Prosperity for all?

by Greg Godwin

Watching the Sunday morning pundits on their network talk shows 
or reading the op-ed pages of the daily newspapers would lead one 
to believe that the United States is enjoying an unprecedented 
burst of prosperity. We hear again and again of the longest 
continuous economic expansion in US history, of nearly full 
employment, and the dizzying rise of stock prices.

The media marvel at the performance of our great economic engine 
— the giant corporations are wallowing in profits and new high-
tech companies are springing up, producing more and more instant 
millionaires. If the media are to be believed, we are truly 
living in the most gilded age of history.

But could there be something distorted or missing with this 
picture? Could there be people left out of this prosperity?

Could it be that most of the economic expansion during this 
period has been channelled to the wealthy? Is it possible that 
all the employment growth is in low paying jobs?

The researchers at the progressive Massachusetts-based think 
tank, the National Priorities Project, demonstrate the hollowness 
of the celebrated economic miracle. Their careful studies show 
that there are big winners in the recent period, but they are 
largely found within the privileged top 10 percent of wealth 
holders.

They point out in their 1998 National report, Are You Winning 
or Losing? How Federal Choices Affect You and Your Community, 
that the richest 10 percent of Americans have seen their wealth 
increase from about 50 percent of total wealth in 1974 to 69 
percent of all of America's wealth in 1994.

The other 90 percent of the population — the vast majority of 
Americans — has seen its share drop from 50 percent in 1974 to 
only 31 percent in 1994 (a revelation that should provoke outrage 
and not celebration)!

While Wall Street conjures an image of unprecedented prosperity, 
and the media dutifully crows about capitalism's great success, 
the undisputed fact is that workers' weekly earnings have been 
declining since the early '70s. (There has been a slight increase 
in the last few years, but not enough to offset earlier losses.)

This has, along with government transfers to the rich — through 
tax breaks and outright subsidies, accounted for the profound 
shift in wealth to the rich.

Hollow statistics

The National Priorities Project staff show that while employment 
may be high, there has been a radical shift in the kinds of jobs 
available to Americans. Workers have lost good paying 
manufacturing jobs, only to take low-paying unskilled, often 
temporary work.

Nearly half of the occupations responsible for most new jobs from 
1994-2005 will pay less than the poverty level.

Corporate downsizing has taken a great toll on better paying 
jobs: 445,000 jobs have been lost since 1995. These workers lose 
the wages and benefits of extended employment. More often than 
not, they find employment at low paying, entry level positions.

Instead of helping the embattled American worker, the Federal 
authorities have reduced job creation and job training by 58 
percent from 1979 levels. The US Government provides less than 
one fifth of what other industrial countries allocate to training 
and job creation.

The minimum wage at full-time, yearly employment fails to elevate 
a family of four above the federally established poverty level.

In addition, our elected representatives have sliced public 
transport funding by 46 percent over the last 17 years, further 
burdening urban workers.

The National Priorities Project report documents the shameful 
corporate welfare that stands in stark, cynical contrast to the 
government's callused neglect of poor and working people. As a 
vivid example, the document cites the huge, $87 million subsidies 
extended to ATT and IBM over the last two years. At the same 
time, these giant corporations cut their workforce by 245,000 
jobs.

Child poverty

Tragically, the "prosperity" of the '90s has left 10 million 
American children — 21 percent of all children — in poverty. 
According to the National Priorities project, four million 
children will suffer from hunger with another nine million at 
risk of hunger.

The US Government does less to remedy poverty among children than 
any other industrialised country. As a result, child poverty is 
three to five times higher in the US than any Western European 
country.

Our children face the same class disadvantage with the education 
system. Children attending schools in wealthy areas enjoy a much 
higher investment in education than their counterparts in the 
poorer areas.

The Federal Government fails to address the educational gap — 
the chasm between the low budget public education of working 
class youth and the elite private school education of the 
wealthy.

Less than three percent of tax revenue goes to the schools, with 
the Federal Government's share of educational expenditure 
dropping from 9.8 percent to 6.8 percent since 1980.

Military adventures against Iraq, Yugoslavia, or illusive 
"terrorists" are pathetic attempts to create an adversary to the 
obscenely powerful military might that we maintain at nearly Cold 
War levels. Yet this military might stands by when client states 
slaughter their political opponents as they have for so long in 
Indonesia and East Timor.

Like all imperialist powers, our government maintains an excess 
of force to discourage any potential challenge. In reality, the 
US military constitutes a private security agency for multi-
national corporations, financed by US taxpayers.

Today, corporations pay only about 15 percent of the total taxes 
collected. Their share has fallen from about 33 percent in the 
1940s, according to the NPP report.

Tax breaks for the rich

At the same time, corporations receive about $150 billion a year 
in tax breaks and subsidies, a system of welfare for the rich and 
powerful, while the US Government neglects the welfare of working 
people and the poor. Has there ever been a time when the State 
more brazenly served monopoly capital?

The vast resources of the wealthy — America's ruling class — 
are arrayed against those who toil. The media serves as a 
monolithic force of persuasion, daily bombarding the populace 
with an unreal, wildly distorted picture of life under 
capitalism.

Millions of dollars flow into the political system, buying 
politicians and policies, making a sham of democratic values and 
a "fixing" of the political process. Forces of division are 
unleashed, sowing the seeds of racial, gender and national 
animosity.

Despite the skyrocketing stock market, the National Priorities 
Project remind us that well over 40 million Americans have no 
health insurance and another 29 million are under-insured. The 
overwhelming majority of the under-or-uninsured are poor and 
working class.

Rather than joining the rest of the civilised world with a 
universal, federally financed health care system, the Clinton 
administration has devised a system that benefits the insurance 
industry at the expense of the ill.

US health care remains the most costly in the world with the 
greatest infant mortality rate and the lowest birth rate of any 
major industrial country.

Thus, even those fortunate enough to have medical insurance are 
faced with an increasingly insensitive, cost-cutting and life-
devaluing free market industry.

While the rich celebrate the millennium, millions of Americans 
search for low-cost affordable housing. In 1970, there was 
actually a surplus of affordable housing available — low rent 
units exceeded the demand by nearly a million units.

But by 1993, according to the National Low Income Housing 
Coalition, those seeking affordable housing exceeded available 
units by 4.7 million units. To put the housing crisis in some 
perspective, 44 percent of renters could not afford to pay "fair 
market" value for a two-bedroom apartment.

Of course, the doors to the great celebration of capitalist 
excess are closed tight to the masses of African Americans, 
Latinos, and other minorities.

Racist edge

All indicators of wealth, well-being, and quality of life 
including child poverty, education, health, housing and 
ecological soundness show the bitter effects of racism.

Despite the constant media chorus proclaiming the death of 
racism, the fierce assault on working-class living standards 
bears a particularly racist edge. Politicians who attack or 
neglect affirmative action in these times deserve a special place 
in the hall of shame.

While the unemployment rate for whites is at a historically low 
rate, Blacks and Latinos are unemployed at nearly twice the rate 
of whites.

The child poverty rate of African Americans and Latinos is 
criminally high — roughly 40 percent of all minority children. 
The National Priorities Project cites several other indicators 
that demonstrate the harsh existence facing minorities in 
America.

But others have grown fat. The Federal Government maintains a 
huge military budget despite no credible military threat. US 
leaders feel such affection for the military that they insist 
that the Pentagon take more than it wants: Congress has given the 
Pentagon over $20 billion more than it requested for the last 
three years.

Nonetheless, a reinvigorated labour movement, shedding the 
shackles of cold-war anti-Communism, promises to resist these 
forces. Organised labour has begun to show signs of independence 
from the two-party system, encouraging workers to run for office 
and supporting issue-oriented electoral campaigns.

Unions have led in forging new and stronger alliances with 
recharged civil rights organisations, and have reached out to 
many other communities in order to forge a new, progressive 
coalition. We see a new leadership and a new commitment.

Of course, the real answer to capitalism's poor report card is to 
expel the troublemaker from our midst, to replace it with 
socialism. While this may not yet be possible, there is no 
question that the spectre of socialism makes the reformers' 
reform harder.

We must bring this powerful idea to the fightback. The greatest 
gains for working people have come when the working class 
movement has been spurred by a vision of a world without 
exploitation — socialism.

* * *

People's Weekly World, newspaper of Communist Party of 
the USA

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