Category Archives: Wage Slavery

For most of the first century following the American Civil War, histories of the wars legacy particularly the Reconstruction era tended to suffer from the myopia of considering only the relationship between white Northerners and white Southerners. As the war neared its end, some in the Union (like Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, though in very different ways) stressed the need for reconciliation between the Union and the defeated Confederates; other Radical Republicans wanted a more vigorous demonstration of vengeance towards the rebels and their leaders for their treason. The result of looking at the war and its aftermath solely through this framework is that waves of revisionism swung back and forth between views sympathetic to the Radicals desire to remake the South and liberal-sounding histories that condemned them as hard-hearted zealots insistent on prolonging the nations divisions, and that painted Reconstruction as a cesspool of corruption. The latter type of history was largely responsible for the bad historical reputation of Ulysses S. Grants Radical-friendly presidency. It also colored denunciations of the impeachment of Andrew Johnson (although Johnson, who was wrong about Reconstruction, was right about the specific dispute at issue in the impeachment.) You can still catch a whiff of this latter view in the chapters on that era in John F. Kennedys Profiles in Courage.

The problem with the how hard should we have been on the Confederates debate is simple: it leaves black people out of the picture. Thats a rather large omission. The Civil War was not, as some would have you believe, fought only over the issue of slavery; it was the culmination of a series of disputes over ideas and policies, and seeing the war as a crusade to free the slaves was never more than the view of a sizeable minority faction in the North. Even Lincoln was willing, all the way to 1865, to make some concessions on the pace of abolition in order to end the war and preserve the Union. But slavery was unquestionably the main cause of the rupture between North and South, without which there would have been no war. The debates and resolutions adopted by Southern states when they seceded made it extraordinarily clear that the South was leaving mainly to protect the institution of slavery. (Moreover, many of the secondary disputes between the two sides were connected to the nature of the Southern slave economy). And in the debates over Reconstruction, the civil and economic rights of the freed slaves were a crucial battleground, one on which Northern Republicans fought long and hard for a decade before exhaustedly surrendering in 1876 in exchange for control of the White House.

If you have only ever read treatments of the life of Robert E. Lee that suffer from the myopic exclusion of black people, Adam Serwers latest piece in The Atlantic could offer you a useful corrective. But Serwer suffers from his own myopia.

Lee was widely revered in his own day even by his adversaries partly for being a great general, and partly as a paragon of a great many virtues valued by the (white) American society of his time. Serwer offers to add to that picture both a reminder that Lee shared the retrograde racial attitudes of his time and that the cause Lee fought for was inseparable in every particular from slavery. (He offers as one example the fact that Lee would not engage in prisoner of war exchanges that treated captured black Union soldiers as prisoners of war rather than escaped property). He also notes that Lees role as a postwar conciliator must be balanced against his continuing opposition to black civil rights, a movement that would mature into the full horror of Jim Crow within a few years of Lees 1870 death. If Serwer stopped there, hed be on solid enough ground.

But intent on attacking every aspect of Lees memory, Serwer keeps going. First, he berates Lee for the grand-strategic decision to wage a conventional war against the Union:

Despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

This echoes a May 19 op-ed by Michael Rosenwald in the Washington Post, tendentiously titled The truth about Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee: He wasnt very good at his job, which chose to level the same charge at the same time, probably for the same reason:

Outmanned, Lee should have taken a more defensive posture, drawing the North into difficult Southern terrain. Instead, he was constantly on the offensive, which resulted in heavy casualties and broken spirits.

Its true that the Confederacys grand strategy in the war was badly flawed. Indeed, the decision to wage the war at all was insane: the Confederacy was far less of a match in manpower or industry for the Union than the Thirteen Colonies had been relative to Great Britain in 1775, and unlike the colonists, the Confederacy didnt have an ocean between themselves and their adversaries. The Confederate cause could succeed only if it was vastly better-led than the Union, and thanks in large part to Lee, it managed to pull that off for the first two and a half years of the war.

However, Serwers attack on Lee as a strategist completely ignores two vital points. One, Lee wasnt in charge of grand strategy, and in reality wasnt even a theater commander until June of 1862, when he was put in charge of the Army of Northern Virginia in time to halt a Union advance on the Confederate capital of Richmond. Lee had spent the year before that fighting relatively peripheral battles and supervising the construction of defensive trenches around Richmond. The Confederacy was a democracy, and its elected government was headed by Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate, former Secretary of War and a colonel in the Mexican War who took an active role in military strategy. It wasnt Lee who decided to locate the new capital so close to the Union lines, necessitating the commitment of extensive resources to defend Eastern Virginia. It was Davis and his government, not Lee, who imposed the political imperatives that drove Confederate strategy.

More broadly, Serwer wholly fails to consider the moral consequences of a purely defensive war of Fabian retreats and guerilla fighting on Confederate turf. Such a war which Lee never wanted during the war, and which he rejected as a path of insurgency after Appomattox would have been one of scorched earth and embitterment, not only wrecking the South even in victory but making any permanent reconciliation vastly more difficult in defeat. The human toll of such a war could be seen from the places where it had erupted during the Revolution, like North Carolina. Sherman would ultimately bring scorched earth to Georgia, and the results hardly recommend a deliberate strategy to invite that for the entire war.

Related to this is how little credit he gives Lees eminence and gentlemanly surrender for preventing a long-term insurgency, avoiding an aftermath like the French Revolution, and enabling the country to return to being a single, functional political whole in time enough to see the vast rise in American prosperity and power between 1870 and 1945. If the old histories of Reconstruction were myopic in forgetting African-Americans, Serwers view is myopic in considering no one else, not even the majority of the population. Looking back at Jim Crow, he cannot see how anything could have been worse, why national reconciliation after the war had any value, or why anyone would have wanted peace in the America of 1865-76. We can use the distance of history to judge the national decision to fight no further, but we should have some understanding of what costs the people of the day had paid already, and what they spared by laying down the sword.

In fact, Lees willingness after the war to subordinate the interests of freed slaves to the cause of union and peace was not so radically different from the view that Lincoln himself took during the war. All the way up to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, Lincoln had held onto the view that some concessions on slavery (albeit fewer as the war wore on) could be exchanged for restoring the nation. That doesnt make Lee the moral equal of Lincoln, but the Americans of that day did not see things in the same terms we do now.

Lee was no hero; he fought for an unjust cause, and he lost. Unlike the Founding Fathers (even the slaveholders among them), he failed the basic test of history: leaving the world better and freer than he found it. And while he was not responsible for the Souths strategic failures, his lack of strategic vision places him below Grant, Sherman and Winfield Scott in any assessment of the wars greatest generals. We should not be building new monuments to him, but if we fail to understand why the men of his day revered him, we are likelier to fail to understand who people revere today, and why. And tearing down statues of Lee today is less about understanding the past than it is a contest to divide the people of todays America, and see who holds more power. Thats no better an attitude today than it was in Lees day.

As much as I value history understanding it is essential to understanding our own world today one should be suspicious of people looking to make a contemporary political cause out of the American Civil War, the most bloody and divisive episode in our nations past. The results are often more racial division and less understanding of history. Serwers interest in attacking General Lee is transparently about the present, not the past. That myopia is how he ends up down a blind alley.

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A Myopic View Of Robert E. Lee - National Review

Nova Ruth and Grey Filastine perform close to 100 shows a year, many of them free, everywhere from semi-legal venues to migrant camps. Julieta Feroz

On YouTube you can find a video of Javanese soul singer Nova Ruth singing Perbatasan (Indonesian for Borderline) from the back of a pedicab driven by her American-born collaborator, Grey Filastine. Strings of lights draped on the pedicab illuminate a world of endless roads and fragile vehicles in an unnamed Indonesian city, while English subtitles translate lyrics about the alternating hope and despair of contemporary war refugees. The rhythmic and melodic structure of the song is based on the circular polyphonics of Javanese gamelan, while the digital loops and noise-filtered string mosaics evoke Migos as much as Philip Glass.

Welcome to Drapetomania, an album named after the mental disease invented by mid-nineteenth-century apologists for chattel slavery, to suggest that any slave seeking to escape the benefits of captivity must be insane.Filastine and Nova believe that the constraints of nationalism and global capitalism enslave the human race; their album title presupposes that many will call them crazy because their art advocates the need to abandon both systems. The ever-expanding suite of music and videos tied to Drapetomania makes one wonder what might happen if this multimedia project got as much press and exposure as Beyoncs Lemonade and given the diverse sources of inspiration for Lemonade, it wouldnt surprise me if Beys brain trust had noticed the past ten years of audiovisual provocation that have made Filastine and Nova legendary among musical activists worldwide.

On a budget of next to nothing they perform close to 100 international gigs a year, many of them free and mounted in semi-legal spaces. We have to be crazy efficient, says Filastine. Most tours are just Nova and myself dragging a few overstuffed suitcases around the world, unfolding ourselves into a deceptively large stage show.YouTube and the website Post World Industries offer an impressive sampling of Filastine and Nova videos and music for the uninitiated. You can watch live footage of beat-meister Filastine and singer Ruth onstage at the Calais Jungle migrant camp in France, or in the studio at Seattles KEXP.Neither Filastine nor Ruth is new to video, radical politics, or digital production on a shoestring; even their most outlaw installations have a professional look and sound.

Emerging out of the Seattle-based agit-pop underground in the 1990s, Filastine formed the anarcho-punk dance theater group Tchkung! then the multiculti marching band Infernal Noise Brigade, making the latter a strategic participant in protests at the 2000 IMF Meeting in Prague, the 2004 US Republican Party National Convention in New York, and the G8 Summit in Scotland in 2005.He went solo and nomadic to form an amorphous digital collective under the name Filastine in 2006; while touring Jakarta in 2009 he was introduced to Ruth. She was already active as a videographer and community hacktivist, as well as a singer-songwriter who performed as half of the rap duo Twin Sista.

My grandpa, a priest, taught me to sing since the age of five, and my dad is a rock guitarist, says Nova of her background. I studied at a school focused on Javanese culture, so I learned gamelan as a kid. Half my family are Pentecostal and the other half Muslim, so I was lucky to spend my childhood in both of these musical traditions. Drapetomania was conceptualized as a dance record, with 808 drum machines abetted by bits of accordion, Gypsy guitar, and Brent Arnolds eloquent cello, but gamelan is a pervasive influence, deployed with specific intent, Ruth explains: If we could make a drawing of the gamelans frequencies, they would be shaped round, like a ball, resonating in all directions equally. This can trigger deep feelings, and thats why its so effective for trance and ritual music. Novas elegiac melodies and layered harmonies on tracks like Miner, Perbatasan, Fenomena, and Senescence open up a place of ecstatic reverie that transcends language.

Impromptu recordings and performances in migrant camps, nomadic communes, or sites of organized socioeconomic protest are what most characterize Filastine and Nova as a pop group, yet they refuse to let their art eclipse their politics or their politics become more important than their art. They manage to capture and honor the signature beauty of every genre in Filastines ambitious sound collage be it Japanese taiko, Dirty South trap, or industrial dubstep. The duo maintains that what they do is distinct from music that explores sound for its own sake, and also from the ego, power, and commercial discourse of mainstream rap. (Lets face it, Bad and Boujee defends an outlaw lifestyle, but it could also be the theme song of the Trump administration.)

I do think we are exploring a different kind of politics, Filastine explains. Ideas about our alienation from nature, about migration and urbanism, ideas more about the totality of the human project, and less about the internal tribal divisions and myriad oppressions that divide it.

At the heart of Drapetomania is a thematic quartet of online video singles collectively titled Abandon.Miner was filmed in Indonesia, Cleaner in Portugal, Salarymen in the USA, and Chatarreros in Spain, with each vignette using music and dance to incite workers in each country to abandon crappy jobs.What do miners, housemaids, corporate wage slaves, and scrap metal collectors have in common? The desire to imagine and live a better life. Yet Filastine and Nova are not so much antiwage labor as they are pro-responsibility. They want all captains of industry to honestly reassess the social and ecological damage done by structuring businesses around ideas like artificial scarcity, conspicuous consumption, planned obsolescence, and maximum profit.

Filastine himself, who abandoned a day job as a Seattle cab driver to travel around the world as a multimedia artist, somehow manages to walk this insurrectionary talk.The songs on Drapetomania speak to, for, and from the perspective of a nationless wanderer, even though Filastine spends most of his non-tour time in Barcelona, scoring bicycle sound swarm interventions, or music for activist documentaries. (He chronicled his struggle to make this unusual bohemian life possible in a blog published from 2008 to 2013.) As if to underscore the upside of useful work, Grey remembers his time in the service industry of driving cabs as deeply inspirational: If youre asking about the taxis acoustic impact on my work, well, nearly every song Ive produced references some part of that experience, whether its the crackle of a two-way radio, a confusion of tongues, or the low-frequency rumble of a city.

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Nova Ruth Wants To Free Us From The Bondage Of Wage Slavery - Village Voice

It's a movie cliche: a bunch of men in white-and-black striped pajamas, with chains around their ankles, breaking rocks in a quarry under armed guard. The media has taught us that prison labor is the natural state of the world a way to make the punishment for wrongdoing a little more unpleasant, and a way to make criminals sweat off whatever sinister restlessness drove them to crime.

But the reality is that prison labor is just a way that governments try to recoup some of the cost of incarceration, by farming out their prisoners as captive labor. That might help governments' bottom line a little bit, but it creates devastating competition for low-wage American workers.

The U.S. locks up an extraordinary number of people. Its incarceration rate is the highest in the world and at least twice that of any other advanced economy, and significantly higher than authoritarian Russia. Of incarcerated Americans, about 1 1/2 million are in prison. That number surged in the 1980s and hasn't fallen much from its peak in the mid-2000s.

That enormous prison population represents a vast pool of ultra-cheap labor. A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative found that the average wage of a prison worker is 93 cents an hour, and the lowest reported wage was 16 cents.

Compare that to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. How can a free American worker compete with an inmate laborer making less than one-tenth that amount? Even if prisoners are less productive than free workers, the wage difference is overwhelming.

Nor are these prison workers breaking rocks, as in old movies. In the modern day, the government contracts them out to private companies, offering inmates as a way to boost the bottom line. Over the years, prisoners have packaged coffee for Starbucks and wrapped software for Microsoft. They manufacture furniture, schools supplies and food products. They make dental products, train animals, work in call centers and even pick cotton.

All of these activities put prisoners in direct competition with blue-collar American workers; the latter essentially have no chance. In recent years, there have been political uproars over guest workers, unauthorized immigrants and offshoring U.S. jobs to low-wage countries such as Bangladesh. But low-wage immigrants don't do much to lower native-born wages, and laborers in Bangladesh don't have the tools or the proximity to compete directly with most American workers.

If you want to ease the pressure on the beleaguered U.S. working class, paying prisoners more is the best bet. Mandating that prison labor receive the federal minimum wage would open up lots of job opportunities for low-wage workers on the outside.

It would also be the moral thing to do. Detractors often call the prison labor system slavery, and while there are differences between modern prison labor and the slavery system of the old South, the similarities are way too close for comfort. The U.S. has always valued free labor over compulsory work -- as historians have documented, this was one reason slavery aroused such ire in the antebellum North.

Prison labor therefore goes against traditional American values and humanitarian concerns alike. Writers who have gone to watch the prison labor system in action report being stunned by how widespread and accepted this un-American system has become, especially in states like Louisiana with high rates of incarceration.

Morality also demands that prisoners should receive more of the money that customers pay for their services. Currently, inmates receive only about a quarter of that money, including the portion that goes to victim reparation funds.

Reduced demand for prison labor due to higher wages, especially if prisoners are allowed to keep more of what they earn, would mean government finances will take a hit. Incarceration is expensive, costing about $30,000 a year for a federal inmate. But maybe raising the cost of throwing Americans in prison is a good thing.

The incredibly high U.S. incarceration rate is a strong indication that the country is locking people away for crimes that don't really require it, such as drug use or petty theft. But recently, high costs are forcing states to reduce their prison populations. Presumably, that will limit incarceration to those who really need to be locked up. The end of mass incarceration will also help the economy and reduce inequality -- some estimates claim that the practice of imprisoning millions of Americans has increased the country's poverty rate by 20 percent, even before taking into account the wage competition from cheap prison labor.

So paying prisoners the minimum wage shouldn't be seen as an act of charity. It will take pressure off of working-class American laborers, encourage governments to reduce mass incarceration and move the country back toward valuing free labor.

Bloomberg View

NoahSmith is a Bloomberg View columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

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Paying minimum wage to inmates helps the working class - Chicago Tribune

Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest recently donated $75 million towards removing "modern slavery from human history".

Extortion, blackmail, cash back scams and slavery are happening every day under our noses. It is also happening in the supply chains of businesses, either through labour hire companies, or suppliers.

Under new legislation to be proposed by the federal opposition on Monday, big business will be forced to clamp down on slavery in their supply chains by reporting publicly and annually all efforts to identify and stop slavery.

Slavery and underpayment of wages is a scourge on our nation.

According to the Global Slavery Index, there are more than 45 million slaves, with two thirds in the Asia-Pacific region and 4300 slaves in Australia through human trafficking, forced labour and servitude.

The ALP will announce a plan to implement an Australian Modern Slavery Act, which will be publicly available and include specific reporting requirements. It will also back the appointment of an Anti Slavery Commissioner to combat the growing scourge of slavery around the world.

It follows a decision in the UK in 2015 to introduce a Modern Slavery Act.

It also comes in the middle of an inquiry launched in Australia earlier this year into establishing a modern slavery act. The inquiry, chaired by Liberal senator David Fawcett, attracted 92 submissions.

The Business Council of Australia and the union movement have all thrown their weight behind the proposed new legislation.

Recently mining magnate Andrew Forrest donated $75 million towards removing "modern slavery from human history".

Indeed Wesfarmers lodged a submission to the inquiry which said "the breadth, depth and interconnectedness of our supply chain make it challenging to manage ethical sourcing risks including child labour, forced labour, right to freedom of association and underpayment."

It says it believes the vast majority of its supply chain operates ethically, however we have identified and acted on breaches by some of our suppliers, and it is clear from public reports that other companies have been challenged in this area." It backs a Modern Slavery Act.

Woolworths has also backed new laws that include uniform reporting "specifying the types of information and the level of detail to be disclosed would be helpful for organisations, and for consumers to be able to more readily compare the efforts of different companies".

Slave labour and systemic underpayment of wages is the dark underbelly of our labour market. It is egregious, unethical and undermines our humanity. It is why all sides of politics must come together to introduce legislation sooner rather than later.

The issue of wage fraud was raised in parliament last week in relation to companies including franchise giant Domino's.

"What I would say is that we have a number of lines of inquiry underway at the moment what enforcement outcomes might flow from this will depend on the culpability of all parties involved, and we need to assess Domino's' own possible involvement in what has gone on," Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James told a Senate hearing last Tuesday.

James' confirmation that the regulator's investigation into wage fraud was ramping up and widening to Domino's head office no doubt sent chills through the pizza giant.

A day later, on May 31, Domino's quietly released an ASX statement that said its own investigations into wage underpayments had been delayed by up to six months. "The process is taking longer than anticipated," the statement said.

The statement was understated but it ignited investor fears. As one investor said:"A six-month delay is significant because it implies there is much more to look at than originally anticipated."

News in the same week that Domino's would buy the remaining 25 per cent of a business in Japan spooked investors, sparked a short selling frenzy and triggered a downgrade by two broking houses.

By the end of the week Domino's was one of the top 10 most shorted stocks and shares had fallen more than 7 per cent, with much of the turnover attributed to short selling.

Domino's is facing a series of headwinds. Concerns range from the extent of fraudulent activity within its franchise network, the success or otherwise of Domino's expansion overseas, particularly in France, the impact of the added cost burdens on franchisees from rising labour and food prices and the revitalisation of chief rival Pizza Hut under new ownership.

Its advertising fund also came under the spotlight in parliament last week following an investigation by the ACCC into breaches of its franchising code in relation to its multimillion-dollar advertising fund that receives contributions from store owners of between 4-6 per cent of sales to pay for advertising and marketing campaigns.

The ACCC's investigation culminated in fines of $18,000 but Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon wasn't convinced that the investigation or penalties were tough enough.

Senator Rhiannon asked ACCC chairman Rod Sims whether the investigation extended to some of the expenses being booked through the advertising fund.

She questioned whether some of the expenses were "legitimate" advertising fund expenses. "They include mystery shopping; chief executive Don Meij's personal website; legal fees regarding protecting their trademarks; and seminars at head office. Have you looked into this?"

Sims told her he didn't believe the investigation included an examination of the expenses but said: "I repeat again: Domino's is certainly on notice in terms of its behaviour in relation to the [franchising] code."

The various investigations into Domino's and political interest in the company has added to investor nervousness.

So too was the decision by Bain Capital to put its 25 per cent stake in a Japanese operator back to Domino's by August 28. The deal is expected to cost Domino's around $50 million but not everyone is convinced that Japan will be the growth story Domino's projects.

Morgans, a strong supporter of the company, has tempered its bullishness in the stock with a downgrade to "hold" from "add" and changed its target price range from $88.38 down to $65.62 after lowering its forecasts in key divisions.

Separately, Deutsche Bank, in its report "Pizza Profits should be shared," downgraded its recommendation to "sell".

At the heart of Deutsche bank analyst Michael Simotas' report is an analysis of the relationship between franchisees and Domino's and a comparison with the UK and the US.

Simotas contends that Domino's overall margins expanded around 50 per cent over the past five years at the expense of franchisees. "This has left Australian franchisees with inferior profits, margins and returns relative to their US and UK peers," he said.

It said Domino's own guidance implies it will need to take even more of the profit pool. "We don't think this is sustainable, and with around 90 per cent of rollout predicated on store splits, we see risk to store and/or margin targets."

Domino's argues that there is no correlation between profitability and franchisees underpaying workers. It says its business model is fair and franchisees do well out of it.

But until it gives more details of how many stores lose money, how many break even, how many make less than $100,000 EBITDA a year and so on, more reports and speculation like this one will remain.

Until the wage fraud scandal emerged earlier this year, Domino's has had a dream run. Its share price hit a record high of $80 on August 18, 2016 and short selling was minimal.

Fast forward to today and Domino's is one of the top 10 most shorted stocks on the ASX. According to shortman.com.au almost 12 per cent of shares in the company have now been short sold.

Short sellers are betting that Domino's share price will fall. They borrow stock from stock lenders in the hope that they will replace it at a later date when the shares fall lower.

Domino's releases its full-year results in August. It promises to be an interesting conference call, with investors and franchisees listening carefully to their answers.

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Slavery law to protect supply chains backed by big companies - The Australian Financial Review

Big businesshas backed aLabor Party push for new laws toforce major Australian companies to report on modern slavery in their supply chains.

Federal Laborwill on Monday announce the newpolicy and call for the introduction of a Modern Slavery Act toimpose newrequirements onbig businessto report onslavery and human trafficking in their supply chains. The policy includesthe introduction of a publicly available list of companies that wouldbe required to develop policies on and monitor any signs of the problem.

Labor also wants an independent anti-slavery commissioner like in Britain toaddress alack of enforcement of laws against slavery and to help businessesprotect supply chains.

The Business Council of Australia, which represents the chiefs of Australia's top companies, said it welcomed Labor's commitment to the introduction of a Modern Slavery Act.

"Greater global trade has boosted Australians' living standards, but it has also increased the risk that products and services are tainted by the use of forced labour," a Business Council spokesman said.

"Increased transparency will help customers, investors and business partners more easily distinguish whether companies are acting morally and working to maintain clean supply chains. Transparency also makes competition between businesses fairer.

"Large businesses are rightly taking a leadership role in promoting and supporting clean supply chains, and we look forward to consulting with Labor on the detail of its proposal."

Mining magnate Andrew Forrest late last year challenged Australian business leaders to wipe slavery out of their supply chains and has backed calls for tougher rules in this country.

Hewas shocked to find evidence of slavery within the supply chain of his Fortescue Metals Group in 2012.

Federal Labor's spokeswoman for Justice, ClareO'Neiland Opposition Leader Bill Shorten will on Monday announce itsnew policymodelled on Britain's Modern Slavery Act.

"For the first time, we are making it crystal clear that big businesses need to know what's happening in their supply chains," Ms O'Neil said.

"Every day, we probably pick up a product, wear a piece of clothing, use a resource or consume something which has been touched by a slave.

"We have a clear moral responsibility to tackle this problem.

"This policy represents a major shift in thinking about our responsibility as businesses and consumers for modern slavery."

Labor's callfor a Modern Slavery Act goes further than theexisting British law by mandatingand not simply suggesting that companiesreport on their supply chains and any areas of risk involvingslavery and human trafficking. Companies would also face penalties for non-compliance.

Ms O'Neil said two-thirds of people trapped in slavery worldwideare reported to be in the Asia-Pacific region and itwas estimated4300weretrapped in slavery in Australia.

In February, federal Attorney-GeneralGeorge Brandislaunchedaninquiry into whether amodern slavery act should be introduced in Australia.

The inquiry has been asked to look into the extent of modern day slavery includingforced labour and wage exploitation, involuntary servitude, debt bondage, human trafficking, forced marriage and other slavery-like exploitationin Australia and globally withreference to Britain's 2015 Modern Slavery Act.

The Senate committee has been asked to identifyinternational best practice used by governments, companies, businesses and organisations to prevent modern slavery in domestic and global supply chains, with a view to strengthening Australian legislation.

See more here:

Big business backs Labor call for new anti-slavery legislation - The Sydney Morning Herald

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.

Memorial Day has the tendency to conjure up old arguments about the Civil War. Thats understandable; it was created to mourn the dead of a war in which the Union was nearly destroyed, when half the country rose up in rebellion in defense of slavery. This year, the removal of Lees statue in New Orleans has inspired a new round of commentary about Lee, not to mention protests on his behalf by white supremacists.

The myth of Lee goes something like this: He was a brilliant strategist and devoted Christian man who abhorred slavery and labored tirelessly after the war to bring the country back together.

There is little truth in this. Lee was a devout Christian, and historians regard him as an accomplished tactician. But despite his ability to win individual battles, his decision to fight a conventional war against the more densely populated and industrialized North is considered by many historians to have been a fatal strategic error.

But even if one conceded Lees military prowess, he would still be responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in defense of the Souths authority to own millions of human beings as property because they are black. Lees elevation is a key part of a 150-year-old propaganda campaign designed to erase slavery as the cause of the war and whitewash the Confederate cause as a noble one. That ideology is known as the Lost Cause, and as historian David Blight writes, it provided a foundation on which Southerners built the Jim Crow system.

There are unwitting victims of this campaignthose who lack the knowledge to separate history from sentiment. Then there are those whose reverence for Lee relies on replacing the actual Lee with a mythical figure who never truly existed.

In the Richmond Times Dispatch, R. David Cox wrote that For white supremacist protesters to invoke his name violates Lees most fundamental convictions. In the conservative publication Townhall, Jack Kerwick concluded that Lee was among the finest human beings that has ever walked the Earth. John Daniel Davidson, in an essay for The Federalist, opposed the removal of the Lee statute in part on the grounds that Lee arguably did more than anyone to unite the country after the war and bind up its wounds. Praise for Lee of this sort has flowed forth from past historians and presidents alike.

This is too divorced from Lees actual life to even be classed as fan fiction; it is simply historical illiteracy.

White supremacy does not violate Lees most fundamental convictions. White supremacy was one of Lees most fundamental convictions.

Lee was a slaveownerhis own views on slavery were explicated in an 1856 letter that it often misquoted to give the impression that Lee was some kind of an abolitionist. In the letter, he describes slavery as a moral & political evil, but goes on to explain that:

I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.

The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most importantly, it is better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee.

Lees cruelty as a slavemaster was not confined to physical punishment. In Reading The Man, historian Elizabeth Brown Pryors portrait of Lee through his writings, Pryor writes that Lee ruptured the Washington and Custis tradition of respecting slave families, by hiring them off to other plantations, and that by 1860 he had broken up every family but one on the estate, some of whom had been together since Mount Vernon days. The separation of slave families was one of the most unfathomably devastating aspects of slavery, and Pryor wrote that Lees slaves regarded him as the worst man I ever see.

The trauma of rupturing families lasted lifetimes for the enslavedit was, as my colleague Ta-Nehisi Coates described it, a kind of murder. After the war, thousands of the emancipated searched desperately for kin lost to the market for human flesh, fruitlessly for most. In Reconstruction, historian Eric Foner quotes a Freedmens Bureau agent who notes of the emancipated, in their eyes, the work of emancipation was incomplete until the families which had been dispersed by slavery were reunited.

Lees heavy hand on the Arlington plantation, Pryor writes, nearly lead to a slave revolt, in part because the enslaved had been expected to be freed upon their previous masters death, and Lee had engaged in a dubious legal interpretation of his will in order to keep them as his property, one that lasted until a Virginia court forced him to free them.

When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to "lay it on well." Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.

Every state that seceded mentioned slavery as the cause in their declarations of secession. Lees beloved Virginia was no different, accusing the federal government of perverting its powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States. Lees decision to fight for the South can only be described as a choice to fight for the continued existence of human bondage in Americaeven though for the Union, it was not at first a war for emancipation.

During his invasion of Pennsylvania, Lees Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free blacks and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lees army with the abduction of free black Americans, with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.

Soldiers under Lees command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lees senior corps commander A.P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As historian Richard Plotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, his silence was permissive.

The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth the Souths slave empire was built on: The happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with whites. As Pryor writes, fighting against brave and competent African-Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society. The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.

As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with Union general Ulysses S. Grant. Grant agreed, on condition that blacks be exchanged the same as white soldiers. Lees response was that negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition. Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that blacks could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that Government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers. Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lees surrender.

After the war, Lee did counsel defeated southerners against rising up against the North. Lee might have become a rebel once more, and urged the South to resume fightingas many of his former comrades wanted him to. But even in this task Grant, in 1866, regarded his former rival as falling short, saying that Lee was setting an example of forced acquiescence so grudging and pernicious in its effects as to be hardly realized.

Nor did Lees defeat lead to an embrace of racial egalitarianism. The war was not about slavery, Lee insisted later, but if it was about slavery, it was only out of Christian devotion that white southerners fought to keep blacks enslaved. Lee told a New York Herald reporter, in the midst of arguing in favor of somehow removing blacks from the South (disposed of, in his words), that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and in justice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.

Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free, he fought for the preservation of slavery, his army kidnapped free blacks at gunpoint and made them unfreebut all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for blacks. Here we truly understand Frederick Douglass admonition that "between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference."

Privately, according to the correspondence collected by his own family, Lee counseled others to hire white labor instead of the freedmen, observing that wherever you find the negro, everything is going down around him, and wherever you find a white man, you see everything around him improving.

In another letter, Lee wrote You will never prosper with blacks, and it is abhorrent to a reflecting mind to be supporting and cherishing those who are plotting and working for your injury, and all of whose sympathies and associations are antagonistic to yours. I wish them no evil in the worldon the contrary, will do them every good in my power, and know that they are misled by those to whom they have given their confidence; but our material, social, and political interests are naturally with the whites.

Publicly, Lee argued against the enfranchisement of blacks, and raged against Republican efforts to enforce racial equality on the South. Lee told Congress that blacks lacked the intellectual capacity of whites and could not vote intelligently and that granting them suffrage would excite unfriendly feelings between the two races. Lee explained that the negroes have neither the intelligence nor the other qualifications which are necessary to make them safe depositories of political power. To the extent that Lee believed in reconciliation, it was between white people, and only on the precondition that black people would be denied political power and therefore the ability to shape their own fate.

Lee is not remembered as an educator, but his life as president of Washington College (later Washington and Lee) is tainted as well. According to Pryor, students at Washington formed their own chapter of the KKK, and were known by the local Freedmens Bureau to attempt to abduct and rape black schoolgirls from the nearby black schools.

There were at least two attempted lynchings by Washington students during his tenure, and Pryor writes that the number of accusations against Washington College boys indicates that he either punished the racial harassment more laxly than other misdemeanors, or turned a blind eye to it, adding that he did not exercise the near imperial control he had at the school, as he did for more trivial matters, such as when the boys threatened to take unofficial Christmas holidays. In short, Lee was as indifferent to crimes of violence towards blacks carried out by his students as he was when they was carried out by his soldiers.

Lee died in 1870, as Democrats and ex-Confederates were commencing a wave of terrorist violence that would ultimately reimpose their domination over the Southern states. The Ku Klux Klan was founded in 1866; there is no evidence Lee ever spoke up against it. On the contrary, he darkly intimated in his interview with the Herald that the South might be moved to violence again if peace did not proceed on its terms. That was prescient.

Lee is a pivotal figure in American history worthy of study. Neither the man who really existed, nor the fictionalized tragic hero of the Lost Cause, are heroes worthy of a statue in a place of honor. As one Union veteran angrily put it in 1903 when Pennsylvania was considering placing a statute to Lee at Gettysburg, If you want historical accuracy as your excuse, then place upon this field a statue of Lee holding in his hand the banner under which he fought, bearing the legend: We wage this war against a government conceived in liberty and dedicated to humanity. The most fitting monument to Lee is the national military cemetery the federal government placed on the grounds of his former home in Arlington.

To describe this man as American hero requires ignoring the immense suffering for which he was personally responsible, both on and off the battlefield. It requires ignoring his participation in the industry of human bondage, his betrayal of his country in defense of that institution, the battlefields scattered with the lifeless bodies of men who followed his orders and those they killed, his hostility towards the rights of the freedmen and his indifference to his own students waging a campaign of terror against the newly emancipated. It requires reducing the sum of human virtue to a sense of decorum and the ability to convey gravitas in a gray uniform.

There are former Confederates who sought redeem themselvesone thinks of James Longstreet, wrongly blamed by Lost Causers for Lees disastrous defeat at Gettysburg, who went from fighting the Union army to leading New Orleans integrated police force in battle against white supremacist paramilitaries. But there are no statues of Longstreet in New Orleans; there are no statues of Longstreet anywhere in the American South. Lee was devoted to defending the principle of white supremacy; Longstreet was not. This, perhaps, is why Lee was placed atop the largest Confederate monument at Gettysburg in 1917, but the 62 Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that makes him look like a hobbit riding a donkey. Its why Lee is remembered as a hero, and Longstreet is remembered as a disgrace.

The white supremacists who have protested on Lees behalf are not betraying his legacy. In fact, they have every reason to admire him. Lee, whose devotion to white supremacy outshone his loyalty to his country, is the embodiment of everything they stand for. Tribe and race over country is the core of white nationalism, and racists can embrace Lee in good conscience.

The question is why anyone else would.

Excerpt from:

The Myth of the Kindly General Lee - The Atlantic

By Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello By Ralph Northam and Tom Perriello June 4 at 7:15 PM

Editors note: On Friday, The Post conducted an email debate between Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam and former congressman Tom Perriello, Democratic candidates in Virginias 2017 gubernatorial election. The questions were asked by Post editorial board member Lee Hockstader. The transcript has been edited for style and clarity.

Lee Hockstader: Polls suggest many primary voters are struggling to decide between the two of you, which might reflect the civility of your race or how narrow the policy differences are.

Dr. Northam, youve suggested youd work better with the Republican-controlled legislature than your opponent, by dint of your experience and relationships in Richmond, but it seems a stretch to think GOP leaders in the General Assembly will allow any Democratic governor to claim a major victory. Mr. Perriello, youve made a case for yourself as a younger, very liberal candidate with what you call bold ideas, but a lot of those ideas like soaking the rich with a tax hike to provide two years of debt-free community college for any Virginian are simply non-starters for Republicans, no matter how much you campaign in conservative parts of Virginia.

What can each of you say to sharpen the distinctions between you so voters can understand how you would govern differently? Why are you a better bet than your opponent?

Ralph Northam: With over a decade of experience working in Richmond, Ive developed relationships with leaders of both parties. In fact, one of my first experiences in the legislature [was] to lead the fight to pass a smoking ban in restaurants. While it failed the first time, I learned some lessons after taking a licking, brought Republicans to the table to talk about the benefits for Virginia. The very next year, we passed the ban and then-Gov. [Timothy M.] Kaine signed it into law. The way we got it done was to explain how much it was hurting our economy and costing our health care. We were able to succeed despite Big Tobaccos efforts.

I led similar efforts to establish firm guidelines for dealing with concussions in Virginias student athletes. As a pediatric neurologist, I could leverage my expertise, and my colleagues respected that experience because of the relationships I established.

Having been a member of Kaines climate change commission, I led the charge to gather bipartisan support for resiliency to combat sea-level rise. Ive continued that leadership under Gov. [Terry] McAuliffes administration.

Finally, I educated people on both sides of aisle on the transvaginal ultrasound bill, and because of my conversations, we were able to remove the transvaginal portion of the mandate.

So, Ive got a proven record of bringing together bipartisan support and doing whats in the best interest of Virginia, and I can do the same as governor.

Tom Perriello: The track record of solving problems within the confines of Richmond hasnt worked. What Ive done both here and abroad is bring people together, from the grass roots, to solve problems that pundits and observers said were impossible. I think thats a useful skill set. The Virginia Way stopped working for average Virginians a long time ago; what we need is a new way that builds solutions directly among the people, across region and race.

Thats why in this campaign, I am the only candidate to offer a fully paid-for plan that guarantees universal pre-K and two years of truly free community college. I designed this plan not inside my own head; these are ideas Ive heard at more than 350 public events across Virginia, including many in Trump country. Im the only candidate from either party whos rejected Dominions campaign contributions. Im the only candidate clearly opposed to two fracked-gas pipelines that would cut across Virginia. I was the first candidate to call for a living wage of $15 an hour, to put fixing our criminal-justice system and ending the racial wealth gap on the table, to say Virginia should join an interstate climate alliance to confront climate change, and to call for enshrining the right to choose in our state constitution. This is about being bold and leading on the major issues affecting Virginia. I think leadership is about identifying the problem and solutions and building a political coalition to make them happen. I find voters across the political spectrum responding to our willingness to put policy details and real tough decisions on the table.

Hockstader: Dr. Northam, doesnt Mr. Perriello also have a proven record as a leader?

Northam: I believe its a matter of experience in Richmond, a health-care provider and veteran versus experience in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. The politics of getting things done in Richmond can be very complicated, and it takes someone who has spent the time to know the issues and develop the relationships with key members of both parties to make progress.

Perriello: I bring executive experience from outside of Richmond and outside of politics to the table, like Govs. McAuliffe and [Mark R.] Warner did, and people have seen that leadership in this race where weve set both the tone and policy agenda.

Northam: While its easy to say that from someone who has not been in Richmond, I believe there are Democratic leaders across Virginia, including Sens. Kaine and Warner, and Gov. McAuliffe, who would say that weve made tremendous progress, and understand there is more to be done.

Hockstader: Mr. Perriello, hasnt Dr. Northam, to use your words, also identified problems and solutions?

Perriello: We appreciate that Dr. Northam has agreed with many of the policy positions that weve led on and introduced into this campaign. I believe that our campaign, talking about both needing to be a firewall against the hate and bigotry of the Trump administration and enacting a bold agenda of turning a cycle of debt to a cycle of opportunity in Virginia, has been unique in this primary. I also am the only candidate whos identified exactly how I will pay for my full agenda, and we find that voters across the political spectrum appreciate that a great deal.

Northam: Since he has not been in Richmond, he may not be aware that I have been fighting for things like gun safety reform, preventing offshore drilling, reproductive rights and pre-K for years.

My proposals, like my G3 program, will improve the economy, train the workforce, and are fiscally responsible. This can get done in Richmond. My total proposals equal $67 million and can be funded through comprehensive tax reform and economic growth, and are not reliant on a billion-dollar tax increase that will not pass the General Assembly.

Perriello: There is no scenario in which proposals like truly universal pre-K, raising teacher pay and paid leave cost only $67 million. A billion-dollar revenue plan did pass under a Republican governor with your support. So what is the distinction when this is for a progressive working-families agenda? To be clear: We dont raise taxes by a billion dollars; the plan includes spending cuts, tax reform and closing loopholes for big corporations as well.

Hockstader: Dr. Northam, would you care to respond to your opponents skepticism regarding the cost of your program proposals?

Northam: Im proud to have used all the tools available to Virginia, including securing a federal grant to fund the program. While there is more work to be done, we were able to open up 13,000 more new pre-K slots in Virginia last year. Thats a good start.

The only way to address these solutions is to have the relationships and bipartisan coalition necessary to get the job done. I took a key role in the transportation plan that was passed, and as governor I plan to be part of the solution to creating a floor in the gas tax with bipartisan support. We must make sure we adequately fund Virginias transportation system.

You have laid out policy proposals for well over a billion, and a tax increase of over a billion dollars; whats left for transportation?

Perriello: My proposal is not a billion-dollar tax increase, and suggesting it is sounds more like something that would come out of Ed Gillespies mouth than a Democrats! It includes major spending cuts and closing loopholes that benefit corporations to level the playing field for small businesses and invest in education.

Northam: I think we can both agree that Ed Gillespies tax plan is a farce and nothing more than a giveaway to the rich.

According to your campaign, your plan increases revenue by more than $1.1 billion.

Hockstader: Would either of you support removing and relocating the statue of Robert E. Lee in the Old Hall of the Virginia House of Delegates? How about the statue of Stonewall Jackson on the grounds of the state Capitol? If so, why? If not, why not?

Northam: I believe these statues belong in a museum but that the decision belongs to local communities. In this instance, the power rests in the General Assembly, and its a worthy conversation for us to have.

In order to be a more inclusive society, we need to elevate the parts of our complicated history that have all too often been ignored.

This means memorializing people like Barbara Johns and Oliver Hill, but also men like Samuel Wilbert Tucker, who was the leading attorney for the NAACP in the state of Virginia in the 50s and 60s and coordinated the sit-in at the Alexandria library in 1939. Or Mozella Jordan Price , who became supervisor of African American schools in Appomattox County in 1919 and served until 1963.

We need to remember the painful aspects of history and not omit them simply because they are difficult to discuss.

It is why the 400th anniversary of the arrival of African slaves at Fort Monroe is so important to commemorate, and we must do so in a way that helps spur a conversation about the more painful parts of our history.

Perriello: I strongly support the valuable conversation we are having about how we memorialize, and frankly understand, our past. In my home town of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, a majority of human beings during the Civil War were black. And it is important that we not discount their lived experience by three-fifths. I have worked on truth and reconciliation commissions in other countries, and often it is the process of these decisions the conversation that is as important as the outcome. I have called for a commission on racial healing and transformation, building on tremendously valuable local initiatives to look systematically at these questions.

Growing up in Virginia, our textbooks gave Reconstruction less than a page, but it is one of the most profound moments of our history. We cannot understand todays racial wealth gap where the median net worth of an African American family is one-eleventh that of the median white family but jumping from slavery to today with a brief stop at Jim Crow. We must understand that most of these memorials were put up not after the Civil War but during moments of racial progress for African Americans. This does not need to be seen as a zero-sum game but as a great puzzle that we ask all Virginians to solve about our past to form a fuller picture for our future.

Hockstader: Mr. Perriello: remove Stonewall and Lee from the Capitol or not?

Perriello: I personally believe the right outcome will be to move them, but I have learned as someone who has done transitional justice professionally that designing a truly inclusive process and addressing all these issues together, rather than one-off, is more effective for the ultimate goal of healing, transformation and a truly accurate history.

Hockstader: Youve both proposed a minimum wage of $15 an hour, more than double the states current rate. Some economists would say thats at odds with each of your stated goals to juice Virginias growth rate, which currently stands at 48th among the states. Your responses?

Perriello: Actually, economic data clearly shows that raising the minimum wage is a growth strategy. One of the greatest barriers to real growth over the past two decades has been the myth of trickle-down economics. In dozens of past experiences of federal and state minimum-wage increases, job creation has risen and small business has benefited, including the restaurant and hospitality sectors that claim concern. This is because no successful business looks at only one side of their ledger sheet costs they look at the net between costs and revenue. When the working and middle class have more disposable income, it is our greatest indicator of real growth.

This is also about something our conservative allies can appreciate, which is that raising the minimum wage reduces welfare rolls. It moves more people off of public assistance and into taxpaying jobs. Over recent decades, welfare benefits have not gotten effectively better but the benefits of working have gotten far worse. Just keeping with inflation would have us at a $10-an-hour minimum wage, and if wages had kept with productivity, it would be at $22 an hour. What studies have shown repeatedly is that a mother going to work for less than $15 an hour will typically lose money by going to work, largely due to child-care costs, transportation costs and lost benefits. We need to make work pay to grow the economy, and that is something liberals and conservatives should agree on.

This is why a more conservative state like West Virginia has raised the minimum wage but a gerrymandered legislature here in Virginia has not.

Northam: Virginias minimum wage is pegged to the federal minimum wage, which right now is $7.25 an hour and hasnt risen in nearly 10 years. That means that right now Virginias minimum wage provides less than 40 percent of a living wage for an adult, and one-fifth of a living wage for an adult Virginian with two children.

The facts are clear: Our economy can afford a $15 minimum wage if its phased in responsibly over time. Today, our low-wage workers earn less per hour than someone working at their level did 50 years ago. Thats just unacceptable, especially considering our economy has grown dramatically over the past 50 years.

Oftentimes, I hear critics tell me that a $15 minimum wage is not needed in rural Virginia. Yet they leave out the lack of transportation options available to them and the higher expense of driving in those areas. We should be mindful that folks across Virginia are consumers, and more money in their pockets means more money they can spend at our businesses.

Hockstader: Another question for both of you: As you know, theres no legal definition of a sanctuary jurisdiction, but Arlington County seems to qualify: Its sheriff wont honor ICE detainers to hold undocumented immigrants in jail past their release date unless ICE secures a warrant issued by a court.

Do you regard Arlingtons stance as admirable, and would you encourage other localities in Virginia to emulate it?

Northam: I believe Arlingtons stance has been defended by Attorney General [Mark R.] Herring in 2015. His opinion stated that detainer request are optional. This mirrored the decisions by other states and local governments, and President [Barack] Obamas Department of Homeland Security. Arlington is well within their legal bounds to take this action. I should add that I was proud to break a tie when Republicans tried to scapegoat immigrants for political gain. They knew full well there are no sanctuary cities in Virginia, but they put up a bill to scare immigrant communities. Thats not right. I was glad to put a stop to it.

Perriello: We support Arlington and others using all options for non-cooperation with the unconstitutional and unconscionable directives of the Trump administration. Within the bounds of the law, I will ensure that Virginia uses all powers possible to remain an inclusive state that ensures the dignity and security of all who live here. This includes discouraging the 287(g) partnerships that blur the distinction between deportation agents and local law enforcement in ways that undermine public safety. The day President Trump threatened to cut off funding, I called this out as an empty threat at odds with the anti-commandeering jurisprudence of our Constitution. Circuit courts have now reached that same conclusion. We must ensure safe, dignified spaces particularly our schools, houses of worship and clinics and make sure families do not go to bed at night terrified they may be separated at any moment from their children.

Hockstader: Arguably, there are at least two sanctuary counties: Arlington and Chesterfield. Do you admire their policies and would you like to see them proliferate in the commonwealth?

Northam: There simply are no sanctuary cities in Virginia. Cities and counties have the authority to release prisoners who are eligible for release, and Arlington and Chesterfield are exercising that authority. The attorney general has ruled that federal detainer requests are optional, and I support his opinion.

Hockstader: In response to the opioid epidemic, from which three Virginians die daily, would you support Virginia bringing a lawsuit against drug manufacturers like the one Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced this week?

Perriello: Yes. I have repeatedly called out Big Pharma for their role in this crisis, including during multiple visits to clinics in Southwest Virginia. I showed my willingness to stand up to the drug lobby during the fight for Obamacare, including my vote for an early, stronger version that allowed Medicare to negotiate cheaper prescription drug rates. This is also why we support the use of medical marijuana as a more effective element of care that does not come from Big Pharma.

Northam: This is a multifaceted challenge. As a provider, Ive been traveling around educating other providers, as well as those in training, to ensure proper management of both acute and chronic pain. As lieutenant governor, Ive led Virginias effort to combat this crisis. This includes increasing funding for community service boards so that we now have same-day access, giving the public through the commissioner of health a blanket prescription for naloxone to reverse the deadly side effects, and working with Attorney General Herring to stop the influx of opioids, as those are now being laced with fentanyl and carfentanil.

Attorney General Herring has made some moves forward on this. I appreciate the spirit of Attorney General DeWines lawsuit, and if Attorney General Herring believes there is a case to be made, I would support his decision.

Hockstader: Turning to a local issue central to the concerns of many Northern Virginians, how would you fix Metro and help meet its anticipated need for at least $15 billion in additional capital funds over the coming decade? Specifically, would you support a regional sales tax in which Northern Virginia would be assessed in coordination with suburban Maryland and the District of Columbia?

Northam: I dont think there is any question among leaders in Virginia, D.C. and Maryland that we need to fix Metro and find a dedicated revenue source for the system. It is an economic driver for the entire region, and one of the biggest economic drivers in Virginia.

However, as you well know, the complex political landscape across differing local and state governments makes this reality hard to achieve. So the first thing we need to do is create an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability for the governance and operation of the system. Restoring trust for riders, residents and policymakers is the only way we can change the current dynamic.

Second, as with tax reform, the legislature is going to reject any dedicated funding plan they feel is forced upon them. To prevent that, I will use the LaHood commission report to guide negotiations with Republicans in Richmond and Northern Virginia stakeholders to find a fair agreement on funding Metro, and to work with our neighbors in D.C. and Maryland.

Ive long worked with Republicans and Democrats to ensure we have the necessary funding for transportation, even campaigning in 2007 that new revenue was needed to fix a transportation system that hadnt seen investment since 1986. I wanted to break the gridlock in Richmond and on our roads. I think Ive done a little of both by supporting bipartisan transportation packages.

I know this cant be done without working together. Theres no one in the race better equipped than me to do that, because I have the record of delivering results for Virginia.

Perriello: WMATA has both governance and revenue problems that are being greatly exacerbated by the current safety problems and service disruptions that have substantially reduced ridership. I would support this or other initiatives that would produce the necessary investments in our regional public transportation options. I have lived for the past six years in Alexandria and understand these problems both as a consumer and as a manager. When I worked at the State Department, members of my team wouldnt know on any given day if they were going to make it into work by 7 or 9 a.m., or make it home by 7 or 8:30 p.m. from work. When I oversaw the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review for President Obama, we looked at the transportation challenges in Northern Virginia as a national security threat, both because of the vulnerabilities it introduced and because it is getting harder to recruit and retain top national security personnel as costs rise and quality of life is eroded based on traffic. We have to ensure the region can tackle this problem.

Hockstader: So you would support a regional sales tax, Mr. Perriello? In your view, is any other means of raising substantial sums of new revenue preferable to a regional sales tax? And would you support scrapping binding arbitration do you see that as part of the governance problem to which you refer?

Northam: Fair compensation and benefits for workers must be respected. Ultimately, we need to build a system of transparency and accountability within Metro. However, without out a dedicated revenue source, any other reforms will not be enough.

Perriello: Here, we disagree. I think the solutions coming out of Richmond on transportation have not come close to getting the job done. It has produced gridlock in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads and disastrous toll deals for tunnels. The Virginia Way approach stopped working with the radical gerrymandering years ago, and Virginians are paying a big price for it. Political change comes from building consensus and support across Virginia that we then take to Richmond.

To your question, Lee: As I said above, yes, I would support the regional sales tax. Our preference is for whatever revenue source and governance reforms can garner sufficient support to solve the problem.

Hockstader: Would you support a dedicated regional sales tax, Dr. Northam?

Northam: I agree with my friend [state] Sen. [George L.] Barker, who said, and I paraphrase, that we need a shared approach with states and localities, and localities having a big stake. The panel that recommended the regional sales tax made a mistake by not involving local political leaders. We need substantive discussion and debate in order to achieve consensus. In Virginia, the entire commonwealth needs to be on board, and they wont be if they are dictated to. We cant hamstring ourselves before we start the discussion in Richmond. It should be an option, but the discussion in Richmond and across Virginia needs to happen first.

Hockstader: Gov. McAuliffe released the outlines of a climate plan last month that calls for pricing carbon dioxide emissions and joining with other states to trade pollution credits. Do you support this idea, and is it appropriate to act on it without the legislatures consent? How would you flesh out the plan?

Northam: Yes, I support it, and applauded him when it was announced. I think Gov.McAuliffe was well within his authority to make that decision. In light of Donald Trumps idiotic and disastrous decision to leave the Paris agreement, its even more important for states to lead. This is why I announced today that I would bring Virginia into the United States Climate Alliance, and I would continue Gov. McAuliffes carbon reduction executive directive.

Perriello: We strongly support Gov. McAuliffes decision as vital for protecting our climate and for ensuring Virginia stops falling behind on the clean-energy jobs and businesses of today. Virginia has the second-most-vulnerable coastline in America, and the ecological treasure and economic driver of the Chesapeake Bay stands at risk. We must pursue strong measures under this new rule to make Virginia a leader on climate and clean energy. Thats why I was the first candidate to commit to the new interstate climate alliance and the only candidate to refuse donations from Dominion Power and oppose two fracked-gas pipelines in Virginia. These positions, interestingly enough, are widely popular among third-party and Republican voters we meet across the state, who see a monopoly approach to energy production as long out of date.

The private sector can help drive solutions, if we create a modern framework of incentives. I have spent much of my life advancing these common-sense reforms, including through the cap-and-trade bill in Congress and new energy business investments in Southside Virginia. We have fallen behind North Carolina on solar energy and risk losing the wind industry to Maryland because our utilities have too much power in Richmond. Dominion is full of good, smart people stuck in a very bad monopoly business model. We should be creating the space for farmers and small-business owners to take over the energy production of the future. It creates more jobs, more efficiency and more local business.

President Trumps disastrous move to pull out of the Paris agreement only reinforces the importance of strong state leadership on fighting climate change. I will ensure that Virginia becomes a leader on climate sustainability, distributed energy production and smart-grid technology.

Hockstader: Final question: High-quality charter schools have proved to be a successful alternative for many students, particularly children at high risk. It is one reason that they were promoted by the Obama administration. So explain why you want to continue to keep them out of Virginia when there are schools in many communities that have so consistently failed their students many of them in predominantly black and low-income areas and when there is no hope of change or improvement.

Perriello: The only problem with this question as posed is, well, evidence. The performance of charter schools has simply not exceeded performance within the system, despite years of investments. There have also been many legitimate concerns raised in how these have proceeded. Vouchers are also a plan that often make policymakers feel good about the few cases they appear to help, instead of focusing us on how to fix the system as a whole. We need to recruit and retain good teachers, which is why Im the only candidate who has put revenues on the table to improve teacher pay, increase counselors in schools and add universal pre-K. Early-childhood development is a far more effective investment in quality outcomes. We are also expanding options to restore career and technical training programs in high schools, and Im the only candidate to provide two years of apprenticeship programs, trade school or community college education.

The evidence does, however, show one clear trend, which is that schools in areas of concentrated poverty are far more likely to be underperforming. Instead of blaming the teachers and principals, we should ask why we have not done more to reduce poverty. In Virginia, we pay poverty wages of $14,000 a year to countless struggling parents. I meet parents every week who work two full-time jobs for less than $30,000 and add another 10 hours of commute time to get to a community with quality schools where they can afford to live. Every one of them would rather be at home helping with homework and cooking a healthy meal. These are not bad parents. They are exceptional parents who are finding ways to keep the lights on for their kids in an economy that is crushing the poor and working class. Some of the solutions to our education performance must be found outside the classroom, in restoring the broken promise of social mobility and economic security for all Virginians.

Northam: I grew up on a small farm on the Eastern Shore. My opportunities began with my public school education. Knowing that, its one of the reasons I have been a big supporter of public education in Virginia. My wife, Pam, was a K-5 science teacher, so she has been a major influence on me as well.

Its one of the reasons I was proud to support raising teacher pay in the state Senate and as lieutenant governor. But teacher pay in Virginia ranks 30th in the nation, while we rank 10th in per capita personal income. If were going to recruit and retain talented, good teachers, we have to step up to the plate and put our money where our mouth is and say were going to make K-12 education a priority. Ive also been proud to work on reforming Standards of Learning so that we teach our children how to think creatively rather than multiple-choice tests. This will go a long way toward helping children and educators.

I have also been involved as part of the Childrens Cabinet modifying our high school curriculum to emphasize vocational and technical training, preparing our students for higher-paying, high-tech STEM-related 21st-century jobs.

With regards to charter schools or vouchers, we need to make sure that we fund K-12 first before we move on to other things like charter schools.

The fundamental reason charter schools have not moved forward on a wider scale in Virginia is because every proposal to come through the General Assembly would limit the local school boards authority to grant the charter. Making sure these decisions are left to our local leaders and those closest to the communities is vital. Second, the charter proposals seen in Virginia would ultimately divert much-needed funding from school divisions, often those that are in the most need.

Wed be better off revising Standards of Quality formulas to better eliminate disparities among different regions across the commonwealth and so that every child in Virginia has the same opportunity to quality education regardless of where they live.

Finally, I am proud that we secured federal dollars to fund 13,000 pre-K slots for low-income children. With the goal of universal access to pre-K, tax dollars can be better spent expanding access to all Virginia children.

Hockstader: Thank you to you both. We appreciate you joining this forum today.

Continue reading here:

Two Democratic hopefuls for Va. governor on schools, Metro and the minimum wage - Washington Post

Industrial Global Union, Africa, has commended the Federal Government for the constitution of a National Minimum Wage Committee to kick start the process of negotiation for a new wage for Nigerian workers.

The Vice President of the union, Comrade Issa Aremu, in a statement issued in Kaduna urged all stakeholders to negotiate a new living wage for what he called impoverished African workforce.

Aremu called on Africa leaders to pay more attention to Africas youth and urgently address their concern which is decent jobs.

He said this is the only way to retain them in the continent and stop their unnecessary migration to Europe for any kind of jobs with millions dying in the Mediterranean Sea.

He described the mass exodus of African youths to Europe and America as unacceptable mass voluntary slavery adding that it was caused by unemployment and miserable pay to African workforce.

Go here to see the original:

Industrial Global union commends constitution of minimum wage - Daily Trust

A few years belatedly, I have spent several recent days binge-reading the famous discontinued blog of Mencius Moldbug, also known as Curtis Yarvin, a computer scientist and entrepreneur who as some kind of half-advertent side project founded with his writings the small but noisome new school of neoreactionary (not his term) political thought (Down with liberal democracy! Restore the Stuarts!).

Its a good read. Its certainly more interesting than its demotic Twitter following O irony had led me to expect. Theres a lot of humor and a gift for skewering pretensions and a feast of trivia and allusion and a measure of genuine insight. Youll especially like it if youve been searching for the mutant literary offspring of Friedrich Nietzsche and Philip K. Dick and are able to withstand toxic doses of smartassery. (I of course cant defend Moldbugs defense of slavery as a natural institution, which comes with a little casual racism guess which continent produces the best slaves? and a lot of equivocation on the definition of slavery. I trust your programming languages are more consistent, Curt.)

But whatever their merits as literature, as political philosophy Moldbugs writings are completely daft. And it will be worth our while to spend a few minutes considering why, since it will give us occasion to think about the perennial trade-offs with which politics confronts us, and the perennial need for balance. A few minutes is really all it will take, because, on about your third day of reading Moldbug, by which time your inner Gertrude is positively shrieking More matter, with less art, it becomes pellucidly clear that this whole great outpouring, stripped of its gaudy costume and seen in the definite architecture of its skeleton, is a simple stick figure of an argument, standing, like most stick figures, on two legs. One leg is diagnostic, the other prescriptive. We proceed to chainsaw them off.

The diagnosis is that the Enlightenment was a great big mistake, the spread of democracy has been a great big disaster, and feudalism or absolute monarchy would be much, much better (though not best see below). To make this point, Moldbug constructs a rambling armchair history of modernity, mainly the 20th century, and attributes its horrors, mainly the world wars and post-colonial conflict, to liberal democracy. The only improvements in mankinds lot over this period have been technological, he maintains. Well call this sub-argument of our schematic skeleton the tibia from violence; it receives the lions share of Moldbugs diagnostic energy.

A second line of critique lets call it the fibula from governance focuses on the dysfunction of the American state: its inefficiency, its gridlock, its structural incentives for politicians to buy votes today with tomorrows tax dollars.

A third criticism, the femur from the ghetto, points mainly to urban malaise: crime, of course, but also street trash. Moldbug really hates street trash. Im sure there was none of that in Charles Is day.

There are kernels of truth the reader will allow me to switch metaphors at will to be found in this diagnosis. Totalitarian regimes have indeed come to power democratically; the imposition of democratic procedures on societies that lacked their cultural preconditions has indeed at times been disastrous; the United States indeed faces a looming debt crisis that neither party is seriously grappling with; and as someone who has lived in both Nanjing and New York City, I can tell you which one Id feel safer being teleported into at 2 a.m. if the neighborhood had to be selected randomly.

And one can grow any number of familiar non-lunatic sprouts of wisdom from those kernels of truth: that the Iraq War and similar endeavors have been nave; that decolonization should have happened more gradually and (better) colonization never should have happened in the first place; that mob passions make democracy dangerous when too direct and require moderation by civil society and a substantial infusion of republicanism; that there are things to be said for the comparative efficiency of parliamentary systems; that the need for proactive policing has not disappeared even if we must do a better job of giving a damn about the Fourth Amendment; that the time has come for pay-as-you-go accounting; that localism is splendid.

And it should be conceded although the concession cuts both ways that ones view of all that will depend greatly on how one prioritizes certain political and social values. Moldbug makes a big show of his allegiance to what is as opposed to what should be, but his whole position nonetheless rests on a gigantic unacknowledged should, namely that paramount importance should be assigned to order and security, and we should therefore accept whatever trade-offs their pursuit may require by way of restricting, say, privacy and liberty. (Moldbugs ideal state, we will see, is as close to all-powerful and all-knowing as anything could be that wasnt God.) There is always a lot of interesting discussion to be had among people who want to strike balances between competing shoulds, but when one side of the see-saw bears infinite weight, theres not much of a game to play. Because his value preferences are, in this metaphor, an infinitely obese child, Moldbug goes straight from his diagnosis to Restore the Stuarts, giving scarcely a glance toward the general terrain of my last paragraph. Thats the thing about extremists. They go to extremes. Moldbugs diagnostic argument is over right where it really ought to get started.

We can nonetheless ask whether the diagnosis of Enlightenment disaster is accurate on its own terms. And it is not, for it depends on an epic lot of trick accounting.

Consider the tibia from violence. First we have to ignore any distinction between sham democracy of the Nazi variety and genuine liberal democracy with deep cultural roots. In his more sober moments Moldbug knows theres a difference and concedes, for example, that fascism was a reactionary movement that combined the worst ideas of the ancien regime, the worst politics of the democrats, and the worst tyrannies of the Bolsheviks. Just so.

Then we have to attribute both the mass slaughter of the 20th century and the lesser slaughter of the golden past to exclusively political rather than technological causes. And that is just absurd. How do you suppose the Muslim conquest of the Maghreb, the Thirty Years War, or Mencius the Warring States Period would have gone if air forces, heavy artillery, and nuclear weapons had been available? Not that one cant make plenty of mayhem without them. Our good friend Wikipedia informs us that, in China and nearby environs, the Three Kingdoms War, the Taiping, An Lushan, and Dugan rebellions, and the Mongol and Qing conquests each managed to kill more people than World War I and without either 20th-century technology or the dread Enlightenment contagion. (The Taiping catastrophe involved a Christian missionary tract, but the source of that is much older than the House of Stuart.)

As with the tibia from violence, so with the fibula from governance and the femur from the ghetto. The history of European monarchy is littered with sovereign-debt defaults, but never mind. Sprawling bureaucracy was well known before the Enlightenment where do you think we got the word byzantine? but never mind. Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg made it possible for me to take lovely all-night strolls through neighborhoods where two decades prior I probably would have been mugged, but never mind. The reader may continue this exercise at home if he wishes, but suffice it here to say that our neoreactionary accountant is consistently half blind. And the burden of proof is surely on him. Surely we should have a look at a fuller accounting, performed by, I dont know, an actual historian, before we toss out the whole Enlightenment. Reading Moldbug is like listening to somebody who informs you of his plan to take care of the termites by burning his mansion down and then starts romanticizing life in a log cabin despite never having lived in one.

But then Moldbug, unlike a lot of his followers, doesnt want to move into the log cabin, even if hed take it over his current digs. So whats the actual prescription?

Its this: Democratic governments will be replaced with sovereign joint-stock corporations, their shares to be owned perhaps but not necessarily by property holders or residents of the realm. The shareholders will elect an executive, who will have plenary authority to rule as he wishes, kill as he wishes, enslave as he wishes, etc. But he wont do such nasty things, because it would be simply incompetent. The corporation gets its income from property taxes; subjects of the realm may leave whenever they wish; and so genocide will be terrible for business. Should the executive prove to be incompetent, the shareholders may string him up at will and replace him with someone abler.

The logic here and there is a powerful, simple logic is to align incentives and allow for their efficient pursuit: The executive has a strong economic incentive for life to be pleasant, and he can immediately do whatever he must, unhindered by our ritual liberal-democratic procedures, to make it so. Freedom in the sense of political participation and popular sovereignty will no longer exist, but we are promised that because the realm is so well ruled, so secure, so all-around wonderful, you, the subject, can think, say, or write whatever you want. Because the state the sovereign corporation has no reason to care. Your freedom of thought, speech, and expression is no longer a political freedom. It is only a personal freedom.

Oh, and there will be world peace, since no executive would be so very incompetent as to wage a war of aggression. (It seems Moldbug has never heard of corporate raiders, who have often been extremely competent.)

In the abstract, this prescription has its appeal. And its kind of cute how Moldbug, again unlike a lot of his followers, actually likes the Enlightenment so much that he wants to sneak big chunks of it in through the back door: Well have total freedom of political speech even if we dont call it that; well have total freedom of movement (except for the unproductive members of society, who, if private charity fails to provide for them, will wind up permanently imprisoned in cells that contain an immersive virtual-reality interface which allows [them] to experience...rich, fulfilling li[ves] in a completely imaginary world); well select or recall the executive, if we are shareholders, by means of an election.

But the whole setup depends on the assumption that the kingly or queenly executive will make no serious mistakes, or that if she does in another endearing mark of his egalitarianism, Moldbug makes the executive a she shell choose to keep playing this particular game: departing office if shes recalled, letting the residents emigrate if theyre unhappy, permitting the press to trash her instead of smashing it. A computer scientist would think this way: You just set up the rules and your mechanism follows them.

Humans in the flesh are not like that. Theyre particularly not like that when they possess tremendous power and are threatened with the loss of it. There is a reason history affords not a single example of a regime that suppressed political freedom while allowing anything like the degree of personal freedom Moldbug cherishes.

This if I may digress into a micro civics lesson is why we democratic republicans prefer to separate powers and respect civil society while lodging final sovereignty with the people who are governed. Popular sovereignty keeps incentives ultimately aligned and satisfies the bedrock requirement of political justice. And its still up to all of us, collectively, whether we want to keep playing the game. But the distribution of operational and social power makes it comparatively easy to contain the occasional bad apple who doesnt. Is there a cost in efficiency? Absolutely. But efficiency, like technology,* is only an accelerant, neutral with respect to any desideratum. Its more than worth it to give up some efficiency if you care about freedom or even long-term survival, since rapid catastrophic failure can be impossible to recover from. (Another one of those ineliminable trade-offs.) Concentrating sovereign power in the hands of a single individual has been and forever will be a recipe for both tyranny and catastrophe not because there cannot be and have not been relatively enlightened rulers, but because in an absolutist system there is nothing to restrain the inevitable psychopath or idiot or (more common among CEOs) deluded charismatic megalomaniac who pops up among them.

Since Moldbug knows perfectly well that his recipe for Singapore could easily turn into a recipe for the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he presents a lame techno-utopian solution: the cryptographic chain of command. Ultimately, power over the realm truly rests with the shareholders hello again, approximation of popular sovereignty! because they use a secret-sharing or similar cryptographic algorithm to maintain control over its root keys. Authority is then delegated to the board (if any), the CEO and other officers, and thence down into the military or other security forces. At the leaves of the tree are computerized weapons, which will not fire without cryptographic authorization.

This solution is lame not because the technology couldnt work but because it would have to be applied by human beings who by definition wouldnt have to apply it. Since the shareholders cannot plausibly authorize every individual use of every individual weapon, the executive (in some writings called the Delegate) could do untold damage before the guns got turned off. Moldbug admits this without quite admitting it: If the Delegate turns on the proprietors [i.e., shareholders] they may have to wait a day to authorize the replacement, and another day or two before the new Delegate can organize the forces needed to have her predecessor captured and shot. That leaves plenty of time to massacre the proprietors, doesnt it? Theyre supposed to be anonymous, but its hard to imagine that a sovereign corporation with the surveillance powers Moldbug envisions it will track literally every move you make wouldnt know or be able to deduce where they are, since theyd have to be identified by some real-world criterion (property ownership, say) at the founding of the realm.

Maybe they live outside the realm, of course maybe they arent its subjects. Still, they have to impose their will by force. And what is to prevent me, when I am the Delegate, from secretly manufacturing weapons that lack cryptographic locks and fighting the forces that come to dethrone me? The manufacture will probably look suspicious if all the employees movements are being tracked, but whos going to do the suspecting? Remember, Im running the realm its surveillance service reports to me and is led by members of my cabal. We can game the thing out endlessly, but youll find that were always stuck with our trade-off: Either I have operational control and can become a super-efficient catastrophe, or operational control gets distributed in order to contain me but Im no longer super-efficient.

And maybe I dont even need to make new weapons. What stops me from modifying the existing ones so that they fire either by cryptographic authorization or by my sole command? The cryptography can be as strong as you like information-theoretically secure. We still have to connect it to the firing mechanism somehow: and so what, in principle, prevents my reconnecting that firing mechanism to something else? (Does super-duper highest-tech self-destruct mode kick in? Okay.) Sovereignty over this realm turns out to belong ultimately to technologists. A computer scientist would think this way.

Stick to computers, Curt. For political engineering, Ill take the Founders plus Lincoln plus a healthful dash of the Roosevelts. Although if you can figure out a way to bring back the Bach family along with Frederick the Great, maybe Ill reconsider where I want hierarchy is in art.

Jason Lee Steorts is the managing editor of National Review.

*The illusion that technology is necessarily good arises from the happy general truth that it is used more often for good than for ill.

Continued here:

Against Mencius Moldbug's 'Neoreaction' - National Review

It was just a movie.

Its a movie cliche -- a bunch of men in white-and-black striped pajamas, with chains around their ankles, breaking rocks in a quarry under armed guard. The media has taught us that prison labor is the natural state of the world -- a way to make the punishment for wrongdoing a little more unpleasant, and a way to make criminals sweat off whatever sinister restlessness drove them to crime.

But the reality is that prison labor is just a way that governments try to recoup some of the cost of incarceration, by farming out their prisoners as captive labor. That might help governments bottom line a little bit, but it creates devastating competition for low-wage American workers.

The U.S. locks up an extraordinary number of people. Its incarceration rate is the highest in the world and at least twice that of any other advanced economy, and significantly higher than authoritarian Russia. Of incarcerated Americans, about a million and a half are in prison. That number surged in the 1980s and hasnt fallen much from its peak in the mid-2000s. A 2016 report by the Sentencing Project shows the dramatic change:

That enormous prison population represents a vast pool of ultra-cheap labor. A recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative found that the average wage of a prison worker is 93 cents an hour, and the lowest reported wage was 16 cents.

Compare that to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. How can a free American worker compete with an inmate laborer making less than one-tenth that amount? Even if prisoners are less productive than free workers, the wage difference is overwhelming.

Nor are these prison workers breaking rocks, like in the old movies. In the modern day, the government contracts them out to private companies, offering inmates as a way to boost the bottom line. Over the years, prisoners have packaged coffee for Starbucks Corp. and wrapped software for Microsoft Corp. They manufacture furniture, schools supplies and food products. They make dental products, train animals, work in call centers and even pick cotton.

All of these activities put prisoners in direct competition with blue-collar American workers; the latter has essentially no chance. In recent years, there have been political uproars over guest workers, unauthorized immigrants and offshoring U.S. jobs to low-wage countries such as Bangladesh. But low-wage immigrants dont do much to lower native-born wages, and laborers in Bangladesh dont have the tools or the proximity to compete directly with most American workers.

If you want to ease the pressure on the beleaguered U.S. working class, paying prisoners more is the best bet. Mandating that prison labor receive the federal minimum wage would open up lots of job opportunities for low-wage workers on the outside.

It would also be the moral thing to do. Detractors often call the prison labor system slavery, and while there are differences between modern prison labor and the slavery system of the old South, the similarities are way too close for comfort. The U.S. has always valued free labor over compulsory work -- as historians have documented, this was one reason slavery aroused such ire in the antebellum North.

Prison labor therefore goes against traditional American values and humanitarian concerns alike. Writers who have gone to watch the prison labor system in action report being stunned by how widespread and accepted this un-American system has become, especially in states like Louisiana with high rates of incarceration.

Morality also demands that prisoners should receive more of the money that customers pay for their services. Currently, inmates receive only about a quarter of that money, including the portion that goes to victim reparation funds.

Reduced demand for prison labor due to higher wages, especially if prisoners are allowed to keep more of what they earn, would mean government finances will take a hit. Incarceration is expensive, costing about $30,000 a year for a federal inmate. But maybe raising the cost of throwing Americans in prison is a good thing.

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The incredibly high U.S. incarceration rate is a strong indication that the country is locking people away for crimes that dont really require it, such as drug use or petty theft. But recently, high costs are forcing states to reduce their prison populations. Presumably, that will limit incarceration to those who really need to be locked up. The end of mass incarceration will also help the economy and reduce inequality -- some estimates claim that the practice of imprisoning millions of Americans has increased the countrys poverty rate by 20 percent, even before taking into account the wage competition from cheap prison labor.

So paying prisoners the minimum wage shouldnt be seen as an act of charity. It will take pressure off of working-class American laborers, encourage governments to reduce mass incarceration, and move the country back toward valuing free labor.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story: Noah Smith at nsmith150@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: James Greiff at jgreiff@bloomberg.net

Originally posted here:

Paying Inmates Minimum Wages Helps the Working Class ... - Bloomberg