More tax breaks for the rich in exchange for another year's worth of unemployment benefits for the desperate: Now there's a compromise that makes me proud to be an American. My father wouldn't have been surprised. He grew up during the Great Depression and worked in factories before he was drafted and served in the Army during World War II. Dad told me that the harder he worked (physically), the less he got paid. And he told me there was nothing like repetitive and physically-grueling factory work to make you want to improve yourself. By becoming a civil servant (a firefighter), he escaped the factory and its dismal pay for a job that paid enough to provide five children with a lower-middle-class existence.
Today's political elites seem to think that the proper way to stimulate economic growth is to empower the exploiters. That way, some of their enormous wealth will trickle down on the little people. My father knew from experience that it usually wasn't money that trickled down from the high heights of the rich.
In the spirit of the holiday season, here's a story from my Dad that recounts his attempt to get a dime pay raise at the local factory. Consider it a parable for the realities our working classes face day in and day out in this country:
It seems that Mike Calabrese on his own asked Harry Callahan [one of the owners] for a pay raise and he was refused. Mike decided to organize the men members and go down in a group. In our group he got ten men to approach Harry C. for a raise. But when it was time to "bell the cat" only three fellows went to see Harry. Well Mike said he couldn't join the group because he had already tried to get a raise. I knew I was being used but I was entitled to a raise. Well Harry said to me, "What can I do for you men?" So I said to Harry: 1) Living costs were going up; 2) We deserved a raise. So Harry said, "How much?" and I said ten cents an hour would be a fair raise. So he said I'll give you a nickel an hour raise and later you'll get the other nickel. We agreed. So, I asked Harry will everyone get a raise and he replied, "Only the ones that I think deserve it."
Well a month later I was drinking water at the bubbler and Harry saw me and said what a hard job they had to get the money to pay our raises. Well, Willie, Harry Callahan and his brother Sam and their two other Italian brother partners all died millionaires. No other truer saying than, "That the rich have no sympathy or use for the poor."
Today, Americans are uncomfortable calling attention to pay discrepancies and exploitation because it smacks of class warfare or even Marxism. It's true that some of the worst abuses have been curbed (for example, my father worked from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. without the benefit of overtime pay or time-and-a-half), but today's workers are simply scared: scared that their jobs will be outsourced, scared that they'll be fired; scared that they'll be replaced by automated robots. Thus they put up and shut up.
So, what's the moral to the story? Our president promised hope and change. "Hope" has come in the form of more tax breaks for the rich. And "change"? To paraphrase my father: No truer saying than "that politicians have no sympathy or use for the poor."
Professor Astore writes regularly for TomDispatch.com and can be reached at wjastore@gmail.com.
It is twinned with the willingness to submit to anyone in a uniform _ who, of course, ultimately also work for Management.
These cultural traits have arisen from values we've claimed _ independence, fairness, loyalty and forbearance.
Management has institutionally perverted our perception of these traits so that they've made us wary of collective bargaining and 'loyal' to the concept of management itself _ and to the concept of sacrifice _ to the point that we consider it noble to suffer in silence at work, and think it 'whining' if we ask for better pay and better conditions.
In the same way, we've been made to remain loyal to anyone in a uniform due to the noble characteristics we associate with the ideal of service _ so much so that the uniform blinds us to the presence or absence of these characteristics.
We're only going to overcome this situation when our culture can come to grasp that a Management can oppress as effectively as a government, and that dictatorship is what it is, even if it's called 'Inc.'
Sadly, so true.
A simple political revolution would not help us - we need a spiritual revolution, we need a new faith in the power of the working class and the need to further its development.