The Debate That Wasn't

One would hope that citizens of a wealthy, vibrant democracy could be moved to openly debate issues of vital national importance. A case in point is an issue as fundamental as shifting our economy from creating and selling manufactured goods to one that provides services in a global marketplace. Such a sea change would surely leave millions of skilled workers adrift; you'd think they would like to have a say.

But this is the United States, and that debate is, unfortunately, buried beneath a ton of rhetoric -- mostly industry-funded nonsense that made the "transition" as smooth as possible for corporate movers and shakers.

For believers in unfettered "free" markets, it is simply a matter of faith that the logic of the private sector will eventually lead to greater prosperity for all, even if some are steam-rolled in the process.

Job displacement and economic insecurity are simply the results of increased productivity, technological advances and the availability of cheaper labor overseas -- all part of the Natural Order of Things and a consequence of economic progress that is to be embraced rather than questioned. The belief is immune to contradictory data, and its adherents have little patience for dissent, and they have the budgets to render it irrelevant anyway.

And they don't face much dissent. Democrats, as a result either of being cowed by big-business's powerful echo-chamber or out of loyalty to their corporate sponsors, have offered tepid opposition to the status quo, occasionally attempting to craft a vaguely populist message like candidate Kerry's lame "Benedict Arnold CEO" line, but never questioning what underlies the New Economy.

That non-debate has been a decades-long double-whammy for average Americans. On the one hand, they've had to adapt to a free-wheeling, world-wide cowboy economy, without insulation from global competition and facing the prospect of seeing their jobs outsourced and off-shored. With the decline in unions, more and more of the jobs that are out there have lower wages, are less secure and don't come with the same benefits the parents of today’s workers took for granted.

At the same time, the rise of the New Conservative movement with its knee-jerk disdain for government and deeply-held belief in the value of "labor flexibility," has systematically picked away at the fabric of the social safety nets -- from the government and from employers--that provided previous generations with a sense of security and prosperity. It's been a slow death by a thousand cuts.

Consider the fact that no cheering treatise about the wonders of economic liberalization doesn't have a few sentences -- often buried deep in the concluding paragraphs -- about those who will be "displaced" by a shifting economy and require "adjustment." These are, of course, euphemisms for real Americans who have lost the economic security once taken for granted in the wealthiest country in the world and who now find it much more difficult to sustain a decent, middle-class life.

Their task wasn't made easier by the rise of Reaganomics. When Ronald Reagan declared, "government is the problem," he set about fixing it on the back of American workers. Upon taking office in 1981, he slashed the benefits available under the Trade Adjustment Act (TAA), which was passed under Kennedy to "render assistance to those who suffer as a result of national trade policy." Benefits under TAA have remained almost flat since the early 1980s. Reagan, and later the first Bush, would both attempt to kill off TAA altogether, just when the "New Economy" was gathering steam. Some on the right continue to oppose the program, calling it that most wretched of conservative bugaboos: “welfare.”

The Los Angeles Times' Peter Gosselin noted that in the mid-1970s, unemployed workers could collect up to 15 months of unemployment compensation. But in recent years, "Congress had pared the program to just six months ... And state eligibility restrictions imposed in the late 1970s and early '80s shrank the fraction of the workforce entitled to collect benefits ... " Last year, only a little more than a third of those unemployed collected benefits.