Bernie Sanders is not even the president, yet he applied enough pressure against Jeff Bezos, specifically, that he forced Amazon to pay their employees something at least close to a living wage.
That is more than either of the two major party nominees for the White House in 2016 managed to do.
Oh, I know. Republicans and Democrats will bitch about how Sanders is supposedly - according to their stupid interpretation of things - a dangerous socialist, or even communist. But damn, he got this thing done, and deserves credit for it!
Look at the title of an article from a Huffington Post piece covering this issue:
"Bernie’s Dumb ‘Stop BEZOS’ Bill May Have Just Helped Amazon Workers Get A Raise: A case study in how bad ideas can sometimes lead to good outcomes."
I would be willing to bet anything that the author of that piece, Jonathan Cohn, cannot think outside of the box, and simply lacks the imagination to believe that anyone but the establishment party members who define politics as usual can get anything done in Washington, even though all of the evidence points to the fact that the current climate of staggering, overwhelming corruption and gridlock are a result of these same so-called mainstream politicians, who are actually quite extremist in their own right. I would also be willing to bet that Mr. Cohn is a Democrat, and supports mainstream Democratic thinking. You know, the same kind of thinking that has led to them accepting losing regularly, even when they win the popular vote. God forbid the Democrats actually get someone like Sanders, who seems actually more interested in working to improve this country and the conditions of the working class people, instead of simply accepting big donations from special corporate interests with deep pockets. The horror! Gasp!
Cohn takes aim at Sanders, and suggests that the title of the bill - which he probably rightly suggests had no actual chance of passing this Republican and establishment Democrat dominated Congress - probably contributed to Amazon hiking up their minimum wage, by basically embarrassing the top brass of that company into it. Sanders called his bill the "Stop BEZOS Act," with the BEZOS part standing for “Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies.”
Sure, it sounds weird. It does not roll of the tongue, if that is what Cohn means. However, it worked well enough to actually get a company - and it's notoriously greedy CEO, Jeff Bezos - to give people a more livable wage, something that people like Cohn will likely tell you is not possible or pragmatic, and would hurt the economy and force big employers like Amazon to seek greener pastures in other countries. Except, Sanders took aim at them, and got them to pay a higher wage while keeping those jobs in this country. Imagine that!
Cohn then suggests that progressives might get some ideas that this kind of thing will work, and that Sanders has big, probably overly idealistic ideas in other areas, and takes aim at the biggest thing that most people automatically associated with Sanders:
"The most obvious is single-payer health care, which means creating an insurance program and then enrolling all residents in it. Sanders calls the proposal “Medicare for all” and it’s even more ambitious than the moniker makes it sound. The program Sanders has outlined would end up setting all prices throughout the health care system. It would also cover all medical bills, with virtually no out-of-pocket expenses except for things like cosmetic surgery.
"On paper, pretty much every American would end up with more generous insurance than they currently have, with fewer restrictions on sources of care. But the only way to make that work would be to raise taxes in ways that left many people feeling worse off, tolerate substantially higher deficits or ratchet down payments to health care providers ― not just drug and device makers, but doctors and hospitals too. The could mean some combination of layoffs and closures in the health care sector, and disruptions to care, though it would depend on the specifics of eventual legislation."
Americans who read and/or listen these kinds of views might as well start getting used to losing, especially those who look to mainstream Democrats to right the ship. The mainstream Democrats have also set a cautionary tone whenever it comes to real, meaningful reform that could actually help improve living standards in this country, and buck the trend of our standard of living seeing a clear and consistent decline for what has now been many decades. Just tell them it cannot be done. Just tell them it will raise taxes, or scare big corporations into sending those jobs overseas. Tell them anything, except that maybe these companies, and their top brass, are being too damn selfish, and should start to be held accountable for a system where they rip Americans off at every turn.
The horror stories of what might happen if we try and force big employers - like Amazon - to account and force them to stop getting subsidized by the government while refusing to pay their employees a living wage are numerous, even countless. And it is precisely that kind of thinking that lacks any imagination, or even common sense. After all, the United States stands alone in the developed world for a lot of embarrassing things, and it is mainstreamers, like Cohn, who seem a little too comfortable with all of this. We have the dubious distinction of being the only developed nation to fail to provide it's citizens with an affordable, universal healthcare program. You know, kind of like the one that Bernie Sanders has long been pushing for? If it works in those countries - and again, literally in every single industrialized nation other than the United States, and for many decades, at that - then why do people like Cohn and other mainstreamers continually insist that it cannot possibly happen here, that these are "pie in the sky" ideas that will lead to the decline of the United States, and western civilization as well, and perhaps the end of the world as we know it? Again, these are not untested ideas. They work, and literally every other advanced nation but the United States have in place. And not one of them has looked at the American example - a for profit, private healthcare - and decided it was so vastly superior, that they would try it out themselves. In fact, most citizens of those countries are downright happy with their systems, and know the anguish and pain that is caused here by the emphasis on the system being for profit. When former Prime Minister suggested that such a privatized healthcare system might work in Canada, Canadians expressed outrage, and the idea quickly died away. And let's face it: there are no other people in the world who know Americans, and their healthcare system with all of it's numerous inadequacies, like Canadians.
What are some of those inadequacies of our healthcare system? Well, Americans pay the highest prices for healthcare in the world, and by far. Go figure, when it is all about profits for the few, huh? Tens of millions of Americans cannot even afford healthcare, and so they choose to go without. And there are tens of millions of other Americans who actually have healthcare, but who run into all sorts of problems and complications as soon as they need their insurance to cover something serious, and not just standard things. These are issues that people in other advanced nations simply would not tolerate. But Cohn, and mainstream Democrats, not to mention conservatives and Republicans, would have you believe otherwise. Keep those blinders on, do not look at the example of other countries - and again, this is literally every single other industrialized nation in the world. Our healthcare system clearly does not work, and the entire world sees it. It has reached the point where not only do we need to acknowledge that this system does not work, but that almost anything else, any other approach, would work better. Yet, these mainstreamers insist that this is the only possible system that could work for us, even though it has not worked for decades, and continues not to work.
And it's like that with so many other things, too. Again, the United States has a lot of these kinds of dubious distinctions. It is the only industrialized country that fails to provide it's citizens with affordable, universal healthcare. It is the only country that lacks affordable childcare, as well. Americans have less vacation time than any of the industrialized nations, too. We are one of only three countries - and once again the only industrialized nation - that does not provide new mothers with paid maternity leave. And we have a stubborn mindset that has us feeling like we can go it alone, even when it is not worth going it alone. We are the only nation in the entire world that refuses to accept the Paris Accord on the grounds that we do not believe in the science of climate change. Sure, most Americans believe that it is real, and presumably, most Americans understand and accept that it is caused, at least in large part, by human activity. But that is not our political expression, because time and time and time again, we get either outright climate change deniers in the highest offices. People like Trump and Bush, in other words. And when we do get people in high office who do admit that there might be something to this climate change thing, we find that they do not quite take as strong action as there words during the presidential campaign suggested. A huge bulk of the environmental legislation passed by the Clinton administration came in the final 72 hours. That is to say, the final three days of an administration that was in power for eight years, and they knew full well that the incoming Bush administration would quickly get rid of all of those new regulations. Obama was also hesitant to take overly strong action on environmental issues.
We have a for profit prison system, which means that we Americans, who hail ourselves as "the land of the free," have far more people behind bars than any other country in the world. We are one of the very, very few countries who refuse to ban landmines.
On and one, the list of dubious, frankly embarrassing distinctions goes on like this. And I guarantee you that none of this is going to change if we keep collectively listening to people like Mr. Cohn, and other mainstreamers who will tell you, time and time again, that any reforms to change all of this just are not possible. He will criticize Bernie Sanders, and seems to dismiss him as a looney without outright saying the word, for actually trying to be proactive and address some of these issues head-on. But I guarantee you that none of these numerous problems - and they are overwhelming in number and scope - will be fixed by listening to people like Cohn, who are effectively telling you, when you understand the situation around the world and in this country and make comparisons, that we cannot have these things in this country because somehow, Americans are incapable of making these things work in this country.
Now, both parties trip over themselves to try and seem patriotic. They pin flags to their clothing, and talk about all of the sacrifices that helped to make the country free, and they advocate (and perhaps even intimidate) people to stand for the national anthem, and all of those things. Republicans are especially good at that kind of stuff. And the Democrats, as they always do, fold, and try and follow the Republicans, and the conservative mindset more generally, in this, and other ways. Whenever anyone suggests serious reform, all the Republicans do is say that these beliefs are somehow "un-American" or unpatriotic, and the mainstream Democrats cave in, time and time and time again. It keeps going like this, over and over again, like a broken record.
Cohn's arguments sound like a broken record to me. Read between the lines, and what he is saying is that someone like Sanders is a nutcase, that his ideas are overly ambitious, and that these things simply cannot and will not work in the United States, so why bother trying? It is defeatist message, a message, frankly, for losers. It is a message that mainstream Democrats have embraced over recent decades, and they sure have gotten quite used to losing and losing, time and time and time again, haven't they? From Reagan to the two Bushes to Trump, and Congressional races scattered along the way, they just keep losing.
And millions of Americans, listening to those same loser arguments and that same loser mentality, keep losing right along with them.
It will not change if we keep embracing arguments like the ones that Cohn is making here. Instead of being impressed and perhaps giving credit to Sanders, he uses this triumph to instead reinforce this idea that Sanders cannot possibly succeed, and these ideas cannot possibly flourish here in the United States.
Until that changes, until they stop making excuses for why these things cannot work, we will never find out if we Americans can join thje family of nations - again, literally every other advanced nation in the world - and begin to enjoy some of these basic benefits that citizens of other nationalities have come to take for granted, but which we Americans continually, consistently lack.
Bernie’s Dumb ‘Stop BEZOS’ Bill May Have Just Helped Amazon Workers Get A Raise: A case study in how bad ideas can sometimes lead to good outcomes. by Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post, October 2, 2018:
Amazon is raising its minimum wage to $15 following pressure from Bernie Sanders by Isobel Asher Hamilton Oct 2, 2018:
https://amp.businessinsider.com/amazon-raises-minimum-wage-to-15-dollars-2018-10
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