There Once Was a Union Maid, But She Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Just home from the theatre and checking my computer one more time before going to bed, and there's this link from my friends at New York's Working Families Party, one of the few bright spots on the USA's political landscape now that Russ Feingold's not in office, and here it is for you too now:

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2011/06/30/a_wageless_profitable_recovery.html

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire is one of the most reliable sources for solid, factual political reportage on the internet. I know this because my son told me. Without divulging my son's identity, I can assure you his word is, well, good as silver. Gold is apparently not the thing to value any more.

Yes, folks, it seems to be true: "corporate profits captured 88 percent of the growth in real national income" during our recent "recovery." I doubt that any of you reading this are much surprised, whether or not you pay much attention to the fact that the banks and brokerages we bailed out with our hard-earned dollars basically put the money straight into the silk pockets of their CEOs, whether or not you care that more American families are falling into poverty, that we are dishing out more for gasoline while the profits of oil companies keep going up and up and up. Fact is, no matter whose figures and what analysis you deem important and/or credible, I'd guess that you, like me, are feeling worse off financially today than you were a year ago and probably much worse off than you were two years ago.

I was leafing through a magazine yesterday and found myself staring at a full page ad from a local car dealership trumpeting the fact that "Everyone can afford $250 a month." But they're wrong. We can't. If my car quit working, I would not be able to replace it. I'm not even sure I can afford to take it in for its routine maintenance now due. There is no extra $250 a month to spend on a car or a new furnace or getting the dishwasher fixed. And the ironic thing about this all is that I'm actually doing well by almost anyone's standards. I own a nice house (even if it needs lots of repair), I have a functioning car (with 100,000 miles), I have a fairly nice and secure job, and my children have finished college. What I have is not only out of reach for most of the world's population, it is out of sight for most of the world's population. But this, after all, is America.

Indeed. It is, in a word, advanced capitalism. People in parts of the world where capitalism is just hitting its stride, places like India and China, should be watching what is happening here with interest and some alarm. This is, after all, where they're heading, and it is not a beautiful meadow with wild animals and blue skies and wildflowers so thick they make you wince to traipse through them on brilliant summertime mornings when the dew is still fresh on their petals.

No. Corporate profits are up. Living standards are down. The gap between rich and poor is widening, as more and more of the former working/middle class are slowly dragged into the spreading puddle of the poor. Not even my former trade union seems to understand the real impact of this change. My union was broken this winter here in Wisconsin, and while tens of thousands of us, union members from all over this once-progressive state, converged on our state capitol to protest this, my union made tee shirts to sell to its members and agreed to a monstrous cut in our wages and benefits without even consulting us, its members. They completely missed the opportunity to use their only real tool: The strike. It could have been a general strike, but it wasn't even a local strike. And now, as of yesterday, they lost the right to represent me. They can no longer collect dues from me. And you know what? I don't even care. They lost me when they failed to refuse to comply with the governor who just successfully emasculated them.

And in case you want to see what happens when trade unionists aren't afraid to speak up, go to Four Star Video here in Madison or (sigh!) order it up on Netflix: "Made in Dagenham." Lovely, heartening movie from England.