With Thanksgiving leftovers still in the freezer and prospects of mouth-watering Christmas feasts burning bright, half of America’s population can toast their toes in front of a cheery fire and enjoy the holidays.
Many of the other half are poor and getting poorer and have no time for toe-toasting.
The latest reports from the census bureau depict a shrinking middle class and a surging number of the truly poor. The data now show that a record number of Americans are just scraping by.
Mayors in 29 cities told the census bureau that more than one in four people in need of emergency food assistance this year did not receive it. Housing and child care are eating up as much as half of total family income in low income families. Both California and Texas have more than a million families which classify as poor.
By category, children make up 57 percent of those in the poor or low-income groups, followed by those over 65. That is to say, those hurting the most are least able to help themselves.
As recession-pressed businesses cut back expenses, low-income workers have seen their hours cut and their wages frozen. The inflation-adjusted average earnings for the bottom 20 percent of families have fallen from $16,788 in 1979 to just under $15,000 and the next 20 percent have remained flat at $37,000.
At the same time, the top 5 percent have seen their incomes skyrocket by 64 percent to more than $313,000.
THE STATISTICIANS who put these numbers together offer no solutions. Thus far in the presidential campaign, politicians haven’t even touched the subject in any serious way.
And that is part of the explanation for the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Our system isn’t working the way it should when so much of the wealth produced every year goes to so few people. It isn’t working when millions with full-time jobs are officially poor. Or when millions — many of them kids — go to bed hungry and even more can’t afford decent housing or health care.
The way to fix it, is to think community first, individuals second; to adopt an all-for-one, one-for-all philosophy that states all working citizens make a contribution to the general good and should be able to afford to live in dignity and comfort.
Our system isn’t doing that. Our system is telling half of our 300 million citizens that they are second class; that 5 percent of our citizens are the ruling class; that one-tenth of 1 percent of our citizens rightly belong to an economic royalty that wallows in wealth and privilege that is truly unimaginable to the rest of us. And, our system says, that’s the way it ought to be.
But, of course, this is not the way to make the American dream come true for all Americans; not at all.
This is not an argument for communism or an autocratic state. It is an argument for a reordered society with different values. Capitalism, the most efficient way to create wealth, is perfectly consistent with such a state. It simply is not true that men and women won’t be innovative and productive unless they are allowed to amass huge amounts of wealth at the expense of others.
Those who are natural achievers strive to meet the expectations of the society in which they live and work. What is urgently needed, is a better set of expectations.
