Op Ed:
Growing Income Inequality in Oregon
Forcing Millions To Seek
Economic, Political Change

“Pursuit of Happiness” Cut Off at Dollar Sign for Many.

Courtesy: prosperity4kids.com

(SALEM) - "What goes around, comes around”: it's an old cliche in politics and economics, reflected in revivals --and even some revolutions-- throughout history. In this nation we’re now engaged deeply in a remarkable example of that inevitable cycle, thirty years in fundamental formation, finally answering to frustrations felt by millions. It heralds further ongoing collapse of the contrived conservative ideology paramount for nearly thirty years and the “return to the sense of connectedness" that prevailed before that political debacle descended on us.

The massive motivator, unavoidably so for these many millions, is the rapidly growing --now well-recognized and widening-- wage/gap afflicting, now, many once-secure within “the middle-class”.

Its impacts are deeply damaging and essentially very personally-hurtful, too. That’s driving both politics and the sometimes-desperate economic-resorts forced on many “once-comfortable” Americans --no longer able to uphold their hard-won “respectable middle-class” status in our society-- as “The rich get richer while the poor get poorer”.

Massed in once much-preferable suburban sanctuaries, these newly-”poor” felt themselves set well-aside from “those others”, long seen as captured in compassion-inducing poverty within metro-areas besieged by socioeconomic catastrophe, over past decades.

These once-comfortable millions are learning “the hard way” what consequences can come from inattention by elective choice. OR impossible political promises such as: “We can cut taxes, double military spending, and STILL balance the budget.”

“All politics is local” one famous participant proclaimed somewhat portentously, some years ago, emphasizing that action-starts at city level. Perhaps now that aphorism must be read differently: To indicate the clear focus now prevailing on how personal-and-demanding some crucial issues have become, so rapidly and irreducibly, for so many, in many more places and levels.

Nothing can now prevail without now demanding rapid state and national full-attention.

What’s happening, now nationwide, makes clear that the portent of both his professional insight, and the rapidly-growing realization of how inequality is hampering and killing that long-cherished American “pursuit of happiness”.

That American dream has now come --full-circle-- to the wreck and remnants left to us after thirty years, begun with “supply-side economics”.

Ironically, sketched out as a Laffer Curve on a lunch-napkin, to buttress a regime now remembered, in large-part, by the name Stockman as well as its President; and now collapsing around renewed “royalism” rivalling that denied and defeated by our Founders, in 1776.

These millions are finding that one-time factory jobs and skilled manual occupations --once more than sufficient to allow them “the pursuit of happiness” even if only in-part-- no longer can still really “cut the mustard”, in the face of massive economic change, much forced by corporate manipulations.

Those changes are mirrored worldwide by globalization, “free trade”, and burgeoning socioeconomic “progress” inevitably involving expansion and advantage in once-retarded countries.

Recent rediscovery and further depth-evaluation of ongoing trends and issues in this nation make it inexorably clear that today, most persons are extremely concerned about a narrow range of really murderous and massively-overhanging threats to family welfare and any possible very-personal futures.

Those deeply felt and --for some--deeply-resented issues are reflected in a recent comprehensive poll by the Pew Research Center: That “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer” -- believed by 73% of Americans, including two-thirds of families with $75,000 annual income.

The fact that “nearly half the country feels financially troubled”; 44% state that “they don’t have enough money to make ends meet”.

Now, 69% agree that “the government has obligation to take care of people who cannot care of themselves” -- up from 57% in 1994.

OTHER SIGNIFICANT FACTS substantiated by recent reporting in the New York TIMES were:

• ONE PERCENT of Americans now receive the LARGEST SHARE of our national income since 1928.
• It takes 150 MILLION Americans to match the dollars devolving on 350,000 others, well on “up the wage- ladder”.
• In the “conservative era” since 1928, the wage-gap has nearly doubled.
• Those receiving $100,000 and up annually --10%-- now carry away 48.5 % of total annual American income.
• For the bottom 90% average incomes are down slightly.(Numbers are IRS-2005, known to understate these disparities.)

Eighty percent of the American workforce is composed of non-supervisory workers. Asked what worries them most, here’s what they stated:

• 77%: Unable to afford healthcare when family needs it.
• 77%: Short on monies for retirement.
• 65% Loosing job, none-new with same pay, benefits.
• 68% Having standard of living slip further.
• 59% Never owning a home, or losing one.

From these accumulated factual findings, documented in every case by much further detail by those summarizing from direct reportorial or polling contact, it is easy to understand why many, many more Americans are now returning to fundamentally different views on major issues than those accumulated in the last thirty years.

For historians, sociologists, economists --and, increasingly, even psychologists and psychiatrists-- the meanings become even more clear as research findings in their fields and, broadly, in communications come into play and combined results become more widely known.

From the cumulative impact of such materials it becomes also increasingly clear to understand the cosmic shift already well underway in the nation, resulting in the connectedness” finding at the heart of the Pew Research Center summary.

Perhaps the most striking sure-result (77 percent) was the overwhelming interest in healthcare as the top issue among workers worried about its loss or forced absence.

The most important finding of all, however, has to be the essential strong demand for action-now, on all of these issues, with fundamental tones sure to echo loudly in the ears of all state-level legislators now convulsed with the necessity-to-cope, somehow, soon and solidly.

But that’s what we chose them to do, when we elected them --and, as so many say re smoking-and-its consequences, “they chose to do it themselves... !!”

We should not only sympathize but strongly support their ongoing efforts --while simultaneously demanding that their work be done right out in the open, with plenty of protracted public hearings.

“It is not for nothing” that democratic dialog is seen by many serious and sensible citizens as the heart of what democracy is left to us -- as well as the only possible route to restoring what we once had, and can capture once again.

If Oregon is ever to “Fly With Her Own Wings”, we must win answers to these issues, at least in part...not only at this session, but onwards, too, as we fly.
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Editor's Note: Documentation counts 49 items including news-clips, notes from resource books, from past seminars and some national conventions and group sessions.

Major information for the recent findings in this Op Ed came from The NATION Magazine (4/23/07) citing a recent Pew Research Center poll and NYTimes report by David Cay Johnston.

A key survey (cited in NATION) was carried out by Lake Research Partners.

For definitive statement on conservative era-beginnings, see David Stockman’s still-explosive “THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICS: Why The Reagan Revolution Failed”; he is notorious for his statement: "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers."

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