I
magine
a country where one out of five children is born into poverty
and wealth is being redistributed upward. Since the 1970s, the
top 1 percent of households has doubled their share of the nation’s
wealth. The top 1 percent has close to 40 percent of the wealth—nearly
the same amount as the bottom 95 percent of households.
Imagine a country where economic inequality is going back to
the future circa the 1930s. The combined after-tax income of
the top 1 percent of tax filers was about half that of the bottom
50 percent of tax filers in 1986. By the late 1990s, the top
1 percent had a larger share of after-tax income than the bottom
50 percent.
Imagine a country with a greed surplus and justice deficit.
Imagine a country where the poor and middle class bear the brunt
of severe cutbacks in education, health, environmental programs,
and other public services to close state and federal budget
deficits fueled by ballooning tax giveaways for wealthy households
and corporations.
It’s not Argentina.
Imagine a country which demands that people work for a living
while denying many a living wage.
Imagine a country where health care aides can’t afford
health insurance. Where people working in the food industry
depend on food banks to help feed their children. Where childcare
teachers don’t make enough to save for their own children’s
education.
It’s not the Philippines.
Imagine a country where productivity went up, but workers’
wages went down.
In the words of the national labor department, “As the
productivity of workers increases, one would expect worker compensation
[wages and benefits] to experience similar gains.” That’s
not what happened.
Since 1968, worker productivity has risen 81 percent while the
average hourly wage barely budged, adjusting for inflation,
and the real value of the minimum wage dropped 38 percent.
Imagine
a country where the minimum wage just doesn’t add up. Where
minimum wage workers earn more than a third less than their
counterparts earned a third of a century ago, adjusting for
inflation. Where a couple with two children would have to work
more than three full-time jobs at the $5.15 minimum wage to
make ends meet.
It’s not Mexico.
Imagine a country where some of the worst CEOs make millions
more in a year than the best CEOs of earlier generations made
in their lifetimes. CEOs made 45 times the pay of average production
and nonsupervisory workers in 1980. They made 96 times as much
in 1990, 160 times as much in 1995 and 369 times as much in
2001. Back in 1960, CEOs made an average 38 times more than
schoolteachers. CEOs made 63 times as much in 1990 and 264 times
as much as public school teachers in 2001.
Imagine a country that had a record-breaking ten-year economic
expansion in 1991-2001, but millions of workers make wages so
low they have to choose between eating or heating, health care
or childcare.
A leading business magazine observed, “People who worked
hard to make their companies competitive are angry at the way
the profits are distributed. They think it is unfair, and they
are right.”
It’s not England.
Imagine a country where living standards are falling for younger
generations despite increased education. Since 1973, the share
of workers without a high school degree has fallen by half.
The share of workers with at least a four-year college degree
has doubled. But the 2002 average hourly wage for production
and nonsupervisory workers (the majority of the workforce) is
7.5 percent below 1973, adjusting for inflation. Median net
worth (assets minus debt) dropped between 1995 and 2001 for
households headed by persons under age 35 and households that
don’t own their own home.
About one out of four workers makes $8.70 an hour or less. That’s
not much more than the real value of the minimum wage of 1968
at $8.27 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
It’s not Russia.
Imagine a country where for more and more people a job doesn’t
keep you out of poverty, it keeps you working poor. Imagine
a country much richer than it was 25 years ago, but the percentage
of full-time workers living in poverty has jumped 50 percent.
Imagine a country that sets the official poverty line well below
the actual cost of minimally adequate housing, health care,
food, and other necessities. You were not counted as poor in
2001 (latest available final data) unless you had pre-tax incomes
below these thresholds: $9,214 for a person under 65, $8,494
for a person 65 and older, $11,569 for a two-person family,
$14,128 for a three-person family, and $18,104 for a family
of four. On average, households need more than double the official
poverty threshold to meet basic needs.
Imagine a country where homelessness is on the rise, but federal
funding for low-income housing is about 50 percent lower than
it was in 1976, adjusting for inflation. The largest federal
housing support program is the mortgage interest deduction,
which disproportionately benefits higher-income families.
Imagine a country where more workers are going back to the future
of sweatshops and day labor. Corporations are replacing full-time
jobs with disposable “contingent workers.” They include
temporary employees, contract workers, and “leased”
employees—some of them fired and then “rented”
back at a large discount by the same company—and involuntary
part-time workers, who want permanent full-time work.
It’s not Spain.
How do workers increasingly forced to migrate from job to job,
at low and variable wage rates, without health insurance or
paid vacation, much less a pension, care for themselves and
their families, pay for college, save for retirement, plan a
future, build strong communities?
Imagine a country where after mass layoffs and union busting,
just 13.5 percent of workers are unionized. One out of three
workers were union members in 1955. Full-time workers who were
union members had median 2001 weekly earnings of $718 compared
with just $575 for workers not represented by unions.
Imagine a country where the concerns of working people are dismissed
as “special interests” and the profit-making interests
of globetrotting corporations substitute for the “national
interest.”
Imagine a country negotiating “free trade” agreements
that help corporations trade freely on cheap labor at home and
abroad.
One ad financed by the country’s agency for international
development showed a Salvadoran woman in front of a sewing machine.
It told corporations, “You can hire her for 33 cents an
hour. Rosa is more than just colorful. She and her co-workers
are known for their industriousness, reliability and quick learning.
They make El Salvador one of the best buys.” The country
that financed the ad intervened militarily to make sure El Salvador
would stay a “best buy” for corporations.
It’s not Canada.
Imagine a country where nearly two-thirds of women with children
under age 6 and more than three-fourths of women with children
ages 6-17 are in the labor force, but affordable childcare and
after-school programs are scarce. Apparently, kids are expected
to have three parents: Two parents with jobs to pay the bills,
and another parent to be home in mid-afternoon when school lets
out—as well as all summer.
Imagine
a country where women working full time earn 76 cents for every
dollar men earn. Women don’t pay 76 cents on a man’s
dollar for their education, rent, food or childcare. The gender
wage gap has closed just 12 cents since 1955, when women earned
64 cents for every dollar earned by men. There’s still
another 24 cents to go.
The average woman high school graduate who works full time from
ages 25 to 65 will earn about $450,000 less than the average
male high school graduate. The gap widens to $900,000 for full-time
workers with bachelor’s degrees. “Men with professional
degrees may expect to earn almost $2 million more than their
female counterparts over their work-life,” says a government
report.
Imagine a country where childcare workers, mostly women, generally
make about as much as parking lot attendants and much less than
animal trainers. Out of 700 occupations surveyed by the labor
department, only 15 have lower average wages than childcare
workers.
Imagine a country where most minimum wage workers are women,
while 95 percent of the top-earning corporate officers at the
largest 500 companies are men, as are 90 percent of the most
influential positions, from CEOs to executive vice president.
Less than 2 percent of corporate officers at the largest companies
are women of color.
Imagine a country where discrimination against women is pervasive
from the bottom to the top of the pay scale and it’s not
because women are on the “mommy track.” In the words
of a leading business magazine, “At the same level of management,
the typical woman’s pay is lower than her male colleague’s—even
when she has the exact same qualifications, works just as many
years, relocates just as often, provides the main financial
support for her family, takes no time off for personal reasons,
and wins the same number of promotions to comparable jobs.”
Imagine a country where instead of rooting out discrimination,
many policy makers are busily blaming women for their disproportionate
poverty. If women earned as much as similarly qualified men,
poverty in single-mother households would be cut in half.
It’s not Japan.
Imagine a country where the awful labeling of children as “illegitimate”
has again been legitimized. Besides meaning born out of wedlock,
illegitimate also means illegal, contrary to rules and logic,
misbegotten, not genuine, wrong—to be a bastard. The word
illegitimate has consequences. It helps make people more disposable.
Single mothers and their children have become prime scapegoats
for illegitimate economics.
Imagine a country where violence against women is so epidemic
it is their leading cause of injury. So-called “domestic
violence” accounts for more visits to hospital emergency
departments than car crashes, muggings, and rapes combined.
About a third of all murdered women are killed by husbands,
boyfriends, and ex-partners (less than a tenth are killed by
strangers). Researchers say, “Men commonly kill their female
partners in response to the woman’s attempt to leave an
abusive relationship.”
The country has no equal rights amendment.
It’s not Pakistan.
Imagine a country where homicide is the second-largest killer
of young people, ages 15-24; “accidents,” many of
them drunk driving fatalities, are first. It leads major industrialized
nations in firearms-related deaths for children under 15. Increasingly
lethal weapons designed for hunting people are produced for
profit by major manufacturers and proudly defended by a politically
powerful national rifle association.
Informational
material from a national shooting sports foundation asks, “How
old is old enough?” to have a gun, and advises parents:
“Age is not the major yardstick. Some youngsters are ready
to start at 10, others at 14. The only real measures are those
of maturity and individual responsibility. Does your youngster
follow directions well? Would you leave him alone in the house
for two or three hours? Is he conscientious and reliable? Would
you send him to the grocery store with a list and a $20 bill?
If the answer to these questions or similar ones are ‘yes’
then the answer can also be ‘yes’ when your child
asks for his first gun.”
It’s not France.
Imagine a country whose school system is rigged in favor of
the already privileged, with lower caste children tracked by
race and income into the most deficient and demoralizing schools
and classrooms. Public school budgets are heavily determined
by private property taxes, allowing higher income districts
to spend much more than poor ones. In the state with the largest
gap in 1999-2000, state and local spending per pupil in districts
with the lowest child poverty rates was more than $2,152 greater
than districts with the highest child poverty rates. The difference
amounts to about $861,000 for a typical elementary school of
400 students—money that could be used for teachers, books,
and other resources. Disparities are even wider among states,
with spending in districts with enrollments of 15,000 or more
ranging from $3,932 per pupil in one district to $14,244 in
another.
In rich districts kids take well-stocked libraries, laboratories,
and state-of-the-art computers for granted. In poor schools
they are rationing out-of-date textbooks and toilet paper. Rich
schools often look like country clubs—with manicured sports
fields and swimming pools. Poor schools often look more like
jails—with concrete grounds and grated windows. College
prep courses, art, music, physical education, field trips, and
foreign languages are often considered necessities for the affluent,
luxuries for the poor.
Wealthier citizens argue that lack of money isn’t the problem
in poorer schools—family values are—until proposals
are made to make school spending more equitable. Then money
matters greatly for those who already have more.
It’s not India.
Imagine a country whose constitution once counted black slaves
as worth three-fifths of whites. Today, black per capita income
is about three-fifths of whites.
Imagine a country where racial disparities take their toll from
birth to death. The black infant mortality rate is more than
double that of whites. Black life expectancy is nearly six years
less. Black unemployment is more than twice that of whites and
the black poverty rate is almost triple that of whites.
Imagine a country where the government subsidized decades of
segregated suburbanization for whites while the inner cities
left to people of color were treated as outsider cities—separate,
unequal, and disposable. Recent studies have documented continuing
discrimination in education, employment, banking, insurance,
housing, and health care.
It’s not South Africa.
Imagine a country where the typical non-Hispanic white household
has seven times as much net worth (including home equity) as
the typical household of color. From 1995 to 2001, the typical
white household’s net worth rose from $88,500 to $120,900
while the net worth of the typical household of color fell from
$18,300 to $17,100.
Imagine a country that doesn’t count you as unemployed
just because you’re unemployed. To be counted in the official
unemployment rate you must have searched for work in the past
four weeks. The government doesn’t count people as “unemployed”
if they are so discouraged from long and fruitless job searches
they have given up looking. It doesn’t count as “unemployed”
those who couldn’t look for work in the past month because
they had no childcare, for example. If you need a full-time
job, but you’re working part-time—whether 1 hour or
34 hours weekly—because that’s all you can find, you’re
counted as employed.
A leading business magazine observed, “Increasingly the
labor market is filled with surplus workers who are not being
counted as unemployed.”
It’s not Germany.
Imagine a country where there is a shortage of jobs, not a shortage
of work. Millions of people need work and urgent work needs
people—from creating affordable housing, to repairing bridges
and building mass transit, to cleaning up pollution and converting
to renewable energy, to staffing after-school programs and community
centers.
Imagine a country with full prisons instead of full employment.
The jail and prison population has nearly quadrupled since 1980.
The nation is number one in the world when it comes to locking
up its own people. In 1985, 1 in every 320 residents were incarcerated.
By 2001, the figure had increased to 1 in every 146.
Imagine a country where prison labor is a growth industry and
so-called “corrections” spending is the fastest growing
part of state budgets. Apparently, the government would rather
spend $25,000 a year to keep someone in prison than on cost-effective
programs of education, community development, addiction treatment,
and employment to keep them out. In the words of a national
center on institutions and alternatives, this nation has “replaced
the social safety net with a dragnet.”
Imagine
a country that has been criticized by human rights organizations
for expanding, rather than abolishing, use of the death penalty—despite
documented racial bias and growing evidence of innocents being
sentenced to death.
It’s not China.
Imagine a country that imprisons black people at a rate much
higher than apartheid South Africa. One out of seven black men
ages 25-29 are incarcerated. Many more are on probation or on
parole. Looking just at prisons and not local jails, 10 percent
of black males ages 25-29 were locked up at the end of 2001,
compared with 1 percent of white males. Black non-Hispanic women
are five times more likely to be imprisoned than white non-Hispanic
women.
Meanwhile, nearly one out of three black men and women ages
16-19 are officially unemployed, as are one out of five ages
20-24. Remember, to be counted in the official unemployment
rate you must be actively looking for a job and not finding
one. “Surplus” workers are increasingly being criminalized.
Imagine a country waging a racially biased War on Drugs. More
than three out of four drug users are white, according to government
data, but three out of four state prisoners convicted of drug
offenses are black and Latino. Racial disparities in drug and
other convictions are even wider when non-Hispanic whites are
distinguished more accurately from Latinos.
A study in a prominent medical journal found that drug and alcohol
rates were slightly higher for pregnant white women than pregnant
black women, but black women were about ten times more likely
to be reported to authorities by private doctors and public
health clinics—under a mandatory reporting law. Poor women
were also more likely to be reported.
It is said that truth is the first casualty in war, and the
War on Drugs is no exception. Contrary to stereotype, “The
typical cocaine user is white, male, a high school graduate
employed full time and living in a small metropolitan area or
suburb,” says the nation’s former drug czar. A leading
newspaper reports that law officers and judges say, “Although
it is clear that whites sell most of the nation’s cocaine
and account for 80% of its consumers, it is blacks and other
minorities who continue to fill up [the] courtrooms and jails,
largely because, in a political climate that demands that something
be done, they are the easiest people to arrest.” They are
the easiest to scapegoat.
It’s not Australia.
Imagine a country where the cycle of unequal opportunity is
intensifying. Its beneficiaries often slander those most systematically
undervalued, underpaid, underemployed, underfinanced, underinsured,
underrated, and otherwise underserved and undermined—as
undeserving, “underclass,” impoverished in moral and
social values, and lacking the proper “work ethic.”
The oft-heard stereotype of deadbeat poor people masks the growing
reality of dead-end jobs and disposable workers.
Imagine a country that abolished aid to families with dependent
children while maintaining aid for dependent corporations.
Imagine a country where state and local governments are rushing
to expand lotteries, video poker, and other government-promoted
gambling to raise revenues, disproportionately from the poor,
which they should be raising from a fair tax system.
Imagine a country whose military budget tops average Cold War
levels although the break up of the Soviet Union produced friends,
not foes. This nation spends almost as much on the military
as the rest of the world combined and leads the world in arms
exports.
Imagine a country that ranks first in the world in wealth and
military power, and 34th in child mortality (under five), tied
with Malaysia and well behind countries such as Singapore and
South Korea. If the government were a parent it would be guilty
of child abuse. Thousands of children die preventable deaths.
Imagine a country where health care is managed for healthy profit.
In many countries health care is a right, but in this nation
one out of six people under age 65 has no health insurance,
public or private.
Healthcare is literally a matter of life and death. Lack of
health insurance typically means lack of preventive health care
and delayed or second-rate treatment. The uninsured are at much
higher risk for chronic disease and disability, and have a 25
percent greater chance of dying (adjusting for physical, economic,
and behavioral factors). Uninsured women are 49 percent more
likely to die than women with insurance during the four to seven
years following an initial diagnosis of breast cancer.
Imagine a country where many descendants of its first inhabitants
live on reservations strip-mined of natural resources and have
a higher proportion of people in poverty than any other ethnic
group.
Imagine a country where 500 years of plunder and lies are masked
in expressions like “Indian giver.” Where the military
still dubs enemy territory, “Indian country.”
Imagine a country which has less than 5 percent of the world’s
population, but uses more than 40 percent of the world’s
oil resources and about 20 percent of the coal and wood. It
is the number one contributor to acid rain and global warming.
It has obstructed international action on the environment and
climate change.
It’s not Brazil.
Imagine
a country where half the eligible voters don’t vote. The
nation’s senate and house of representatives are not representative
of the nation. They are overwhelmingly white, male, and millionaire.
At least 170 senators and congresspeople are millionaires. That’s
nearly one out of three members of the house and senate. Just
1 percent of the population they represent are millionaires.
Imagine a country where white men who are “falling down”
the economic ladder are being encouraged to believe they are
falling because women and people of color are climbing over
them to the top or dragging them down from the bottom. That
way, they will blame women and people of color rather than corporate
and government policy. They will buy the myth of “reverse
discrimination.” Never mind that white males hold most
senior management positions and continuing unreversed discrimination
is well documented.
Imagine a country with a president who, even more than his father
before him, “was born on third base and thought he hit
a triple.” The president wants to undo affirmative action.
Never mind that despite all his advantages he was a mediocre
student who relied on legacy affirmative action for the children
of rich alumni to get into a top prep school and college. Never
mind that he rode his family connections in business and politics.
Imagine a country where on top of discrimination comes insult.
It’s common for people of color to get none of the credit
when they succeed—portrayed as undeserving beneficiaries
of affirmative action and “reverse discrimination”—and
all of the blame when they fail.
Imagine a country where a then presidential press secretary
boasted to reporters: “You can say anything you want in
a debate, and 80 million people hear it. If reporters then document
that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people
read it, or 2,000 or 20,000.”
Imagine a country where politicians and judges whose views were
formerly considered far right on the political spectrum now
rule both houses of congress and the presidency and increasingly
dominate the judiciary.
Imagine a country whose leaders misuse a fight against terrorism
as camouflage for undermining democracy. Fundamental civil liberties,
including the right not to be imprisoned indefinitely on the
word of government officials, are being tossed aside. The attorney
general attacked critics of administration policy with McCarthyite
words: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms
of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists
for they erode our national unity…They give ammunition to
[our] enemies and pause to [our] friends.” The attorney
general would burn democracy in the name of saving it.
It’s not Italy.
It’s the United States.
Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. called on us to take the
high road in
Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?
(Harper & Row, 1967). King wrote: "A true revolution
of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice
of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play
the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but…one day the
whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women
will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through
life….
”A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on
the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth….There is nothing
but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate
wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker,
laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except
shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and
livable—income for every American family.”
Holly
Sklar is the coauthor of
Raise The Floor: Wages and
Policies That Work For All Of Us
.
