And the Wall Street Journal has just amazed me by their willingness to publish…well, THIS:
The most important–and unfortunately the least debated–issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.
Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic’s range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.
In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn’t happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners’ pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.
Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate “reorganization.” And workers’ ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.
Emphasis added.
Now, doesn’t this read just like something you might expect to see coming from, say, Hugo Chavez (or any writer at Venezuelanalysis), describing the economic situation in Latin America? Or maybe from Noam Chomsky, writing for Zmag? Certainly it’s not the norm for the op-eds at the WSJ, which is usually rah-rahing its pom-poms off for all things “free market”! It’s easily on a par with what Warren Buffett said to Lou Dobbs: “It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.”
And I must admit to being pleasantly surprised to see that this came from Jim Webb, who, in case your memory slips, is the recently elected senator from Virginia, who beat out George “Macaca” Allen in a very acrimonious, and suprisingly close, race. Now, it’s axiomatic, at least in the whore media, that the winners of close races had to scrape votes from their opponents by moving closer to their side of the ledger politically, but is that really the case? Not always; the sentiments Webb expresses here are easily more germane to those of an ultra-progressive leftie like me than to those of a far-right wingnut like Macaca Man, who blatantly pandered to the worst in the southern white mentality–and in any case, was prepared to do absolutely NOTHING to challenge the elite’s victory in the class war. (Frankly, I’m only surprised that Macaca didn’t lose by a much wider margin.)
Now, I could be wrong; maybe Webb will turn out to be one of those dreaded (and dreadful) “centrist” (read: CONSERVATIVE) Democrats after all. I hope not, though. Rather, I hope he goes on as he does in this vein:
This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation’s most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the “rough road of capitalism.” Others claim that it’s the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism.
Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant groups have the “right genetics” and thus are natural entrants to the “overclass,” while others, as well as those who come from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top, simply don’t possess the necessary attributes.
Most Americans reject such notions. But the true challenge is for everyone to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages and disappearing jobs.
Sit back and savor it a moment, won’t you, folks? This man–arguably the one who decided the tilt of the US Senate to Democratic, NOT Joe Lieberman–just handed racism AND predatory capitalism their collective ass. I am loving this!
And yes, he does go on in this vein:
America’s elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own self-interest. A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the U.S. differently than other “First World” nations, and that white-collar jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far been ravaged by outsourcing and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that “unless a solution is found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk of a protectionist backlash” in America that would take us away from what they view to be the “biggest economic stimulus in world history.”
More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The “Wal-Marting” of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.
The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been rep
eatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of “God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag” while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.With this new Congress, and heading into an important presidential election in 2008, American workers have a chance to be heard in ways that have eluded them for more than a decade. Nothing is more important for the health of our society than to grant them the validity of their concerns. And our government leaders have no greater duty than to confront the growing unfairness in this age of globalization.
What a satisfying conclusion!
It’s clear to me that Webb has no intention of playing the nicey-nice “centrist” who won’t rock the greedheads’ boat. It wasn’t “safe” for him to say this, but he stuck his neck out and said it anyway. And he said it in the most unlikely place. This gives me hope that things are indeed about to change for the better, not only in the US, but worldwide if this new Congress affects foreign policy in the ways it should. It’s time to crack down on outsourcing, on sweatshops, on all forms of exploitation. It’s time to bring in FAIR trade, and forget about “free” trade.
As for the purported virtues of “trickle-down”, this photo sums it up best:
The emperor is naked, folks–time to face it, even on the pages of a publication that routinely touts the viewpoint that he’s never been better dressed. Jim Webb deserves a hearty round of applause for pointing that nudity out.
Afterword: Milton Friedman, arguably the author of all the misery Webb denounces, died recently. A singular synchronicity indeed, since his thinking is also proving to be in its death throes now. The Beeb notes that “[i]t was said that he never lost an argument”, but I think reality, that famed bastion of liberal bias, has just had the last word.
