Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 426-428

Social Security is redistributive. Medicare is redistributive. Public education is redistributive. Public investments in highways, bridges, dams, and other infrastructure are most definitely redistributive. The land reforms that accompanied the rise of every society, dating back to feudalism, are inherently and overtly redistributive. Even defense spending is redistributive, insofar as the benefits of national security are rarely captured by current taxpayers. Beyond government and politics, it’s not only "socialists" who have embraced “redistributive” thinking. The Hebrew lawgivers and prophets; Jesus Christ; Mohammad--all were blatant redistributionists. All denied that wealth or status was invariably the product of productivity and virtue, and rejected the idea that redistribution was theft.
The Attack on "Redistribution"
Ed Kilgore
The Plank
The New Republic


…unemployment among men and women is proving relentless. Of the 15.1 million people who are now officially counted as unemployed, over a third have been out of work for 27 weeks or longer, the highest percentage of long-term unemployment on record.
Editorial
Wanted: Leadership on Jobs
New York Times
Published: October 3, 2009



…we spend eight to 10 to 12 hours of our daily lives at work, where we have no say.
I think when anthropologists dig us up 400 years from now -- if we make it that far -- they're going to say, "Look at these people back then. They thought they were free. They called themselves a democracy, but they spent 10 hours of every day in a totalitarian situation, and they allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined."
Naomi Klein Interviews Michael Moore on the Perils of Capitalism
By Naomi Klein,
The Nation.
Posted September 25, 2009.