The evidence of a steadily hardening national heart is becoming painfully apparent. If there is any doubt, one had only to listen to a few hours of the recent debate on raising the debt ceiling to realize how fractured the country has become.
The entire focus was how much can be taken from the bottom of the socio-economic ladder in order not to touch a penny of those at the top. Since Congress is presumed to represent the will of the public one has to presume this debate provided a window into the American character. But there are more examples of the true nature of that character.
Let”™s start with the fact that more than one in 10 citizens are out of work, some for more than a year. Jobs continue to be shipped overseas and yet the recession is deemed to be over because the balance sheets of corporations look healthy. An insight into the level of empathy for the unemployed is that many at the upper income level believe that if one is without a job it represents a personal failing or lack of initiative.
It is clear the American worker has become a commodity, interchangeable with workers around the world. Wages have not moved for several decades, steadily losing value because of inflation. The value of the American worker to U.S. commercial interests has slipped even further. Many workers have become freelancers, on call when needed and then left to fend for themselves.
The cost savings attained by squeezing the workforce have flowed directly to the top, with the greatest disparity between the average worker”™s salary and those at the top now at a level to equal those vilified in the days of the robber barons. In 1965 the average salary for a CEO of a major U.S. company was 25 times the average worker”™s. Today, the average CEO”™s pay is more than 250 times the average worker”™s.
It should be noted that when the top income tax was 91 percent and the worker was fairly treated, the country was in far greater economic health. Is there a connection?
There is a far more serious change in the American character that does not bode well for the future. Chris Hedges, author of “War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning,” sums it up this way: “We have been very effectively pacified by the pernicious ideology of a consumer society that is centered on the cult of self ”“ an undiluted hedonism and narcissism. That has become a very effective way to divert our attention while the country is reconfigured into a kind of neofeudalism, with a rapacious oligarchic elite and an anemic government that no longer is able to intercede on behalf of citizens but cravenly serves the interests of the oligarchy itself.” (The Progressive, August 2011).
Strong stuff but it does seem to match with the aforementioned historic figures.
For a country that was founded by a people who bucked authority in the most fantastical manner imaginable, rising up against the British Empire, it is truly sad to see how gullible we are when it comes to power and fame.
This country is on a disastrous path where it could wind up in the straits it left on the other side of the pond unless it retakes the ability to challenge authority, big time. Think of the plank the British prime minister has to walk on a regular basis when he faces Parliament.
Something to think about.
This is Maureen Morgan”™s final Surviving the Future column in the Business Journal. Reach her at maureenmorgan10@verizon.net.
