The New York Times is considered our “paper of record,” an authoritative source for news, information and opinion on life in these United States at this point in history. A few days ago in its on-line edition the Times ran this headline: WALL ST. STARTS TO SEE SIGNS OF A TURNAROUND.
With thousands of citizens in danger of losing their homes, individuals and small business owners suffering from sky-high fuel costs, health care a luxury millions of Americans cannot afford, our paper of record leads with a story about how Wall Street is faring, as if what happens on Wall Street is in any way connected to the reality of hard times in Portland, Oregon, Durango, Colorado or Chicago, Illinois.
Below the headline was this tidbit: “For ExxonMobil, $10.9 billion profit disappoints.” While average Americans struggle to make ends meet with rising costs and flat wages, ExxonMobil is unhappy about its $10.9 billion profit.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton argue about which of them has shadier friends or who is more patriotic; not to be outdone, John McCain is trying to sell Americans the idea that a tax break to buy a health insurance policy is the same thing as health care. John McCain’s blind faith in the “free market” is a subject for another day, though if McCain’s faith doesn’t sound eerily familiar and absolutely chilling, you haven’t been paying attention.
Wall Street may see golden light at the end of the tunnel, but directly below the headline in the Times was another: “Consumer Spending Stagnates as Prices Rise.” Consumers are in the deep end, up to their ears in debt, unable to buy stuff, which is a problem since our economy is based on ever-rising consumption of goods and services. But here’s the conundrum the cheerleaders for current economic arrangements seldom mention: how are consumers supposed to continue consuming if their wages remain flat?
Hard times coming. Hard times already here. If you work for wages, you don’t need to be reminded that it’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet.
What does it say about America’s economy when the Investor Class sees daylight and working people see darkness? Do you get the feeling that there’s a Big Disconnect in our society, a decoupling of public and corporate interest, of individual freedom and social responsibility, of individual good and common good?
Turn off your TV, put your computer to sleep, take off the iPod, power down your phone, and listen. Do you hear the sound of paper being torn, ripped, shredded? That’s the last page or two of the social contract being destroyed. The brainchild of FDR, who believed that no American should struggle for the necessities of bare survival, the social contract came into being after World War II. The contract was Business and Labor agreeing that when workers produced they should share in the profits; the contract implied that there was dignity in work and that working people deserved a fair shot at dignity; the contract was a shared belief that the next generation would do better and have even more opportunity than the current generation.
Gone. That in the midst of these worrisome economic times the New York Times chooses to report on Wall Street illustrates how difficult it is to have a real conversation about our economy – not only who it works for, but who it doesn’t, and why. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, the wages of working Americans have been flat for thirty years, but when was the last time you saw a news story about that? American families are working full tilt – not to get ahead, but just to hold their place. Seen any stories in the major media about that? The political buying power of corporations and their lobbyists is so pervasive that they have driven wages down, exported manufacturing jobs to countries where workers are more easily exploited, eliminated health insurance, dumped pension obligations and gutted regulatory bodies, all of which is great for investors, price per share, and lavish executive compensation, but a death sentence for workers.
Think about it. Big Business controls the media and therefore has the power to shape, frame, spotlight and filter the information we see and hear. In the middle of presidential primaries in a watershed election year, we get endless takes on the words and deeds of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright; not that America doesn’t need to hold a national conversation about race relations, we do, desperately, but that’s not what’s happening in news coverage of Reverend Wright. Big Media sets the story line, and no deviation from the script is allowed.
I don’t know if Americans can ever return to a shared social contract that takes into account the idea that human beings have needs other than economic needs. The conservative, free-market, ownership society, you’re-on-your-own ideology that has prevailed for the past three decades has turned us into anxious economic animals, constantly running to hold our place, working two jobs to earn the wage that one job once provided; constantly worried about whether we can afford health care or if we can afford to educate our kids or retire with enough financial wherewithal to live with dignity and give something back to our families and communities. The power arrayed against that happening is daunting.
But for the millions of us who believe that human life is about more than chasing a dollar or a euro, we have an obligation to stand against the prevailing power structure – to question it, to demand answers from it, to use moral persuasion to make it listen to our legitimate concerns. That’s Democracy. Dissent is a patriotic, creative act. As Dr. King said, “There is never a time in our American democracy that we must ever think we’re wrong when we protest. We reserve that right.”
It’s past time for America to reconnect with its basic values, just as it’s past time for working Americans to say, loud and often, enough is enough.
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