Cynthia Tucker, writing in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, says
". . While the unemployment rate has remained below 5 percent, many workers are stranded in jobs that don't pay well and that offer little or no health insurance coverage. If you were once an automotive worker making $60,000 a year, your current job at Wal-Mart may keep you out of unemployment lines, but it hardly makes you feel secure. If the textile plant where you once worked shut down moving its operations to China you may have managed to patch together two part-time jobs to cover your lost income. So you're not counted among the unemployed. But you're working longer hours for the same pay. . .
Before you fire off an e-mail screed charging me with invoking "class warfare," consider this: A huge gap between the affluent and everybody else creates social instability and political discontent. Look at South America. In many countries, globalization and market-driven economic policies have not lived up to the promise of creating a broad new middle class, but they have, instead, exacerbated the historic chasm between the affluent and the poor. That's why Hugo Chavez is so popular among the impoverished in Venezuela, and Bolivia's new president, Evo Morales, has seized privately controlled gas and oil reserves. Their populism appeals to those stuck at the bottom who believe the rich have unfairly stacked the deck.
Since the civil rights movement ended the last vestiges of official inequality, this country has enjoyed civic harmony, largely because of the broad economic opportunities offered to all. But the loss of manufacturing jobs has closed off the route to the middle class for many Americans, especially those without post-secondary degrees.
It's not Bush's fault that General Motors has loss its competitive edge or that China manufactures TVs and toys so cheaply. But the president should have noticed by now that globalization has left a lot of hardworking Americans stranded on the wrong side of the income gap. If he could see across that gulf, perhaps he would start thinking about how to rescue his countrymen, and his country."
Since the civil rights movement ended the last vestiges of official inequality, this country has enjoyed civic harmony, largely because of the broad economic opportunities offered to all. But the loss of manufacturing jobs has closed off the route to the middle class for many Americans, especially those without post-secondary degrees.
It's not Bush's fault that General Motors has loss its competitive edge or that China manufactures TVs and toys so cheaply. But the president should have noticed by now that globalization has left a lot of hardworking Americans stranded on the wrong side of the income gap. If he could see across that gulf, perhaps he would start thinking about how to rescue his countrymen, and his country."
No comments:
Post a Comment