Squeezing the American Dream: Workers Face Diminishing Returns

[keep_it_real]

-snip-

The writer's central thesis is, "One of the least examined but most important trends taking place in the United States today is the broad decline in the status and treatment of American workers -- white-collar and blue-collar workers, middle-class and low-end workers -- that began nearly three decades ago, gradually gathered momentum, and hit with full force soon after the turn of this century. A profound shift has left a broad swath of the American workforce on a lower plain than in decades past, with health coverage, pension benefits, job security, workloads, stress levels, and often wages growing worse for millions of workers."

It is also chockablock with stories of daily humiliations and insults administered to employees by their superiors and/or the policies of the companies they work for.

http://www.alternet.org/workplace/87405/?page=1

[JHB]

1. The sad part is that it's NOT one of the least examined...

...it's that the topic bubbles up in books every few years, but the lessons never gain any political traction.

On my journal page I preserved an old post of mine talking about one of the earliest series of books on this subject, by James B. Steele and Donald L. Barlett from reporting they did for the Philadelphia Enquirer and elsewhere, goimng back to the early 90s surveying the damage done by Reagan and Poppy Bush: the blue collar side of all the news about "mergermania", leveraged buy-outs, "golden parachutes", corporate malfeasance (sometimes legalized, sometimes not). Some of the personalities you know. Others you don't. And some of the ones you do know might surprise you as to which side they were on.

After some 16 years the series is a little dated, but not nearly as dated as it should be.


------------------------
A good series on the scuttling of the middle class...
Posted by JHB in General Discussion (01/01/06 through 01/22/2007)
Wed Sep 20th 2006, 12:37 PM
I originally posted this elsewhere, but for resource value it's worth repeating here:
--------------------------------------------------------

One of the things I find that comes up when talking with people about the economy, globalization, etc., is many peoples' belief that it was all rather inevitable, so complaining about it is like complaining about the tide: you can do it, but it's pointless.

I don't have to wonder why they think that -- the "liberal" media has repeated the theme for nearly thirty years now -- but sometimes I wonder how it is that I became "inoculated" against this. Why am I so sure things didn't have to play out this way and that deliberate political decisions were at least as important as "the invisible hand" in bringing about what Paul Krugman called "The Great Unraveling".

Well, part of it was what I'd been reading. I can't exactly give my full reading list for the last 20 years, but I can recommend a few books that will help when it comes to fixing the "What's the Matter with Kansas?" and "Talking to an Elephant" problems.

Reporters James B. Steele and Donald L. Barlett wrote a series of articles, some for The Philadelphia Enquirer, some for Time, on how the changing economy was playing out for ordinary people. The first, published in book form in 1992, is a little dated, but that actually works in its favor now, since it's entirely pre-Clinton. The later series/books followed up on the same or similar themes, and collectively they serve as quite an information source and teaching tool when you try to explain to people just how far this "squeeze the middle" and "starve the beast" effort goes back.

Pick'em up at your library, or at a bookstore, and get

America: What Went Wrong?
by James B Steele, Donald L. Barlett

Paperback: 252 pages
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (January 1, 1992)
ISBN: 0836270010
"Worried that you are falling behind, not living as well as you once did?..."

Chapter 1 of "America: What Went Wrong" can be found here:
http://www.politicalindex.com/wrong1.htm


AMERICA: WHO REALLY PAYS THE TAXES?
by Donald L. Barlett

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Remaindered Marked edition (March 23, 1994)
ISBN: 0671871579

America: Who Stole The Dream?
by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele

Paperback: 276 pages
Publisher: Andrews McMeel Publishing (June 1, 1996)
ISBN: 0836213149
"Let's suppose, for a moment, there was a country where the people in charge charted a course that eliminated millions of good paying jobs..."

The Great American Tax Dodge: How Spiraling Fraud and Avoidance Are Killing Fairness, Destroying the Income Tax, and Costing You
by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele

Paperback: 302 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; 1st Califo edition (September 2, 2002)
ISBN: 0520236106
"A woman forms a company to conduct "research" for the benefit of her minor children and writes a monthly "rent" check to her husband to..."

Critical Condition : How Health Care in America Became Big Business--and Bad Medicine
by Donald L. Barlett, James B. Steele

Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (October 5, 2004)
ISBN: 0385504543

JHB

[keep_it_real]

7. I have the first two of the Barlett books you posted

Powerful stuff.

[raccoon]

2. C'mon, let's get this on Greatest! Rec'd. nt

[nashville_brook]

3. that is a great read!

thanks for posting...k n r, etc..

[formercia]

4. There is no 'American Dream', there never was one.

It was all propaganda, fed to us by Madison Avenue to get us to work our asses off, "keep up with the Joneses", consume, consume, consume and hopefully build up a small retirement account which disappears when the funds get looted. Empty promises, blowing smoke up our collective asses since the end of WWII, all for nothing.

[conscious evolution]

5. American Nightmare is more like it

Consume and create.
Conform and compete.
Conform and compete.
Consume and create.

With such diametricly opposed ideals being programmed into us from birth by the media,churches and goverment institutions is it any wonder that Americans are so confused and out of touch with reality?

[formercia]

6. Like any good con game, you have to keep the 'mark' off balance.

Send conflicting messages, always keep moving the goal posts, let them build up equity then throw in a recession so that they lose ground and have to work even harder to keep up.

It worked for a long time and a small percentage of the population became very wealthy as a result, but now there's no room at the top and it's time to create a permanent under class with a small merchant class to serve their needs.

Just like the old days before the American Revolution.

[raccoon]

8. Great post!

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true,
Or is it something worse?"

Bruce Springsteen

[formercia]

9. Thanks.

Someone is bound to make a comment on my bad grammar.:hi:

[darkmaestro019]

10. (sigh)

I just love how all articles like this--end with the "...and do something about..."

like WHAT? What?

I moved back to FL in February and I've turned in maybe forty job applications since then. I haven't applied at Walmart--yet--because last time I worked there it was as a temp to slightly rearrange their shelves to compete with the new Target. I worked for three and a half weeks and got paid for two.

Like WHAT, what should we do? I'm not gonna have enough gas in my borrowed truck to REACH the revolution if there ever is one!

[JHB]

12. That was part of my reason for posting about the older books...

...because for a reporter with this "beat" von Hoffman sounds surprizingly (or maybe not so surprizingly) ignorant of previous work on the subject.

Because what can we, individually, "do something about" it? Not much.

But what we can do in our own little corner of the world is fight it however you're able to, and assist those who can do more. If all you're in a position to do when some blowhard starts equating higher taxes on the rich with socialism is laugh at him, then laugh loud and hard. Simply not letting "their" language go unchallenged is a help.

[Raksha]

11. K & R

What I don't understand is why are being sold on the "inevitability" of globalization? Even Obama does this when he talks about "retraining" former factory workers, as he did in 2005 in a commencement speech. What nobody ever talks about is why not REBUILD our manufacturing base in America? If you even consider it, you're accused of being quaint, Luddite, "protectionist" and hopelessly regressive. WHY???

At some point, the gods of macroeconomics decreed that China was to do most of the manufacturing for the world, while America was to become a high-tech and "service" economy. It was all a huge con, a bait-and-switch game, because now even the high-tech and service jobs are being outsourced.

It's obvious that a healthy economy is a diversified one, and not so long ago that's exactly what we had in America. And EVERYONE was better off than they are now. So why does nobody talk seriously about having one again?