The Debate That Wasn't

From AlterNet:

For believers in unfettered "free" markets, it is simply a matter of faith that the logic of the private sector will eventually lead to greater prosperity for all, even if some are steam-rolled in the process.

Job displacement and economic insecurity are simply the results of increased productivity, technological advances and the availability of cheaper labor overseas -- all part of the Natural Order of Things and a consequence of economic progress that is to be embraced rather than questioned. The belief is immune to contradictory data, and its adherents have little patience for dissent, and they have the budgets to render it irrelevant anyway.

And they don't face much dissent. Democrats, as a result either of being cowed by big-business's powerful echo-chamber or out of loyalty to their corporate sponsors, have offered tepid opposition to the status quo, occasionally attempting to craft a vaguely populist message like candidate Kerry's lame "Benedict Arnold CEO" line, but never questioning what underlies the New Economy.

That non-debate has been a decades-long double-whammy for average Americans. On the one hand, they've had to adapt to a free-wheeling, world-wide cowboy economy, without insulation from global competition and facing the prospect of seeing their jobs outsourced and off-shored. With the decline in unions, more and more of the jobs that are out there have lower wages, are less secure and don't come with the same benefits the parents of today’s workers took for granted.

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"Non-debate" is so very right. It's amazing, in fact, how many Americans continue clinging to the old and outmoded concept of "the American dream." True, some people are still able to work hard and prosper: the vast majority of Americans, however, have rather grim prospects for, say, sending their children to college, buying a home, or retiring comfortably. We simply no longer live in the nation glorified by high school American history texts. Most US citizens are now commodities, labor capital to be bought and sold in the "labor market;" we're not people, anymore. The maddening thing is that it doesn't have to be this way. Our current economic predicament is the result of specific and conscious governmental policy decisions; such policies could easily change if the public demanded it. Unfortunately, most American workers, that is, the ones who bother to study economics, have bought the corporate line that what's good for business is good for the nation as a whole. While that's true to some extent, it's become quite clear these last twenty years or so that business is quite capable of prospering while the general population stagnates and rots. All my life, it seems, I've been promised that allowing business to do as it pleases will ultimately result in economic prosperity for all. That hasn't happened yet, despite a couple of decades of wild-eyed deregulation, and I've been paying pretty close attention since the early 80s. It's time to face the facts: it's not ever going to happen.

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