(Do you love this country? Do you think it's the greatest ever? Do you think we should strive for economic justice? Read this essay, published in 2003, and tell me...)
Imagine a country where one out of five children is born into poverty and wealth is being redistributed upward. Since the 1970s, the top 1 percent of households has doubled their share of the nation’s wealth. The top 1 percent has close to 40 percent of the wealth—nearly the same amount as the bottom 95 percent of households.
Imagine a country where economic inequality is going back to the future circa the 1930s. The combined after-tax income of the top 1 percent of tax filers was about half that of the bottom 50 percent of tax filers in 1986. By the late 1990s, the top 1 percent had a larger share of after-tax income than the bottom 50 percent.
Imagine a country with a greed surplus and justice deficit.
Imagine a country where the poor and middle class bear the brunt of severe cutbacks in education, health, environmental programs, and other public services to close state and federal budget deficits fueled by ballooning tax giveaways for wealthy households and corporations.
It’s not Argentina.
Imagine a country which demands that people work for a living while denying many a living wage.
Imagine a country where health care aides can’t afford health insurance. Where people working in the food industry depend on food banks to help feed their children. Where childcare teachers don’t make enough to save for their own children’s education.
It’s not the Philippines.
Imagine a country where productivity went up, but workers’ wages went down.
In the words of the national labor department, “As the productivity of workers increases, one would expect worker compensation [wages and benefits] to experience similar gains.” That’s not what happened.
Since 1968, worker productivity has risen 81 percent while the average hourly wage barely budged, adjusting for inflation, and the real value of the minimum wage dropped 38 percent.
Imagine a country where the minimum wage just doesn’t add up. Where minimum wage workers earn more than a third less than their counterparts earned a third of a century ago, adjusting for inflation. Where a couple with two children would have to work more than three full-time jobs at the $5.15 minimum wage to make ends meet.
It’s not Mexico.
Imagine a country where some of the worst CEOs make millions more in a year than the best CEOs of earlier generations made in their lifetimes. CEOs made 45 times the pay of average production and nonsupervisory workers in 1980. They made 96 times as much in 1990, 160 times as much in 1995 and 369 times as much in 2001. Back in 1960, CEOs made an average 38 times more than schoolteachers. CEOs made 63 times as much in 1990 and 264 times as much as public school teachers in 2001.
Imagine a country that had a record-breaking ten-year economic expansion in 1991-2001, but millions of workers make wages so low they have to choose between eating or heating, health care or childcare.
A leading business magazine observed, “People who worked hard to make their companies competitive are angry at the way the profits are distributed. They think it is unfair, and they are right.”
It’s not England.
(There is much, much more. Take a few minutes and read the whole thing.)
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