Reading material

This is the opening paragraph of a New York Times review of The Working Poor: Invisible in America, a new book by David Shipler.

The phrase "working poor" doesn't carry much weight in this fractious political season. It slips by in a campaign speech, with nothing much to grab onto as it passes. It suffers from a kind of blunt-edged simplicity - a collision of enormous, rounded terms that, by the lights of American exceptionalism, should not be joined. Both political parties quietly agree that it is an ugly, unsettling combination - that any American who works steadily should not have to suffer the barbed indignities of poverty. But Americans do - millions of them. There are 35 million people in the country living in poverty. Most of the adults in that group work nowadays; many of them work full time. And while there are heavy concentrations of African-Americans and white single women in the mix, the group is every bit as diverse, and diffuse, as the nation is.

It is the ugly underside of the American economy, the part that no one in government wants to touch, the shameful national family secret that everyone knows about but pretends doesn't exist, like the cliched mad uncle living in the attic, a truth expressed not in numbers but in results:

A "living wage" often doesn't provide one. "Education" and "job training" are not only not panaceas, they're not even very good treatments. Increased productivity does not translate into either higher wages or more jobs but only into higher corporate profits. What increases there have been in median family income over the last few decades have come solely through increases in the length of the work week and the number of two-income families.

In short, working is not enough to keep you out of poverty. Soon, it may not be enough to keep you middle class.

The beneficiaries are the rich. In the year 2000 in the US, the richest 1% of the population had more wealth than the bottom 95%. For the last 30 years, the average real (i.e., after taking inflation into account) wages and the net worth of middle class families have fallen more or less continuously - and the pattern shows no signs of stopping, even less of reversing. We are increasingly a society cut into two pieces. Very unequal pieces, a tiny handful versus the great majority, but still two pieces: rich and poor, gainer and loser, powerful and powerless, boss and bossed, and to a greater extent than we'd care to admit, owner and owned.

I haven't read Shipler's book so this is not a recommendation, although the review does make it sound a worthwhile read. I do recommend Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America by Barbara Ehrenreich. As you read either (or both) remind yourself that this slide has continued through Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. A political stance of Anybody But Bush does not, will not, cannot address this.

In the 1960s, an unemployment rate of 3% was considered "full" employment - and even at that, there were people who found it outrageous to call that "full." Now, anything below 5% is regarded as indicating "dangerous inflationary pressures." Answering the questions of who benefits from that change and when was the last time you heard any representative of either major party say anything about it will tell you all you need to know about what's wrong with both our economy and our politics.