Today the AFL-CIO held its first session of their exciting Summer Book Group, in which well-known authors discuss their new books on jobs, inequality, and the U.S. financial crisis, all of which the first speaker has written about extensively.
Jeff Faux, author of the new book The Servant Economy: Where America’s Elite is Sending the Middle Class, was the speaker for the first session of the series. Faux’s impressive resume includes distinguished fellow at the Economic Policy Institute, which he was the founder of, the Carnegie Scholar Award, a Fellowship at the Institute of Politics at Harvard, the founder of the Global Policy Network, as well as a member of five different trade unions over his career (Whew! Quite the list).
Mr. Faux was first introduced by by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, who described Faux as a prophet of the economy, seeing as he accurately predicted the, what Faux says, is the “permanent” decline of the middle class.
To begin, Mr. Faux asked the room to say whether they thought,, by a show of hands, if our country’s next generation would be worse off than our own. Not surprisingly, almost all hands raised in the air. His next question, was if each person in the room believed that they personally would be financially okay for the next 10-15 years. This time, the room seemed divided. Most of the older individuals in the crowd raised timid hands, but anyone looking to be younger than 30 remained still. According to the information discussed in Faux’s book, the feelings of insecurity by the younger generation are alarmingly justifiable.
The Servant Economy tells the story of struggling americans, and paints a bleak picture of our country’s immediate financial future. In the book, Faux notes that the drop in the wages and living standards of the middle class is not simply because of the recession, but has actually been declining for 30 years. For those who disagree, Faux discusses how average wages have stagnated since 1979, and that the decades between that year and the crash in 2008 only looked prosperous because family income went up, and the debt boom still existed. But those things changed after 2008, and now more women than men are employed in labor and there is no longer such rampant access to easy credit.
According to Faux, the book begins with a proposition, which is that the United States no longer has the means to fulfill three American Dreams, which are the Business and Wall Street’s wish to deregulate government, our military’s and foreign policy’s desire for global dominance, and the average american’s dream to move upwards in their standard of living. For each of these dreams to be reached, says Faux, people believe that liberals and conservatives must reach some sort of agreement, or that a bargain must be made. The thing is, he says, is that the bargain has already been made and that is that in order for the first two dreams to survive, the third must be crushed, effectively imprisoning the middle class where they are, and leaving them with no hope to better their lot in life.
After all of this, the room was momentarily taken aback when Faux stated that the system “is not broken”. The audience breath let out however when he explained that this is only true for the corporate elite.
The facts are, he says, that we are looking into a future of lower wages and benefits, even in the case of recovery. Faux says that of course we will create more jobs, but that those jobs will be “paying $10 to $12 an hour, not $20 to $30.” Even making the assumption of recovery, “you are still looking down the barrel,” he says.
Moving on into conversation about what put our country in this place, Faux discussed his plans to vote to re-elect President Obama. He argued that “the other guy” running, leaves him no choice but to do so. However, he claims it is not so much Mitt Romney, but the republican party in power that “has become the worst reactionary in politics” and that the people Romney will bring to the white house “are from a pool of reactionary activists and financial lunatics.” Tax cuts for the top 1%, he says, are ludacris.
However Faux also mentioned that although President Obama has passed certain reforms, he has not proposed nearly enough to save the country.
“Our country sinking,” Faux said; “it is a downward sloping curve for american standards of living.” He now predicts that, at best, the next four years will remain the same for our economy. The other predictions outlined in his new book include that the two-tier wage system will grow to a three-tiered one, and then four, and so on. He sees a shrinking body of labor and even lower wages, and desperate governments moving to privatize “everything in site.” Another startling prophecy he mentioned in that Wall Street will own American education, leaving college grads with $10-$12/hr wages, debt, and their best prospect of a job being at apple, which they will say is temporary. These temporary twenty-somethings will turn into thirty-somethings, and then forty-somethings. Finally, he sees there being generational tensions, with grandchildren feeling sore at their grandparents about their luck.
On this topic, Faux provided a personal story about a time when he visited steel mill workers in Ohio. After asking one worker about the difference he saw in his job before the union and afterwards. The steel-mill worker remarked that unionizing made the the young and old workers stop fighting amongst each other. He explained that prior to their contract, older workers never wanted to share their valuable skills with the younger workers, for fear of being fired once the younger workers could surpass them. But now that is was not possible for that to happen, the worker saw that unionizing made the young and old work together.
This is precisely what Faux says we will start seeing dissappear. The rights as workers that we have gained since the New Deal, that we take for granted, will start to go away, as a result of what he dubs “Big Money” ruling the country. A clean workplace, freedom to use the bathroom without asking, all of those things will go away. These are things that Faux says make our “service economy turn to a servant economy”.
Amongst the depressing facts and theories that Faux offers in his new book, he also offers ideas for a change of course. “We have to face what we are headed for,” he says, “face that there are no private solutions. Most Americans think that they will be ok- not so. We will not have Americans sitting on their own little islands of prosperity while the country goes down the toilet.”
Electing only democrats is not a solution either, says Faux. “Bill Clinton was from a little town called Hope, Barack Obama had the audacity to hope,” he reminded the room, but action, it seems, is the only thing Faux has faith in. That action, is not creating more jobs, because those new jobs will not support middle class standards of living, but is to “get rid of the tsunami of money going to corporate America.”
To make things right, Faux says there must be more government, in a time when no one trusts government. “Many people don’t seem to realize this is a big country,” he said; “A big country needs big government! We cannot run this country on a government the size of Honduras.”
What we need, said Faux, is a national motivation for a constitutional amendment that will stop the legal proposition that money equals free speech and that corporations are people. He claimed that public financing doesn’t work anymore, and gave the room the only anecdote straight from his book that he was willing to offer:
Faux’s anecdote sends a clear message about what he believes we need to do to right our economic situation. But one audience member asked why more people were not pissed off. “Many people are pissed off,” he said, “they just don’t know who to be pissed off at. So they turn on each other.” This, Faux claims, is what makes working class people target each other on issues such as immigration, etc.
“People are waiting on a recovery,” said Faux. “But the recovery is here, this is it.”
Faux’s ideas certainly are ominous and possibly hard to swallow. But one can certainly see the truth in it, and we can certainly take a stand together, to tackle corporations and those in power who want to crush that third American dream.