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| Today's voice belongs to Contributing Editor Tom Lowe |
I've been thinking recently about something that has puzzled me for a long time. How America's working class got lost in the Twentieth Century. They lost their identity and history, letting themselves be screwed by their bosses, while being conned into taking the blame.
Over two generations they have forgotten how the very poor working class, often with immense sacrifice, became respectable and thought of themselves as middle class. Along the way losing the ability to defend themselves, their fellow workers, and their community.
Their success is one of the foundations of the post WWII boom. The survivors of the Great Depression and WWII were able to gain for themselves and their kids a piece of the American Dream. But, somewhere in the transition from tenement to suburbia, their shared history went down the memory hole.
Looking back, the Sixties was a great time to be a working stiff in America. Driving home after an honest days work, to the house you own in a nice suburb, relaxing after dinner with your family in front of the new color TV, life feels very good. You're certain that when the kids finish school at that new community college they'll have even better lives. The union just got everybody a raise, and better retirement, they promise that next time health insurance will be the big issue. The company is expanding next year, so maybe your neighbor's younger daughter can get a job in the office. That stuff on the news about Viet Nam and Civil Rights sounds worrying, but it's a long way from here. The American Dream as everyday life.
What was forgotten was how organized labor made it happen.The struggles of Samuel Gompers and Eugene Debs in the 1880s, of John L. Lewis and the Reuther brothers in the 1930s, and of George Meany uniting the AFL-CIO made their dream of justice real. By the 1960s, their basic goal—gaining recognition from society that workers were full citizens with the same rights to fair treatment as anyone—had been achieved.
Then beginning in the 1970s came our season of discontent, adeptly exploited by corporations to their profit, leading to Reagan Democrats and the Tea Baggers. One place to get a sense of how it happened is by listening to Bruce Springsteen’s music over the past 35 years. Another insight is the new book by Joan Walsh, What's the Matter with White People: Why We Long for a Golden Age That Never Was, in which she talks about the internal debate within her working class Irish-American family.
I dissent from the conventional wisdom of the moment, that “Boomers” have screwed it up for everyone else. Whatever sweet dreams they still entertain lie, with everybody else’s, in pieces on the ground. To pretend otherwise is buying into the justification for bullshit like the Simpson-Bowles “Cat Food Commission” and the Ryan Plan. Playing the “we are the real victims” card—right next to the race card—has been the corporate media’s way of absolving their masters of responsibility since the era of America’s own Richard the Third, “Tricky Dick” Nixon.
So, this is just history, the struggles of labor are over, lessons from the past are not important, and we're all citizens together in this crisis, right? Try telling that to Chicago teachers or Wisconsin public employees. They’re facing, and making, history daily. And they are likely to have a lot of company soon. From what I read, the mid-20th Century middle class is sinking, the lower class remains stuck at the bottom, and 46.2 million are living in poverty, an historic high. And the one percent are off-shoring everything—including themselves. As I see it, there aren't any easy endings, or solutions, in sight—just a hard landing to survive.
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Copyright © 2012 by Tom Lowe
Tom, the central paragraph for me is the one that begins "I dissent...." Is it your point of view that the national debt is an spurious problem, or is it rather a problem for which we haven't yet heard a serious solution? When you write of the corporate media do you mean CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the news departments of PBS and the entertainment networks, the New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major newspapers? And who are "their masters"? The people doing the screwing are in this paragraph, but I can't make out who they are and how they managed to bring down the middle class.
ReplyDeleteSo far as I can figure it out the issue of the national debt is political. Note that when the solutions that seem obvious- raise tax rates on the 1%, cut the War Machine back to what the rest of the world spends, bring the cost of health care into line with other industrialized countries, the Repugs, and the mainstream media start hand waving and declaring it too complicated and unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteYour list of the "corporate media" seems a good one, I'd go with it adding ABC, CBS, NBC.
Anyone's master is the one who gets to give the orders- while holding your paycheck. To my mind, the screwing of the middle class has been a joint project of the major corporations chasing the bottom line, the Democrats and the Republicans chasing corporate cash, and the media chasing ratings with sitcoms, cop shows and reality TV in place of news. Many cooks to spoil the broth.
Tom, I agree with you about the national debt. There is revenue and savings where politicians will not go. The Dems are not as blind as the Reps, but they also resist real cuts to the War Machine. Medicare, however, will have to be retooled. There's an order of magnitude mismatch between its funding and its expenses. All that said, what's the impact of it on the undoing of the middle class?
ReplyDeleteI have a similar disconnect between the trends you cite and the dwindling middle class. In my view, the middle class has suffered mainly because of global economic shifts. Asia has become a source of cheap, competent labor, and this has severely damaged the availability of manufacturing jobs and the negotiating power of unions. I also believe that the middle class has become politically more ignorant and now has the habit of voting against its own interests. The media have definitely played a part in this trend, but I see no masters other than the profit motive.
Tom, that is an excellent, concise synopsis of the changes in America over the past 100 years. While I fully agree the national debt is a political weapon and not a real problem, and that organized labor's efforts from the 1880s to 1960s helped make this country what it was, I have to respectfully disagree with you about the "Boomers" role in its decline.
ReplyDeleteSince I was born at the back end of the "Boomer generation" I have seen firsthand the change in this country wrought by my decade-older siblings and others at the leading edge of the "Boomers." As much as I hate to say it about my older friends and family members, I do think those in that group "have screwed it up for everyone else." If their parents are the "greatest generation" then the older "Boomers" are the "selfish generation."
Those at the leading edge of the "Boomers" were handed a society that was arguably at the height of its power and the most dominant in history. They threw it away in three decades because they favored apathy over action, entertainment over education, and excuses over effort. By the 1960s and '70s the older "Boomers" were already stealing from their children to support their lifestyle and pad their retirement accounts. With the coming of Reagan's "something for nothing" philosophy they started stealing from their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Today the older "Boomers" lament the at-risk status of Social Security and Medicare. Well, who refused to fully fund the former or plan for the latter, and who sat by placidly while the people they voted for plundered and borrowed against what meager funds they were willing to save? And that isn't even looking at the amount of money the "Boomers" expected to be paid from their factory jobs while assuming their children and grandchildren would pay to clean up the industrial pollution they created in the process.
The "Boomers" may want to blame this country's current woes on greedy corporations, corrupt politicians and jobs sent offshore, but all they have to do is look in the mirror to see who let it happen. They are the ones who refused to fight to protect the unions their parents established, who chose prime-time soap operas over the evening news, and who never paid their own bills but instead passed the real cost of their lavish lifestyle and burgeoning stock portfolios on to future generations.
For three million years of human evolution each succeeding generation had a better lifestyle and longer life expectancy than its parents' generation. The "Boomers" even turned that three million year pattern upside down in a little over 30 years.
Tom, while I usually agree with you on just about everything, in this case I must respectfully disagree and conclude the "Boomers" are at fault. Either that or they just accidentally happened to be first on the scene at what must be the most unbelievably unlucky streak of coincidences in human history.
Moto, I agree that the Boomers have a lot to account for. They've been poor custodians of the nation's wealth, resources, and values. But please, let's take a step back. A better lifestyle and longer life expectancy have in no way been the inheritance of successive generations for 3 million years. (You've gotta send me the titles of your history books!) Until the advances in medicine, nutrition, and the standard of living that has characterized the last few centuries, life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." (You've already forgotten my Hobbes quote from an earlier post!) Further, the U.S.A. hasn't been around for 3 million years, so the Boomers could hardly have reversed 3 million years of life in the U.S.A. Further, the last 30 years could by no stretch qualify as the "most unbelievable unlucky streak of coincidences in human history." Ever hear of the Middle Ages, or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition? How about the World Wars and Great Depression in the first half of the last century? Get some perspective, man.
DeleteBeing from that "leading edge of the 'Boomers'", but having grown up in a agricultural small town, I can only partly concur. The material gains were poorly distributed for those ares, and certainly the kids born 1945-1955 only began to benefit from the postwar boom as they got out of school. Having interacted with the mindset of the later Boomers in the workplace and college, I tend to agree that they had a sense of entitlement and no sense of history.
DeleteBut, I disagree with the idea that the past three million years was a pattern of progress- that's the junior high civics version. The pattern, to the degree there is a pattern, is cyclical over several generations. It's likely we are on the down side of a Kondratiev wave, of a length that is in dispute, and laying the blame on the boomers, especially the loudly whining ones is too simple.
American history is not the same as human history, In spite of what Obama or Romney try to tell you.
Ken and Tom, do the briefest bit of "Googling" and you will find many medical and health-oriented websites quoting CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) statistics that say the boomers are likely to live longer than their children. The main reason cited is the obesity epidemic taking its toll on the boomers' children, which was created mainly by the inactive lifestyle and overeating the boomers ingrained in their children.
DeleteYes, plagues, inquisitions and civil wars have at certain times made the lives of particular generations here and there shorter than the lives of their parents. But those were the exception, not the rule.
Overall, the general trend over time has been for those of each generation to live longer than those in their parents' generation, and have a better lifestyle as well. I'm sorry I can't quote you any books - having traveled a bit in Africa I've always been willing to accept paleonanthropologist Richard Leakey's wisdom on the topic.
What makes the boomers failure so dramatic is it was self induced. Unlike in medieval times, there was no plague that killed half the boomers children. There was no tragic war that killed massive numbers of young, military aged people.
From obesity epidemic to political dysfunction to financial disaster, it seems the main problems the boomers' children are trying to overcome are those created by their parents' generation. Which seems to point to most, if not all, of the blame falling on the boomers.
When I look at any semi-representative sample of Boomers, say in the doctors office, I have no doubt that there is an obesity epidemic. I'd credit it to the creation of the TV Dinner somewhere in the 1950s. (Truth in labeling, I'm overweight so I don't throw stones.) I can remember some health writers worrying about this in the 1950s, calling for more exercise in schools. It started long before Boomers children.
DeleteI think Phillip Wylie makes some of the same points you are making in the first edition of Generation of Vipers, which came out in 1938. I'm not sure you are incorrect, or overstating, but I'm sure that the critique is not unique to present situation.
Just to be clear, I don't much care for my generation. But, I do have the vantage point of working over the decades with Boomers who have maintained a commitment to making a better world, and who joined in with Occupy. So I'm going to keep picking nits when you get too general- just as Ken does with me.
Actually the mismatch is more in the cost of medical services and drugs than in the funding of Medicare. Did you ever see Sicko? It's in Michael More's bombastic style, but he also hits the key points. Again, and again, the comparison of outcomes versus costs makes the clap trap U.S. structure, and its manipulation by insurance companies and HMOs look insane.
ReplyDeleteOffshoring is a choice, made to maximize the power of corporations- not a simple response to changing economics and educational structures in Asia. The decision to throw American workers under the bus was cynical and self serving. The currently embarrassing video of a Romney fundraising speech catches the mentality perfectly. The tire tracks on the back of Middle America are brought to you by the Fortune 500, an "invisible hand".
Good point, Tom, on the cost of medical services, especially hospital services, and drugs. Another instance of places where cost-cutting politicians fear to tread.
ReplyDeleteYes, corporations always want to maximize their power, meaning profits. This is precisely why they jumped at the prospect of exploiting cheap, skilled labor abroad. I don't think you can tack on the motive "Oh, and let's double the fun by destroying the middle class!" A prosperous middle class is the sine qua non of a consumption society.
What the Romney video captures is how shameless he is about crafting his utterances to his audience. He's the shallowest politician in my memory.
Yes, but consider the contested definition of the Middle Class: The Census would say $45,000 a year, One of Romney's surrogates recently said $200,000, and it ranges all over the place depending on whose economic agenda is involved.
DeleteI doubt that the corporate deciders even gave the question of the effect on their inferiors any thought. In the late 1980s the Dean of the Sloan School of Management, Lester Thurow, observed U.S. business leadership was acting more like an oligarchy than an establishment. "We don't care, we don't have to" as the Communication Workers of America once mocked AT&T, sinks the ship as easily as negative intent.
A fascinating discussion, though I focus on Tom's main point, of the contributions of unions, which have shrunk from a much greater share of the working population to something near 10%; the great figures Tom cites helped win collective bargaining, employer paid healthcare, sick leave, and many other worker guarantees that the average American takes for granted while buying the too-easy condemnation of unions as vested interests or selfserving. I kind of wonder who will be there to protect the average American's wages and benefits as the unions shrivel. Obviously not Romney and the Republicans. I'm no fan of Paul Ryan, for sure, but the Bowles-Simpson plan seemed like a rational approach to problems.
ReplyDeleteI'm also loath to write off a whole generation (Baby Boomers), actually several generations with millions of individuals with disparate views, attitudes, and needs.