The
War On Working
Americans - Part II
By Stephen Lendman
29 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
Read
Part I
This
article was written to assess the state of working America in the run-up
to Labor Day, 2007. Organized labor today is severely weakened following
decades of government and business duplicity to crush it. Part I reviewed
the labor movement's rise in the 19th century and subsequent decline
post-WW II and especially in the last three decades. Hope arose for
some change in the Democrat-led 100th Congress. A weak effort emerged,
but Senate Republicans killed it.
Organized labor is struggling
to remain relevant and claw its way back. The enormous obstacles it
faces are reviewed below as well as the condition of working Americans
today in a globalized world affecting their lives and welfare heading
"south" in the "land of opportunity" offering pathetically
little.
The Loss of High-Paying
Jobs from Outsourcing Under Globalized Market-Based Rules
World trade isn't new, and
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was its mid-20th century
version after 23 founding nations signed it on October 30, 1947 in Geneva.
Earlier in 1946, they drafted the International Trade Organization (ILO)
that followed the creation of the IMF and International Bank for Reconstruction
(now the World Bank) at Bretton Woods in 1944. Fifty-three nations then
signed the GATT in Havana in March, 1948 as the founding international
instrument governing world trade.
Subsequent rounds of negotiations
followed through number eight launched in Punta del Este, Uruguay (the
Uruguay Round) in 1986. It was signed in Marrakesh, Morocco in April,
1994 by most of the 123 participating countries as the updated version
of the original 1947 GATT. It was then succeeded by the WTO January
1, 1995, one year to the day after NAFTA took effect as another worker
rights legislative weapon of mass job destruction. DR-CAFTA followed
next for the Central American countries signing on to it after El Salvador
did first in March, 2006.
The WTO is well-seasoned
with a corporate-friendly alphabet soup of Uruguay-negotiated agreements
like the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property
Rights (TRIPS), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), Agreement
on Agriculture (AoA), Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT),
and others all designed for one purpose. It's to override member states'
national sovereignty so they're now governed under a uniform set of
global market trading rules favoring capital.
They're designed for the
Global North, giant corporations and the rich at the expense of Global
South developing nations, ordinary people everywhere, concern for environmental
standards as well as sanity and public safety. Along with the IMF, World
Bank, and other international lending agencies, this entire structure
is big capital's neoliberal scheme to commoditize everything, including
people and life itself in the human genome, to strip-mine the planet
for profit.
Globalized trade has a long
history, but the notion of a globalized marketplace came into its own
in the 1980s. It was hailed as a western, mainly US, prescription for
economic growth and prosperity lifting all boats. In fact, only yachts
benefitted by design so the privileged could gain at the expense of
all others preyed on.
The UN's International Labour
Organization's (ILO) commission on the social dimensions of globalization
is comprised of representatives from labor, government and business.
In 2004, it issued a damning appraisal of world trade rules harm and
the subsequent distress caused by unfair practices. It ranges from how
TRIPS prevents affordable generic life-saving drugs being sold in developing
countries to the shifting tax burden from business and the rich to workers,
and much more.
In the US and West, the damage
comes from exporting jobs and offshoring manufacturing and service operations
to low-wage countries. It began in the late 1950s when modest numbers
of them went to Canada to take advantage of the cost savings there.
The pace then quickened in the 1960s and 1970s with the exodus of production
jobs in autos, shoes, clothing, cheap electronics, and toys as well
as routine service work like credit card receipt processing, airline
reservations and basic software code writing.
What started as simple assembly
and service work early on, then took off in the 1980s. It spread up
and down the value chain and now embraces almost any type good or service
not needing a home-based location such as retail clerks, plumbers, and
carpenters; top-secret defense research, design and selected types of
manufacturing; and certain types of specialized activities companies
so far have kept at home. What's moving abroad, however, is big business
getting bigger with Gartner Research estimating outsourcing generated
$298.5 billion in 2003 global revenues.
The toll adds up to a global
race to the bottom in a country where services now account for 84% of
the economy. The once bedrock manufacturing portion is just 10% and
falling as more good jobs in it are lost in an unending drain. Since
the start of 2000 alone, about one in six factory jobs, over three million
in total, have been affected. The sector is less than a third of its
size 40 years ago and one-fourth the peak it hit during WW II.
It's been devastating for
the nation's 130 million working people. No longer are unions strong
and workers well-paid with assured good benefits like full health insurance
coverage and pensions. Today, all types of financial services comprise
the largest economic sector. Much of it is in trillions of dollars of
high stakes speculation annually producing wads of cash for elite insiders
(when things go as planned) and nothing for the welfare of most others
and the good of the country.
Worst of all is the poor
and declining quality of most service sector jobs measured by wages,
benefits, job security and overall working conditions. It's because
fewer good ones exist, unions are weak, and workers are at the mercy
of employers indifferent to their plight. People are forced to work
longer and harder for less just to stay even. Jobs in this sector are
mostly concentrated in unskilled or low-skill areas of retail, health
care and temporary services of all kinds. They pay lots less than full-time
jobs, and have few or no benefits and little prospect for future improvement.
This all happened by design to crush worker rights and commoditize them
like all other production inputs.
The Department of Labor now
projects job categories with the greatest future expected growth are
cashiers; waiters and waitresses; other restaurant-related workers;
janitors and cleaning personnel; retail clerks; and child care workers
- all low-skill areas. Harvard degrees aren't required. Neither are
high school ones.
Most in-demand higher-skilled
jobs are projected to be for nurses, post-secondary teachers and sales
representatives. There are still plenty of high-tech jobs in areas like
network systems and data analysis and software engineering applications
and systems. But watch out. They're being lost as well to low-wage countries
in an unending domestic job drain affecting all types of work able to
be done anywhere. It shows why domestic job growth is stagnant (despite
the hype it isn't), eligible workers are dropping out of the work force,
and the decline is sure to continue unless legislation stops it. None
is in sight or imagined.
The loss of good well-paying
jobs means fewer high-end and a range of low-skilled ones are all that
remain for vast numbers of young people whose future looks bleak. Two
research studies among others highlight the problem. One by University
of California staffers in 2004 estimated up to 14 million American jobs
are at risk to outsourcing, and another by Gartner Research predicts
as many as 30% of high-tech jobs may be lost to low-wage countries by
2015. In addition, writing in the March/April, 2006 issue of Foreign
Affairs on what he calls a "third Industrial Revolution,"
former Federal Reserve vice-chairman Alan Blinder estimated 28 - 42
million American service sector jobs are vulnerable and could be lost
to foreign labor.
In low-wage countries, they're
done at far less cost to US employers in their company-owned or subcontracted
out operations. Blinder added starkly "We have so far barely seen
the tip of the offshoring iceberg, the eventual dimensions of which
may be staggering." Veteran financial analyst and writer Bob Chapman
calls this the "rape of our economy" with enormous, wrenching
and destructive consequences to the lives of millions of working people
pursuing an illusory American dream.
It affects the skilled and
unskilled alike for all types of jobs at risk. Chapman cites India as
an example noting once only low-skill and routine programming jobs went
there. Now, he says, it's "software aeronautical engineers, banking,
insurance, investment banking and drug research" along with many
other high-end jobs where companies can hire skilled professionals at
a fifth the cost of US and European ones. So why wouldn't they, and
more are in a growing trend.
All types of financial jobs
at all levels are also being eliminated with financial institutions
moving sizeable chunks of investment banking, research, trading operations,
and other professional jobs abroad for big cost savings. Deloitte Touche
estimates the industry will outsource 20% of its cost base by 2010 with
more to come in a continuing job drain for big cost savings abroad.
The ones lost will be in financial services and most other sectors in
a trend looking like it won't end until the US is as low a wage nation
as those now taking our jobs.
An Unprecedented
Fall in Workers' Standard of Living
Over the past 30 years, most
people have seen an unprecedented fall in their standard of living.
Adjusted for inflation, the average American worker now earns less than
in the mid-1970s with the minimum wage unchanged at $5.15 an hour since
1997 until the 110th Congress raised it in pathetically small steps
to a wholly inadequate top level. Beginning July 24, it rose to $5.85,
will go to $6.55 July 24, 2008 and to $7.25 July 24, 2009. Until the
increase, minimum worker pay was at the lowest point relative to average
wages since 1949. It got many states, comprising over half the population,
to raise their own, but it's not enough.
A recent study released by
the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) shows the dire state
of things. It reported about one in three jobs in the country, about
47 million of them, pay low wages (defined as two-thirds the median
wage or $11.11 per hour or less) with few or no benefits like health
insurance, pensions or retirement accounts. It's barely enough for a
family of two adults and two children to exceed the official understated
poverty level of $20,444 in 2006 (or $9.83 an hour), and by this definition
one in four workers (35 million) only earned poverty-level wages. But
millions of others fall below it because official statistics way understate
the problem, and workers earning around $11.11 an hour in cities like
New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other large ones can't get by if
they have to support a family on it.
These growing millions now
comprise a permanent underclass in a nation unwilling to admit what
census data and private research now show. America is a rigid class
society by design with extreme wealth at the top, a declining (maybe
dying) middle class, and a growing underclass of low-paid workers and
poor, many desperately so.
Following the inequalities
of the 1920s, the nation experienced what economic historians Claudia
Goldin and Robert Margo called "the Great Compression." Income
gaps narrowed from the positive effects of New Deal and Great Society
programs, strong unions, and an equitable tax system for individuals
and corporations. From then to now, call it "the Great Expansion"
of inequality with the gap between rich and most others the greatest
it's been since the Gilded Age of the "robber barons" and
getting worse.
Business Week magazine highlighted
the trend in December, 2003 and accompanying research. It showed a decline
in social mobility over the past few decades. The article was called
"Waking Up from the American Dream - Meritocracy and Equal Opportunity
Are Fading Fast." It noted the "Wal-Martization" of the
country corporate America embraces to control labor costs by outsourcing
jobs, de-unionizing, hiring temps and part-timers, and dismantling internal
career ladders to boost profits at the expense of people. What's left
is a proliferation of dead-end, low-wage jobs with public policy skewed
to keep it that way. It needs stressing again. This didn't happen by
chance. It was by design to destroy organized labor, and so far it's
working.
In its most recent State
of Working America - 2006/2007, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI)
reports the official poverty level in 2004 stood at 12.7% or 37 million
people, including 13 million children. It also showed for the first
time ever, poverty in the country grew in the first three years of an
economic recovery. In its study, EPI cited factors today they call "historically
unique:"
-- increased globalized trade;
-- low union membership;
-- more low-skilled and high-skilled
immigration; and
-- fewer favorable social
norms guiding employer behavior to provide "adequate safety nets,
pensions, and health care arrangements."
EPI noted the biggest challenge
in today's "new economy" isn't (macro) growth but how benefits
get distributed with such a high proportion skewed upward.
Left out entirely are the
16 million 2005 census figures show are on the very bottom living in
"extreme" poverty that's defined as a family of four with
an annual income of $9903 or less. Even more disturbing is how fast
the poverty rate is increasing. The numbers of those worst off grew
by 26% from 2000 - 2005 or 56% faster than for the total poverty population.
Further, it happened mostly in years of economic expansion after the
2001 recession ended late that year. Notable also is the disturbing
decline in higher-paying jobs leaving what's left for unskilled or low-skill
workers. They pay pitiful wages and few, if any, benefits with crumbling
social safety net protection left to pick up the slack.
The Oakland Institute policy
think tank promotes social and economic justice. It recently reported
its disturbing assessment of things saying 10% of the US population
(around 30 million) "experiences hunger or is at risk of going
hungry." A December, 2006 Helsinki-based World Institute for Development
Economics Research of the UN University study also reported disturbing
findings. They showed the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets
in 2000, and the richest 10% held 85% of them.
EPI reported the top 1% controls
more than one-third of America's wealth, the bottom 80% has 15.3%, and
the top 20% holds 84.7% of it. In contrast, the poorest 20% are in debt
and owe more than they own. Globalization, automation, outsourcing,
the shift from manufacturing to services, weak unions, deregulation,
and other harmful economic factors all add to the problem.
Other data show an astonishing
generational shift of well over $1 trillion of national wealth annually
from 90 million US working class households to for-profit corporations
and the richest 1% of the population. It created what economist Paul
Krugman calls an unprecedented wealth disparity getting worse that shames
the nation and is destroying the bedrock middle class without which
democracy can't survive.
A similar conclusion also
came from an analysis of income tax data by Professor Emmanuel Saez
of the University of California-Berkeley and Professor Thomas Piketty
of the Paris School of Economics. Both men are noted for their work
on income inequality. Their research found the top 1% of Americans in
2005 (about 3 million people) got their largest share of national income
since 1928 - 21.8%, up from 19.8% a year ago or a 10% gain. Further,
the top 10% received 48.5% of all reported income in 2005, also the
highest level since 1928, up 2% from 2004, and one-third since the late
1970s.
The top one-tenth of 1% (about
300,000 people) did best of all, to no surprise. It got as much income
in total as the bottom 150 million Americans combined. In addition,
while total reported income rose almost 9% in 2005, average incomes
for the bottom 90% of the population dropped .6% from the previous year.
Further, the Bush administration
tax cuts for the wealthy greatly widened the income gap between rich
and poor that was the whole idea behind them with a healthy piece of
the benefits going to big corporations. In the 1950s, they contributed
an average of 28% to federal revenues. That dropped to 21% in the 1960s
and about 10% and falling since the 1980s. It's happening with the corporate
tax rate at 35%, but few of the giants pay it. According to the Government
Accountability Office (GAO), 94% of major corporations now pay less
than 5% of their income in taxes, and corporate tax payments overall
are at their lowest level in 60 years. In addition, many large companies
pay no tax, and some end up with sizable rebates on top of huge corporate
welfare subsidies under a system of socialism for big corporations and
the rich and "free market" capitalism for the rest of us.
Saez and Piketty also reported
their findings may be understated because the wealthy are more likely
to file late tax returns so those who did weren't included in the study.
Also, the IRS acknowledges it can account for only about 70% of business
and investment income, most, of course, going to high-income earners.
What's missing is $300 - $400 billion a year that adds up to trillions
of untaxed dollars for the rich with the rest of us having to make up
for it.
Recent US Commerce Department
data is also disturbing. It shows the share of national income going
to wages and salaries the lowest on record with their data going back
to 1929. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds
wage and salary growth in the current recovery growing at half the average
rate for post-recessionary periods since the end of WW II while corporate
profits in the current period grew over 50% more than the post-WW II
average. It's the first time on record, corporate profits got a larger
share of income growth in a recovery than wages and salaries - 46% to
34%.
The Growth and Shredding
of Social Services in America
The golden age of social
service benefits and worker protections emerged during The Great Depression,
but they didn't begin then. An obligation was felt to help the needy
as early as colonial times but without an organized effort to do it.
Back then, local towns and villages did it through the poor relief system
and almshouses. That began changing as the nation became less agrarian
and more industrial when a number of states added services like cash
allowances, mothers' pensions and by the mid-1920s old age assistance
for the blind. Also, then and earlier, the Federal government and States
began recognizing the need for public welfare social insurance financed
through contributions guaranteeing protection for all rather than public
assistance for the needy alone.
The first instance of it
began in 1908 with a Federal workers' compensation law covering some
government workers. States then added their own, and by 1929 all of
them had it except four holdouts. Other efforts followed including State
and local retirement plans and Federal benefits and services for veterans.
Even the private sector added their own with token amounts of health
care, pensions, life insurance and sick pay.
The Great Depression hard
times of the 1930s changed everything creating a golden age for worker
rights and benefits mentioned above. It followed the roaring 1920s era
of anything goes corporate greed and loose regulation. It ushered in
the Roosevelt administration's New Deal to aid the needy and reform
the economy when 25% of the working public had no job in 1933. Those
in power feared the worst knowing they had to act to save capitalism
at a time of mass hostility to it they feared might erupt in a Russian-style
1917 revolution.
They did it then like never
before or since starting by passing the National Industrial Recovery
Act in 1933. It was based on a "bubble up" theory of recovery
to raise wages and thereby stimulate consumer purchasing power hoping
it would lead to increased production and new investment. Despite good
intentions, things go as planned. The Depression dragged on until the
1939 early WW II build-up began ending it. It packed greater economic
punch than in earlier public sector spending. Those efforts were less
for reform and more for what John Maynard Keynes recommended - upgrading
infrastructure to revive durable goods production that, in turn, would
revive the economy.
Still New Deal policies were
remarkable in how mirror opposite they were to what's been enacted since
1980 and especially in the gilded age of George Bush. There were stimulative
loans and grants to the States and landmark measures like the FDIC insuring
bank deposits, the SEC regulating financial markets, and the NLRB through
the Wagner Act explained above. Most important was a broad array of
social programs. They included Federal emergency relief, public works
and others under an alphabet soup of initiatives. They were way inadequate,
but, nonetheless, tried to jump-start a moribund economy by providing
substantial work and relief for the unemployed and needy.
The high water mark came
in 1935 with the passage of the landmark Social Security Act. To this
day, it's still the single most important piece of social legislation
in our history. More than any other government program, it's the one
most responsible for keeping vast numbers of elderly people out of poverty
as well as providing other essential services and benefits for the needy
and disabled. Other important social legislation came out as well including
Unemployment Insurance with the Federal government partnered with States;
the Railroad Retirement System; Public Housing; and Social Security
Old-Age and Survivors Insurance.
Post-WW II there
was lots more:
-- the National School Lunch
Program (established in 1946);
-- Aid to the Permanently
and Totally Disabled (APTD - in 1950) that later became Supplemental
Security Income (SSI) in 1972;
-- Social Security Disability
Insurance (SSDI);
-- Medical Assistance for
the Aged (preceding Medicare);
-- Aid to Families with Dependent
Children (AFDC - 1960);
--the Food Stamp Program
(1964);
-- the School Breakfast Program
(1966);
-- the WIC food assistance
program (1972);
-- Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC - 1975);
-- Low Income Home Energy
Assistance; and
-- Temporary Assistance for
Needy Families (TANF - 1997 successor to AFDC that was a huge step backwards
explained below), among others.
Lyndon Johnson's Great Society
earlier saw other landmark social legislation with the establishment
of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. It guaranteed the elderly and indigent
health care coverage at affordable, minimal or no cost when they needed
it most.
That was the good news, but
it changed with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. Mark Weisbrot
from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) called his administration's
rollback of social services his "project of building a bridge to
the 19th century in areas of social policy." It was that and more,
but despite it, the dominant media shamelessly exalted him in life (see
Mark Hertsgaard 1989 book "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan
Presidency") and practically deified him following his death on
June 4, 2004. Left out of the eulogies was the true scorched earth legacy
he left behind. His "war on international terrorism" was a
devastating precursor to its updated version under the current administration.
This article, however, only addresses his domestic damage on people
least able to handle it.
The Reagan administration
instituted a generational decline of worker rights and vital social
programs. It allowed them to erode through higher payroll taxes, raising
the retirement age, increasing Medicare premiums, and cutting Medicaid
benefits for the poor. His years were characterized by large increases
in military spending, big tax cuts for the rich and big business while
slashing social benefits, union worker rights and running up huge deficits.
Discretionary domestic spending
for most social programs, other than Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,
was cut by one-third from 1981 - 1988. Programs for low income earners
were hard hit with a 54% cut. Subsidized housing lost over 80%, housing
assistance for the elderly 47%, and training and employment services
over 68%. Reagan also reduced health and safety protections and weakened
federal statutes guaranteeing workers the right to organize and bargain
collectively.
Beneath his avuncular persona,
Reagan was callous and indifferent to notions of equal justice, civil
liberties and human need. He showed it in his support for the Christian
Right's hate campaign against gays and lesbians in its early days of
ascendency by refusing to address the AIDS problem he allowed to become
a global epidemic.
HIV/AIDS first surfaced in
the US among gay men in New York and California in 1981, Reagan's first
year in office. It was called a "gay disease", and still is
largely today by those who demean it. Most notably, extremist Christian
Right leaders call it God's revenge against gay people they say are
diseased sinners. When the Centers for Disease Control first reported
the outbreak they, too, stigmatized the gay community as disease-carriers
calling it GRID - gay-related immune deficiency.
Ronald Reagan went along
with this notion refusing even to mention AIDS or do anything to address
the problem in the first seven years in office. It caused enormous setbacks
for HIV/AIDS research and appalling discrimination against the infected
and gay community overall. In addition, there were no government-directed
efforts at prevention or education. It thereby allowed a health problem
that might have been contained to become an epidemic killing a half
million people in the US alone and infecting an estimated one million
others now living with the disease.
Worldwide the numbers are
catastrophic with an estimated 25 million deaths and another 34 - 47
million people currently infected. In addition, millions more are added
to the numbers each year who might have been helped if the Reagan administration
had led a worldwide effort to contain what's now an out-of-control plague
in parts of the world like sub-Saharan Africa. None of this was mentioned
in Reagan's eulogy that should have been a denunciation for this and
his other crimes against humanity George Bush is now doing his best
to match or exceed.
The GHW Bush years followed
the "Reagan Revolution." They were pathetically "kinder
and gentler" domestically and made worse by a "new world order"
imperial agenda harming working people everywhere that's standard practice
now under all Presidents. It was the same under Bill Clinton who called
himself a Democrat but never governed like one. His tenure included
NAFTA and WTO responsible for mass and growing poverty, human misery
and ecological destruction under one-way globalized trade rules providing
cover for predatory capitalism.
So-called "welfare reform"
in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act
of 1996 (PRWORA) also was passed. Before it did, the needy got welfare
payments through Aid to Families with Dependent Children or AFDC help.
That changed in 1996 with time limits set so no one would be helped
for more than five years under the new program called Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families or TANF. Under it, the Federal government allots
fixed block grants to the States they then administer at their discretion
meaning the needy now get cheated by an uncaring state.
TANF also requires most recipients
to participate in some kind of work or training to qualify for help.
It doesn't matter that much of it goes to single mothers with young
children needing them at home to provide care unavailable if the law
prevents it. There's also no relief during recessions when jobs are
lost and unskilled workers are least able to find one.
Clinton's main social initiative
was his ill-conceived health care "reform." It was a complex
mess based on the notion of "managed competition" and marketplace
medicine instead of what's really needed in the form of a "single-payer"
national health insurance program modeled on the kind in Western Europe,
Canada or that all members of Congress and the administration get. They
cover everyone, irrespective of ability to pay, and for US legislators
and the executive it's gold-plated for life.
The Clinton plan (dubbed
"Hillarycare") offered the public less choice for more affordability
but wanted big insurers and HMOs to run it guaranteeing an illusion
of full coverage the way it is now. Profits always trump need with insurers
targeting young and healthy prospects while avoiding those posing the
greatest risks.
The pace of social spending
cuts accelerated dramatically under George Bush who'd eliminate them
all given the choice, and he's working on it. He's against all of them
to fund more tax cuts for the rich and provide multi-billions for his
permanent state of war plus every imaginable weapon system the Pentagon
and defense contractors want to wage them.
Bush's assault on organized
labor was covered above, but he has lots more targets as well. Education
is one of them in his appalling No Child Left Behind Act. It focuses
on testing, not children. It's a boon to corporations supplying the
materials but not to teachers who hate them. It forces them to teach
"to the test" instead of educating students in course material
that's the only way to run a classroom. Otherwise, kids don't learn,
but that's part of the scheme as what kind of future do all but the
well-off have to look forward to.
The Bush education agenda
also promotes school vouchers disguising a broader goal to privatize
public education and aid the white supremacist parochial part of it.
Christian Right zealots support these schools because of their brand
of hard right extremism dangerous to everyone outside the faithful.
In most areas where vouchers are used, 80% of them are for these type
schools. They renounce proved science like evolution and teach creationism
instead, repackaged as "intelligent design."
They also preach an extremist
Christian doctrine waging war on truth and democratic principles of
a free and open society. They replace it with faith-based pseudoscience
on everything from creation to HIV/AIDS to pregnancy prevention to global
warming to militarism, and all the while denounce non-believers as heretics.
These schools also threaten the survival of public education. They divert
funding from them and violate the constitutional separation of church
and state which is why the Bush administration supports them.
His administration also opposes
college aid at a time tuitions and fees are more unaffordable than ever
and rising much faster than inflation. An undergraduate year at Harvard
now costs over $50,000 with all expenses included, but even lower-tuition
state schools aren't affordable for many with the University of Illinois
typical of most others. It's much cheaper than Harvard but still costs
about $26,000 a year "base rate" that's unaffordable for low-income
families without considerable financial aid. George Bush's solution
- cut or freeze maximum allowable Pell Grants so even holding them steady
means amounts offered don't keep up with rising costs and needy students
lose out.
Bush's prescription for health
care is no better at a time 47 million have no coverage, millions more
are underinsured, and 80 million in the country have no coverage at
some time during the year meaning they need to be judicious about when
they're sick. Administration solutions are pathetic at best showing
no intent to tackle a problem this huge. Suggested tax breaks are so
inadequate, families with annual incomes under $10,000 would only save
$23 in 2007. Those with higher incomes fare little better with the Bush
plan only covering 9 million uninsured leaving 38 million others (and
rising) with no help.
Then there's Bush's 2003
Kafkaesque Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization
Act (MMA) scamming seniors. It took strong-arming threats and bribes
in an all-night congressional session to get it passed. Its controversial
Part D costs tens of billions annually, does little for most Medicare
recipients, but provides huge benefits for "Big Pharma." It's
able to charge top dollar because the administration won't negotiate
lower prices the way the Veteran's Administration (VA) does getting
big savings on all drugs it buys so veterans today only pay $8 a prescription.
Two decades ago, they paid nothing.
More social wreckage gets
into each new FY budget with billions of new cuts heaped on past ones.
It's to free up more funds for the military, the rich, and corporate
allies with the White House now audaciously proposing a further cut
in corporate tax rates. It's part of a near-three decade agenda furthering
the interests of the privileged at the expense of all others. In America
today, social welfare and the greater good are nonstarters.
Earlier damage included -
-- killing OSHA workplace
ergonomic rules more than 10 years in the making;
-- revoking grants to study
workplace safety and health;
-- cutting funding for job
training; and
-- more cuts for enforcement
positions at OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration that
was a key reason for the early 2006 Sago and Alma mine deaths in West
Virginia, the latest tragedy in Utah (not earthquake caused), and the
death of 60 miners and counting since January, 2006.
-- Bush also proposed paying
welfare recipients below-minimum wages;
-- denying Homeland Security
employees protection for being a whisleblower;
-- blocking release of funds
to monitor Ground Zero;
-- ignoring New York rescue
workers' health;
-- cutting health care benefits
for veterans and billions more cuts for Medicare and Medicaid;
-- raising interest rates
on student college loans;
-- cutting the number of
WIC-eligible participants;
-- reducing the number of
adults eligible for food stamps and children qualifying for school meals;
-- cutting the Commodity
Supplemental Food Program, child care, Head Start, affordable housing
units for the elderly, home energy assistance (LIHEAP), Employment/Training
Services, and education for the disadvantaged; and
-- stiffening work requirements
for two million adults (mostly single mothers) on welfare.
His administration is also
at fault for the Walter Reed Hospital scandal because medical facilities
for military personnel and veterans across the country are understaffed,
underfunded and allowed to deteriorate under federal or private contractor
management. The result is inadequate or sub-standard care for the severest
of problems, and the worst is yet to come with tens of billions of new
planned cuts through FY 2011. Only Bush's plummeting approval rating
may slow him down. But it doesn't stop his war machine from getting
all the funds it wants and lots more for the asking in supplemental
add-ons.
Looking Ahead - Tough
Choices with No Easy Answers
The state of working America
today is bleak with few signs of improving in a globalized world of
corporate omnipotence and an indifferent to hostile government. It backs
the rights of the privileged while scorning the social welfare needs
of all others. Somehow, some way this must change, but wishing only
works if backed by effective action. A look back suggests how.
Past labor successes were
noted above. What worked before can again, and there's nothing complicated
about it. Above all, new leaders are needed because too many today are
uninspiring at best. They must be committed and dedicated to the rights
and needs of ordinary working people and be willing to go to the wall
for them. Effective mass organizing is needed to build unity and strength
of numbers, educate workers on what they lost, and lead the fight to
win them back. It means taking to the streets, storming the halls of
Congress, going on strikes, holding boycotts, doing battle when necessary
that in the past meant paying for it in blood and lives.
It worked when it won an
eight hour day, a living wage keeping pace with inflation, essential
benefits like health care coverage and pensions, and a more level playing
field guaranteeing labor the right to bargain collectively on equal
terms with management. Those gains weren't handed over because change
never comes from the top down. They were fought for and won with lots
of blood and sweat expended to get them. Why not again?
It's called democracy, equity
and justice and one thing about them is clear. Achieving and keeping
them requires a strong middle class of ordinary working people that,
in turn, needs a vibrant labor movement as a foundation and springboard
for progressive grassroots social change. Organized labor is in tatters
today at barely over 7% of private sector workers (a 100 year low).
It's on life support, needs a survival strategy, and is heading for
the dustbin of history only major change can avoid. The way is through
organized people out-muscling organized money. It happened before and
can again.
This is the great class struggle
of our time against long odds for success. The stakes though are huge,
and our future as a democratic society depends on the outcome as former
US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis explained in 1941 when he said
"We can (either) have a democratic society or we can have great
concentrated wealth in the hands of the few. We cannot have both."
The concentration is greater than ever at a time American workers are
in their weakest position in decades.
Bowed but not broken, they're
in a war for survival with the rest of us, and their sovereign worker
rights and ours in a free society are at stake. It's no time for timidity.
It's a time for unity and pressing ahead. It happened once. Why not
again, and the time to go for it is now with the rest of us pitching
in to help for our own preservation and survival.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site
at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Steve Lendman News and Information
Hour on The MicroEffect.com Saturdays at noon US central time.
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