Forget the poor! They
aren’t the problem.
The poor are not our most important
problem. Our problem is a middle class that is becoming poor. We have an
economy and a government that are dominated by economic forces that allow
corporations to squeeze ever more wealth from the labor of the middle class
while giving back nothing. These forces
allow a few greedy people of great wealth to use the threat of outsourcing to
squeeze Americans until there is no juice left in us. Consequently, in recent
decades, we have seen much wealth created in the United States but little or no
increase in real wages.
We progressives have not faced this
reality straightforwardly. We have clung to a vision of America from the
nineteen sixties. In that America, most people were doing ok, but injustices remained
at the margins of society. In response
to these injustices, we had the Civil Rights Movement, the Voting Rights Act of
1965, the War on Poverty and the Women’s Movement. All of these were intended
to correct injustices that had come to seem egregious in a society in which
most people were doing ok. More recently, we have also seen Gay and Lesbian
people struggle to be treated equally, and we have seen the struggles of
undocumented immigrants, especially Mexican and Central American immigrants. These movements have had some successes, but much
still remains to be done. We still have poor people. Black Americans still face
barriers to success. Women’s equality is still a work in progress as is
equality for gays and lesbians. Millions of undocumented, Mexican and Central
American immigrants continue to struggle in the shadows.
Because work remains to be done in
all of these areas, we progressives have continued to focus on them, but in the
meantime, the world has changed around us. We no longer live in a society in
which most people are doing ok. Instead, we live in a society in which a family
with two wage earners struggles to maintain a level of living that could be
maintained by one wage earner in the nineteen sixties. We live in an aging
society in which most Americans are woefully unprepared for retirement. We live
in a society in which young people are crushed by the debt that they incurred
in order to obtain the education they needed (and which our society and economy
needed them to obtain). We also live in
a society in which most people still get
their health insurance through their jobs while at the same time, those jobs
have become ever more insecure and uncertain. In short, we live in a society in
which most people are definitely not doing ok, and economic injustice is not
something that is found only at the margins of our society.
We progressives must recognize that
the world has changed, and we must and craft a progressive, political agenda
for the twenty-first century. The first principle of that agenda is that its
core elements must be things that will benefit the majority of our people. In a world in which the middle class is being
squeezed and impoverished, we can no longer cobble together a broad political
agenda from the agendas of a patchwork of special groups. We can no longer add
together the agendas of black Americans, Hispanics, women, gays and the poor to
create a progressive agenda for the twenty-first century. Our agenda must
address the needs of most Americans directly and clearly. Here are some
suggestions for things that might be included in a progressive agenda for the
twenty-first century.
Issues for Our Time
Jobs
Creating jobs that pay well and
cannot easily be outsourced to other countries must be a high priority. To do
that, we must support large programs to rebuild and expand our aging
infrastructure. We must also focus attention and support in each region of the
country on the growing sectors of the economy. Finally, we must also stop
giving tax benefits to companies that move their operations to other
countries.
Pensions
We must expand our Social Security
system into a decent national pension system. Individuals and companies must
contribute to it. We must also improve the way that we finance our pension
system, and many suggestions for doing so have been advanced. We cannot have a country in which most of our
people live out their retirement years in poverty.
Post-Secondary Education
We must change the way that we
finance post-secondary education. The use of loans to students has proven to
impose unbearable burdens on young people, and the cost of their debts is a drag
on our entire economy. I think that the
key to changing this system is to recognize that we do not educate students
only to provide them with opportunities. We educate them because our economy
needs their skills. Everyone benefits
from an economy with a good supply of advanced skills, and the cost of
providing the supply such skills should not fall entirely on the students.
Health Insurance
Creating a modern, national system
of health insurance must be a high priority.
Employment-based health insurance should be a thing of the past. It is a drag on hiring because a company must
provide each new employee with expensive health insurance. Employment-based health insurance also drags
down wages for most people because money that might be used to raise wages is
used instead to pay health insurance premiums. Employment-based health
insurance is a drag on our economy as well as a source of poverty and
insecurity for our middle class. So, we must push for a true, national health
insurance system. Obamacare is a good first step, but its limitations are
well-known, and even as I write, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case
that may nullify its benefits in many states.
Taking Back Control of Our Financial System
We have to take back control of our
financial system. We cannot allow a few greedy bankers and traders to be in a
position to destroy the lives and savings of millions of Americans. This is a
matter of basic fairness. There are various ways to go about regaining control
of the system starting with breaking up the companies that are too big. The
rule should be that a company that is too big to fail is too big to exist.
The Core of Our
Appeal to Voters
These issues and other like them
should form the center of every progressive political campaign. They will allow
us to offer something concrete to every American. All people facing retirement
should know that we stand for them. All people who need jobs should know that
we stand for them. All people who are trying to obtain post-secondary education
or who have children who want to do so should know that we stand for them. And
all people who worry about their health insurance should know that we stand for
them. The days of cobbling together a
progressive agenda from the agendas of a scatter of marginalized groups must
end, and the day of addressing the needs of the majority of our people must
begin. We should start now to select among the many, viable proposals that are
out there, and we should begin a campaign right away to educate the voters on
these issues.
