The Real Downward Spiral

GOP presidential hopeful T.PAWlenty (what he reportedly prefers to be known as) railed at the RightOnline convention in Minneapolis yesterday that it's imperative to elect more regressives (my word, not his) to high office and "end the downward spiral this country's in."

But, wait! I shot back (granted it was only at my NPR-tuned radio). Wasn't it the regressive policies of the previous president and fellow corporate/megawealthy-friendly elected officials that plunged this country off the cliff in the first place?

This is but one factor that is viewed through what seems like opposite sides of the looking glass and result in such diametrically different ideas about conditions and policies that form our society and increasingly polarizes the country.

Take the impact labor unions have had on the national economy, for example.

One view is that unions, not corporations, have been the tide that has lifted all boats in this country. Working and workplace conditions, which unions have fought to improve, including job-safety regulations, child-labor restrictions and work-day and work-week limitations eventually became the law of the land, thus benefitting the nation's entire workforce, non-unionized as well as unionized. All workers in the U.S. benefitted from the higher wages, pension contributions and healthcare benefits unions won for their workers.

Then along came globalization and corporate operations and jobs, particularly manufacturing operations and jobs that had formed the backbone of what is viewed as America's middle class, evaporated from American cities and emerged in other countries, countries where the manufacturers didn't have to be bothered with such nettlesome and expensive gnats as healthcare and retirement benefits and livable, by U.S. standards, wages.

This view sees unions as villains. By demanding ever-higher wages and ever-more costly benefits for their workers, unions priced America out of the employment market and drove employers overseas to labor markets where workers are happy to work for a fraction of what companies have to pay Americans and who don't demand or even expect retirement and healthcare benefits.

In the other view, corporations are the villians. It is corporate greed that sends corporations to labor markets when they can pay wages at a fraction of what they would have to pay U.S. workers. That enables corporations to pile up ever-greater company profits, enrich their investors with ever-larger dividends and, in the appallingly incestuous corporate board-of-directors system, reward their top executives more and more obscenely bloated compensation packages and bonuses.

Which view is correct? Perception will probably always depend on which side of the looking glass the viewer is looking at. But here is a reality that, so far as I'm concerned, blows a hole in T.PAWlenty's rant.

For corporations to pay pennies-on-the-dollar wages for goods -- and now even services -- they produce, they are not only driving down their own costs and, thus, increase their profits, which are at record highs -- they are driving down the standard of living in the United States.

The downward spiral this country is in is a correction to the global workforce employers have accessed. As more Americans have less access to what used to be good-paying manufacturing jobs, they have less income to spend on the goods and services employers are providing via foreign workers.

Spending less on goods and services in this country results in less revenue for public services. Just think about the myriad ways people are finding to cut corners: Don't eat out as much, put off major and even minor purchases, take 'staycations' because they can't afford the travel, accommodation and entertainment expenses traditional vacations involve. Not only are the travel, restaurant, hotel and amusement park industries making less, so too are taxes associated with such expenditures drying up.

So now in addition to Americans being paid less and finding fewer jobs in the private sector, they're being laid off in the public-service sector, which results in their having less income to spend on goods and services.

As a result, instead of "keeping up with the Jones", Americans are being forced into "moving down with the Chans."

That, T.PAWlenty, is a downward spiral.