We're Reinstating the 19th Century - Robert Reich

There has always been a struggle between labour and capital.  In feudal times, labour was on the losing end, big time.  For most it was a brutal, nasty and short life.

Democracy changed that, in part from the transfer of political power from the hands of the few to the many, the great unwashed if you like.  The technology era and rise of unions leveraged egalitarian democracy to likewise shift the balance of economic power, at least in part.

That's over now, at least according to Robert Reich who argues that the wealthy have pulled America back to the 19th century.

A Forbes Magazine contributor ...writes that jobs exist only “when both employer and employee are happy with the deal being made.” So if the new jobs are low-paying and irregular, too bad.

Much the same argument was voiced in the late nineteenth century over alleged “freedom of contract.” Any deal between employees and workers was assumed to be fine if both sides voluntarily agreed to it.

It was an era when many workers were “happy” to toil twelve-hour days in sweat shops for lack of any better alternative.

It was also a time of great wealth for a few and squalor for many. And of corruption, as the lackeys of robber barons deposited sacks of cash on the desks of pliant legislators.

Finally, after decades of labor strife and political tumult, the twentieth century brought an understanding that capitalism requires minimum standards of decency and fairness – workplace safety, a minimum wage, maximum hours (and time-and-a-half for overtime), and a ban on child labor.

We also learned that capitalism needs a fair balance of power between big corporations and workers.

Today there is a logic disconnect that has become pervasive in politics and in the commercial sector.  The future has been discounted to near irrelevance.  Posterity is out the window and, with it, the need for balance between capital and labour.

In my Baby Boomer lifespan I have never known governments so anti-labour as today's.  I have never known a society as mortally divided, confused and powerless as today's.  Step by step by step we, the majority, have been politically and economically dismantled in the process of usurping what had been our political and economic power and transferring it to our 'betters.'  

A modern, vibrant and robust society cannot exist in this matrix but that may be the objective of those who would have us revert to the 19th century and those in high office who now do their bidding.  That may be the essence at the core of our neoliberal transformation into, first, illiberal democracy (where you still get to vote but it matters less and less), and, ultimately, oligarchy.   And the decay in our democracy and our nation's decline into a police state are very much integral to that process.

...since around 1980, even though the economy has doubled once again (the Great Recession notwithstanding), the wages most Americans have stagnated. And their benefits and working conditions have deteriorated.

This isn’t because most Americans are worth less. In fact, worker productivity is higher than ever.

It’s because big corporations, Wall Street, and some enormously rich individuals have gained political power to organize the market in ways that have enhanced their wealth while leaving most Americans behind.

That includes trade agreements protecting the intellectual property of large corporations and Wall Street’s financial assets, but not American jobs and wages.

Bailouts of big Wall Street banks and their executives and shareholders when they can’t pay what they owe, but not of homeowners who can’t meet their mortgage payments.

...Antitrust leniency toward a vast swathe of American industry – including Big Cable (Comcast, AT&T, Time-Warner), Big Tech (Amazon, Google), Big Pharma, the largest Wall Street banks, and giant retailers (Walmart).

But less tolerance toward labor unions — as workers trying to form unions are fired with impunity, and more states adopt so-called “right-to-work” laws that undermine unions.

We seem to be heading full speed back to the late nineteenth century.