Panglossian Elephants

Jared Bernstein has an artice in the American Prospect website that everyone should take a look at. While conservatives and their whores trumpet the substantial 4.4% GDP growth in 2004 (and with it a slight net increase in the number of jobs over the course of Bush's first term), wages have actually fallen. In other words, the pie is getting bigger but the share that the middle and working classes get is shrinking. Imagine a big fat guy at a party eating half the chips at a birthday party, and then the entirety of the cake. And when you remind him that it isn't his party, he tells you to shut up.

How is this possible? Easy. The benefits of economic growth are being monopolized by the people at the top. Over the last generation 98.6% of new wealth creation has been concentrated in the top 10%, so last week's figures are only the accentuation of a long-standing trend.

What we have here is a paradigmatic case of exploitation, in which some people work and someone else reaps the rewards. The worst instance of exploitation is slavery, but when employees work themselves half to death and generate profits for the company, which promptly cuts their wages, that counts as exploitation too. Hence the old-fashioned phrase "wage slavery."

Aside from the morality of the thing, there are other reasons to be concerned. This ssue is not just about economics, or even fairness (we know how much conservatives care about the latter). It is important to remember that the middle class in America is not a true middle class at all. Middle classes are characterized by independent proprietors, i.e. small business owners, farmers, and professionals. Working classes get their wages from others. The American middle class is an artificial one in which laborers have the affluence of a true middle class without being self-employed. It was created as a deliberate act of policy during the New Deal, and maintained by labor unions, government redistribution, and U.S. economic dominance. But now we have shrinking labor unions, government redistributing wealth upward rather than downward, and massive trade deficits. The American middle class is on its way out. And as I have pointed out repeatedly, no middle class, no democracy.

So while we "spread freedom abroad," we are laying the foundations for oligarchy here at home. Repealing the New Deal has consequences. And to those Americans who have decided that two men holding hands in public is more important than your children's ability to have a chance in life, the fruit will be bitter indeed.