was followed in 1973 by the end of fixed currency exchange rates. The dollar plummeted. Traveling to the wine country of France in the summer of 1973, I was unable to cash American Express dollar-denominated traveler’s checks. Inflation jumped with the 1973 Energy Crisis. Nixon imposed wage and price controls. Then Watergate, accompanied by the Dow Jones hitting bottom in 1974. Three Initiatives to Turn the Tide Against all this, Trader Joe’s mounted three initiatives. In chronological order: We launched the Fearless Flyer early in 1970. We broke the price of imported wines in late 1970 thanks to a loophole in the Fair Trade law. Most importantly, in 1971, we married the health food store to the Good Time Charley party store, which had been the 1967–70 version of Trader Joe’s. Together these three elements comprised the second version of Trader Joe’s, Whole Earth Harry.

Missus and I get overwhelmed. So many weans and not enough coin. Then you find a way for them to earn a few pennies with the shoveling or weeding or sweeping. It’s not charity. It’s teaching them that hard work deserves a fair wage. That’s all they need, some pride and ingenuity.