American wages stagnant: What is to be done?

‘In a recent article Robert Reich pointed out that American wages have stagnant for over 40 years. Not answered is why the alarm bells were not sounded.’

The alarm bells were sounded but were muted by the institutions and social forces responsible for galvanizing social action to address this assault on the American working class. As a result, the American working class has been economically, intellectually, morally and physically devastated. What happened was the complete triumph of the Corporate ruling class over labor.

How did it come to this?

To begin with globalization has led American workers to move from higher paid manufacturing jobs to lower paid service jobs. This occupation switching due to international trade led to real wage loss of 12 to 17% [Ebenstein]. Since 2001 the U.S. has lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs to China alone-that despite U.S. factory workers being far more productive. The average hourly wages for Chinese factory worker are less than a tenth the average of U.S. counterpart [BLS]. However, it is twice as cheap to live in China and China has a far superior infrastructure so raw materials can move from point A to point B in the shortest time and for the minimal price. As a result, American Capitalists realize far greater profits utilizing Chinese labor instead of U.S. labor. Since 1978 American workers had an 11.2% increase in compensation while American CEO’s average income was $15.6 million per year a 937% increase in earnings, 70% faster than the rise in the stock market [Economic Policy Institute].

Especially hard hit by the decline in industrial and agricultural employment of recent decades are the rural areas and small towns inhabited by predominately conservative evangelical white labor. This has generated enormous economic insecurity, community disruptions and breakdowns.

Improved technology and increased productivity, rather than raising living standards, have actually lowered them for the vast majority of working people, creating stagnant wages and permanent structural unemployment [Brynjolfsson and McAfee].

 Trade unions the main force holding corporate America in check has been effectively nullified.

U.S. workers, without a political voice and leadership, have been divided and pitted against one another through corporate and media anti-union indoctrination.

Fifty years ago, nearly a third of U.S. workers belonged to a union. Today fewer than 7% of private sector workers are unionized. [Reich]. Each year, all of the nation’s unions spend about

$48 million on lobbying, while Corporate America spends more than $2.5 billion and this does not include the billions funneled to anti-union political packs and organizations.

The legal system in the United States has systematically ruled against unions and the U.S. worker. For example, the Supreme Court in Janus v AFSCME (June 27, 2018) ruled that public-sector unions cannot require union dues from workers who do not choose to join a union in a unionized business and do not have to pay for collective bargaining.

Trump and the Executive Branch has taken numerous anti-union actions: scrapping several worker safeties rules, rolling back a regulation extending overtime pay to millions more workers

and killing a rule that required Wall Street firms to act in the best interest of workers when overseeing their 404(k) plans costing workers billions of dollars.

As of Q3 2019, the bottom 50% of households had $1.67 trillion or 1.6% of the U.S. net worth verses $74.5 trillion or 70% for the top 10%. Even worse, the wealth gap between white and black families nearly tripled from $85 thousand in 1984 to $236 thousand in 2009. From an international perspective the difference in U.S. median and mean wealth per adult is over 600%.

Workers healthcare fair no better. With a U.S. GDP of $19 trillion, healthcare costs were about

$3.2 trillion or about $10,000 per person in a country of 320 million people. This is an industry

Invested in the status quo.

Why haven’t the American workers organized to challenge these assaults from Corporate

America on their socio-economic well-being?

There are two main reasons for this lack of labor solidarity: institutional racism and worker’s confused worldview.

Racial animus has coursed through American history, poisoning both those that hate and those who are hated. Race has contaminated the American trade union movement making it difficult for poor whites, threated by job loss, globalization, and the loss of white privilege, to make common cause with African Americans, Hispanic-Americans and immigrants. Unwilling to share the bounty of state with other races, creeds, heritages and colors, real Americans-the white ones-have prevented the erection of a welfare state at all. [Eduardo Porter]

The American corporate elite dominate the political system and mass media, maintaining its control through coercion and indoctrination of the American population, especially the poorly educated. Through systematic attacks on public education with the goal of drastically reducing the public sector, undermining teachers’ unions and restricting access to science-based knowledge and education. Right-wing mass media sources like Fox news, Liberty Nation, et. al. has promoted “American Individualism”- the individual should possess the freedom to define himself as oppose to a government definition of who he is- and Evangelicalism to a population of poorly educated individuals.   

Evangelicalism believe the bible is God’s inspired word to humankind, perfect in truth in the original text, it is the final authority in all matters of doctrine and faith-above all human authority [EvangelicalsBeliefs.com] 

 Evangelicals are anti-science, anti-expertise, tribal and distrusts “Big government”. They have fueled the rise of Trumpism-the ascendency of the notion that people whom we should trust least are the people who know what they’re talking about. They are poorly educated and economically distressed.

In place of expertise, we have elevated the Gut and the Gut is a moron, we occasionally dress up the by calling it common sense [Pierce].

Pro-Trump white labor, parochial in their worldview, will not coalesce with non-white labor as equals.

There will be no successful labor movement in solidarity with poor white workers in the United States in the foreseeable future.

 Organized labor will continue to decline in economic and political significance and all working people, white and non-white, will suffer.

~MP