WORKERS AT THE BOTTOM ARE TAKING ALL THE WEIGHT
BY JULIANNE MALVEAUX
Few economists were surprised by the news that our nation’s gross
domestic product shrunk by 0.4 percent in the third quarter. That bad news
was quickly followed by news that the unemployment rate rose half a point to
5.4 percent. The African American unemployment rate rose a whole point, from
8.7 to 9.7 percent. So much for the notion of a level playing field!
Instead, our economy is tanking, and our Congress seems prepared to do
nothing more than watch and point as it tanks.
Oh, there is a stimulus package on the table, but that package would mainly
offer corporations new write-offs. Everyone has lined up to get their cash –
the airlines, the insurance companies, and others. People at the bottom
aren’t getting anything. Not unemployment, not assistance, nothing.
Who takes the weight for our bum economy? From where I sit, those at the
bottom are the ones that carry the weight. They get the hit from higher
unemployment, and they get the hit from a shrinking GDP. These are the folks
who could have reasonably expected to work temporary or part time jobs in the
holiday rush. What holiday rush? It will take something like a miracle to
get cash registers going ca-ching this year. Even zero interest rates don’t
seem to get people to buying. Instead, some say that a credit crunch
prevents them from taking advantage of good prices.
Cities and states will take the weight for our bum economy. They aren’t
getting the countercyclical assistance they ‘ve gotten in recessions past.
Instead, their hands are tied and they can’t use deficit spending to keep
local economies humming. In some areas, energy-related challenges complicate
the economic situation. And the federal government’s answer to any energy
crisis is simply to drill in Alaska.
The federal government doesn’t have a lot of answers now, or their
answers seem to conform to the Bush Corporate Welfare Plan. Whether we’d
been subjected to terrorism or not, Mr. Bush had promised his corporate
donors a tax break, and now he is using 9-11 to deliver it. Shame on him!
More importantly, shame on Congress for allowing it!
There is more than enough shame to go around. Shame on so-called
progressive members of Congress for being asleep at the switch, unwilling or
unable to step up to the leadership plate and tell people about the economic
dimensions of this crisis. Everyone is in “kumbaya” mode, and we are all
Americans, and this apparently means that people should be silent and keep
their voices muted about the unacceptable differences in the way that
potential anthrax victims are treated, in the way different sectors of our
population will shoulder the effects of our bum economy. It doesn’t help
when the President offers us pep talks and then connects the stimulus package
to our national well being. It makes it seem as if opposing a skewed
stimulus package is absolutely anti-patriotic, which has a chilling effect on
discourse and policy development.
While progressives are silent, everyone else is talking. The National
Restaurant Association has taken out ads saying that eating out is “the
American way of life”. They are encouraging Americans to dine at their
establishments to keep the economy buzzing. We’ve heard that we need to do
patriotic shopping, to keep the economy going. We should travel, according
to the ads, to reach out and touch the family and friends that we have missed
in the two months since airline passenger loads plummeted by 40 percent.
There is consideration for every sector except for those folks, already at
the periphery of the nation’s economy, who are getting their butts kicked!
When an executive gets laid off work, all of her support services take a
hit. The headlines focus on the executive, not on the folks who support her.
When a flight attendant gets fired, people talk about the airlines, but not
the people who clean floors at airports. When National Airport cuts its
flights, one of the restaurants or coffee shops in the airport closes. The
airport makes the headlines, the waiters sit on the sidelines.
It is the sideline workers who get ignored, who shoulder the brunt of the
bum economy. We couldn't do without the people on the sidelines, yet we
consign them to invisibility, kick them to the curbs of our consciousness.
Corporations have their hands out, their mouths open, their needs met by a
contribution-conscious Congress. The people, whose small checks and
volunteer hours don’t often buy them access, are ignored.
Our economy is tanking, but some people are profiting from the nation’s
misery. Others, on the sidelines, are shouldering the weight of a 5.4
percent unemployment rate and a GDP contraction. When Congress says they
want to stimulate the economy, who do they have in mind? They need to think
of our nation’s invisible workers when they start pumping money into the
economy.