Will income inequality emerge as top issue in 2014-16 campaigns?

 

 

New York Times photo

For many in influential political circles, the focus of the past week has been on the heartbreaking story of an 11-year-old girl named Dasani.

Dasani is not a character in one of the many Christmas season movies; she is not the fan favorite in a so-called reality TV show. She is just an American reality.

 

In a five-part series, the New York Times documented Dasani’s life as one of 22,000 homeless children in New York City. She lives in a rag-tag shelter not far from the gleaming luxury apartment buildings of Manhattan.

While liberals denounced the stunning income inequality documented by the Times, at least one prominent conservative, former House speaker Newt Gingrich, declared that the gaping divide between the rich and poor has reached obscene levels.

“How can you justify the level of wealth in those big towers and the level of poverty in those alleys?” he asked.

 

Something is happening out there in the political world.

 

Macomb County is not Manhattan but the rising number of homeless kids in Macomb schools caused some districts to establish school bus stops at cheap hotels where homeless families live on a long-term basis.

In Macomb, a proud, blue-collar, ethnic county, we are witnessing a churning sea change that has grown the number of “working poor” families. After substantial shrinkage in the manufacturing sector and rapid advances in technology, automation and globalization, a staggering number of Macomb families now depend on some government help to survive from week to week.

 

 

The annual Kids Count report for Michigan that was released last week found that the number of Macomb County children eligible for federal food assistance actually went up in 2012, to one-fourth of all kids, compared to the slightly lower rate during the depths of the Great Recession in 2009.

In 1999, the last truly prosperous year in Michigan, just 4 percent of Macomb kids qualified for assistance. Since then, we have witnessed nearly a seven-fold increase.

The number of Macomb County K-12 students eligible for free or reduced-cost school lunches – meaning their parents earn no more than 80 percent above the federal poverty level -- has also increased, not fallen, since the dark days of 2009. Nearly half of our students -- 59,000 kids – now qualify for a government-subsidized lunch.

With one in five of children living below the poverty line – a big jump from ’09 – is it a surprise that the proportion of Macomb’s newborns and toddlers eligible for the Women, Infants Children (WIC) nutrition assistance program is at 40 percent?

 

The picture is the same across much of Michigan, particularly in many northern counties. The bottom line is this: More than one in three Michigan children who come from a two-parent, two-child family are living in a household that earns less than $31,000 a year.

In America, we do not punish our children -- we do not allow them to go hungry or live in squalor --regardless of their parents’ flaws or failures. Or do we? More and more, we turn away from reality.

Yet, it appears that a grassroots, mainstream movement to restore economic dignity for all is emerging in many sections of our nation.

In the voter-rich Upper Midwest, 2014 congressional candidates and 2015-16 presidential contenders who scoff at a substantially higher minimum wage, or who brush aside the need for long-term unemployment benefits, or who support reductions in the food stamp program may find themselves precariously out of step.

 

The nation is beginning to understand that the recession never really ended. The damage it inflicted – in lost jobs, lost homes, lost income – has never been repaired.

We still have too many workers chasing too few jobs. We have people working outside of their field for a fraction of the pay they earned just a few years ago. We have countless families who have drained their retirement savings in a futile attempt to avoid home foreclosure.

And, beyond the shameful poverty rates among U.S. children, we have millions of aging unemployed and underemployed workers in their 50s and 60s who have skills but find themselves going on repeated job interviews and receiving no offers. Whether they are liberal or conservative, these pre-retirement workers are bitter about age discrimination in a brutal job market, and disgusted by a Washington mindset that assumes they are comfortable living off of government largesse.

 

As protests over the poverty-level minimum wage continue, a smart politician could make an issue of the disappearance in corporate board rooms of a merit-based compensation system. We have seen countless examples over the past decade of CEOs at failing companies receiving a bonus or “golden parachute” of $10 million or more.

In addition, don’t discount the 2014-16 political impact in the U.S. of Pope Francis, whose message calling for an economic shakeup has resonated across the globe.

When the new pope said that unfettered capitalism has created immoral hardships for lowly workers, some panicky right-wing fringies called him a Marxist. In Middle America, the claim that the world’s premier holy man adheres to the old Soviet atheistic principles draws laughter.

 

Moving forward, moderates and independents will blanch at the idea of added government intervention. Liberals may insist on more federal programs, even as the national poverty rate now exceeds the levels just prior to the Great Society programs of 50 years ago.

At the same time, conservatives and tea party types will claim that the income inequality issue is driven by wealth-envy and class warfare, while arguing that the true malady centers on minorities who don’t want to work hard and advance themselves.

Well, they should consider the plight of Michigan’s Lake County, a rural, nearly all-white area of our state that suffers from a poverty rate of about 50 percent and where nearly every K-12 student in the county is eligible for free or reduced-rate lunches.

 

Some of the most common occupations in the United States now consist of cashiers, cooks, waiters and waitresses, fast food workers and those toiling in the hotel industry. A recent study found that one-third of the nation’s bank tellers – a position that requires skills and carries substantial responsibilities – qualify for some type of government assistance.

Another statistic to emerge asserts that minimum wage workers receive $6 billion in government aid per year. That is a direct subsidy by U.S. taxpayers to low-paying, cash-hoarding corporations.

 

Something is happening out there.

 

President Obama and Congress have failed to achieve any meaningful jobs legislation. But Washington seems oblivious to the growing reality that the issue is not jobs, it’s decent-paying jobs.

Far too many millions of working people are making far too little money to live a modest but comfortable life.

 

That sounds like a simple message.

But it is a political message that could take hold in the latest version of 21st Century America.