I have stated in my other blog that I was impressed with some of the things Barack Obama has said and proposed, but I maintain that there was too little difference between the two major candidates in the last election. Before getting into how similar they are, I want to make it perfectly clear that their differences will have an effect on the U.S., its people, and the rest of the world, and that we are better off with Obama as president than John McCain.
It struck me as funny the way the two sides were representing eachother during this presidential election, because one side, not so much Obama himself, who was trying to make the point that McCain shared policies with George W. Bush, but the peripheral Democratic narrative was that the Republican Party is the party of corporate cronyism and McCain is no better, and Sarah Palin was sent out to spread Joe the Plumber’s message that Barack Obama’s “spreading the wealth around” made him a socialist, and the peripheral argument went so far as to call him a Marxist Communist.
The main piece of evidence used by both sides was Obama’s proposal to reduce taxes in a range of the hundreds or a little over $1000 a year for working families, and to raise the amount paid by the top tax bracket by three percent. In other words, we’re supposed to believe that the difference between corporate cronyism and a Marxist welfare state is a three percent tax increase for maybe five percent of Americans. How dramatic!
The similarities don’t end there. Even the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation put together a comparison of the two tax plans, complete with biased analysis, poor documentation of sources, and misleading charts, that pointed out many similarities in the two candidates’ proposals concerning items on their agenda which get less national media coverage, such as the estate tax, which does only affect those who I would say are quite wealthy. Obama has mentioned that everyone wants a living wage, but he hasn’t dared mention actually writing legislation to require it.
As for other issues affected by the presidency, a real discussion of foreign policy was off the table. The rhetoric was certainly more belligerent on the McCain side, especially in Iraq, but as for actual policy, getting out of Iraq but leaving it in safe conditions, or returning victorious from Iraq, may not necessarily be very different. Both candidates support a long-term continued military presence. Obama stated that he will negotiate with hostile states without preconditions, which is a much better position than McCain’s, but does not affect the bias in favor of Israel in Middle Eastern policy. There has been no discussion of foreign policy in any other area than the Middle East, preconditions, and a little bit about Russia earlier in the campaign. Both candidates have taken a very aggressive stance on international affairs, and the kind of sneaky, dirty business happening in many nations around the world on the part of the U.S. government, such as in South America for half of the 20th century, or the failure to take a stand on atrocities, war, and poverty abroad, especially in Africa, are unlikely to change.
The main difference between the two was how they framed their arguments. As diplomat in chief, what the president says is important, so it does show movement in the right direction that we elected the candidate who best represented the ideals of democracy, freedom, and equality in his rhetoric, but if Obama fulfills his campaign promises to be exactly like Bush or maybe Bill Clinton in nearly every function of the office of the presidency, a significant and meaningful change will not be achieved.
Here are the real issues few people are talking about. The military industrial complex is taking half our budget, we are in debt, we are spending money on things that we shouldn’t be spending money on, like illegal wars, and saving money on things we need, like universal health care and the protection of the rights and well-being of the citizens of the U.S. We let corporations get away with murder, literally, unless you can come up with another name for polluting with full knowledge that not only is it causing global warming, but it is killing pockets of people in densely polluted areas all over the world.
What follows are my own words, and I haven’t heard of any public figure addressing this issue. We all should know by now that the middle class is shrinking, but I want to look at what’s happening more in depth. I believe that the middle class was formed because the labor movements, the populists, the socialists, and the people who were just plain fed up with deadly working conditions, slave hours, and payment engineered to keep them in debt to the company towns where they lived, organized and fought for their rights to a living wage (then called a minimum wage), their rights to organize and unionize, and their rights to safe working conditions. They bled and died to win these rights, the out-of-control big businesses they worked for actually hiring strikebusters to suppress them with both clubs and firearms.
Today we have a middle class because these people fought for their rights, and because a Depression-era progressive movement elected a president, Franklin Roosevelt, came up with a plan, the New Deal, which was a comprehensive package to provide temporary work building innovative infrastructure and bringing power lines even to rural areas, building dams, and building the national parks, to young people who were too poor to study, and gave them funding to go to school and get an education.
Now the middle class is disappearing because we have failed to keep up this progressive work. Congress has time and again refused to raise the minimum wage, which would be at $10 today, on a national level, not to mention what it would be in cities, were it adjusted for inflation. Today more and more young people are living with financial help from their parents, working at jobs that don’t pay the bills. Many believe that this is temporary, and that as they advance in their careers, they will earn enough money to start a family and buy a home eventually, but this may not be the case. Many promotions today come with very little pay raise, upward mobility between classes is at a low, and if you’re counting on becoming a manager where you work in order to make more money, you may be able to with time and hard work, and that’s fine for you, if they pay you a living wage, but there will always be more workers than managers, and they have a right to a future as well if they work. Work hours are getting longer, benefits are disappearing, and the dream of becoming a homeowner or even being able to pay your own rent and food and raise a family is fading away.
How is it possible for the system to continue in this direction? How can an entire generation be working poor? They’re getting help from their parents, and those who do not, simply slip between the cracks of the system and end up homeless, jailed, or otherwise excluded. As time goes on, more and more people will slip through the cracks as their families lose their homes, run out of savings, have to spend all their money on pharmaceuticals in their autumn years, get tired of helping their kids and disown them, or die. Without a living wage, this problem is going to grow. It is an international problem, and businesses are moving into nations all over the world and slowly robbing the middle class of their livelihood through stagnant wages.
The solution I propose is to put a living wage and good working conditions requirement within the U.S., and on all products and services imported to the U.S. That’s not going to happen without a strong national progressive movement, and the impressive Obama win came with some real ballot initiative losses for the progressive movement, like the California same-sex marriage proposition. What we can do is support third parties and living wage initiatives on a local level, win local elections, and show that there is a real progressive movement happening under the two-party noise.
Three percent isn’t enough of a difference. We need more voices.
Capitalocracy 