JJ: The full employment amendment, the right to work, because all of the other amendments are not possible unless we are pursuing a full employment economy. With the tremendous economic growth on Wall Street, what is becoming increasingly clear is that that economic growth is not shared by all Americans. The economy is growing very well in downtown Chicago and in the northwest suburbs, but in the 2nd Congressional District not much has changed. I have 60 people in my district for every one job. Section 8 is on the rise. Unemployment is on the rise, and I am more and more convinced that the national aggregate numbers for unemployment don't include people who are trying to get full-time work or people who are presently working part-time jobs. So how do we guarantee every American a government, both federal and state, that is pursuing the policy of full employment at every level of our economic system? I argue that this is not doable without fundamental adjustment to the Constitution.
Why full employment? Because in the former Confederate states, from Virginia around to Texas, for the last 150 years there have been laws written to perpetuate and promulgate the system of injustice in the South. So-called right-to-work laws. And these right-to-work laws fundamentally are anti-Union, which is why the South is lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of middle-class development. I argue that those workers who have labored under 150 years of post-Civil War history over whether or not they should be paid equal pay for equal work, or whether or not they should be able to organize to protect their own economic interests in the form of a trade union, must be settled by the American people.
PB: You write that the government should become the employer not of last resort but of first resort. Won't that make the federal bureaucracy the most enormous thing on the planet?
JJ: It already is the most enormous thing on the planet. We have the most enormous military on the planet, we protect the single largest economic engine and driving force for the world economy with our military, we are the most prosperous nation in the history of the world, we are the most technologically developed in the history of the world. The only question is whether or not we want to achieve a unique American purpose to ensure that every single American has access to the American Dream, and what role a government of, for and by the people should play in trying to achieve that. I argue that that must be a constitutional issue and not one left to blind market forces, which by definition, at least from my perspective, are not so blind.
PB: Do you realistically think any of these amendments will be seriously considered in Congress?
