Earlier this week, I wrote a piece that took the Democrats to task for having a wimpy economic plan. Some people took offense--but I don't think I was tough enough. If you look just at the party's plan for raising the minimum wage, you can only conclude this: the Democratic Party does not want to raise people out of poverty.
Look at the facts. The federal poverty guidelines say that a family of three is considered to be below the poverty line when it earns $16,600 or less. The Democratic Party is proposing passing legislation that would raise the minimum wage to $7.25--and take two years to get there. That hike would bring a person working full-time to a grand total of about $15,000.
For the sake of argument here, can we stipulate, as the lawyers would say, that, no, I don't think it's better that Republicans control Congress (and, along with thousands of other people, I personally walked many miles and knocked on hundreds of doors to help make a Democratic Congress a reality).
But, is that what we Democrats are about? An economic agenda that effectively says to millions of people, "sorry, the best we can do is make poverty a bit less onerous." And, beyond the political parties, I would ask my friends in labor: isn't it our duty to raise holy hell about such a mediocre proposal? Even in families where both parents work at minimum-wage jobs, this hike still is meager since you have to figure in child-care costs, not to mention the devastating burden of health care bills (minimum wage jobs either don't offer health care at all or give workers access to an over-priced plan with pathetic coverage). This is what we will trumpet if and when it passes?
I'm going to assume that most Democrats are earnest in their concern about poverty--even if most of them never grew up poor and think of the crisis facing millions of people in an abstract way. But, the fundamental problem is the frame in which the Democratic Party is thinking about our challenges--and the way in which the corrupting influence of money in our electoral process establishes the frame for the political debate.
Very few Democrats will speak openly about the greatest economic threat we face: corporate power. The party buys the rhetoric that raising the federal minimum wage to a livable wage would make companies "non-competitive"--without stopping and thinking, "what is the use of a market that can't provide decent incomes for people?" Few Democrats want to talk about the financialization of the economy: the vast amounts of money pouring into hedge funds and private equity (A recent Economist article estimates that there are now 9,000 hedge funds, completely unregulated, with $1.3 trillion in assets), not for the purpose of investing in companies because of what they make but simply as a financial asset whose potential sale will lead to profit if the share price can be moved up. The financial titans are even more clearly abandoning us, acting without a sense of place in either a community or country.
Few Democrats--and, certainly, no talked-about presidential candidate aside from John Edwards--will actually talk about the power of corporations and the need to reign in the corporations by redefining their rights and obligations. You can't be audacious and hopeful about the future, unless it's out of pure opportunism, if you are unwilling to confront head-on that which threatens our future.
The people know something is wrong. They know they can't pay their bills and their personal debt is reaching staggering levels, that they don't have health care, that jobs are disappearing, and that they can't afford to retire. They know corporations have too much power, even if the can't put their fingers on a solution to the threat and are afraid that the solution might mean losing their jobs. And the hoopla around raising the minimum wage is only clouding the picture.