A few times every year, something is published or broadcast with regard to our economic plight that just makes me stop dead in my tracks. Today, Sunday, is one of those moments, in the Op-Ed Section of today's NY Times, from Barbara Ehrenreich: "
Too Poor to Make the News."
You want to know why I get ticked-off when I read all this "happy news" about the 'impending recovery in our economy,' when so many scores of millions in our society are living in a reality which is nothing short of a deep, desperate economic depression? (See: "Altered States: U.6 Jobless Rate Officially >16% Today.")
You want to know why I rant when I hear folks put forth the false meme that 'unemployment is a lagging indicator in an economic recovery?' (See: "Why "Jobless Recovery" Is An Oxymoron.") It's because nothing could be farther from the truth.
Barbara Ehrenreich tells us of our own
"disappeared." Do you remember them? These are the folks I see far too little being written about in this self-described Progressive community these days. Coverage of that demographic group--perhaps with the exception of healthcare--has, somehow, all but vanished from these webpages of late. I'm not going to sit here and speculate why that's the case, but I truly hope you'll take the time to read every word of Ms. Ehrenreich's piece from today's NY Times. Here's the link, once again: "
Too Poor to Make the News."
Take a visit into the daily hell that's arisen over the last few months among the lives of America's blue collar unemployed, where joblessness is increasing three times faster than it is for white collar workers.
Too Poor to Make the News
Op-Ed Contributor
By BARBARA EHRENREICH
New York Times Op-Ed Page
Published Online: June 13, 2009 In Print: June 14, 2009
"...the outlook is not so cozy when we look at the effects of the recession on a group generally omitted from all the vivid narratives of downward mobility -- the already poor, the estimated 20 percent to 30 percent of the population who struggle to get by in the best of times. This demographic, the working poor, have already been living in an economic depression of their own. From their point of view "the economy," as a shared condition, is a fiction."
--SNIP--
...The already poor...the undocumented immigrants, the sweatshop workers, the janitors, maids and security guards...had all but "disappeared" from both the news media and public policy discussions.
Disappearing with them is what may be the most distinctive and compelling story of this recession...
--SNIP--
...The deprivations of the formerly affluent Nouveau Poor are real enough, but the situation of the already poor suggests that they do not necessarily presage a greener, more harmonious future with a flatter distribution of wealth. There are no data yet on the effects of the recession on measures of inequality, but historically the effect of downturns is to increase, not decrease, class polarization.
--SNIP--
Maybe "the economy," as depicted on CNBC, will revive again, restoring the kinds of jobs that sustained the working poor, however inadequately, before the recession. Chances are, though, that they still won't pay enough to live on, at least not at any level of safety and dignity. In fact, hourly wage growth, which had been running at about 4 percent a year, has undergone what the Economic Policy Institute calls a "dramatic collapse" in the last six months alone. In good times and grim ones, the misery at the bottom just keeps piling up, like a bad debt that will eventually come due.
Perhaps the most important line of the entire piece: "Comfortable people have long imagined that American poverty is far more luxurious than the third world variety, but the difference is rapidly narrowing."
I sincerely hope you'll remember this Ehrenreich column the next time someone tries to put forth their pretzel logic that unemployment is a secondary or tertiary issue with regard to our current economic condition.
For Progressives everywhere, IMHO, this story should be the wake-up call.
Have a good Sunday...