Robert Reich: This Labor Day We Need Protest Marches Rather Than Parades

Noted economist and former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, has emphasized over the years the importance of using the well-being of working families as an indicator of the nation's overall economic health and prosperity. More recently, he has also been critical of the measures which have or have not been taken to address the deep recession and high unemployment that we suffer. Thus, it is not at all surprising that he now suggests that working families have little to celebrate on Labor Day. Instead of parading, he suggests, they should be protesting.

A brief excerpt from this article:

"The ratio of corporate profits to wages is now higher than at any time since just before the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, the American economy has all but stopped growing -- in large part because consumers (whose spending is 70 percent of GDP) are also workers whose jobs and wages are under assault.

Perhaps there would still be something to celebrate on Labor Day if government was coming to the rescue. But Washington is paralyzed, the president seems unwilling or unable to take on labor-bashing Republicans, and several Republican governors are mounting direct assaults on organized labor (see Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and Wisconsin, for example).

So let's bag the picnics and parades this Labor Day. American workers should march in protest. They're getting the worst deal they've had since before Labor Day was invented -- and the economy is suffering as a result."

Robert Reich: This Labor Day We Need Protest Marches Rather Than Parades:

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