So over this Labor Day weekend me and my mom had some pretty tough discussion about the future I face, and the end of the USA that she grew up in. As a recent diary stated, for folks my age, there are few if any opportunities to get what we've always called "grown up" jobs. I'm in my early thirties, college educated, laid off, and facing the reality that I may never have a job that pays as well as my previous positions. Facing the final stages of what the IMF calls "economic restructuring", ie- stratification into the haves and have nots, with little in between is almost completed, the neo-liberal experiment is reaching its conclusion, and my mother tells me that she'd "rather eat cat food, in my old age, than think that you're gonna face this for your whole life."
More over the jump.
My dad grew up in post-Depression Louisiana, his mother was deaf, and his father was in and out of mental institutions for most of his adult life. Things were tough, to put it lightly. My father began working in the fields, around the age of ten, so that he could afford suitable clothes to attend school, as the state aid and the small monies my grandmother was able to earn as a seamstress didn't actually cover the costs for a woman and three children. He always taught me to save and that at the end of the day, debt is slavery, pure and simple. You owe them, they own you. As such the only credit card debt I've ever had was a couple of hundred dollars that the mortgage company told me i needed to carry, so that I'd have enough credit, to qualify for a loan. I paid all of my college loans off, by the time i turned 28, and I pay extra toward my mortgage principal, every month.
My education and fear(and it is) of indebtedness put me on track to reaching the middle class. While many of my age cohort were either stuck in low paying service sector jobs, or were living far beyond their means, even with salaried professions, I quietly built a modest, but financially secure life. All the while, I have lived in fear that I would be caught in the financial hurricane of what was an extremely obvious coming debt crisis. You didn't see it coming? Seriously? Many years ago, the median households monthly financial obligations began outpacing monthly income. This major default was avoided by the "debt consolidation" second motgages that were all the rage in the early 2000's. Sure you got your monthly payments under control, but most people didn't cut up their credit cards, because you've gotta "keep up with the Joneses", and that means new cars, big screen HDTV, etc, etc. Quickly credit card debt started piling up again, and whatever reprieve was granted by the mortgage was gone. The reports were everywhere, but since they were the outliers, in the neo-liberal economy, they were ignored as "doomsday predictions". The jokes on us, cuz "doomsday" arrived, pretty much as predicted, in spite on the conventional wisdom, which was very conventional, but hardly wise.
(I would like to take a quick detour and tell all of the real estate appraisers who agreed to ridiculously inflated prices for the debt consolidation loans(which precipitated much of the explosive home prices) to go fuck yourselves. I know you were under pressure by your employers, but this wholesale ethical collapse is the retail version of the fraud at the credit ratings agencies.)
The truth is many labor and leftist economists have been yelling about the current debt collapse for many years. Unfortunately, the average American bought into the neo-liberal view of economics, a long time ago. Unfortunately, folks under the age of 40 are gonna be paying the price for this, our whole lives. People of my age cohort are supposed to be entering our prime earnings period of our lives. You know, the part that lets you pay off your car, house, put the kids through school, and save for retirement. Well, as wages are declining, our whole generation is facing the reality that we're never gonna have that. People with master's degrees, who used to be salaried professionals, are competing for jobs waiting tables, and since wages and employment have collapsed, even those service jobs aren't paying what they were in 2007. Constant economic precarity, this is the new normal. Always be afraid, be cut-throat in the job market, and always, always be "on the hustle".
This is what they wanted. Hoover, Nixon, Reagan, Rubin, Bush, Summers. The bipartisan elite consensus that knew, just knew, things would be better if the market just was allowed to take care of everything. To the elites, the New Deal or Social Democracy were just rest stop on the path to the true ideological reckoning, and Ayn beat Karl, no doubt about it.
Now, I'm a former organizer, and I know you don't get all doom and gloom, without a call to action. So, if you want to fight for things that will reorient our country towards a more equitable society, I'd like to offer the following three areas of focus:
- Industrial policy- The United States needs to reintroduce a true industrial policy. We spent much of the last century benefiting from a national industrial policy that focused on self sufficiency and technological advancement. That doesn't mean we didn't import or export goods, but that we tried to ensure that our internal industrial base would be able to produce all of the necessities for national defense, improvements to our infrastructure, and the ability to stay "on the cutting edge" of technological advancement. This was not completely successful(see the ongoing need for foreign fossil fuels), but as a by-product, it produced a strong middle class and minimal unemployment. It also produced a social safety net that caught most who fell through the cracks, until Cinton. It didn't afford them a middle class lifestyle, but compared to the unfortunate in many countries, it was a relatively tolerable existence.
- Labor law reform- Until the playing field is leveled, between the workers and the bosses, there will not be a more equitable society. Pass card check, yesterday. Without a dramatic increase in union density, American workers will not earn adequate wages. Unions are how democracy insures that wealth is distributed in a somewhat reasonable way. It's that simple. The government doesn't do it directly, they allow workers to do it for ourselves, through collective bargaining. If you disagree with this, well I'm sorry, but you're just wrong. If there is to be a rebirth of the middle class, this is the single most important factor. You can't stimulus economic justice into being. America works best when you vote union, yes!
- Reform education "reform"- Both the Bush and Obama administrations have pursued/are pursuing an educational policy that is geared towards this bifurcated economy. Under the guise of reform, charter schools, and "teacher responsibility" , both administrations have been attempting to change the American educational system into one where there are elites, who receive excellent education, and the rest of us that are trained to have a low wage service industry job, where we take care of the whims and needs of those that were chosen for opportunity. Don't believe me, ask a public school teacher. I in no way believe the "education is the answer" canard. It's bullshit, we can have the best educational system on the planet, but without a manufacturing base, all we will be doing is training the rest of the world's scientists, engineers... oh wait. That being said every American deserves the chance to both learn how to do calculus and get a good job, even if you never use that knowledge again. For the record, I'm not saying every student will take calculus(I never did), but if they do well enough at lower levels, it should be available to them. At the same time if someone has educational achievements, but decides they'd rather work at the plant, I want to live in the world where that is an option.
Finally, back to my mom. She is facing a retirement in which her investments have taken a beating, and she is nervous about what the future holds. There's that precarity, again. Even so, she is so terrified about the future that she would sacrifice any retirement ease she might have earned, so that I might have a better chance. Here's the problem, we can't just make sacrifices for each other, anymore. We're past that. What we can do is fight together. We've gotta do our best to stop the ultra-right's reconquering of congress, but we owe it to each other to fight the truly big fight. It doesn't come on election day. It comes on pay day. Our material existence is the one thing we can actually affect through the political system. No one's going to heaven because the vote for democrats, republicans, greens, or libertarians. We can force the powers that be to give us our fair share of the pie, but it means that we fight along side and for each other. Only when the elites fear their grip on power is slipping, will they make concessions. We missed an opportunity with the banks collapsing. There I said it. We could've reshaped our economy in fundamental ways, but we didn't. That being said it is time that we all understand that if we want to make a better world for us, our kids, and our grandkids it's gonna be tough, people are gonna get hurt, and that's the way it's always been. We have the responsibility to our future generation to stand and fight. If we fail to do so, may history look down upon us as the spineless cowards we are.
Which side are you on?