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We’re Squeeeeeezed
This is a cross-post from the Firedoglake blog.
Economics is scary. Or boring. Or both. Say the word and watch people yawn.
But what’s going on around us right now—the U.S. mortgage crisis, skyrocketing oil and food costs, tanking wages and disappearing health care and retirement benefits, to name a few of our current traumas—makes the need for understanding a few fiscal fundamentals critical for most Americans.
So how do we dislodge people from watching “American Idol” long enough to see that the reason they are having trouble paying bills, affording health care or sending their kids to college is not because they are only working two jobs instead of three. Rather, there’s something really wrong with the way our nation’s economy is being run. And it’s in their interest—and the interest of all of us—to understand why.
Progressive economist Jared Bernstein takes a crack at making economics comprehensible and even (sort of) fun, in Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries). The book treats a single topic like “The Health Care Squeeze” in bite-sized chapters you can read while waiting for dinner to heat up in the microwave. And for those who can’t make it through each chapter’s four or five short pages, Bernstein handily sums up the main points of each in a single “Crunchpoint” graf.
Bernstein goes right to the heart of the matter in his first chapter: “If the Economy is Doing So Well, Why Do I Feel So Squeezed?”
We in the union movement long have been saying the economy is not working for America’s workers and their families. Yet, what the public is told is another story. As Bernstein writes:
Raise the issue of the squeeze, and many economists and policymakers will excitedly (and correctly) remind you that the stock market is kicking butt!…productivity is soaring!…unemployment’s historically low!…inflation’s down!
But as Bernstein points out, there are more pertinent facts behind these feel-good phrases, and most are only a mouse-click away. Such as:
- …the typical working-age household’s income was down 5 percent, or $2,400, from 2000 to 2006.
- After falling steeply in the late 1990s, the share of the population that’s officially poor rose from 11.3 percent in 2000 to 12.3 percent in 2006.
- Over the business cycle from 2001 to 2007, real wages were up 2.3 percent, compared with 18 percent for productivity….
- While inflation has been moderate since 2000…the costs of some of the key components of the middle-income market basket—health care, child care, college tuition, housing—have been growing much faster than the overall average of all prices taken together.
(Kevin Phillips, most recently the author of Bad Money, goes even farther, saying that inflation and other federal economic indicators have been progressively “Pollyanna-ed” by recent administrations of both flavors, meaning our current inflation is more like 6 percent or 7 percent, rather than the 2 percent cited.)
In short, writes Bernstein:
The name of the problem is economic inequality, and it’s been on the rise for decades.
Yet, with the complicit assistance of the corporate media, the nation’s economics debate has become “scarily unhinged,” Bernstein said at an EPI book talk earlier this week. He cited the example of ABC News anchor Charles Gibson who moderated a recent debate between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Both support an increase in the tax on capital gains (which essentially is cash earned on investments) to help fund critically needed programs. But Gibson framed the question to them as though a boost in the capital gains tax would sucker-punch the middle class. In fact, says Bernstein, the wealthiest top 10 percent make 90 percent of capital gains—making it a tax on the wealthy, not the middle class.
But few watching the debate would know that fact.
If people can get one thing from Bernstein’s book, it’s that the “economy” doesn’t just spin in neutral gear, fairly distributing economic growth. There are puppet masters holding the strings, and what they have that we don’t is power.
More so than in any recent period, those who hold a privileged position in the economic power hierarchy, the players who sit down at the poker table with a stack of chips reaching to the ceiling—the CEOs and the holders of large capital assets—are able to steer the bulk of growth their way. Then, using their political connections, they’re able to ice the cake with a nice bit of after-tax redistribution, as regressive changes in the tax code funnel even more resources their way.
Crunch is clearly written and the most accessible of books on bread-and-butter economics around. Give copies to your neighbors, friends, in-laws. It may not stand alone as a Mother’s Day present, but tuck it into the flowers and surprise Mom.
Because the more people who know why we’re being squeezed, the greater the chance they won’t vote to perpetuate Bush administration policies this election. And voting for Sen. John McCain would do just that.
At the EPI talk, Bernstein made a scary prediction: The first thing McCain would do after taking office is to go after Social Security and Medicare. Privatizing either or both would be a disaster for working people in this nation.
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Paid for by the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee, www.aflcio.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.
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10 Comments
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No matter which candidate gets elected the American worker is screwed. It is the same political party with two different heads that’s all. You need to get out of the rut and stop voting for the democrats and the republicans. I’m glad to see that there is a progressive economist mentioned in this article, unfortunately this is still old news. Now maybe it is just new information to this blog but, the changing way of interpreting the economy has been discussed on alternative media sources for over three years and the average “American Idol” watching zombie would discard the information as some weird conspiracy theory. And anyone who relies on network news for an accurate account of the real world is in trouble. What are you going to do when the North American Union becomes a reality and our currency is the amero? At least border security won’t be an issue. Oh, I forgot that is just another weird conspiracy theory:-)
Very good article, yes we are getting squeezed! I filled my gas tank for $50 this weekend. I remember when I bought the vehicle, it would cost $20-25 to fill. Our dictator shows great concern about the economy, publically acknowledges the gas crisis, yet he gave tax breaks to the oil companies, plans to veto legislation to help those caught in the housing crisis, but yet help bail out and assist Chase Bank, remember he denied knowing “Kenny boy” Lay (yet photos of him and Lay at the Arlington baseball park) and watch thousands of people lose $$ in that scandal.
This November, people have got to get off their lazy, tired, burnt out a–es and get out and vote! If McSame get the WH, this nation will collapse. We will never get out of the ever growing hole.
More people vote on American Idol, than general elections. What does that tell you?
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report
National Edition
Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
********************************************
Our Imploding Economy
William Spriggs,Chair,Economics Dept., Howard University
and
Meizhu Lui, co-author of The Color of Wealth
While the recession is off the front pages for now, people are
getting poorer, joblessness is increasing, their assets are
diminished and credit extinguished. This is part of a decades
old process of impoverishment and wealth inequality which
affects people of color disproportionately which is now being
exacerbated by the economic crisis.
********************************************
To Download or listen to this 27:28 minute
program, go to:
http://www.archive.org/details/BuildingBridgesRadioOurImplodingEconomy
for more information contact Ken Nash – knash@igc.org
Building Bridges is regularly broadcast live over WBAI,
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Every person reading this post can do something: They can write letters to their members of Congress, and get their family, friends and neighbors to do the same.
The message can be short and to the point. Tell them that as a condition of receiving your vote they must co-sponsor and support HR 676, the United States National Health Insurance Act.
Here’s what HR 676 would do. A family – no matter the size of the family – would pay 4.75% of their income for single-payer insurance. (For a family earning $35,000 that would be $1662.50 annually. That’s $138.50 per month. No deductibles! No co-pays! Choose your own doctor! Choose your own hospital! HR 676 covers office visits, hospitalization, surgery and all other necessary medical procedures, prescription drugs, vision, dental, hearing, durable equipment, nursing home care, long term care, mental health…virtually every medically-necessary service. (Sorry. Folks wanting Botox or tummy-tucks, etc., would have to pay for that out of their own pockets. Neither are medically necessary and would not be covered by HR 676.)
A family earning $50,000 would pay $2375 ($198 per month). $60,000 = $2850, or $237.50 per month. And if you’re lucky enough to be raking in $100,000 per year you’d pay $4750 ($395.80 monthly). For everything! No deductibles! No co-payments! You could choose your own provider. Anytime. Anywhere. For the whole family!
The family of four next door to me pays $10,000 yearly premiums, plus deductibles and co-pays. They earn about $60,000 per year. Under HR 676 they would get what amounts to no less than a $7150 annual “wage increase”. ($595.80 per month) That’s how much less they’d be paying for medical care under HR 676.)
So why doesn’t Congress jump on the HR 676 bandwagon? Because the for-profit health care industry – that treats people like commodities instead of patients – buys off Congress through campaign financing, that’s why! That industry has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. That “interest” of course is profits.
Congress will continue to allow working class Americans to be squeezed by the health care industry unless we are willing to do what is necessary to stop that “legalized” theft.
Corporations will continue to use the excuse of “non-competitiveness” because of health care costs as “justification” for moving our jobs offshore, or for holding down our wages. Both results would further “squeeze” us.
People can continue with their “woe is me” laments, but let’s face it; they are self-defeating. What has that refrain gotten us? A health care crisis, and a squeezing of working America’s pocket book. (50% of all the bankruptcies filed by working class Americans are the result of medical debt! Most of the people devastated by such debt have some form of insurance!)
We can solve our nation’s health care crisis and by doing so give working America an immediate “wage increase”. It will take action on our parts! One message Congress hears loud and clear is the promise of “ballot box revenge”. If Members of Congress continue to choose to sell us out to the for-profit health care industry those Members do not deserve our support! It is literally a matter of life and death!
For more information on HR 676, go to UFHC.org or Healthcare-NOW.org. Take the time to do a little research, and then take some action. (You’ll find resources on either website for doing so.)
Congress won’t do the right thing unless forced. The buck stops with us. Period!
As a labor candidate for state office, I gotta have this book!
Thanks for the post. My dad, Nat Goldfinger, an economist and the Research Director of the AFL-CIO until his death in 1976 would roll over in his grave at the state of the economy now. He warned of corporate greed, and the take over of the government by corporations, but I don’t think even he could have imagined that things could go as wrong as they have in such a few short decades. I’m glad some people are telling the truth about the state of things, unlike the most of the mainstream media most of the time; and I’m glad some people are listening, unlike the largely somnambulant population.
-Judy Adams
Our government has lied and continues to lie to the American people. We have lost our civil liberties, our basic freedoms, our quality of life, our educational opportunities, our standard of living, our credibility with the rest of the world, our incomes, our decent jobs, our future retirement protections, our health care … our hope …
It is because we, as a nation, have become so complicit, so passive and apathetic that we have given the people that we erroneously believed would protect us, complete control over our lives, simply because they have won elections, that we are in this mess. I too believed that the reason we have leaders is so they will in fact lead responsibly and the rest of us don’t always have to monitor every single decision that they make on our behalf. I was wrong.
We are so afraid to speak out and tell our leaders just what we want, so afraid we will be arrested for treason or conspiracy, because we do not agree with what our government is doing, perhaps actually believing we no longer have a right to protest which supposedly is still guaranteed by our Constitution (but hey, maybe we don’t). Our president uses the excuse of executive privilege for whatever he wants to pass, or deny or veto, and Congress lets him. We, as voting Americans have allowed it.
Now it seems it is ALMOST too late. We are stuck, unless the people who really are trying to represent the American people will actually do so, instead of worshiping money and selling out our nation to the highest bidder.
Let’s make the supporting voices for single payer health care heard!
38,000 Health Insurance Executives will be in San Francisco. In solidarity with protests on June 19th and in celebration of Juneteenth, the anniversary of the emancipation from slavery and now our fight for emancipation from the insurance companies, health care activists around the country are organizing demonstrations at insurance companies with patients, nurses, doctors, social workers, and Americans of every stripe protesting the National Health Insurance industry to say:
Health Care YES! Health Insurance
NO! Guaranteed, Single Payer Health Care NOW!
TAKE ACTION JUNE 19th!
What: National Protest Against “AHIP” Health Insurance Convention
True Democrat –
Thanks for your post!
Although I live several hundred mikes from SF, I am nonetheless greatly interested in attending the June 19 solidarity protest.
There is one question I’d like answered, but I will qualify it with a comment:
Ever since Rep. John Conyers first introduced HR 676, I have actively supported the bill. I can’t tell you how many health care forums I’ve attended. Most of them were organized by well-meaning people, but in almost every instance only one out of four or five of the panelists were HR 676 advocates. The others had their own, shall we say, “band-aid” approaches. At the end of each of those kinds of forums people left confused, without a clear direction on what to do next.
I have decided to devote all my health care advocacy time to HR 676. I do not want to invest time, energy and money on “yet to be decided” health care reform concepts. That process, in my opinion, allows the opponents of health care reform to whittle-down our demands. What’s more, I think that solidarity protests are great, providing people have something to do the day following the protest, and the day after, and the day after….to further advocate for (in this case) HR 676. Otherwise, folks go away from protests confused and without a clear program that leads to success. I think people need to hear that HR 676 is the only solution, but because it is languishing in Committee it will not be heard unless we the people demand it! They need to hear that writing letters to Congress stating that their votes will only be given to Congressional co-sponsors of HR 676 is one action plan. Another is talking up HR 676 with family, friends and neighbors, and then getting them to write letters too.
Here’s the question: Will the solidarity protest focus on enacting HR 676, or will it include “soup de jour”, Baskin-Robbins-type flavor of the month “newest” health care schemes?
Looking forward to your response.
Healthcare-Now! (www.healthcare-now.org) is 100% behind Rep. Conyers’ HR 676. At the protest I am planning to attend, the media will be contacted, hopefully they will show and there hopefully on the air talk and spread the word on single payer health care.
If 676 ever gets out of committee where it has sat forever, all those in favor of 676 must get their Congress persons to 1. co-sponsor 676, 2. fight that the bill never gets watered down to meet the needs of the insurance industry, the bill is all about getting rid of the greedy profit making jackals, and providing the best health care to ALL Americans.
As of 5-11-08:
HR 676 currently has 90 co-sponsors in addition to Conyers.
Co-sponsors and bill text are here:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.00676:
HR 676 has been endorsed by 409 union organizations in 48 states
including 104 Central Labor Councils and Area Labor Federations and 33 state AFL-CIO’s (KY, PA, CT, OH, DE, ND, WA, SC, WY, VT, FL, WI, WV, SD,NC, MO, MN, ME, AR, MD-DC, TX, IA, AZ, TN, OR, GA, OK, KS, CO, IN, AL, CA & AK).