Labor & Employment Law

Middle Class Must Organize to Take Back America from the Rich

By James Parks

A recent Pew Foundation poll shows 53 percent of Americans believe government is helping Wall Street and the rich, while only 3 percent believe it is helping the middle class. Those figures are not a coincidence, but reflect what is really happening in our political system today, says Jacob Hacker.

Hacker spoke yesterday evening at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., in a book event that featured introductory remarks by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.  Hacker, co-author of ?Winner-Take-All Politics,? said the nation?s wealthiest people and Big Business colluded with conservative ideologues in the late 1970s to hijack the political process and change government regulatory and tax policies.

By concentrating large amounts of resources and money in political action groups and lobbying, they changed the political climate in Washington, causing every Congress and president, Democrat and Republican, to adapt. As a result, taxes for the wealthiest Americans were cut, deregulation took hold in a big way and unions still face major obstacles getting legislation passed.

The economic crisis and the growing inequality in our country are mainly the result of deliberate government policies over the past 35 years that have helped the rich get richer, and ignored the middle class, Hacker said. While globalization, trade and technology played a role in the economic changes, the real culprit is the political power of the wealthy. In fact, the immense political power of the rich threatens our democracy and the public?s faith in government, Hacker said.

Hacker and Trumka both agreed middle-income people can take back their power by organizing for the long haul, not just from election to election. Such mobilization, with the union movement taking a big role, requires a broad, inclusive vision in which working people share the nation?s wealth. Progressives also must begin to hold politicians accountable as do corporations.  Trumka said it will take more than electing friendly politicians to office to change the fundamental direction of the economy:

Charting a new course for our economy requires that we understand the causes behind wage stagnation and growing inequality over the past 35 years. And prominent among those causes is the free market orthodoxy that has served the interests of our nation?s wealthiest families and most powerful institutions but left the vast majority of working families behind.

We have to wage a sustained war of ideas to challenge free market fundamentalism and fight for our own strategy to recover, rebalance and rebuild an economy that works for all.

Hacker?s appearance was co-sponsored by the AFL-CIO, Campaign for America?s Future and the Progressive Book Club.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 15, 2010 (boomark / email).