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The Real Moral Fight |
Current rating: 0 |
by Katrina vanden Heuvel via goodriddancegipper
(No verified email address) |
12 Jan 2005
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This is an interesting take from the editor of The Nation on the current condition of many Americans, as well as the Orwellian usage of "class war" that the right wing tries to propagate. |
The Real Moral Fight
by Katrina vanden Heuvel
The Nation
On January 20, hundreds of Republicans will descend on Washington,
DC, wearing furs, boots and Stetsons, and partying like the Hollywood
stars (they love to loathe) at festivities that will cost some $40
million to host--or $25 million more than the first pledge of US
assistance to victims of the tsunami. These high-end Bush donors will
be paying to play in our nation's capital.
Their high-flying parties come after a holiday season of little
sacrifice for those in the top one percent. At a time when growing
numbers of Americans cannot afford essentials like rent, health
care and retirement security, the Bentley car dealership in
Bethesda, Maryland, registered a 700 percent increase in sales last
year. (One popular seller this season is the new Continental GT,
which goes for $165K.)
A few days before the release of a report showing that New Yorkers
needed to make $18.18 an hour (three times more than the federal
minimum wage) to afford a one- or two-bedroom apartment, the media
titan Rupert Murdoch agreed to pay $44 million for a Manhattan
penthouse on Fifth Avenue. (That's $29 million more than the first
pledge the Bush Administration offered to tsunami victims.)
While Murdoch lives high, the working poor in the same city can't
make ends meet. Playing by the rules hasn't done them much good.
Thanks to a series of recent reports that I'd call required reading
for journalists, policymakers and concerned citiizens, we now have
more than enough evidence (even for the faith-based members of this
Administration) showing that the working poor cannot afford basics
for survival including, in some cases, food.
In late December, the National Low Income Housing Coalition concluded
in a landmark report that full-time workers making the federal
minimum wage (an appalling $5.15 an hour) can't pay rent or utilities
on the vast majority of one-bedroom apartments.
Last November, the Community Service Society and United Way of New
York City reported that about one in three low-wage, full-time
workers in New York City used a food bank, or couldn't afford their
utilities, or their rent, or to fill a prescription. A different
report completed by the Women's Center for Education and Career
Advancement reinforced the grim picture for families citywide: Almost
half of the city's households can't pay the cost of food, housing,
child care or other necessities.
Last October, the Economic Policy Institute issued a briefing paper
driving home what US policymakers know is another new reality: Health
care is increasingly unaffordable and out of reach for middle-income
families. Between 2000 and 2003, married couples with children saw
health care spending outpace income by a factor of three, EPI
reported. About one-fifth of the full-time workforce now lacks health
insurance and almost 50 percent of lower-income New Yorkers don't
have health insurance.
Job security is also becoming a thing of the past. Those who lose
their jobs in this economy, reports the Washington Post, need "some
combination of specialized skills, higher education and professional
status that can be constantly adapted [or they] will be in danger of
sliding down the economic ladder to low-paying service jobs, usually
without benefits." Anthony Carnevale, senior fellow at the National
Center on Education and the Economy, warned that unless a
comprehensive industrial policy is adopted soon, "we could have a
permanent working poor. They don't live in America; they kind of live
under it," he told the Post.
What's the Republican response? Give more tax breaks to corporate
America and give billions to Wall Street by privatizing Social
Security. Talk about distorted priorities.
Now is the time to enact a new industrial policy--and raising the
minimum wage is an essential first step.
Progressives have already achieved living wage victories in Florida
and New York (Floridians, for example, voted on November 2 to raise
the minimum wage to $1 above the federal level, although the
mainstream media has ignored the living wage momentum that's
occurring in at least fourteen states and 123 cities and counties
nationwide). Moreover, until we get to a universal health care system
so desperately needed, policymakers should pass laws that will
control rising health care costs and expand our employer-based health
insurance system. The government should invest in worker retraining
so people who get outsourced or downsized can find high paying jobs
elsewhere.
Economist Jamie Galbraith, in his smart book Created Unequal: The
Crisis in American Pay, argues that by encouraging full employment
and taking other steps, the US can close the wage gap that threatens
to undermine our social fabric. Another vital step is correcting the
tax imbalance by raising corporate taxes, closing tax loopholes for
corporations relocating overseas and increasing funding for
low-income housing because the funding "hasn't kept up with demand,"
says the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Finally, progressive religious activists believe this is a moment to
push poverty and economic justice into the "moral values" debate. As
Kim Bobo, director of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker
Justice, a Chicago-based advocacy group, and other religious leaders
say, "Shame on us--those of us who work with the religious community
have not adequately made the connection between economic disparity
and moral values."
These religious activists hope to move beyond issues of sexual
morality and bring attention to the Administration's new efforts to
increase inequality by privatizing Social Security and overhauling
the tax code. Or, as Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National
Council of Churches, said in a recent open letter, "Allowing 45
million Americans to go without health insurance, permitting 35
million Americans to live with incomes below the official poverty
line and standing by while millions of children attend decrepit
schools violates our faith, assaults our sense of justice and
condemns us all to generations of poverty, violence and injustice."
With the Republicans in control of all three federal branches,
building a new consensus for sane economic policies that give more
opportunity to more Americans will take time, organizing and savvy
political and policy skills. But, it's an urgent project, and it's
never too late to begin setting out the alternatives. Americans
should not be required to work eighty-hour weeks just to pay the
rent, eat, and live in a decent neighborhood. |
Copyright by the author. All rights reserved. |
