From The Boston Globe, 9/2/06:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/09/02/another_year_another_wage_loss/?rss_id=Boston+Globe+--+Editorial%2FOp-ed+pages
Another year, another wage loss
By Robert Kuttner
LABOR DAY was created by the machinists union in New York in 1882 as a
``workingmen's holiday."
Unions all over America adopted the idea.
By 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day an official
holiday.
The day also celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the
workplace, to improve livelihoods and lives.
Today, the politics have largely been leached out of it.
Labor Day is a long weekend that marks summer's end.
And that extra day of rest is needed more than ever.
Government statistics show that the typical family works about 500
more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes two
incomes to make it.
Even so, family incomes are failing to keep pace with the cost of
living.
This past week, these items have been in the news:
The Census Bureau reported that median incomes for working-age
families were down again, for the fifth straight year.
Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent
since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year.
All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket people and corporate
profits.
The Pew Research Center released an extensive survey on public
attitudes about the economy.
Pew reported, ``The public thinks that workers were better off a
generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be it wages,
benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are
shown by employers."
And, statistically, the public is right.
The Globe recently reported that chief executives of nonprofit
hospitals now routinely make more than $1 million.
University presidents are not far behind.
The Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has released
its annual, encyclopedic report, ``The State of Working America."
Among its findings:
The economy's productivity increased by a remarkable 33.5 percent
between 1995 and 2005, but real wages have declined since 2000.
Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent in 1979 to
56 percent in 2004.
The top 1 percent's share of interest, dividends, and capital gains
has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979 to 57.5 percent in 2003.
Politically, it's evident what is occurring.
Those in a position to capture astronomical incomes are awarding
themselves an ever-larger share of the national economic pie.
Meanwhile, ordinary incomes, job security, health security, and
retirement security are eroding.
The political mystery is why everyone else is not kicking up a fuss.
After all, as the Pew report suggests, it's not as if people are
unaware of what's happening.
Here's a clue to some of the puzzle:
Polls show that people do want more reliable wages, pensions, and
health insurance.
But too many people have given up on the idea that the political
process can be used to restore the American dream.
Theda Skocpol, author of several books of social history, tells of
interviewing a hard-pressed woman with small children and a low-wage
job.
Her only social support was that her mother-in-law -- the children's
grandmother -- looked after her children while she worked.
As Skocpol observes, this was possible only because Social Security
enabled the grandmother not to have to work herself.
Skocpol asked the woman whether she thought there was anything
government might do to improve her economic circumstances.
The woman replied, ``Nothing they do there ever makes a difference for
people like me."
But that was not always so.
Social Security, Medicare, college aid, the GI Bill, government
wage-and-hour laws, and government protection of the right to unionize
made a real difference in people's lives.
These policies, which benefited the vast middle class (and helped to
create it), did not just happen.
They were the result of political organizing and a public awareness
that government could affect the economic opportunity and security of
ordinary Americans, for better or worse.
It's understandable why politics today is often a turnoff.
But if a great many middle-class and poor Americans have given up on
politics, you can be sure that the economic elite is invested in
politics as never before.
The changes in the tax code and regulatory laws and workplace
practices that benefit America's super-rich did not just happen,
either.
They are the result of relentless maneuvering by the financial elite
and its political allies.
So this Labor Day, at the beach or in town, we suffer not just from
reduced economic opportunity but diminished political imagination.
You can ignore politics, but you can't escape it.
So we might as well reclaim democracy to benefit the many rather than
the few.
____________________________________________________
Are you better off now than you were 5 years ago?
Harry
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