Letters to the Editor for Nov. 13
Who makes the rules?
All games have rules, and our tax policies create the playing field for our economy. We need to stop handing out tax breaks and corporate welfare to CEOs and instead incentivize businesses that do right by workers and communities. As a retired small business owner, I know the difference local businesses can make in their communities, unlike giant global corporations that ship jobs overseas. President Biden gets that: that’s why his Inflation Reduction Act and his Infrastructure Investment Act focus on growing quality jobs with good benefits here and bringing supply chains back home.
How we measure the economy matters. America needs a monthly profit report. We measure prices, jobs, and wages monthly. These three variables drive the national economic conversation, but there’s no monthly report showing the record upsurge in corporate profits over the last two years.
If we measured corporate profits regularly, we might see how inflation is rooted not so much in workers’ power to get wage gains but in corporations’ power to get price gains. There might be more discussion about record profits and their impact on price increases. And, instead of assuming that the Federal Reserve must hike interest-rates to cool the economy by weakening workers’ purchasing power, we might explore ways to weaken corporations’ pricing power: taxes on windfall profits, price controls, and tougher antitrust enforcement. Of course, that’s just what big corporations don’t want. So, it’s up to us, “We the People,” to push for it.
Marguerite Chandler
Newtown
Teachers leaving their unions — I am one of them
More than 80,000 teachers have resigned their union membership in the past two years. I’m one of them.
As a teacher who just wants to do what I love — educating America’s young people — I find the lack of transparency and integrity by teachers’ union leaders to be embarrassing and shameful. They instill fear and pressure and misinform their members so they can continue to rake in millions of dollars.
I’ve since founded a website for educators across the country, Union Choice for School Workers, that provides resourceful information about teachers’ union politics and finances, alternative organizations for liability insurance and continuing education, the facts about how the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME finally ended forced union membership for public-sector employees across the country, and how to leave their union membership behind.
Fellow teachers have compared union membership to being in an abusive relationship. They want to leave and are not happy, but are fearful of the backlash and isolation that may come with it.
I will continue to help empower people with knowledge so they can have the courage to make their own truly informed decisions about the teachers’ union and what is best for them.
Karin Majewski, special education teacher
Central Bucks School District
This article originally appeared on The Intelligencer: Letters: CEOs don't need corporate welfare; Teachers ditching unions
