Trump’s cast of self-absorbed billionaires as policy heads will not right the extreme imbalances needed to revitalize the nation. It’s not their wealth that is the problem, it’s their obtuse, willfully blind approach which overlooks how grossly enriched they have been at the expense of the public purse through subsidies, access to public resources, social benefits and tax breaks. To “Make America Great Again”, executives and investors need to extract less for themselves, so that corporations can share more with their work force and invest more in productive pursuits that will protect and sustain the world around them. In addition, our legal and regulatory system needs to hold directing minds personally accountable for corporate offenses. Trump’s proposal for labor secretary appears to be another example of a disastrous public representative for our times. See Andrew Puzder will be a disaster for workers. I know: He was for me:
Andrew Puzder, the chief executive since 2000 of CKE — which owns Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and other fast-food companies — is now in line to become the country’s next labor secretary. The headlines ponder what this may mean for working people in America, but I already know.
I already know what Trump/Puzder economics look like because I’m living it every day. Despite giving everything I had to Puzder’s company for 21 years, I left without a penny of savings, with no health care and no pension. Now, while I live in poverty, Trump, who promised to fix the rigged economy, has chosen for labor secretary someone who wants to rig it up even more. He’s chosen the chief executive of a company who recently made more than $10 million in a year, while I’m scraping by on Supplemental Security payments…
The cooks and cashiers at Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. are the reason Puzder can take home more than $10 million in a single year and live in a plush mansion with movie star neighbors — while his workers like me skip meals to pay our rent and are forced to live in homeless shelters.
We are their corporate strategy: Pay us as little as legally allowed, steal from our meager paychecks as needed and force us onto public assistance to get by. Sadly, that’s the America Trump and Puzder believe in: an America where workers give everything to an employer, and in return, receive nothing. Their America means that an older woman in retirement fighting a chronic illness has to rely on Supplemental Security Income to survive.
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