The most common complaint I hear regarding the Williamstown school system is about salaries and benefits. Williamstown, Vt., is an economically bifurcated town with many in the financially comfortable classes (middle class and up and employed) and just as many in the financially uncomfortable and untenable classes. In addition we have many small “mom ‘n pop” type shops that invariably are struggling to keep their business heads above water. All in all a good cauldron in which to bring a resentment of tax payer funded decent wages and benefits to a boil.
How did this come to pass that we as a society are willing to sacrifice our middle class way of life and all the accouterments that followed? How have we reached the point where it has become such a struggle to create a simple life that gives us time to spend with our families and involve ourselves in our communities and exercise real political power over our various governments? Why are we losing what was once the source of American pride and strength?
I remember seeing Alan Greenspan on one of the cable business channels a couple of years ago. Greenspan was discussing with the interviewer the troubles caused by the great disparity in wealth and wages in the United States. According to Greenspan this issue presented grave dangers that our collective governments must move boldly to address – by bringing in more foreign workers to give wage competition to those making in the $70,000 and $90,000 range.
That’s right. The problem was not that the highest wage earners were making hundreds or thousands of times the wages of the lowest paid workers, but according to Greenspan the problem was the top middle class levels were making four or five times the lowest wages. If Alan Greenspan hadn’t spent so much of my life helping with or actually running the nation’s economy this wouldn’t really be important. Be he did, and he has been and continues to be enormously influential, and our nation’s economic policies reflect this every day: bring the middle class wages down to make our businesses more competitive and attractive as investments for the already wealthy.
The biggest obstacle in this pursuit of greater accumulated wealth for a dwindling percentage of the population has been the unions.
You remember unions, don’t you? The memberships of these organizations were machine gunned down by company paid private mercenaries and attacked by our own US military and clubbed by the local municipal police squads. Unions and their memberships braved long periods of unemployment and the accompanying hardships while companies hired cheap “scab” labor too worn out by their own unemployment to resist a job offer.
But the unions prevailed and in partnership with Democratic and Republican presidents built a progressive middle class that by the early 1960s was the envy of the world.
Power is a zero sum game. The political might that shifted from the rich and famous to the unwashed middle class masses due to the rise of work place unions was something not seen since the emergence of the merchant class in middle ages Europe or England’s Magna Carta shortly afterwards. Those with the ruling might did not really appreciate the reality of what they had to give up so others could gain … and this has stayed true to this day.
The kings and queens of our government protected corporations are having a field day turning the newly poor against the middle class these newly poor were forced out of due to the policies brought forth by those same kings and queens. But first they had to make these people the newly poor, and they did this by shipping the middle class jobs out of country to low cost labor nations where middle class was nothing more than a tale of far off places. Simultaneously the unions representing jobs that couldn’t be sent overseas, such as air traffic controllers, were then attacked relentlessly and driven into an oblivion of corporate toe sucking desperately pleading to keep the jobs, any jobs, at any price.
Poor people, after all, are convenient. They don’t have time or energy to be politically active, and despite the occasional pitch fork style uprising/riot they are extremely compliant in society and at work.
Today’s problem area for the rich, famous and powerful is the likes of the NEA and other government worker unions. These unions have smartly flexed their political muscle to ensure we have a balance in at least some of our work places, and because of their political strength they have become targets of the those who covet all the power. Because the astronomically wealthy also control most of what we hear and discuss the conversation has been about the evils of unions – not the evils of an economic system designed to function best for a few.
I was in a local establishment not long ago and heard the expected complaint about the teachers’ union being the biggest problem with reducing educational costs. “Why aren’t you asking,” I inquired, “a different question. Why aren’t you asking why these strong middle class wages aren’t the norm? Why aren’t we trying to lift others up instead of dragging the teachers down?”
I haven’t heard a good answer yet.
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