To The Editor:
We are in the middle of an immediate economic crisis!! Fightback for justice and dignity.
Only a country that has a strong manufacturing base can be wealthy and have a solid and growing middle class. China is getting richer because they are building their manufacturing base. The United States is in debt because we are letting our manufacturing base disappear; we are pouring money into the financial and military industries, which contribute nothing to our economy.
The unions are declining right along with the manufacturing sector and when the unions decline, so do the living standards for the middle class, because the unions keep wages fair.
The only solution we have before it’s too late is to rebuild both the cities and the manufacturing industry as well as the infrastructure that supports them.
A government-led construction program of affordable housing must begin. We don’t need more office buildings; we need affordable housing.
We need to rebuild the schools, pay teachers better wages and decrease class sizes, while creating an educated workforce that can build and design all of these new systems.
We need universal government and paid health care, so that we don’t go bankrupt paying for health insurance companies’ profits.
We need to build solar panels and wind generators to create the electricity grids to power the transit systems and new buildings, before global warming blows everything away.
Only the federal government has the ability to create enough jobs and start construction projects of that size. They just provided trillions of dollars to bail out the banks.
How about providing trillions of dollars to states and cities to create affordable housing and extensive transit aystems, along with the renewable energy to power it?
How about requiring that all of the buildings, trains and wind turbines be built by American workers … in American factories?
Only then can we begin to put the economy back together!
Vivia Morgan
Friends of Wingate Park
