Imagine a presidential candidate in 1976 who stood for election and told Americans the truth: that his policies would make things worse for average Americans. If truthful, his speech would say something like this:
“We are going into a conservative era. We’re going to deregulate corporations and banks. Free trade, privatization, smaller government, tax breaks for the wealthy – we are going to let it rip.”
He would continue, “You are going to work longer hours. You’re going to have less job security. Health care will be harder to afford. You’ll find it harder to send your kids to college. Your pensions will be eliminated or endangered. Public schools will grow more crowded.”
And, finally, “I am asking you to work harder and make less because we are going to create an America that works for the very few. Wealthy Americans are going to clean up. So, do I have your vote?”
Those are exactly the policies that we pursued. If the poorest one-fifth of American households in 2000 had received the same share of the nation’s income that they received in 1977, each poor household would have taken home $3,300 more than it actually did. If average American households had received the same in 2000 as they did in 1977, each household, after taxes, would have taken home $3,500 more per household than it did.
And if the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans had closed the century taking home the same share they did in 1977, they would have made $226,000 LESS per household than they pocketed.
As economist Lester Thurow concludes, “No country without a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp shift in the distribution of earnings as America in the last generation.”
This growing inequality is the result of policies, pushed by the powerful to benefit themselves, and adopted by politicians that need their money to pay for their campaigns.
What policies have contributed to this? You can see it everyday in the choices the Bush administration and the Republican Congress make.
The poor sink because the minimum wage has lost value – nearly 20 percent over the last 25 years. Americans overwhelmingly support raising this floor under wages. Yet House leader Tom DeLay refuses even to allow the measure to come to a vote.
Workers suffer because the jobs that were unionized and offered good wages, health care and pensions are disappearing. America’s companies trample labor laws and keep workers from organizing. So, profit is up, productivity is up, CEO salaries are up, but wages are down.
Yet DeLay refuses to allow a vote on laws that would insure that workers have a free choice to organize and bargain collectively.
This nation will not remain strong if prosperity is not widely shared.
