The GOP Price of Living (and Dying)
Those of us of a certain age have seen the economy expand, then contract, then expand again on many occasions. Things have changed, though - from Reagan’s “revolution” to GHW Bush’s “voodoo economics” through the unprecedented wealth transfer that has happened during Bush II’s reign, there’s a fundamental difference. In that difference lies the reason that I’m a progressive Democrat…
I’m old enough to remember when the nuclear family was really the American dream: 2.2 kids, a house with a modest mortgage, mom met the kids at the school bus stop in the afternoon because she didn’t work outside the home, dad came rolling in later in the afternoon, dinner was served, homework was done, then maybe some TV (3 VHF channels and a couple of UHF “independents”). Rinse, spit, repeat.
The promise of technology and automation was never that Americans would lose their jobs to machines, but that the machines would make the jobs more efficient and lead to a better quality of life for everyone. LBJ’s “Great Society” was a product of progressive thinking - that yes, indeed, it was possible for the previous generation to leave the next generation just a little bit better off, and so on and so on.
In the past, I’ve ranted about how there was a palpable shift in the overall demeanor of big business back in the early days of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Perhaps I was a bit closer to it (”the shift”) at the time because of the point that I was at in my career - I’d been with the same employer for a couple of years, making a pretty good wage, and I was the sole breadwinner in the family. That was my role; that was the real role in life I thought I was supposed to play. But I could sense, even back then, that something was terribly amiss. I just couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. Something strange was happening in the work place that augured an uncertain future.
Allow me to use a personal story as a segue into a larger discussion on why I’m a progressive Democrat.
The company I worked for during the Reagan years made a very rapid transformation from a truly “family oriented” employer, to a “bottom line” company. Harvard Business School was just starting to churn out Michael Hammer-cloned MBA graduates using the “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap model of business education. The heady days of merger and acquisition really got cranking around the time of Reagan’s second inauguration. The atmosphere in the workplace shifted dramatically in the space of what felt like just a few short months. In fact, the change was so dramatic that, even in the quasi-professional / technical role that I filled, it was becoming obvious that the only way to survive was for those in my technical specialization to organize with a local labor union. And so we tried - I tried. I was very active in the effort.
I was active in the effort for several reasons, but the most important was that the HBS graduates were starting to fling around the specter of competition and deregulation and corporate survival as if to generate a self fulfilling prophecy. And, to a degree, the HBS’ers did just that. What a union offered, even a professional / technical union, were rules that the company and employees had to live by. I reasoned that, without a legally binding employment contract, non-represented, non-management employees were flying by the seat of their pants and without a net.
In the long run, I was right.
The company used a couple of really shady tactics, aided and abetted by a Reagan-reconstituted National Labor Relations Board ruling, to defeat the organizing effort, and the union local was not prepared well enough to respond. The threat of layoffs never emerged for the rank and file union members in the company, but the professional and technical specialties started to be purged in the late 1980’s, as folks like me began to simply make too much money.
As my salary and 401K grew, I clearly recall sitting at my kitchen table one night and amortizing the value of my salary and benefits 20 years into the future. I somberly recognized that evening that the company couldn’t sustain me and hundreds of my coworkers into the future. At some point, even a modest three or four percent increase per year in a fairly decent salary becomes like compounding interest to the bean counters in a company - and it was clear that something had to give. So the professional ranks started taking hits in terms of layoffs, “performance-based” firings, and early retirement package offerings to those in the organization who held the corporate institutional memory.
Here’s an example of how quickly the changes occurred, and why I worked so hard in the union organizing effort.
At one time, the technical and professional folks made time and a half for overtime (because the company would never compensate their professional people less than their union workers, don’tcha know…). Out of the blue, the non-represented technical workers were required to put in at least 45 hours a week to qualify for time and a half. The uncompensated five hours per week was euphemistically dubbed “professional time”. And then one day, word came down from the executive suite that overtime was completely gone for the professionals. You worked what you had to in order to get your job done, no matter how long it took or how much additional responsibility you had to assume because the guy’s desk next to you was suddenly vacated late on a Friday afternoon (the favorite time to issue pink slips), and there was no replacement for him or her.
But you know who didn’t go? The company never touched the union rank and file, because of the contract. There are still guys working for the company in union positions who were there when the great middle management purge of 1990 took place.
I was fortunate enough to see the handwriting on the wall, and started doing some serious programming work on the side back then, and that led to my ability to leave the company on my own terms in the mid-90’s. After all, computers were where the big money was, Tim Berners-Lee was rolling out the HTTP protocol, and the dot com boom was just getting underway. My services were in pretty high demand, and I brought not only my computer experience to a booming market, but my mature business acumen. It was a great combination that worked for awhile, and I made a pretty good living. And then the dot com bust hit.
By the time I was forced back into the job market in the early part of this century, even though my skills were at their peak, my earning power was not. The conservative mantra was, “well, you work whatever you have to work at. McDonalds, whatever. There’s no shame in working hard.” Indeed. It got to the point where I took one of the first jobs that I was offered that was even remotely reasonable in terms of compensation. And then that job was “mergered and acquisitioned”, even though it was in the non-profit sector. The last several years have been a struggle, having come down from positions of both authority and responsibility. In the business climate that I was unfortunate enough to experience, at a certain age, it’s impossible to regain career traction, and you settle for the best job that’s available in order to make ends meet.
I know I’m not alone in my tale, and that there are many out there like me. My real income has declined significantly since the mid-90’s. In fact, I was 1040′ing more per year in 1995 than I am today. And I’m working harder today than I ever did in my life, for a relatively thankless employer whose executive battle cry at the end of every quarter is: “We’re not making the numbers!! Panic! Panic!!” So, the sales force forward-sells our product line to make this quarter’s numbers at the expense of bookings at the beginning of next quarter. It’s an endless cycle of stupid business decisions that leads to bargain basement deals for our customers, less revenue for the company, and a repeating of the cycle again at the end of next quarter.
The company that I work for in 2008 is by no means exceptional in the modern corporate world. There is no “quality of life”, so to speak. I’m tethered to a cell phone and a computer 24 hour a day, 365 days a year, and I spend my time reacting to business crises rather than getting a break from the bonds. I am literally doing the same work that three people did 20 years ago. But my employer thinks this is ok. (The customers don’t, but that’s another story for another day.)
This is the life that the Republican Party brought to me, and why I’m such a strong progressive, even if I’m getting a bit long in the tooth. I’m angry. I’m angry with the business climate that has upended my life and that of millions of others like me. I’m angry that I’m good enough at what I do that I’m the “go-to” guy when there’s a steaming pile of business shit that someone else has left for me to clean up, but there’s no one to back me up when I have a less than stellar day at the office. I’m angry that at this point in my life I’m locked into a fairly dead-end position because of the paycheck, but more importantly, benefits that I can’t (again, at this point of my life) afford to be without.
In the past year, I’ve seen one of my closest business associates hang it up because it just wasn’t worth it anymore - he bailed out early when he had the opportunity, even as he was somewhat unsure of his financial future. Another (15 years younger than me) had a heart attack just before Christmas. He was back at his desk last week. He’ll never make it to retirement. Another is opting for early retirement in March rather than spend another minute with her nose stuck to the grind stone.
The nuclear family is a dream of the past. There are so many among us (thankfully, I’m not yet one of them) who have to work two and three jobs just to pay the mortgage, electric bill, and put food on the table because real wages have declined so precipitously in years recently passed. But the GOP thinks that’s all right, in fact, they’re proud of it. They think it’s just peachy that mom and dad have to work themselves to the point of exhaustion, and then on the other hand they wonder why the nuclear family has disintegrated.
There is more than just a mortgage crisis at hand, and I don’t think anyone in a position to say so really wants to admit it in polite company. There is a very real family financial liquidity crunch that is underway, and sooner than later, the crunch is going to affect all of us. The unprecedented wealth transfer from poor and middle income families to the uber rich is nearly complete. The folks at the bottom of the GOP-led financial pyramid scheme are nearly bled dry, and the pyramid is about to collapse. To sustain itself a little longer, the folks at the top of the pyramid will have to start an Amway-style ritual of financial cannibalism amongst themselves. I think that (to an extent) this is exactly what we’re seeing in the stock markets and big financial houses as the true meltdown begins. Is this is how it starts?
An executive of a collapsed subprime mortgage lender jumped to his death from a bridge Friday, shortly after his wife’s body was found inside their New Jersey home, authorities said.
The deaths of Walter Buczynski, 59, and his wife, Marci, 37 — the parents of two boys — were being investigated as a murder-suicide, according to the Burlington County Prosecutor’s Office…
[He] was a vice president of Columbia, Md.-based Fieldstone Mortgage Co., a high-flying subprime mortgage lender that made $5.5 billion in mortgage loans and employed about 1,000 people as late as 2006.
However, it has since filed for bankruptcy and now has fewer than 20 employees. The company had recently filed court papers seeking approval to pay about $1.1 million in bonuses that would be divided among Buczynski and other staffers so the company could wind down its lending operations and go out of business…
Even in the last throes of corporate failure, the bosses reward themselves.
It’s only speculation, but perhaps this tragedy happened in part because the Buczynski’s were embroiled in some intractable sort of financial difficulty. Still, for each VP of a failed company that can’t take the personal pressure any longer and leaps from a bridge, how many more bodies and destroyed lives from the lower rungs of the economic pyramid have they left in their wake as they pursued the Republican holy grail of financial success and “A-list” cocktail parties?
When consumers stop spending, the economy is going to crash hard. Signs already point to a significant contraction in consumer spending, which is why George Bush today offered up a $140 billion economic stimulus package. The plan tosses a meager bone to those who chose to forgo a new winter coat this year in order to pay the gas or heating oil bill. The theory is that people will see $800 or $1000 from the government as “found money” and go out and buy a new refrigerator or big screen TV, thereby stimulating the economy.
Here’s a news flash for George Bush and his fiscal policy wonks: a lot of people aren’t going to use the cash from his proposed “economic stimulus package” to buy a new big screen TV. They’re going to use the money to catch up on a late car payment. Or pay the electric bill for a month or two without having to figure out which Peter to rob in order to pay Paul.
This is the GOP price of living. And it isn’t cheap or indexed for inflation.
This is why I’m a progressive Democrat.
Update, 1/19: From the Moderate Voice, on the eve of the GOP primary in South Carolina, Shaun Mullen remembers the late GOP henchman Lee Atwater’s “death bed” soliloquy:
“My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The ’80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the ’90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.”
Ed. Note: Former RNC Chairman (and Karl Rove mentor) Lee Atwater currently resides in a special circle of hell, and a séance to obtain his comment on this article was not immediately productive.
BANG! Going, going ,going, fucking GONE.
Right outta the park, with the bases loaded, Blair hits a grand fuckin’ slam.
Excellent. One for the books.
History repeating itself?
Historians among you may recall the urban myth that after the Crash of ‘29, stockbrokers leaping to their deaths from Wall St. skyscrapers was a daily occurence. IIRC from my Dark Wraith readings, maybe one fellow might have done just that about then, but it occurred well before the crash. Another fellow might have bought a one-way ticket on the shithouse express but he did it by shooting himself.
$300 will buy me exactly 25 cases of Aldi’s corned beef hash.
right on. The Depression is coming. Hopefully, many more bankers and high flying executives will also take the easy way out. After all, it wasn’t poor people flinging themselves off buildings in 1929.
But this drive to feudalize America won’t end till the oligarchy start finding their grandchildren hanging from lampposts. Sadly, that’s the way these phases usually come to an end.
Powerful post, Richard.
Don’t forget this: The Bush stimulus package has one purpose and one purpose only. The Republicans realize that their eight years of rapacious greed are going to have a horrible price, and their only interest now is in postponing the economic collapse for a year, so they can blame it on the Democrats. They will spend any kind of money they have to in order to escape the results of their behavior (as usual, and as long as it’s our money, not theirs).
The raiding of American companies started in the 1980’s with hostile takeover of companies with junk bonds, confiscation of pensions, borrow money and put the company in debt, and then sell the company–leaving the company in position that made it very difficult to compete. The Raiders then went on with their Fascist Republican cronies in state and local governments and did basically the same thing. Then they decided to raid the largest prize of all–the US Government. Wit Bush as the puppet they have increased the National Debt over 60% and continuing. The Republican Party is not a political party–it is a Fascist Criminal Party that has indebted and almost broken the good ole USA. Who pays?? Your children and grandchildren will be paying for their free lunch for the next 25-50 years. Is Revolution the only option that we the people have to take back what was stolen from, not only us, but our children and grandchildren? Google-”the 14 points of Fascism and compare to the Bush/Cheney mis-administration. Organize, Organize, and Organize in your communities!
don’t worry peeps. The result of this radical rightwing backsuck to the 19th century ultimately will result in the most pronounced progressive swing left the world has ever seen. It’s always darkest before the dawn
getaclue, I hope you’re right, but if history shows us anything it shows us that Americans have to re-learn every 70 years or so that right-wing economic doctrine is full of shit. We last learned it in the 1930s and we are about to learn it again. But right-wing economic doctrine will come back because (a) people WANT to believe its simplistic theme that we get what we deserve in life — that the good are rewarded and the bad are punished — and (b) there’s a hell of a lot of money behind it.
Since the New Deal, Republicans have been on the wrong side of every issue of concern to ordinary Americans; Social Security, the war in Iraq , equal rights, civil liberties, church- state separation, consumer issues, public education, reproductive freedom, national health care, labor issues, trade policy, campaign-finance reform, the environment
and tax fairness. No political party could remain so consistently wrong by accident.
The only rational conclusion is that, despite their cynical “family values” propaganda, the Republican Party is a criminal conspiracy to betray the interests of the American people
in favor of plutocratic and corporate interests, and absolutist religious groups.
Why? Because they’re evil GOP bastards!
Methinks such is best described as “good concept, but no sense”, for want of anything better.
Especially considering the National Debt being well over $9 trillion, and then some.
And the likelihood of His Fraudulency’s Great Within expecting the advanced tax rebates to be blown, and quickly, @ Wally World on spending sprees lacking any respect for practicality or utilitarian value for money.
Damn! If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought he was writing this about me and my life. Such a powerful look at what has happened to us baby boomers and our witnessing the death of our American dream.
Mr Blair, you hit the nail on the head in regards to the GOP business model we are currently experiencing. Don’t forget on how they take the numbers such as trade, the deficit and employment and “spin” them into whatever they want to reinforce their mantra of tax cuts and corporatism.
But, I think you missed an important part of the overall picture. The GOP is using the present economic disaster, that they have engineered, to finally rid the US of their nemesis, The New Deal. They will use the crash to call for reduced spending and the elimination of the “entitlement programs”. Fred Thompson is already carrying the banner for this. When asked about what he would do to solve the recession, he gives the cut spending nonsense. He then continues with the famous Neocon fable of no tax increases and “Afterall it’s your money”. Nevermind the fact we have infrastructure falling apart all over this country, just pledge to not raise taxes.
The amazing thing about the entire scenario is how many working class people vote for this crap. That and how many think increased productivity is a good thing for the workers!
That was a terrific article. I’m probably a good deal younger than you, but a lot of your points resonated with me. I’m sad that I’ll probably only know of the American Dream from books and posts such as yours.
Nice synopsis of what has gone wrong with the American Dream.
I too am a bit long of tooth. I just retired from the federal government after 34 years. I was a branch chief. My employees were well paid, they had benefits, and job security. After Bush became President we were pressured to fill jobs with contractors who did the same work as my federal employees but for far less pay, few benefits and no job security. Did it save the taxpayers money? No, each contractor cost the government slightly more per employee that a similar governmnet employee but the workers got only a relatively small share of that money. The rest went to the contract company owners. It really pissed me off to have two employees working side by side doing the same job, but one got paid less, had fewer benefits, and could be let go for no reason and with no warning.
This is precisely the kind of world the Republicans are aiming for, a workforce too poor and desperate for work to complain or fight back..They want the company’s officers to make most of the money because they are the ones who will give some of that money to the Republican Party to insure they remain in power.
Great post, Richard.
It really resonated with me because I’m on the verge of falling into the pit you so vividly describe. All I can do is keep my head down, be as productive as possible and sock away as miuch money as I can.
Great article, and sums up the sheer stupidity of Reagan and the people who idolize him-they all bought the typical, although well-hidden greed, programs of the neocons that took over the Republican Party, after years of planning. If the groundswell Democrats aren’t active and aware, those same rich-folk policies will be behind the scenes at the top of the pyramid (behind the curtain) that took over the Republican Party. Money is power, power corrupts, and total power corrupts totally.
WE are in grave danger in this country from apathy and ignorance about what is happening. With the almost total control of the medias to keep the public from being educated about what is happening, this is even more frightening. Our votes are becoming meaningless-not only due to the corruptible electronic voting machines, but because of the whole process-from limiting polling places and hours to vote and count, to the debacle of party delegates votes meaning more than the popular vote. The economy has been, in many ways, deliberately eroded, because people who are scrambling to keep afloat don’t have the time or the inclination to get involved to make change happen. Our schools are in a mess-it keeps the public ‘dumbed-down’-it isn’t the teachers for the most part, it’s the system that writes the regulations for the state and local school curriculum and buys badly edited textbooks. (How many of your history books were really accurate-how many math books were easily understood?) Undereducated and financially strapped people don’t question much, and when they do, it is without the proper questions to get the facts to change things and they are much more easily persuadable. (duped) That’s why so many blue collar workers bought into Reagan in the beginning…..it wasn’t that they were devoid sense-but without access to information and desire to believe in their country, they believed their leaders. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, doesn’t it……..but if you think someone is after you, and you see them countering your every move, that is not paranoia and that’s why the hair on the back of your neck is rising. It is also why so many believed that Iraq was responsible for 9/11, even though 3/4 of those involved came from Saudi Arabia and how we were pushed into the Iraq war and why volunteers were gung ho at first.
We need to go back to the principles that lead our country to the progress and social advancement of the multitudes-and the majority were formed under FDR. Unions, regulations for all businesses, be they manufacturing (what’s left), stocks & bonds, Banks, medias, telecoms, and enforce them because without them, greed rules. We are in a new age of Robber Barons, with more tools at their disposal. Without those regulations and unions, this article paints a clear portrait of what happens and how it hurts our country.
I was about to graduate from college when Reagan won the elections for the first time. I turned to my then girlfriend and said: “We’re fucked.” I would have never thought how correct I was.
I sensed a poisoning of the American character as I saw corporate greed become the accepted norm and the tax breaks for the rich elite began.
I too grow long on the tooth (to use your phrase) I realize in what dark waters we sail. I echo what I said more that 20 years ago. We are fucked. Americans have a very short memory and a naivete that defies logic. Some call it optimism. I call it ignorance, fear and unwillingness to get involved and ask serious, tough questions.We hope everything will be ok, we think all politicians are corrupt and none of it has anything to do with our lives. And so it’s time for the music to stop. The party is over.
Pogo was right.
Sobering - Neitsche says “We are doomed to repeat our mistakes until we learn from them.”
The current state of life in America is finally sinking in ….to all those Americans who have chosen anything but patriotism and activism - things like “Dancing with the Stars” “The Super Bowl” and Faux news stories about attractive young women with bad things happening …the day of reckoning has come. EIther bow down and be subserviant to the New World Order or reach deep into your individual soul and the collectrive unconsciousness of goodness to start this ball bouncing in a new direction
Distraction is the contemporary mode of oppression.
Very well written.
I much preferred the fear of living with the Cold War, Detente, Star Wars Weapons and Missile Crises-one could still live cheap back then and go to school working part time. But seriously, all of those threats kept us in line regarding social responsibility to our own citizens. Nobody went broke due to medical bills. When the Wall came down I knew we were headed for ruthless capitalism and eventual self destruction–and I was so young then too–read a lot of history though. Well, when a country has no major threats it eventually turns on it’s own citizens, which is what we see today. I feel for my kids now coming of age–I really grew up in the best of times–the 70’s.
We all have to work now to maintain a reasonably decent way of life. My husband and I own a bridal accessory business that is slowly dying due to the fact that our product category is nearly dead and the endless availability of it all online–cheap. You said it when the only one who benefits is the customer, it’s an endless race to the bottom for American businesses. Eventually the customer is going to lose too though when they can’t afford to buy anything.
So, I’m headed back to school to become a nurse? At 50? Well, yeah. Thinking about opting out in a major way too. A small piece of land with a well, straw bale house with solar panels and a very large garden. All I can think of now is how to be be self sustaining and self sufficient.
The Writing is on the wall.
But why do all now assume it’s just the Repubs or the NeoCons that are the “bad Guys”? I have just retired from a tech job with a very large mainframe corp. I opted out to the country, built a SIP panel house with solar panels and No gas - propane or “natural” . I am waiting - along with friends - for the criminal elite to throw the switch - another 9-11 style internal attack, this time nuclear so that “our” army, Navy, Air force can protect us from the “terrorists”. If there is any reaction from being without electricity, food, water, gas, etc., and riots result, the “general” in Colorado will invite the friendly army from up north - Canada - to come help out. The army won’t be able to get our boys home from the 170 foreign US bases in 130 foreign countries. The now classified “terrorists” will be without rights - by way of “patriotic act”, Military Commissions act - and thrown into the many - some say 230 FEMA/Homeland Security detention camps, formerly known as decommissioned military bases. Here they will work to be fed. Tell me, how else can President Cheney and his dumb-a__ sidekick stay out of prison for their acts against humanity? Another question - Please ask your “progressive” Democrats “Why is Impeachment off the table”? And will there really be another election in this country? Free or otherwise! Ron Paul tried to warn us!
The writing is on the wall - the Long of Tooth have been watching it appear there for many years now.