Hearing the Falconer #45 ~ 27-May-2019 ~ Raising America's Pay

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world....
from The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, 1919

The middle of the road is all of the usable surface.
The extremes, right and left, are in the gutters.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

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27-May-2019:
Raising America's Pay
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One of the fundamental goals of any society should be to promote growing and widespread prosperity. If the median worker's wages and benefits only increased 7.9% between 1979 and 2013 while “economic growth and productivity” grew by 64.9%, that is a problem.

If we do nothing about growing and sharing prosperity I think that is too extreme in one direction. If we try to completely manage the economy that would be far too extreme in the other direction.

Other extreme positions would be to help business but not workers, or to help workers but not business. We all need to work together to increase prosperity for ALL.

I was happy to find this “Raising America's Pay” project that was launched a few years ago at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

The EPI is focused on:

• Raising the minimum wage
• Protecting the right to overtime pay
• Protecting the right to collective bargaining

All these items are important but I think there are a few other factors that could be even more important:

• We need to promote innovation so we can create new jobs
• We need to promote increasing productivity so we can pay higher wages
• We need to offer good educational and training opportunities so people can prepare themselves for better jobs.

By finding the right smart and moderate policies we can make sure prosperity in the United States keeps growing and that all citizens have a chance to participate in that prosperity.

We are all on the same team. Let's do what we can to make sure the whole team succeeds.

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The "Hearing the Falconer" Library

Books for Independent Thinkers

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Truman

Moderates: The Vital Center of American Politics, from the Founding to Today

The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It

Unapologetically Moderate: My Search for the Rational Center in American Politics

The Deliberate Moderate: Influencing From the Middle

Eisenhower: The White House Years

The Constitutional Convention: A Narrative History from the Notes of James Madison

Lincoln

Reflections of a Radical Moderate

Washington: A Life

The Reluctant Republican: My Fight for the Moderate Majority

Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party

Franklin D. Roosevelt: A Political Life

Theodore Roosevelt: A Life

The Three Languages of Politics: Talking Across the Political Divides

Beyond Red and Blue: How Twelve Political Philosophies Shape American Debates

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Copyright © 2019 by Joseph Wayne Gadway