In Praise of Prosperity

Every day, progressives dive headlong into debates over the U.S. economy only to end up angry, defensive, and confused. The problem: few of us realize that the very definition of the terms used in these heated discussions -- for example, "growth" or "competitiveness" -- is loaded against us.

The language of economic competitiveness is not ideologically neutral, but instead designed to promote policies that serve the interests of big corporations and their investors. If progressives want to reframe the debate over America's future, they will have to reframe its very terms. A first step: start talking about prosperity.

When making arguments in support of their favored policies -- be it massive tax cuts or rolling back environmental safeguards -- conservatives focus almost exclusively on economic growth. What most Americans don't understand is that economic growth does not necessarily make us more prosperous as a society.

Consider the research of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez: while we've witnessed several periods of immense growth in recent decades, the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers -- in other words, most of us -- actually fell by 7 percent between 1973 and 2000.

As Americans, we are raised to believe from an early age that growth is an over-arching imperative of a capitalist economy. You don't have to be an economist to get it -- when graphs point upward, the economy's good. So we are expected to dedicate ourselves to that goal, even if it requires ceding our own personal well-being. Just think about the rhetoric surrounding living wage laws: sacrifice your very basic needs for the good of the corporations, i.e. America. We're all Corporate Citizens, and we have to advance the national project of achieving growth at all costs.

But for progressives, this narrative muddies the waters and obscures questions that are important to all Americans. Growth-related statistics, for example, tell us nothing about inequality. If the wages of 99,990 workers were to decline by a half percent while the fortunes of ten members of the Walton family increased by 20 or 30 billion dollars, the average growth for that population of 100,000 would be quite impressive indeed. But that's little solace for anyone who is not a Walton.

The self-serving politics of growth has grown ever more dominant since the emergence of the new conservative movement under Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, creating a lopsided system that increasingly serves the greed of the few at the expense of the well-being of the many. According to Ed Wolff, author of Top Heavy, the share of national wealth controlled by the top 1 percent of households increased from 20.5 percent in 1979 to 38.5 percent in 1998, while the bottom 40 percent of American households experienced a drop in their share of national net worth, from 0.9 percent in 1983 to only 0.2 percent in 1998.

This alarming trend is only going to get worse in George Bush's "Ownership Society." According to the Los Angeles Times, during 2004 and the first couple of months of 2005, wages didn't keep pace with inflation for the first time since the 1990 recession. In other words, working Americans effectively took an across-the-board pay cut -- and, more importantly, at a time when the economy grew by a healthy four percent, and "corporate profits hit record highs as companies got more productivity out of workers while keeping pay raises down."

According to ILO statistics (from 2001), Americans are the most productive workers in the world -- a fact that is often touted by the 'boot-straps' folk on the right as proof of our system's superiority. But we're not the most productive workers per hour; we merely work more hours than any other industrialized country, and our hours increase almost every year. It's the kind of productivity that is built primarily on the backs of the middle class and the poor. Squeezing every last drop of productivity out of working people to maximize growth is the essence of the Wal-Mart model. It's good for the economy, but not for the people who live within it.