By
BOB HERBERT
20/01/08 "New
York Times"
I think of the people running this country as the
mad-dashers, a largely confused and inconsistent group
lurching ineffectively from one enormous problem to another.
They’ve made a hash of a war
that never should have been launched. They can’t find bin
Laden. They’ve been shocked by
the subprime debacle. They’re lost in a maze on health care.
Now, like children who have
eaten too much sugar, they are frantically trying to figure
out how to put a few dollars into the hands of working
people to stimulate an enfeebled economy.
They should stop, take a
deep breath and acknowledge the obvious: the way to put
money into the hands of working people is to make sure they
have access to good jobs at good wages. That has long been
known, but it hasn’t been the policy in this country for
many years.
Big business and the federal
government have worked hand in hand to squeeze the daylights
out of working people, stripping them (in an era of
downsizing and globalization) of much of their bargaining
power while ferociously pursuing fiscal policies that
radically favored the privileged few.
My colleague at The Times,
David Cay Johnston, took a look at income patterns in the
U.S. over the past few decades in his new book, “Free Lunch:
How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government
Expense (and Stick You With the Bill).”
From 1980 to 2005 the
national economy, adjusted for inflation, more than doubled.
(Because of population growth, the actual increase per
capita was about 66 percent.) But the average income for the
vast majority of Americans actually declined during that
period. The standard of living for the average family has
improved not because incomes have grown, but because women
have gone into the workplace in droves.
The peak income year for the
bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973 — when
the average income per taxpayer (adjusted for inflation) was
$33,001. That is nearly $4,000 higher than the average in
2005.
It’s incredible but true: 90
percent of the population missed out on the income gains
during that long period.
Mr. Johnston does not mince
words: “The pattern here is clear. The rich are getting
fabulously richer, the vast majority are somewhat worse off,
and the bottom half — for all practical purposes, the poor —
are being savaged by our current economic policies.”
His words are echoed in a
proposed stimulus plan currently offered by the Economic
Policy Institute in Washington. (The plan is available on
its Web site,
epi.org.) Stressing that any stimulus package should be
“fair,” the authors of the institute’s proposal wrote:
“The distribution of wages,
income and wealth in the United States has become vastly
more unequal over the last 30 years. In fact, this country
has a more unequal distribution of income than any other
advanced country.”
Economic alarm bells have
been ringing in the U.S. for some time. There was no sense
of urgency as long as those in the lower ranks were sinking
in the mortgage muck and the middle class was raiding the
piggy bank otherwise known as home equity.
But now that the privileged
few are threatened (Merrill Lynch took a $9.8 billion
fourth-quarter hit, and the stock market has spent the first
part of the year behaving like an Olympic diving champion),
it’s suddenly time to take action.
There is no question that
some kind of stimulus package geared to the needs of
ordinary Americans is in order. But that won’t begin to
solve the fundamental problem.
Good jobs at good wages —
lots of them, growing like spring flowers in an endlessly
fertile field — is the absolutely essential basis for a
thriving American economy and a broad-based rise in
standards of living.
Forget all the CNBC chatter
about Fed policy and bargain stocks. For ordinary Americans,
jobs are the be-all and end-all. And an America awash in new
jobs will require a political environment that respects and
rewards work and aggressively pursues creative policies
designed to radically expand employment.
I’d start with a broad
program to rebuild the American infrastructure. This would
have the dual benefit of putting large numbers of people to
work and answering a crying need. The infrastructure is in
sorry shape. New Orleans comes to mind, and the tragic
bridge collapse in Minneapolis.
The country that gave us the
Marshall Plan to rebuild postwar Europe ought to be able, 60
years later, to reconstitute its own sagging infrastructure.
There are also untold
numbers of jobs and myriad societal benefits to be reaped
from a sustained, good-faith effort to achieve energy
self-sufficiency. Think Manhattan Project.
The possibilities are
limitless. We could create an entire generation of new jobs
and build a bigger and fairer economy for the 21st century.
If only we were serious.
