STAY FOCUSED,
STAY STRONG,
STAY UNITED!
We are dedicating this page
to a man in Minnesota who has spent his career researching and studying the
importance of Unions in America,
Richard A. Levins, Professor
Emeritus of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota
Unions Built the Middle Class and Must Save
It
By Richard A. Levins
The middle class is fading fast. Stagnant wages,
rising costs for life’s essentials and massive debt are taking their toll.
What can we do to reverse this trend before it is too late? We must recognize
that cheap labor can build cars and appliances, but only organized labor can
build a middle class.
While the middle class struggles, the country’s wealthiest people are riding
the stock market gravy train. Much of my economic work in the past several years
has been with farming. Farmers have a better word for those who make money
because of what they own instead of what they do. They are called landlords.
Landlords, like corporate shareholders, simply sit back and take part of what
others have earned.
What many politicians hail as the “ownership society” is really a landlord
society. It is one in which money that could be used to reward labor gets
skimmed off by a fortunate few. This repackaging of our old friend, trickle-down
economics, is downright dangerous.
All strategies that trade good jobs for cheap toasters eventually erode the
market for the goods and services being provided. A society composed of a
handful of hyper-wealthy individuals and millions of people living on the
economic edge is not the sound, stable market needed for growth. Only a middle
class with a widely distributed buying power can provide that. What economists
call the “income distribution” in this country is, from a middle-class
perspective, as bad as it has been since the years leading up to the Great
Depression.
The ideology of ownership would have us believe that the rich getting richer is
just how things work in our economic system. The less we tamper with the way
profits are distributed among owners and workers, the better off we all will be.
The problem is, of course, that the rich and powerful monkey with the system all
the time, and always to their benefit at the expense of the middle class.
Corporations are now strong enough to call for, and get, substantial tax
reductions. They can call for, and get, substantial wage concessions. They can
call for, and get, weakened public oversight of their activities. These changes,
which have permitted and fostered the growth of corporations and globalization,
are not the result of clever ideas and theories. They result from the exercise
of power.
And that, in a nutshell, is the problem. Once corporations pay all their
expenses, anything left over must be distributed between labor and owners. When
labor has power, wages grow, and with them, the middle class. When owners have
power, we move toward a society of rich and poor without much in the middle.
A farmer I have worked with over the years put it this way: When you sit down to
dinner with a group of hungry people, it’s not only the size of the pie that
matters. The size of your fork is just as important.
Because of its generous share of natural resources, and centuries of public
action to build roads, schools and the like, the United States is a wealthy
nation. During the mid-twentieth century, there were two principal methods for
making sure this wealth was distributed such that it would do the most to
maintain and build the nation’s wealth.
First, the very wealthy were heavily taxed, either directly or through their
corporations. This provided for maintenance of existing social investments and
creation of new ones. Our system of public education and research, for example,
was well supported by tax dollars.
Second, labor unions became strong enough to shift corporate profits from very
wealthy owners to the middle class, in the form of better wages and benefits.
Money stayed in the hands of those most likely to spend it in ways that would
further stimulate the national economy and provide essential public services.
We are providing links to the works of Professor
Levins. Keep in mind, he is working in the "Heartland" and has taken
great interest in many "farming issues" as well:
http://www.apec.umn.edu/faculty/dlevins/
His Faculty page from the University of Minnesota
http://www.middleclassunionmade.com/
We are reviewing this booklet
http://www.middleclassunionmade.com/bio.htm
http://www.middleclassunionmade.com/spreadword.htm
http://www.themountainmail.com/main.asp?SectionID=7&SubSectionID=7&ArticleID=8797
"It was Unions that Built the Middle Class"
STAY FOCUSED,
STAY STRONG,
STAY UNITED!
