It’s the problem that our politicians can’t talk about. Democrats for the most part don’t know how, and Republicans for the most part don’t even want to try. But it’s also the problem that is transforming American culture, the American self-image and the American future, and not in healthy ways.
We all know about the decline of the American economy, but in some important ways that decline is more apparent than real. The notion that we don’t make things anymore is simply false: Today, the U.S. economy produces 64 percent more per person than it did 30 years ago. Measured by how much we create and produce, our economy has never been stronger.
But we’re doing it without creating many jobs, and the jobs that do exist aren’t paying very well. And while these trends are decades in the making, the most alarming thing about them is that they show no signs of slowing down and in fact may be accelerating. Widespread economic insecurity, unemployment, income inequality, even the decline of marriage among young people can all be traced in some way back to this long-term trend.
In fact, in a major investigation into the phenomenon, the Associated Press reported last month that in this new world, “Four out of 5 U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, a sign of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream.”
In a recent series of speeches, President Obama has at least attempted to draw attention to these issues and has proposed a series of steps, including re-investment in basic infrastructure and education, that might begin to address them. For the most part, however, the Republican Party refuses to even acknowledge the problem’s existence.
However, if these trends can be willfully ignored, the economic strains and stresses they create cannot. They have to be explained away by some other means, and the GOP has proposed several counter-narratives, none of them convincing. For example, they cast the federal government as the villain, claiming that it is snatching away the economic sustenance that its people need to survive and prosper. Yet today, in 2013, the federal government spends less of the nation’s gross domestic product (22.7 percent) than it did 30 years earlier under President Reagan (23.5 percent).
The other popular villain — besides Obama — is the poor and working class. According to this theory, if Americans aren’t prospering, it’s not because good jobs don’t exist. It’s not because the ladder of success is now missing a few rungs. It’s because the American people have become too lazy to work.
Tell you what: Put a single job listing on Craigslist offering a $40,000 salary and benefits and watch the flood of hundreds of applicants from people allegedly “too lazy to work.” The typical American is desperate for good work. It simply does not exist on the scale that it once did.
That dismissal of struggling Americans as “too lazy to work” is also becoming increasingly dangerous for Republicans because their own base knows from personal experience that it simply isn’t true. Economic insecurity has become pervasive and permanent, and as the AP reported, white Americans now account for “more than 41 percent of the nation’s destitute, nearly double the number of poor blacks.”
It’s a serious issue that demands serious debate.
Editor's note: A more extensive version of this column is available at Jay Bookman's blog at http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2013/aug/05/what-america-needs-talk-about-wont/
