Hi everyone!  I'm Heather DeMarco at the business desk and I'd like to kick off the week by republishing an article of interest.

I guess that many of us would be quite surprised to hear the words "a class struggle in America" but according to a recently elected Democratic Senator from Virginia, these words may not be too far from the truth.  I am going to reserve my opinions but I'll let you be the judge. 

Have a great day.

   Class Struggle
By Jim Webb
Democratic Senator-Elect
Wall Street Journal, November 15 2006

 

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics
today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes
of which we have not seen since the 19th century.

 

America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the
past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a
different country.

 

Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their
loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock
market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people.

 

The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in
1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they
protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

 

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for
chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this newspaper
has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10
million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000
a year, and has not been raised in nearly
a decade.

 

When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times
what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

 

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground
labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a
different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn't happen.

 

Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries
are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same
time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that
increase comes from wage-earners'
pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical
insurance at all.

 

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have
collapsed in the wake of corporate "reorganization." And workers' ability to
negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern
corporate America: If
they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or
given to illegal immigrants.

 

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its
beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on
hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent
political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an
overt lack of concern for those who are
falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most
fortunate.

 

Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the
inevitable byproducts of the "rough road of capitalism." Others claim that
it's the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the
average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our
education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old
notions of corporate paternalism.

 

Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the
natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken
insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant
groups have the "right genetics" and thus are natural entrants to the
"overclass," while others, as well as those who come
from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top,
simply don't possess the necessary attributes.

 

Most Americans reject such notions. But the true challenge is for everyone
to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to
our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to
begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to
economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages
and disappearing jobs.

 

America's elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own
self-interest.

 

A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the
U.S. differently than other "First World" nations, and that white-collar
jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far
been ravaged by outsourcing
and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that "unless a solution is
found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk
of a protectionist backlash" in America that would take us away from what
they view to be the "biggest economic stimulus in world history."

 

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of
opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a
period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply
been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are
(and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers
and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders
who have failed to protect their interests.

 

The "Wal-Marting" of cheap consumer products brought in from places like
China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have
softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both
cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

 

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the
very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of
their way of life.

 

Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional
issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the
flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But
this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government
leaders accountable for allowing every
American a fair opportunity to succeed.

 

With this new Congress, and heading into an important presidential election
in 2008, American workers have a chance to be heard in ways that have eluded
them for more than a decade. Nothing is more important for the health of our
society than to grant them the validity of their concerns. And our
government leaders have no greater duty than to confront the growing
unfairness in this age of globalization.

 

Mr. Webb is the Democratic senator-elect from Virginia.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/forms/printThis.html?id=110009246

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