Everett, Wash.
Published: Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Wishing for a progressive turn of events in 2008

By John Burbank

 The day after Christmas … thank goodness we made it this far. Now we can actually relax a little. We can all take a big breath and look around us, enjoy our families and friends, be thankful for our lives, and contemplate our hopes for 2008.

Here's my wish list.

1) More hamburgers from Dick's Drive-In, where the employees start at $9 an hour, get 100 percent employer-paid health coverage, college and vocational scholarships, and child-care assistance of up to $5,000 a year. Plus, Dick's pays its employees when they volunteer to help out in the community. And the hamburgers and shakes are tasty!

2) More CEOs like Jim Sinegal, head of Costco, who refuses to accept a stratospheric salary. He has gone seven years without a raise. Not that he is hurting. Last year Costco posted a profit of $1.08 billion. Sinegal received a salary of $350,000 and a bonus of $80,000, plus stock options and perks for a total value of $3.2 million. That's two-fifths of median CEO pay. More importantly, Mr. Sinegal insists on good wages and benefits for Costco employees. He values them as people, not as interchangeable commodities.

3) A robust capitalist economy, with Costco, Boeing and Microsoft leading the way. The key is that these corporate citizens create jobs for Washington workers with good wages and benefits. Not that we expect these companies to stand alone. Rather, their prosperity should be built on a platform of shared social responsibility, in which our democratic government assures that basic needs for education, health care and retirement are well taken care of. Then we all can work and achieve, not haunted by financial insecurity.

4) Politicians who don't just talk about family values, but actually do something for family values. They could start in Olympia by funding the family leave insurance statute, enabling parents of new-borns and newly adopted children to get five weeks of partial compensation (at $250 a week) to care for these new family members, without losing their jobs. Now those are family values.

5) Get the federal government to adopt our minimum wage, the best in the country. As of next week, minimum-wage workers in Washington will earn $8.07 an hour. (Well, they'll probably earn more than that, but that's what they'll get paid!) This wish may have to wait until 2009, given the current occupant of the White House.

6) Speaking of which, a new occupant in the White House, who will do some common-sense things like suggest that we actually pay for the war in Iraq! The cost is now estimated to be $1.3 trillion and growing. That is about $4,300 for every man, woman and child in America. A friend of mine who served in World War II keeps telling me: We should pay for this war. After all, we paid during World War II. We could pay for this war if we wanted to. A 10 percent increase in the income tax would bring in about $130 billion a year. If your household income is $50,000, you would pay, approximately, an additional $600. If your income is $75,000, you would pay about $1,100 more -- not quite the cost of a new 42-inch flat screen TV. If we taxed unearned income -- interest, dividends and capital gains -- as much as we tax earned income, we would realize more than an additional $100 billion each year.

7) A renewal of patriotism: Let's make national service universal for all our children when they turn 18. That means service in the military. Now we may not like the idea of sending our children to war, but that's just the point. If it is other people's children, it is not our problem. If it is our children going into harm's way, then it is our problem.

Finally, if we can't stomach paying for this war, or sending our own children to Iraq, then it is time to get out. That would indeed be a gift to the American people, after a day on which many of us celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.



John Burbank, executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (www.eoionline.org ), writes every other Wednesday. Write to him in care of the institute at 1900 Northlake Way, Suite 237, Seattle, WA 98103. His e-mail address is john@eoionline.org.
© 2009The Daily Herald Co., Everett, WA