3
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It shows up in inequality in health security in the form of inadequate or no insurance, lower life expectancies for poor and lower income households, and an eroding safety net for the most needy. Rising health care costs, lost or no benefits, and an economic crisis have increased the plight of millions of the country's least advantaged.
EPI's report highlights a nation of growing inequality, lower wages, fewer benefits, diminished worker bargaining power, and disempowered unions v. market fundamentalists, complicit government officials, and their "You're-on-Your-Own" (YOYO) ideology against which they're powerless.
They believe markets know best so let them, arguing that alternatives "will create the wrong incentives." Recent decades reveal the folly of this approach on American workers' living standards. Exposing the "ownership society" myth, all household security measures, including net worth, have fallen despite a few years of late 1990s progress.
Today, "The macro-economy is in serious disrepair, beset by the spillovers from the bursting....housing bubble, high energy prices, and unsustainable levels of household indebtedness" causing economic collapse and the possibility of a deep, protracted depression. So far, remedial measures have been patchwork and counterproductive as growing millions face greater uncertainties with no imminent signs of relief and federal and state governments not caring or helping.
In 2009, the State of Working America is dire and worsening enough for millions of households to face greater than ever challenges on their own with government indifferent to their plight.
Concluding an early 1980s edition of his book, Michael Harrington sensed what "Other Americans" were up against in writing:
"I end this review, then, on an ambivalent note. There was progress; there could have been more progress; the poor need not always be with us. But it will take political movements much more imaginative and militant than those in existence in 1980 to bring that progress about. Until that happens, the poor will be with us." And today, in exponentially growing far greater numbers because nothing is being done to reverse them.
Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday - Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.
