The Wall Street Journal Editorials
Class Struggle
American workers have a chance to be heard
November 15, 2006
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.
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.
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 repeatedly 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.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS