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American Exceptionalism Comes Under Conservative Assault
After 3 months of anemic Republican action on the economic front, Speaker John Boehner and the Joint Economic Committee have formulated a plan. On the second page of the executive summary titled, What and How to Cut, the Republicans are demanding to “Decreasing the number and compensation of government workers”- the Republicans follow up with their explanation of the prior statement,
“A smaller government workforce increases the available supply of educated, skilled workers for private firms, thus lowering labor costs.”
For those who have a slight grasp of economics this is astonishing. Let me explain, labor costs = American wages. By increasing the supply of labor, wages decrease. This is basic economics of supply and demand. So the way the Republicans want to create jobs in America is to saturate the American labor pool with more workers, increasing unemployment, and driving down the American standard of living.
The wages of the American middle class has been almost flat for almost an entire generation. ”The typical worker has had stagnating wages for a long time, despite enjoying some wage growth during the economic recovery of the late 1990s.”
The one demographic that has had better performing wages has been college educated employees. Most government workers are college educated thus have a higher standard of living and wage packages than high school educated workers.
The conservative assault on our standard of living has been incremental, first the GOP has driven private unions into the dirt over the last 30 years, now they are attacking the public sector unions with the same intentions.
The Republicans have now turned their sights, not only on the unions, but all working class wages. This is precisely what liberals have been warning would happen if conservatives ever took control of our government.
The basic foundation of a strong economy is wages. Without wages there isn’t demand, without demand, there isn’t economic growth. That is unless all economic demand is controlled by the elite. If economic demand predominately comes from the top 10% of Americans there isn’t a need to increase the wages of the middle class. This has been called a plutonomy, an economy of, for, and by the rich.
The data may be a further sign that the U.S. is becoming a Plutonomy–an economy dependent on the spending and investing of the wealthy. And Plutonomies are far less stable than economies built on more evenly distributed income and mass consumption. “I don’t think it’s healthy for the economy to be so dependent on the top 2% of the income distribution,” Mr. Zandi said. He added that, “In the near term it highlights the fragility of the recovery.”
Essentially the working class is only needed to make the things that the rich buy.
I don’t see anything in GOP plan to reduce CEO compensation that has spiked through the roof. Just recently the CEO of Ford received a 54 million dollar salary. This is 500 times the average workers’ salary at Ford, if the worker made $100,000/yr. In the world of the conservatives, this should be celebrated as the American success story. Really? The only people allowed to live a comfortable lifestyle and have their standard of living continue to increase are the executives in the country?
The GOP obviously sees no need to manipulate the money out of the hands of the CEOs and bring a portion of that economic growth into the hands of the working class, the employees who made the company successful.
The core of American exceptionalism is our democracy and our standard of living, unfortunately both are under assault under the oppressive direction of the current republican regime in the states and the federal government.
Ramen noodles for everyone!
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11 Responses to American Exceptionalism Comes Under Conservative Assault
Reynardine
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 2:44 pm
See, I told you so.
If you can get us a usable link to the Citicorps/Ajay memo, we could view the evidence ourselves. It’d be as appetizing as an on-site lecture in forensic pathology before lunch, but it’d help us all see who’s been murdering America.
Ray Medeiros
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Ask and you shall receive… www.scribd.com/doc/667423...
Reynardine
Mar. 30th, 2011 at 9:07 am
Thanx for the link. It downloaded little bitty onto my Samsung Flight, but I’ll manage to read it. Anyway, we now know what the Orangetan meant by, “So be it!”
Anne
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 3:39 pm
You know what’s truly ironic? The very same people who like to run on about American exceptionalism are doing everything in their power to ensure that there is no economic or political basis for this country to actually BE exceptional. If they had their way, almost everyone would be reduced to ignorant serfdom.
Eykis
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 5:26 pm
These people lack any shred of moral fiber in their inhumane bodies. Who do they think is going to keep them in power? Even the Teabaggers are unemployed and have no money left – so many of them gave it away to these PIGS for their campaigns to do in the Middle Class.
What do they actually expect Baby Boomers, the largest demographic of Americans in the country to do for retirement? Are we supposed to take our paltry reduced Social Security checks – now that Wall Street and Big Business has decimated our retirement funds and move in with our college-educated children who are trying their best to live their American Dream? Such a retirement to look forward to – after we work until age 72! Are we back to 1880?
Ray Medeiros
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Thank you Talk Radio host Leslie Marshall, for promoting this article
www.lesliemarshallshow.co...
Shiva (Moderator)
Mar. 29th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
You are absolutely correct. There is little need for more workers in the workforce. By getting rid of unions they get rid of competitive wages, meaning no one makes anything. Want to work? We will hire all of you for next to nothing.
Hopefully this can all be turned around after 2012
howard
Mar. 30th, 2011 at 9:16 am
Your analysis misses the mark. Reducing the government payrolls reduces the deadweight loss of government costs and taxes. Government creates no wealth, they consume it. Reducing a deadweight loss is more efficient for the economy, and more sustainable.
Redeploying and retraining workers for the private sector increases the labor supply, but is the only sustainable solution. While middle class wages may have been stagnant for some time, we are in a global economic battle with other countries for labor. It is the competitive wage base of other countries that undermines middle class wages, and government intervention, taxes and the deadweight loss government costs.
Wages are compensation for skills, knowledge, and intelligent effort consistently applied.
Shiva (Moderator)
Mar. 30th, 2011 at 9:31 am
When you have 5 people for every job out there, increasing the labor supply does very little for you
Nor does it do anything for your country when the middle class wages stagnate, when the middle class is the one that keeps your economy rolling with purchasing power. Reduce that and your rich, who get much richer btw, look overseas.
Ray Medeiros
Mar. 30th, 2011 at 12:02 pm
@howard,
Thank you for your comments, but I believe you may have missed the meaning of the article. The GOP’s sole purpose in this article is to increase high skilled labor into the private sector, this increased surplus of high skilled labor will effectively drive down wages of all white collar, middle class workers.
Yes, this is there plan to decrease unemployment. Make wages low enough so businesses will hire, rather than increasing real demand and grow the economy
Reynardine
Mar. 30th, 2011 at 10:31 am
A two-class society should require only two publications. For the super-rich, there’s Forbes magazine. For the rest of us, there’s forbs magazine, or, How to live on hay.