Seventy-seven years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his historic “Four Freedoms” address to Congress, stating everyone has an essential human right to Freedom from Want. “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”
Humans, unlike squirrels, can’t take care of themselves. What we see today is alarming. According to a September 2017 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau survey, “One-third of American households have struggled to afford either food, shelter, or medical care.” Full-time jobs are hard to find, and wages are low.
Tax Wars
The promise of jobs for the working class as a result of the massive 2017 Tax Cut for corporations and the top one percent was false. This is not surprising. Companies hire people when the demand goes up and layoff people when the demand goes down. Customers, the people paying for goods and services, drive job creation.
Trade Wars
Free trade creates jobs for all. Last week, the China trade efforts failed to find a common ground. China and the United States have different goals. Why risk a trade war with the largest economy and a key military partner bordering North Korea?
The North America Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, is at risk. Trump prefers bilateral agreements “to get a better deal.” However, multinational agreements allow more transactions between members and are easier to sustain. As long as the total dollar amount of exports equals the total amount of imports, the trade balance is maintained.
Case in point: Ford makes sedans in Mexico at lower wages. Trump wants Ford to send “auto jobs” back to the U.S. or Canada. Relocating a manufacturing plant to Detroit or Flint, Michigan, would cause a major interruption to U.S. car manufacturers and suppliers. Ford just announced it would discontinue sedans and make SUVs and trucks, leaving Trump to deal with phantom jobs.
Border Wars
“We’re going to get the wall. We have no choice. We have absolutely no choice. And we’re going to get tremendous security in our country. And we may have to close up our country to get this straight, because we either have a country or we don’t. And you can’t allow people to pour into our country the way they’re doing.” Trump said.
This is crazy talk using false terrorism claims. Immigration data shows there is no security threat. Crimes against humanity by the US Border Patrol are under investigation: their policy intentionally pushes migrants into crossings where they are more likely to suffer and die from thirst, chasing them with armed helicopters.
National Geographic has gone from exploration to exploitation with Border Wars, a disgusting series showing “Brave soldiers stand off everyday with drug smugglers and human traffickers. These are the Border Wars.”
Think like a squirrel
To understand the jobs of the future, forget the economy and the glory of the past. Most of the new jobs are in the service sector. Tourism, for example, should be the main source of jobs for Arkansas, protecting our forests and rivers for the future. Last month, we reached 410 ppm carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, for the first time in 800,000 years. Forests are magical, timber and wood mills are deadly. Irma, Jose, and Maria are not the people at the border waiting requesting asylum. The threat is from severe weather events in 2018.
Scott Pruitt has to go, not for spending $1,000 on Kevlar underwear to safeguard his nuts, but from destroying the environmental protections and the NASA Earth science programs.
When problems and sadness overwhelm you, where do you find the courage to continue? Squirrels jump from tree to tree and save some nuts for the winter, taking one acorn at a time to a safe place.
In early 1941, with the U.S. almost a year away from entering World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt used his annual message to Congress to set out what he called the “Four Freedoms”—freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear. Two years later, at the height of the war, the Saturday Evening Post used four consecutive issues to publish images inspired by FDR’s speech, all done by America’s best-known illustrator, Norman Rockwell.
Rockwell’s versions are among his most revered and reproduced images. In New York, the four works will face each other in an open octagonal space. “Freedom of Speech” is based on a real town meeting in Arlington, Vt., where Rockwell lived during the 1940s. The painting shows a farmer, dressed in a humble jacket and open-necked shirt, dissenting from the opinions of those around him, including two men in ties. Rockwell regularly used real-life models from the area, and the jacket, worn by a mechanic representing the farmer, is part of the new exhibition. The totemic Thanksgiving dinner in “Freedom From Want” both “reflected and shaped American identity,” says Ms. Haboush Plunkett.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-new-york-rockwells-vision-of-fdrs-freedoms/
What does it mean to be an American?
It is a question many people are grappling with, especially in the wake of the 2016 election. And it is one of the reasons the New-York Historical Society’s coming exhibition, “Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms,” is so powerful.
“We planned this before Trump got elected, but it’s taken on a different resonance since,” said Margaret K. Hofer, the museum director.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/arts/new-york-historical-society-norman-rockwell-four-freedoms.html