We are destroying the natural world that humans depend upon for life itself
PETER MONTAGUE for Common Dreams
EDITOR'S DISCLOSURE: I worked with Peter when we were both in Washington and working on hazardous waste problems. Peter was an inspiration and one of the best thinkers on how to attack environmental problems. - Will Collette
Now is a time of unprecedented opportunity for progressive
change. The reason is simple: "the system" is ruining the future for
young people. Any system that threatens the future of its young people cannot
retain their support and therefore is ripe for basic change.
Every morning, the daily news provides fresh evidence that "the system" is heading off a cliff—fruitless climate talks; growing nuclear threats; microplastics in food, water, breast milk and newborn babies; oceans damaged by warming, acidification, and dead zones; the military-industrial dragon preparing for war with China; Congress out of touch and deadlocked.
But there's also good news: every day more young people are
waking up to the facts and demanding that
the system change.
What do I mean by "the system"? Back in 1996, when he
was the editor of Harper's magazine, Lewis Lapham described it as
"the permanent government."
Only slightly tongue-in-cheek, Lapham wrote, "The permanent government, a secular oligarchy… comprises the Fortune 500 companies and their attendant lobbyists, the big media and entertainment syndicates, the civil and military services, the larger research universities and law firms.
"It is this
government that hires the country's politicians and sets the terms and
conditions under which the country's citizens can exercise their
right—God-given but increasingly expensive—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness. Obedient to the rule of men, not laws, the permanent government
oversees the production of wealth, builds cities, manufactures goods, raises
capital, fixes prices, shapes the landscape, and reserves the right to assume
debt, poison rivers, cheat the customers, receive the gifts of federal subsidy,
and speak to the American people in the language of low motive and base
emotion."
The permanent government is ruining the future for young people in two ways:
(1) destroying the natural world that humans depend upon for
life itself—air, water, soil, vegetation, and wildlife, and
(2) degrading the social/economic sphere, creating a vast chasm
between the megarich and everyone else, inciting anger and resentment that
divide us against ourselves, which prevents us from protecting the natural
world that sustains us.
Resentment is rising as social conditions are deteriorating
Radio host Thom Hartmann recently compared
economic conditions for two groups of people of equal size in the U.S.: Baby
Boomers (average age 67 today) versus Millennials (average age 33 today).
Back when the average Boomer was 33, Boomers held 21.3
percent of the nation's wealth; in contrast, Millennials age 33 today hold only 4.6
percent of the nation's wealth. Prospects for Gen-Z are no better.
Hartmann identifies seven trends that have robbed young people
of their fair share of prosperity: It boils down to the so-called "Reagan
Revolution," which Republicans (along with some Democrats) have pursued
since 1980.
#1. Attack on wages
The attack on wages has three parts: (1) a coordinated offensive against labor
unions, (2) passage of "right to work"(aka "right to work for less")
laws, and (3) flooding the political system with dark money so the megarich rule and
ordinary people have no say.
Right-to-work-for-less laws prevent unions from collecting dues
from workers who benefit from collective bargaining but who choose to withhold
dues from the union that bargains on their behalf. This weakens unions, which
reduces the incentive to join one, which weakens unions further.
Now 27 states have enacted such laws. Hartmann writes, "In
every single case, anti-worker right-to-work laws have been passed in states
controlled by Republicans at the time of passage."
The attack on unions has succeeded. In 1983, 20 percent of
workers were unionized; in 2021 it had dropped by half to 10.3 percent, even
though 70 percent of Americans approve of unions.
As a result of these trends, today working people are taking
home a 10% smaller share of the nation's economic pie ("the labor
share") than they did in 1980. Ten percent may not sound huge, but it
represents a transfer of 50 trillion dollars from
working families to shareholders and business owners since 1975. Fifty trillion dollars.
That's $13,000 per year taken from every single worker in the bottom 90% of the
wage-scale, year after year for 40 years.
Young people have been hit especially hard. In 1940, 90 percent
of young people could expect to earn more than their parents. For children born
in the 1980s, that measure of "absolute income mobility"
has fallen to 50%—a major change that has degraded the future for tens of
millions of young people.
No wonder working-class parents are angry and resentful as
they see themselves precariously treading water, their children falling behind.
This is where Trumpism began; then some cynical, privileged Republicans fanned
those embers into flames. In 2018, Reuters/Ipsos asked 1,249
Trump voters what "Make American Great Again" meant to them, and
2/3rds (63 percent) responded, "A better economy."
#2. Restricting educational opportunity
Republican policies have put higher education out of reach for
many children of low-income families and put millions more into crippling debt.
Professor Devin Fergus, now at the University of Missouri, has described the
effects of the "Reagan revolution" on student debt. Prior to 1980,
states paid 65% of student college costs, the federal government paid another
15%, leaving 20% for students to pay. Thom Hartmann has described how
Mr. Reagan and his fellow "revolutionaries" set out to change all
that. Students were "too liberal," Mr. Reagan said, so "America
should not subsidize intellectual curiosity." After 40 years of defunding
education, 44 million students are now saddled with $1.5 trillion in debt,
making it hard or impossible for two generations of young people to create
businesses, start families, or buy homes.
#3. Raising the price of a home
In 1950, the average price of
a house was 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the median family income is $37,522 and
the average house sells for ten
times that amount—$374,900.
#4. "Financializing" the economy
As early as 2013, Bruce Bartlett, who served as an advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, described how Wall Street firms have grown in proportion to the whole economy. In 1950 the financial services industry represented 2.8% of gross domestic product (GDP); in 1980 that proportion has grown to 4.9% and by 2013 it has reached 8.3 percent.
In 1980, wages and salaries in financial services were comparable to
other industries. But then compensation in financial services began to rise
and, by 2013, people in financial services were taking home 70 percent more
than their counterparts elsewhere in the economy. Thus, financialization of the
economy "is a major cause of rising income inequality," Bartlett
says.
#5. Tolerating monopolies
Competition is supposed to be the life blood of our economic system. As the Hamilton Project explains it, "Competition is the basis of a market economy. It forces businesses to innovate to stay ahead of other firms, to keep prices as low as they can to attract customers, and to pay sufficient wages to avoid losing workers to other firms.
When businesses vie for customers, prices fall and economic output
increases. When businesses hire workers away from each other, wages rise and
workers' standard of living improves. And as unproductive firms are replaced by
innovative firms, the economy becomes more efficient."
President Reagan ordered an end to anti-trust enforcement in
1983 and consolidation (contrary to U.S. law) has now affected many
parts of the economy—agriculture, banking, insurance, hospitals,
pharmaceuticals, internet providers, cable companies, gigantic food
corporations, grocers, home mortgages, office supplies. Result: prices spiral
upward, wages decline, jobs disappear.
#6. Profiting from disease and disability
In 1960, U.S. health care costs were 5 percent of gross domestic
product (GDP); by 2020, health care had risen to 19.7
percent of GDP. People in the U.S. don't use more health care services than
people in other countries; they just pay more for them.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation,
9% of U.S. adults (23 million people) are carrying medical debt totaling $195
billion. According to Forbes magazine, in 2021, one-in-five
households (19 percent) "could not pay for medical care when it was needed." How do you think that made them feel?
#7. Handouts for the megarich
If Republicans agree on nothing else, they agree on cutting
taxes for the super-rich so their vast accrued wealth can "trickle down" upon the rest of us and (as a side benefit) can starve government so
it can't regulate business or provide "socialist" amenities like
schools, hospitals, and old-age insurance (social security).
As Thom Hartmann puts it,
"Reagan dropped the top income tax on the morbidly rich from 74 percent
down to 27 percent and cut corporate tax rates from 50 percent to functionally
nothing… The average billionaire pays an income tax of under 3 percent and the
majority of the nation's largest corporations pay nothing."
Recent studies show that in
the 3-year period 2018-2020, 39 major corporations paid no taxes on $120
billion in profits and 73 others paid an average of only 5.3 percent during the
period.
When billionaires and wealthy corporations don't pay their fair
share of taxes, the cost of running government gets dumped onto average
citizens, who feel it, resent it, and then blame government for being weak and
out of touch.
Summary
As things stand now, many working-class parents and their
children are screwed, disrespected, even mocked as "deplorables."
Naturally they are seething with anger and resentment.
Cynical privileged Republicans have studied how to mobilize this resentment, to deflect it away from "the system"onto immigrants, gays, people Of Color, non-Christians and anyone who protests inequality or injustice ("slackers"and "hippies").
Yes, some privileged
Republicans are more than just cynical; some are Nazis or Nazi sympathizers
joined by dupes or dimwits or groupies—but most weren't born that way; they
have been bent by circumstance. Only 1 to 4 percent of people are born psychopaths without
empathy or a conscience.
It is not fashionable to say so, but America is in trouble mostly because it no longer has a major political party sticking up for the working class. Since the mid-1970s, the permanent government has guided both major parties to benefit the few, not the many.
Until that changes, we will
have white-hot resentment and privileged opportunists who will trade on that
resentment, creating rancor, division, and political stalemate, which will
prevent us from protecting and repairing the natural world or spreading the
wealth, upon which the future of all young people depends.
What is to be done?
In 2020, Nick Hanauer proposed a
new kind of organization. Mr. Hanauer wrote, "…Imagine an AARP for all
working Americans, relentlessly dedicated to both raising wages and reducing
the cost of thriving—a mass membership organization so large and so powerful
that our political leaders won't dare to look the other way. Only then, by
matching power with power, can we clear a path to enacting the laws and
policies necessary to ensure that that trickle-down economics never threatens
our health, safety, and welfare again."
In 2018 the AARP had 38
million members.
Could Mr. Hanauer's idea be built upon by young people, with
support from their elders? Could we, together, create a new organization for
all working Americans and for all young people, who are now
losing their future? A mass-based organization dedicated to raising wages and to
reducing the costs of thriving and to guaranteeing a future
for young people by protecting and repairing the natural world. Large
majorities of Americans already support these ideas.
Maybe name it simply: The Future.
Every existing issue-focused organization, including every labor
union (like mine, the National Writer's Union) could urge its members to not
only support their own particular issues but also to join and
help create The Future. Make membership dues affordable for
everyone: No more than $10 per year. Recruit like crazy, build, deliver
results.
Youth are already getting organized to
protect their future. With youth choosing the path and leading the way, we
elders could join The Future to serve as volunteer benefactors,
fundraisers, cheer leaders, publicists, social-media posters, recruiters, and
more. It could be big. Who knows? It might even work.
PETER MONTAGUE is a widely published environmental journalist and historian who has co-authored of two books on toxic heavy metals. He has been writing about carbon capture and storage since 2007. Email: pm8525@gmail.com
