It’s Class, Stupid!

In recent weeks, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have run a series of articles about issues of class and inequality in America.

These two media pillars have comprehensively taken on the root myth of the American way, reporting facts that are so stark and clear that they can no longer be ignored. The gap between rich and poor is widening dramatically; There's been a startling lack of upward mobility over the last three decades; And Americans face no better odds today that they will climb the ladder to a higher economic rung where their parents stood than they did 35 years ago.

As Sylvia Allegretto wrote in the Economic Policy Institute's "The State of Working America 2004/2005," which she co-authored: "The costs of basic necessities like health care, housing, and college keep rising, and many working families' incomes are not keeping pace."

Moreover, as the New York Times recently editorialized, education in this country is "heavily dependent on wealth and class"; and the richer people become, the greater their odds that they will live longer as beneficiaries of the best health care money can buy. All in all, a bleak picture, but one that the media is only slowly starting to grapple with.

As Paul Krugman noted, commenting on his paper's series in his column, "Since 1980 in particular, US government policies have consistently favored the wealthy at the expense of working families--and under the current administration, that favoritism has become extreme and relentless." Conservative economic policies are fueling this phenomenon of an increasingly stratified America. Republicans refuse to raise the minimum wage, which has remained stuck at a paltry $5.15 an hour since 1997. Bankruptcy "reform" savages the working class. Meanwhile, Bush's tax cuts handed a tax reduction of more than $4,500 to the top fifth of income-earners while those in the lowest quintile received an average of only $98 annually off their tax bills.

Another fine series of stories--in the Los Angeles Times--pointed out that policies like deregulating industries, coupled with a right-wing assault on social programs have eroded Americans' safety net and shifted "economic risks from the broad shoulders of business and government to the backs of working families." (The reporter Peter Gosselin received a 2005 Sidney Hillman Award for journalism reporting for this series. Disclosure: I served on the panel of judges. And there were other fine articles submitted on this crucial issue, including a fine series in the Detroit News documenting how Bush tax cuts badly hurt the poor.)

There's a good resource called Toomuchonline.org that I recommend to reporters and anybody else interested in a reality check on America's economy. Sam Pizzigati, a veteran labor journalist, runs and edits the site, which is chock full of useful information. The site has a simple message; it argues that "our society would be considerably more democratic, prosperous and caring if we narrowed the vast gap between the very wealthy and everyone else."

To promote this vision, Pizzigati highlights the gap between the rich and the poor, sheds light on the excesses of the super-wealthy, advocates a "maximum wage" that would cap excessive income and wealth and applauds public and private-sector efforts to reduce inequality and make America a more equitable nation.

The kinds of reforms Pizzigati wants to see enacted are also on display at Toomuchonline.org. Pizzigati praises former SEC chairman Richard Breeden, who proposed a plan that said MCI, which rose out of the ashes of WorldCom's collapse, should prevent a repeat of WorldCom's train wreck by banning executive stock options and capping total CEO compensation. And then there's Congressman Martin Sabo's proposal to ban corporate tax deductions for executive compensation that exceeds more than 25 times what the lowest-paid worker at the company earns.

While Pizzigati commends the Times and the Journal's series on social mobility as "a mainstream media watershed," he also argues that a lot of work remains to be done. The Times, he says, for instance, ignored "inequality's impact on our social health"--i.e. how vastly unequal societies have negative health consequences for all people, not just for the poorest sectors of society.

As Vermont Senate candidate Bernie Sanders says, the corporate-owned media tend to ignore the economic problems that face millions of people on a daily basis. The press doesn't cover, he argues, things like the fact that Americans are "working longer hours for lower wages," living standards have declined, and "we have the most unequal distribution of wealth of any major country on earth…[and] we are the only industrialized country in the world without a national health care system." One result of people not seeing their lives reflected in the media, Sanders argues, is that they think their problems are unique to them, and are not social or political problems that we as a nation can solve by working together.

I believe there's a constituency and an appetite for more stories about class lines in America. Readers want to see their lives and problems treated in our media. There may also be an appetite for real "reality shows." A new FX show, 30 Days, hosted by Supersize Me author Morgan Spurlock premiers this week and could generate a new trend. In the show's first episode, Spurlock and his girlfriend go to Columbus, Ohio and try to live on a minimum-wage income--raising issues of class that we rarely see on our TV sets.

In April 2004, I argued in this space that attention must be paid to those being left behind. More than a year later, the LA Times, the New York Times and the Journal's good series on class are steps in the right direction. Let's hope that these articles (and even that FX show) are just the beginning of a national effort on the media's part to show how people are living in these times. Here's a motto the media should adopt: It's Class, Stupid!

Comments (25)

1. The Nation itself draws its opinions primarily from the well-educated elite. Why is the Wall Street Journal on the cutting edge of discussion here?

   Posted by s-staff at 06/13/2005 @ 4:15pm

2. Katrina's is not a new observation, though one that has not gained the attention it should have. Check out "MONEY AND CLASS IN AMERICA" by Lewis H. Lapham published in 1988.

   Posted by Chuck at 06/13/2005 @ 5:23pm

3. I should have mentioned all the wonderful books Studs Terkel has done over the years, as well as a wonderful anthology by Barbara Solomon called "THE HAVES AND HAVE-NOTS" published in 1999.

   Posted by Chuck at 06/13/2005 @ 6:03pm

4. I haven't spent much time analyzing the idea of a single payer healthcare system, but I recently saw "The Barbarian Invasions," which documents in some small respect the problems Canada has with the single payer system. I also am curious whether a single-payer system might stifle innovation within the healthcare system. Any thoughts?

   Posted by nattiebumpo at 06/13/2005 @ 6:33pm

5. Zero's brought up some key questions which s/he has been consistently raising in this forum; that is, how can the Nation (quite rightly) decry all these terrible aspects of the neolib/neocon social crisis...and then support a political party which is so obviously a major part--about half, actually--of the problem? Not only that, but display outright hostility to the formation of a Left political party? I don't mean to be grumpy, but frankly I think this is just a lot of unserious talk if we see the Nation repeat in 2006 and 2008 the disgraceful role it played in 2004, for which it seems to be preparing itself even now (eg, the stomach-turning profile of HR Clinton).

   Posted by rvs-convener at 06/13/2005 @ 6:35pm

6. RVS:

   I understand where you and Zero are coming from, but what is to be gained by fracturing the Democratic party? The Republicans have clearly demonstrated the benefits of unity...

   Posted by nattiebumpo at 06/13/2005 @ 6:42pm

7. In reading these forums over the past few weeks I have been struck by how many readers agree with RVS's and Zero's assessment that The Nation's "hostility to the formation of a Left political party" has seriously eroded its credibility among progressives, though it should be recognized that most other leftist media does no better.

   In any case, there is a clearly a need for media outlets which speak for us and we need to resign outselves to the fact that it won't be The Nation. Along these lines I would recommend Sam Smith's Progressive Review, www.prorev.com and also New Politics, http://www.wpunj.edu/%7Enewpol/default.htm, which, unfortunately only comes out twice a year. Counterpunch is also good though generally too much oriented to Chomskyan style documentation of more or less well known problems rather than proposing solutions-something it doesn't really seem to be interested in.

   If there are sites I should know about along these lines, I'd appreciate hearing about them.

   Thanks very much to Zero for his or her consistently useful and well reasoned posts. A step above most Nation articles, I should say.

   Posted by john.halle at 06/13/2005 @ 8:55pm

8. Nattiebumpo: Check Paul Krugman's article in the June 13 New York Times for a good place to start.

   Posted by Chuck at 06/13/2005 @ 11:04pm

9. Zero and Mr Halle might want to check out of commenting on Nation articles. Their nihilistic negativism ranks up there with Spiro Agnew's nabobs of negativism. What rank BS to say the Nation is hostile to formation of a left political party. You reading the Nation? You living in US of A? Pleez/ These are times when we are seeking smart answers to many tough questions. We have staked out a position which is at core of any left party's platform: withdrawal from Iraq is at top of our agenda. We are for organized people, anti-corporate, getting $ out of our political system; for choice and for sticking it to cowardly dems...we are for real electoral reform...We are staking out alternative foreign and security policies at a time when the democratic party, for most part, has abdicated ground in this arena. Of course, we seek upright, toughminded, left/progressive/demoractic with a small "d" political leaders who will connect with movements afoot and alive in this land....It is easy to bash the Nation. Continue to do so. Make yourself feel righteous and all. Zero--you have that name for a reason, I suspect. Why don;t you act like Zorro for a few days and lance some of ills in this land instead of using your lame skewer to take on the Nation. Why are you so dismissive of the many decent, left people writing and searching and thinking in the pages of the Nation. Seek out devils elsewhere. Katrina

   Posted by Katrina vanden H at 06/14/2005 @ 12:04am

10. I saw The Nation's support for the Democratic presidential candidates in 2000 an '04 as mostly motivated by strong anti-Bush sentiment, especially when it became clear that none of the alternative candidates would get very far. It's hard to argue that Gore and Kerry, whatever their weaknesses, would have come close to W's idiotic, plutocratic and, ultimately, deadly policies. I haven't supported all of this publication's editorial decisions, but I am grateful for its consistent opposition to the current war, its support for campaign finance reform, its strong and passionate arguments on behalf of women's reproductive and economic rights, and its (mostly) terrific columnists (Pollitt,Williams, Nichols, Corn, and Alterman are names I tend to gravitate to first for provocation, if nothing else).

    I'd like to see more humor and satire, perhaps. But, hey, nobody's perfect.

    Thanks, in the meantime, to KVH for alerting me to toomuchonline.org. It's a site I will recommend to others. $20,000 cell phones, indeed.

    Who among Democrats are pushing for national health care? Kucinich, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (from my home state), and (God love him!) Sanders. No, they're not the party leaders, sadly. But neither are they shrinking violets. This is a good thing.

    I think KVH is right that the NYT and WSJ series' on class are being echoed (somewhat softly, but real just the same) in other mainstream papers. In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had a decent piece on Sunday about our state's highest paid CEO's (the head of Harley Davidson, it turns out, is on top). They followed up today with a report on the annual salaries and net worth of our congressional delegation. Sen Herb Kohl takes home more in a week, thanks to his investments, than our other Senator, Russ Feingold, takes home all year.

    I LIKE these kinds of stories! Maybe we WILL see more of them.

    Posted by msbosh at 06/14/2005 @ 12:56am

11. I apologize to KVH if she found my previous posting dismissive.

    We are all paying subscribers here so it can be assumed-by definition-that we find The Nation valuable.

    Rather the point was to observe that 1) many of us have concluded, based on overwhelming evidence, that the Democratic Party is fundamentally unreformable and that serious political change will only be accomplished through the strategic development of a third party alternative. 2) Since neither The Nation nor, for that matter, any nationally circulated print publication effectively represents our perspective, and is largely dismissive of it, we will need to look elsewhere and begin to develop our own outlets for critical and informed discussion.

    That there seems to be increasing recognition of this is a hopeful sign.

    Posted by john.halle at 06/14/2005 @ 09:37am

12. I found Ms. vanden Heuvel's comment to be totally inadequate to the questions on the table. Of course the magazine is hostile to the formation of a Left political party. Does Ms. vanden Heuvel read the Nation? Everyone knows the role it played in 2000 and 2004. It may not be hostile in theory, but it's certainly dead-set against third-party politics whenever it's actually tried. It's like a self-proclaimed pacifist who finds "specific reasons" to be for every individual war.

    The Nation does some fine journalism and takes some admirable stands--until an election year rolls around. Then they drop all that and mobilize for Anybody But [blank]. Why should the corporations and warmongers take us seriously at all? They just count the votes for the Republican and Democrat, add them together, and laugh at how many people they got to put up with this shit. The social movements--including and especially labor, which Ms. vanden Heuvel is particularly concerned over--have basically zero representation in US politics. By way of contrast, is there a ruling class on this earth that would dream of having fewer than two political parties?

    Finally, I'm not dismissive of the Nation's contributors or readers. I wouldn't bother commenting here if I were. But it's fairly obvious from reading the comments that the magazine's readers are thinking through the "Democrats or third party?" question in a much more open-minded way than the editors. Why not open a debate on the pages of the Nation? Have people debate from all the social movements: labor, antiwar, abortion rights, gay rights, anti-racism, etc. I think that would be great, much more enlightening than the pathetic HRC profiles and hootings about how "Dean Has the Power" (which recently events have decisively disproved).

    Posted by rvs-convener at 06/14/2005 @ 11:09am

13. I think it is pretty cool that Ms. Vanden Heuvel responded to some of the posts. While I think she is a gorgeous woman, every time I see her on TV she is always bitter and angry and hostile, which detract not just from her beauty but also the effectiveness of her arguments. Just a bit of advice - as I said on posts to your Dean article, people here in flyover country do not like negativity, and are not persuaded by people who seem to be driven by hate.

    I had to respond to something in her post, that the Nation is anti-corporate? Hmm, isn't the Nation part of a corporation? Aren't about 95% of all Americans employed by corporations (if not more)? Aren't corporations pretty much the backbone of American capitalism? To me, saying you are anti-corporate is the same as saying you are anti-capitalist.

    I also had to respond to the sentence in her article "Meanwhile, Bush's tax cuts handed a tax reduction of more than $4,500 to the top fifth of income-earners while those in the lowest quintile received an average of only $98 annually off their tax bills." What's your point? Those people who got $98 off their tax bills probably paid little more than that in the first place, while those getting $4,500 probably paid ten times that. Let's not forget that the rich in this country pay a higher percentage of taxes than at any time in our country's history, and that percentage increased under Bush's tax cuts. His tax cuts benefitted the lowest classes the most, they got the highest percentage tax cut, with millions of lower-class Americans dropping off the tax rolls entirely.

    The argument of Ms. Vanden Heavel's article is that the rich are getting richer, and the poor are having a hard time keeping up. That's true, but her solutions (did she have any?) won't work. The way to close the gap is to encourage the formation and success of small businesses by individuals. But our current system is rigged against small business, with the mountains of paperwork and taxes and regulations they have to do, often paying others excessive amounts of money just to comply, which eats into the profits the small business owner desperately needs to stay afloat and get ahead. I know these things because I have been the CFO for many small businesses, and I found myself spending the majority of my time doing needless paperwork instead of working to help the company become more profitable, which would mean we could pay our employees a lot more than we were. Eliminating red tape would have meant I could have gotten rid of one or two accountants, and that money would have been spread to the rest of the employees who made a lot less. Raising the minumum wage wouldn't do any good, we would just fire a few employees if it were raised too much. Employees do good when the corporation does good, thus, being anti-corporate is also being anti-employee.

    Posted by lburwell at 06/14/2005 @ 3:19pm

14. In Krugman's recent column on the need for a Single Payer Health Care System, he asserts that the impending crisis in medical care will result in a system, unless it is reformed, where only the well-off can afford adequate medical care. Class lines will be evident as the haves live healthier, longer lives. The have-nots, a sizable majority of the population, will face a miserable life and early death. What the Dickens!!!

    Posted by John Earl at 06/14/2005 @ 3:48pm

15. John Earl,

    I would not put much credence in anything Paul Krugman says. He may be the only columnist in America with a website dedicated solely to pointing out his lies (and they are quite numerous). He is about the most dishonest columnist in America today.

    I remember when I was a kid, my mom would take me to the doctor, the doctor would send us a bill, and my mom would write him a check. Now, with Medicare driving up health costs at an alarming rate, and with consumers in a position where they don't know and don't care (because they are no longer directly involved in paying the bills) about the cost of health care, there is no longer a mechanism in place to keep health costs from rising so dramatically. When people are involved in purchasing decisions, costs stay low, when they aren't, cost rise. In other words, capitalism works, and it needs to be brought back to the healthcare industry. If I had time I could go into many solutions to the health industry, but giving government an even greater role in health care (they are already the single largest purchaser of health care) would be disastrous and would bankrupt us as a nation. Nobody likes Medicare, not the providers, not the patients, and it is about to go bankrupt, and now you want to force everybody to be stuck in a lousy system controlled by a few elites who decide what is best for us with no accountability? No thanks, I prefer capitalism.

    Posted by lburwell at 06/14/2005 @ 4:16pm

16. John Earl

    On another point, you say the have-nots are a sizable majority of the population. Where in the world do you live? Washington DC? I know of very few cities or regions where that is true, unless, of course, you consider everyone making less than 6 digits a have-not.

    Let me add to my last post briefly. It is the socialized system (Medicare, Medicaid) that is driving up health care costs in this country, and your solution (and Krugman's) is to socialize it more. Think about that for a second.

    Posted by lburwell at 06/14/2005 @ 4:25pm

17. LBurwell: your post arguing that the most of the tax cuts went to the lowest on the totem pole strikes me as disingenuous. Okay, so people paying 50$ taxes are now off the income tax rolls. Their taxes were cut a whopping 100%!!! Therefore, they benefitted the most, not billionares who received millions of dollars in tax cuts. And where does the government look to pay for these tax cuts? It de-funds social programs, thus directly hurting those who need those programs. Incidentally, those who need those programs the most are those on the bottom. The argument is straightforward and simple.

    I'm not sure where you get the idea that the socialization of the system is what has increased health care costs. I was under the impression that a huge portion of the increased costs came from increased profits to drug companies for prescriptions and maybe some insurance liability to doctors. I am no expert, but what is the reasoning there?

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 06/14/2005 @ 4:42pm

18. Zero: I don't think it is a bad idea to discuss a third party, but your rhetoric seems much the same as that underlying the Ralph Nader campaign in 2000. Maybe you believe that the Democratic Party offers no alternative to the Republican party, but I think you are being shortsighted. The policy positions embraced by Democrats substantially differ from those of Republicans. If John Kerry, that bastion of centricity, was in power, I guarantee that we would still have a Roadless Forests rule. We would not be pushing to privatize social security. Our judges would be much less Strict Constructionists. We would have increased efforts for fuel efficient transportation. We might even have a repealed tax cut. I am supportive of all those real policy differences that you so easily dismiss.

    Posted by nattiebumpo at 06/14/2005 @ 4:50pm

19. Nattiebumpo

    On the tax cuts, no I am not being disingenuous, nor am I using tricks in numbers. The rich pay a higher percentage of taxes than they did before Bush's tax cuts. If the rich pay more now, then the non-rich pay less. That is indisputable fact. In fact, you can go to this site and get an actual excel spreadsheet which details the numbers: http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.xls.

    Your reasoning that paying for the tax cuts means cuts in social programs is not valid. You cannot link revenues and spending, they are two different animals. You don't "pay for" tax cuts, in fact, they pay for themselves, and more. Because our tax rates are so high, there is an economic phenomenon where lowering tax rates actually increases revenues to the federal treasury. JFK knew this, which is why he pushed for an across-the-board (or in liberal terms, "tax cut for the rich") tax cut. His quote was something like "lowering rates now will greatly increase revenues in the future" or something very similar to that. Anyway, if there have been cuts in social programs as you claim, they had nothing to do with the tax cuts, they only have to do with spending priorities. Politicians have never linked revenues and spending, which is why we seem to always have deficits.

    I know a little more about health care now because of a long discussion I had with a liberal (I think he was, we stayed away from labels, all I know is he hated Bush, but he knew a lot about health care). The reason Medicare is driving up costs is because it is the largest single purchaser of health care. They reimburse providers far below what the actual bill is, so in order to make up the loss, the providers pad their bills with extra costs. So this inflated bill is now "the market" price because Medicare is the 600 lb. gorilla in health care, and so all other areas of health care follow suit. Plus, Medicare requires so much paperwork that providers hire people to do nothing but take care of Medicare paperwork. Very innefficient and costly. Liability (malpractice) insurance for doctors is also another factor, you were right about that. You are probably right about the drug companies to some degree, but think of the insurance they need to guard against gigantic lawsuits. But the single biggest factor in my opinion is the fact we have taken consumers out of the equation. When you go to the doctor for a checkup, and his bill is $200, when common sense says it should be $50, you don't care, because you don't pay it, your insurance does. But if you had to pay it, you would argue about it, and they would lower it, which, in a ripple effect, would lower the costs for everyone. That's capitalism, and I would like to see us bring it back more to the industry. Reward people for NOT spending so much each year on health care. Give them incentives to at least look at their bill, if not actually negotiate a little bit. I actually liked a portion of Kerry's idea about solving health care. The government would cover catastrophic costs, costs that no one under 6 figures would be able to afford. Add to that medical savings accounts, where people could put money in tax-free (many employers have a version of this) to use for health care costs (and we could subsidize the poor). Then make people pay their own bills, and any money they save accumulates, and they get to build a health care nest egg. Those are some of my ideas.

    Posted by lburwell at 06/14/2005 @ 5:47pm

20. It always amuses me to see the LBURWELLs of the world say things like "how about medical savings accounts?" What planet do you live on - do you really believe that the working poor in this country, so many of whom comprise the uninsured and whose ranks are swelling by the day thanks to the Bush cabal, could somehow find an extra $30,000 or so to stash away in a savings account?! How is it possible to be so deluded about the reality of conditions today. We are a nation that expects large numbers of people to live on $5.15 an hour – these are people who struggle constantly to cover basic living expenses like food and housing. Wake up. And as for suggesting that we meet this challenge by "subsidizing the poor" - how is that any different than the status quo, really, which you evidently object to strenuously as socialistic?

    And then there's the old chestnut, the magic of the marketplace. Look at what the almighty free market has done for virtually everything in its talons - perhaps most significantly, for this board's purposes, its disastrous effects on a free media. More of that as remedy for the health-care morass? No thanks.

    Posted by mewsician at 06/14/2005 @ 7:29pm

21. PS - Anybody who doesn't get that Paul Krugman is one of the only people who actually knows what he's talking about in the entire mind-numbing blizzard of blowhard pundits, shout shows, bloggers and op-ed contributors that constitute our current media climate....is just too partisan to be able to face truth. Krugman is unimpeachable, and that Web site you refer to is a joke.

    Posted by mewsician at 06/14/2005 @ 7:34pm

22. Yes, class warfare will serve the Democrat party very well. Just look where it has gotten them so far. :)

    Posted by Tymbrimi at 06/14/2005 @ 7:53pm

23. Krugman is a joke. :) But he is good for a laugh. :)

    Posted by Tymbrimi at 06/14/2005 @ 7:58pm

24. For the poor, the medical accounts could receive subsidies. :)

    Posted by Tymbrimi at 06/14/2005 @ 7:59pm

25. Zero, and all other left of center stalwarts--ponder this--we will be on the outside looking in until we stop focusing on the national offices and start a grass roots effort to take back statehouses in all fifty states. this is how neo-cons have and will stay in power for the next 20 years. How many states do the left control? Not enuf to mount a serious effort to redress the ills in this country. Nader can't do it , Gore couldn't do it and Kerry was so inept I cried at his bumbling effort to dislodge a well oiled political machine--GW. Let's get back to basics. Mayors, City Managers, County Execs, Governors and then and only then will we take back Congress and the White House.

    dicktracy

    Posted by dicktracy at 06/21/2005 @ 11:34pm