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Main Street Squeeze

By David Moberg

Pick your metaphor for the current state of American workers: Are they squeezed? Caught? Crunched? Three new books — by two top-notch national journalists and a leading progressive economist — exploit these images to convey how average Americans are losing out in today’s economy. And despite varied but overlapping prescriptions for new policies, none of the three offers an easy… return to article

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    It was interesting to read this article, but also very frustrating.

    When I turn 70 recently, friends asked how it felt.  My answer? “Like everything is a re-run.”

    Richard Longworth’s book, “Global Squeeze,” was one of the first I read with which I could identify. Many of my friends and relatives were being bribed to take early retirement. (or coerced if that didn’t work) My own business was feeling the threat of long-time clients shifting operations to Mexico and Asia.

    I had already been writing to everyone I could think of since NAFTA was being considered. My representatives, financial publications, labor unions all either ignored this as a threat or, even worse, replied with a list of the ways we would all “benefit from cheaper consumer goods and the new knowledge/service economy.”

    Many people have tried to point out how the massive economic changes will effect our nation, but no one can compete with the D.C. lobbyist when it comes to setting economic policies.

    Expect more re-runs and a tighter squeeze ahead for both middle and lower class Americans.

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    Here is a partial list of my reading on the subject:

    “The Lexus and the Olive Tree,” and “The World is Flat,” Thomas Friedman

    “Indendently Wealthy,” by Robert Goodman

    “ A Future Perfect,” Micklewait and Woolridge

    “Who will tell the people?” William Greider

    “Perfectly Legal,” David Cay Johnston

    “Running on Empty,,” Peter Peterson

    Selling Ben Cheaver,” Ben Cheaver

    “Nickel and Dimed,” Barbara Ehrenreich

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 23, 2008 at 10:09 AM

    I haven’t read these books, but the review discourages me.  While I believe they probably chronicle the ills of the non-wealthy in America accurately, they don’t seem to give any kind of logical analysis of these ills or their possible solution.  For example, about the second book the reviewer says ‘The problem isn’t education. It’s power. “Those who hold a privileged position in the economic power hierarchy,” he writes, “are able to steer the bulk of growth their way.” ...  To reduce inequality, Bernstein advocates federal full-employment policy, infrastructure spending, energy independence, national health insurance, broader social insurance, better control of immigration (and better integration of immigrants already here), public service jobs for the hard-to-employ, minimum wage increases, easier access to higher education and more widespread unionization.’ I can believe this is an accurate report of the book because such thinking is widespread.  But it’s also self-contradictory.  If a set of problems is held to be caused by the concentration of power in elites, then the logical solution is not to concentrate more power in elites, i.e. the State.

    United States Posted by anarcissie on May 30, 2008 at 9:24 AM

    anarcissie,

    The problem isn’t education. It’s power. “Those who hold a privileged position in the economic power hierarchy,” he writes, “are able to steer the bulk of growth their way.”

    From my distillation of the list of books on this topic I tend to agree with the above statement. The power of corporate paid lobbyists, the power of the congress, the power of the typical economic “expert” all have contributed to the current malaise average Americans are now facing.

    Some books in my list see globalization as a benefit and a win-win situation.  Friedman’s books and “A future Perfect” take this stance. Many of my friends who retired before this world-changing event feel the same way (unless their children have been adversely affected).
    Others view it from the victim end of the scope, Greider, Johnston and Peterson give a third party negative account based on research and many documented examples. Cheaver and Ehrenreich tell first hand their personal struggles, one out of necessity the other as an investigative reporter who chose to see what it is like. Both are touching, frightening and match my experience and that of some of my friends and relatives.

    “Who will tell the People,” by Greider shows just how selfish and ugly the American corporation can appear to those “benefitting” from our kind of employment in the home country.

    I think some of what Bernstein proposes would be helpful, but will never come about until and unless things get too terrible to hide under the capitol carpet any longer.

    I have always been a free trade advocate, was self employed from age 19 to 67 and never believed in government solutions, but…

    We have been increasingly lied to and fed phony data. The economy we have is anything but free enterprise or free market. CPI, inflation, unemployment data are flat out untrue. Corporate tax breaks and wealthy citizens have been favored repeatedly.

    Just look at who is being protected in the subprime fraud today — banks, mortgage insurers, rating agencies, congressional committees, Fed chairmen, Treasury Secretaries.

    The costs of energy and agriculture are rising primarily due to the deliberate inflationary policies at a time when they claim to be for a “Strong Dollar Policy.”

    It’s not where the power is as much as what kind of character those with power have. It is not which party is in power, but what kind of individuals have the power.

    Both Truman and Eisenhower put the nation ahead of party or self. We need a better class of leadership.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on May 30, 2008 at 12:44 PM
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