Imagine A Country: Life in the new millenium

About one out of four workers makes $8.70 an hour or less. That’s not much more than the real value of the minimum wage of 1968 at $8.27 in inflation-adjusted dollars. 

It’s not Russia. 

Imagine a country where for more and more people a job doesn’t keep you out of poverty, it keeps you working poor. Imagine a country much richer than it was 25 years ago, but the percentage of full-time workers living in poverty has jumped 50 percent. 

Imagine a country that sets the official poverty line well below the actual cost of minimally adequate housing, health care, food, and other necessities. You were not counted as poor in 2001 (latest available final data) unless you had pre-tax incomes below these thresholds: $9,214 for a person under 65, $8,494 for a person 65 and older, $11,569 for a two-person family, $14,128 for a three-person family, and $18,104 for a family of four. On average, households need more than double the official poverty threshold to meet basic needs. 

Imagine a country where homelessness is on the rise, but federal funding for low-income housing is about 50 percent lower than it was in 1976, adjusting for inflation. The largest federal housing support program is the mortgage interest deduction, which disproportionately benefits higher-income families.  

Imagine a country where more workers are going back to the future of sweatshops and day labor. Corporations are replacing full-time jobs with disposable “contingent workers.” They include temporary employees, contract workers, and “leased” employees—some of them fired and then “rented” back at a large discount by the same company—and involuntary part-time workers, who want permanent full-time work. 

It’s not Spain. 

How do workers increasingly forced to migrate from job to job, at low and variable wage rates, without health insurance or paid vacation, much less a pension, care for themselves and their families, pay for college, save for retirement, plan a future, build strong communities? 

Imagine a country where after mass layoffs and union busting, just 13.5 percent of workers are unionized. One out of three workers were union members in 1955. Full-time workers who were union members had median 2001 weekly earnings of $718 compared with just $575 for workers not represented by unions. 

Imagine a country where the concerns of working people are dismissed as “special interests” and the profit-making interests of globetrotting corporations substitute for the “national interest.” 

Imagine a country negotiating “free trade” agreements that help corporations trade freely on cheap labor at home and abroad. 

One ad financed by the country’s agency for international development showed a Salvadoran woman in front of a sewing machine. It told corporations, “You can hire her for 33 cents an hour. Rosa is more than just colorful. She and her co-workers are known for their industriousness, reliability and quick learning. They make El Salvador one of the best buys.” The country that financed the ad intervened militarily to make sure El Salvador would stay a “best buy” for corporations. 

It’s not Canada. 

Imagine a country where nearly two-thirds of women with children under age 6 and more than three-fourths of women with children ages 6-17 are in the labor force, but affordable childcare and after-school programs are scarce. Apparently, kids are expected to have three parents: Two parents with jobs to pay the bills, and another parent to be home in mid-afternoon when school lets out—as well as all summer. 

Imagine a country where women working full time earn 76 cents for every dollar men earn. Women don’t pay 76 cents on a man’s dollar for their education, rent, food or childcare. The gender wage gap has closed just 12 cents since 1955, when women earned 64 cents for every dollar earned by men. There’s still another 24 cents to go. 

The average woman high school graduate who works full time from ages 25 to 65 will earn about $450,000 less than the average male high school graduate. The gap widens to $900,000 for full-time workers with bachelor’s degrees. “Men with professional degrees may expect to earn almost $2 million more than their female counterparts over their work-life,” says a government report. 

Imagine a country where childcare workers, mostly women, generally make about as much as parking lot attendants and much less than animal trainers. Out of 700 occupations surveyed by the labor department, only 15 have lower average wages than childcare workers. 

Imagine a country where most minimum wage workers are women, while 95 percent of the top-earning corporate officers at the largest 500 companies are men, as are 90 percent of the most influential positions, from CEOs to executive vice president. Less than 2 percent of corporate officers at the largest companies are women of color. 

Imagine a country where discrimination against women is pervasive from the bottom to the top of the pay scale and it’s not because women are on the “mommy track.” In the words of a leading business magazine, “At the same level of management, the typical woman’s pay is lower than her male colleague’s—even when she has the exact same qualifications, works just as many years, relocates just as often, provides the main financial support for her family, takes no time off for personal reasons, and wins the same number of promotions to comparable jobs.” 

Imagine a country where instead of rooting out discrimination, many policy makers are busily blaming women for their disproportionate poverty. If women earned as much as similarly qualified men, poverty in single-mother households would be cut in half. 

It’s not Japan. 

Imagine a country where the awful labeling of children as “illegitimate” has again been legitimized. Besides meaning born out of wedlock, illegitimate also means illegal, contrary to rules and logic, misbegotten, not genuine, wrong—to be a bastard. The word illegitimate has consequences. It helps make people more disposable. Single mothers and their children have become prime scapegoats for illegitimate economics. 

Imagine a country where violence against women is so epidemic it is their leading cause of injury. So-called “domestic violence” accounts for more visits to hospital emergency departments than car crashes, muggings, and rapes combined. About a third of all murdered women are killed by husbands, boyfriends, and ex-partners (less than a tenth are killed by strangers). Researchers say, “Men commonly kill their female partners in response to the woman’s attempt to leave an abusive relationship.” 

The country has no equal rights amendment. 

It’s not Pakistan. 

Imagine a country where homicide is the second-largest killer of young people, ages 15-24; “accidents,” many of them drunk driving fatalities, are first. It leads major industrialized nations in firearms-related deaths for children under 15. Increasingly lethal weapons designed for hunting people are produced for profit by major manufacturers and proudly defended by a politically powerful national rifle association. Informational material from a national shooting sports foundation asks, “How old is old enough?” to have a gun, and advises parents: “Age is not the major yardstick. Some youngsters are ready to start at 10, others at 14. The only real measures are those of maturity and individual responsibility. Does your youngster follow directions well? Would you leave him alone in the house for two or three hours? Is he conscientious and reliable? Would you send him to the grocery store with a list and a $20 bill? If the answer to these questions or similar ones are ‘yes’ then the answer can also be ‘yes’ when your child asks for his first gun.” 

It’s not France. 

Imagine a country whose school system is rigged in favor of the already privileged, with lower caste children tracked by race and income into the most deficient and demoralizing schools and classrooms. Public school budgets are heavily determined by private property taxes, allowing higher income districts to spend much more than poor ones. In the state with the largest gap in 1999-2000, state and local spending per pupil in districts with the lowest child poverty rates was more than $2,152 greater than districts with the highest child poverty rates. The difference amounts to about $861,000 for a typical elementary school of 400 students—money that could be used for teachers, books, and other resources. Disparities are even wider among states, with spending in districts with enrollments of 15,000 or more ranging from $3,932 per pupil in one district to $14,244 in another. 

In rich districts kids take well-stocked libraries, laboratories, and state-of-the-art computers for granted. In poor schools they are rationing out-of-date textbooks and toilet paper. Rich schools often look like country clubs—with manicured sports fields and swimming pools. Poor schools often look more like jails—with concrete grounds and grated windows. College prep courses, art, music, physical education, field trips, and foreign languages are often considered necessities for the affluent, luxuries for the poor. 

Wealthier citizens argue that lack of money isn’t the problem in poorer schools—family values are—until proposals are made to make school spending more equitable. Then money matters greatly for those who already have more.  

It’s not India. 

Imagine a country whose constitution once counted black slaves as worth three-fifths of whites. Today, black per capita income is about three-fifths of whites. Imagine a country where racial disparities take their toll from birth to death. The black infant mortality rate is more than double that of whites. Black life expectancy is nearly six years less. Black unemployment is more than twice that of whites and the black poverty rate is almost triple that of whites. 

Imagine a country where the government subsidized decades of segregated suburbanization for whites while the inner cities left to people of color were treated as outsider cities—separate, unequal, and disposable. Recent studies have documented continuing discrimination in education, employment, banking, insurance, housing, and health care. 

It’s not South Africa. 

Imagine a country where the typical non-Hispanic white household has seven times as much net worth (including home equity) as the typical household of color. From 1995 to 2001, the typical white household’s net worth rose from $88,500 to $120,900 while the net worth of the typical household of color fell from $18,300 to $17,100. 

Imagine a country that doesn’t count you as unemployed just because you’re unemployed. To be counted in the official unemployment rate you must have searched for work in the past four weeks. The government doesn’t count people as “unemployed” if they are so discouraged from long and fruitless job searches they have given up looking. It doesn’t count as “unemployed” those who couldn’t look for work in the past month because they had no childcare, for example. If you need a full-time job, but you’re working part-time—whether 1 hour or 34 hours weekly—because that’s all you can find, you’re counted as employed. 

A leading business magazine observed, “Increasingly the labor market is filled with surplus workers who are not being counted as unemployed.” 

It’s not Germany. 

Imagine a country where there is a shortage of jobs, not a shortage of work. Millions of people need work and urgent work needs people—from creating affordable housing, to repairing bridges and building mass transit, to cleaning up pollution and converting to renewable energy, to staffing after-school programs and community centers. 

Imagine a country with full prisons instead of full employment. The jail and prison population has nearly quadrupled since 1980. The nation is number one in the world when it comes to locking up its own people. In 1985, 1 in every 320 residents were incarcerated. By 2001, the figure had increased to 1 in every 146. 

Imagine a country where prison labor is a growth industry and so-called “corrections” spending is the fastest growing part of state budgets. Apparently, the government would rather spend $25,000 a year to keep someone in prison than on cost-effective programs of education, community development, addiction treatment, and employment to keep them out. In the words of a national center on institutions and alternatives, this nation has “replaced the social safety net with a dragnet.” 

Imagine a country that has been criticized by human rights organizations for expanding, rather than abolishing, use of the death penalty—despite documented racial bias and growing evidence of innocents being sentenced to death. 

It’s not China. 

Imagine a country that imprisons black people at a rate much higher than apartheid South Africa. One out of seven black men ages 25-29 are incarcerated. Many more are on probation or on parole. Looking just at prisons and not local jails, 10 percent of black males ages 25-29 were locked up at the end of 2001, compared with 1 percent of white males. Black non-Hispanic women are five times more likely to be imprisoned than white non-Hispanic women. Meanwhile, nearly one out of three black men and women ages 16-19 are officially unemployed, as are one out of five ages 20-24. Remember, to be counted in the official unemployment rate you must be actively looking for a job and not finding one. “Surplus” workers are increasingly being criminalized. 

Imagine a country waging a racially biased War on Drugs. More than three out of four drug users are white, according to government data, but three out of four state prisoners convicted of drug offenses are black and Latino. Racial disparities in drug and other convictions are even wider when non-Hispanic whites are distinguished more accurately from Latinos. 

A study in a prominent medical journal found that drug and alcohol rates were slightly higher for pregnant white women than pregnant black women, but black women were about ten times more likely to be reported to authorities by private doctors and public health clinics—under a mandatory reporting law. Poor women were also more likely to be reported. 

It is said that truth is the first casualty in war, and the War on Drugs is no exception. Contrary to stereotype, “The typical cocaine user is white, male, a high school graduate employed full time and living in a small metropolitan area or suburb,” says the nation’s former drug czar. A leading newspaper reports that law officers and judges say, “Although it is clear that whites sell most of the nation’s cocaine and account for 80% of its consumers, it is blacks and other minorities who continue to fill up [the] courtrooms and jails, largely because, in a political climate that demands that something be done, they are the easiest people to arrest.” They are the easiest to scapegoat. 

It’s not Australia. 

Imagine a country where the cycle of unequal opportunity is intensifying. Its beneficiaries often slander those most systematically undervalued, underpaid, underemployed, underfinanced, underinsured, underrated, and otherwise underserved and undermined—as undeserving, “underclass,” impoverished in moral and social values, and lacking the proper “work ethic.” The oft-heard stereotype of deadbeat poor people masks the growing reality of dead-end jobs and disposable workers. 

Imagine a country that abolished aid to families with dependent children while maintaining aid for dependent corporations. 

Imagine a country where state and local governments are rushing to expand lotteries, video poker, and other government-promoted gambling to raise revenues, disproportionately from the poor, which they should be raising from a fair tax system. 

Imagine a country whose military budget tops average Cold War levels although the break up of the Soviet Union produced friends, not foes. This nation spends almost as much on the military as the rest of the world combined and leads the world in arms exports. 

Imagine a country that ranks first in the world in wealth and military power, and 34th in child mortality (under five), tied with Malaysia and well behind countries such as Singapore and South Korea. If the government were a parent it would be guilty of child abuse. Thousands of children die preventable deaths. 

Imagine a country where health care is managed for healthy profit. In many countries health care is a right, but in this nation one out of six people under age 65 has no health insurance, public or private. Healthcare is literally a matter of life and death. Lack of health insurance typically means lack of preventive health care and delayed or second-rate treatment. The uninsured are at much higher risk for chronic disease and disability, and have a 25 percent greater chance of dying (adjusting for physical, economic, and behavioral factors). Uninsured women are 49 percent more likely to die than women with insurance during the four to seven years following an initial diagnosis of breast cancer. 

Imagine a country where many descendants of its first inhabitants live on reservations strip-mined of natural resources and have a higher proportion of people in poverty than any other ethnic group. 

Imagine a country where 500 years of plunder and lies are masked in expressions like “Indian giver.” Where the military still dubs enemy territory, “Indian country.” 

Imagine a country which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but uses more than 40 percent of the world’s oil resources and about 20 percent of the coal and wood. It is the number one contributor to acid rain and global warming. It has obstructed international action on the environment and climate change. 

It’s not Brazil. 

Imagine a country where half the eligible voters don’t vote. The nation’s senate and house of representatives are not representative of the nation. They are overwhelmingly white, male, and millionaire. At least 170 senators and congresspeople are millionaires. That’s nearly one out of three members of the house and senate. Just 1 percent of the population they represent are millionaires. 

Imagine a country where white men who are “falling down” the economic ladder are being encouraged to believe they are falling because women and people of color are climbing over them to the top or dragging them down from the bottom. That way, they will blame women and people of color rather than corporate and government policy. They will buy the myth of “reverse discrimination.” Never mind that white males hold most senior management positions and continuing unreversed discrimination is well documented. 

Imagine a country with a president who, even more than his father before him, “was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.” The president wants to undo affirmative action. Never mind that despite all his advantages he was a mediocre student who relied on legacy affirmative action for the children of rich alumni to get into a top prep school and college. Never mind that he rode his family connections in business and politics. 

Imagine a country where on top of discrimination comes insult. It’s common for people of color to get none of the credit when they succeed—portrayed as undeserving beneficiaries of affirmative action and “reverse discrimination”—and all of the blame when they fail. 

Imagine a country where a then presidential press secretary boasted to reporters: “You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it. If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000 or 20,000.” 

Imagine a country where politicians and judges whose views were formerly considered far right on the political spectrum now rule both houses of congress and the presidency and increasingly dominate the judiciary. 

Imagine a country whose leaders misuse a fight against terrorism as camouflage for undermining democracy. Fundamental civil liberties, including the right not to be imprisoned indefinitely on the word of government officials, are being tossed aside. The attorney general attacked critics of administration policy with McCarthyite words: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity...They give ammunition to [our] enemies and pause to [our] friends.” The attorney general would burn democracy in the name of saving it. 

It’s not Italy. 

It’s the United States. 

Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. called on us to take the high road in Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? King wrote: “A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. We are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but...one day the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life.... A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth....There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American citizen whether he be a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer. There is nothing except shortsightedness to prevent us from guaranteeing an annual minimum—and livable—income for every American family.” 

Z 

Holly Sklar is the coauthor of Raise The Floor: Wages and Policies That Work For All Of Us.