In 2000 when unemployment was at 4%, corporate profits accounted for 8.3% of national income and wages accounted for 66% of national income. In 2018, now that unemployment is back at 4%, corporate profits account for 13.2% of national income and wages account for 62%. Source Here.
Meanwhile Republicans and Democrats tell the working class that they need “higher education and improved job skills” to make a better life for themselves.
I call bullshit and so should every Democrat.
Please share widely!
johntmay says
Woops…..down voted my own post. Clicked on it to see who down voted it. No matter, it’s still a damn good post.
Here’s a few anecdotes, for those who like that sort of thing.
I now work in retail, at a wage about 1/3 of what I used to make. I am a college educated man, with some post grad work, and I spent a considerable amount of my own time and money to become computer literate. I am not a programmer, but at my previous job, I was the “go to” guy for anyone with computer problems, help with Word and Excel, and many of the templates and procedures still in use by the company were created by me. I was replaced by someone twenty years younger who would work for twenty grand less. A story I have heard many times from others who are now in their 50’s and 60’s and working for a fraction of their previous wages, having been replaced by a younger worker eager to take less.
One of my co-workers is a part timer, with a masters in biology. He works in retail, part time, because his full time job in his field does not pay well enough for him to pay rent, other living expenses, and his college loans. He is not alone. I work with a half dozen people like him, all knee deep in dept, a debt created by their pursuit of higher education that they hoped would get them into the “middle class” AKA a working class individual able to support themselves at a level and style not too far removed from the wealthy people.
Wages have been flat for over four decades, decades in which Republicans and Democrats have been in charge. Recent data has indicated that the small rises in wages for the working class since Trump took over have not even been at pace with inflation. In other words, to quote The Who, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss”……..and I only wish “we won’t be fooled again”……
jconway says
I’m a both/and type of guy. It’s my job to prepare every student I ever teach to think like an informed citizen, think like a historian, and write at the collegiate level. I think all of those skills are important for life as well as for work. That said, we should improve vocational training and help students make informed choices about what career they want.
There needs to be full transparency about the debt-expected income ratio for every college and every specific degree program. I think when people on this site get defensive about college education, they are thinking about where they went to school or fearful about losing an engine of middle class mobility that produced well rounded citizens in the past. So many programs these days saddle kids with debts they cannot afford to pay and offer very little practical or even philosophical value in return.
My niece ended up going to Regis to train to be an RN and will come out with far more debt than my wife who got the same training at community college. My niece was even eligible to go the joint program at her current college with Middlesex Community College that is a half/half and would have given her the same degree at the same institution for a fraction of a cost. She regrets it now and feels the “experience” she paid for was not worth it. A lot of kids her age feel the same way.
UMass Boston, which still has one of the top teacher training programs in the region, used to be a predominately commuter school serving the kids who couldn’t afford to go elsewhere. Now it’s investing in dorms and international student recruitment and acquiring debt ridden private colleges as part of its expansion. The state universities should absolutely be chartered to prioritize spending money on educating first generation kids, kids of color, blue collar white kids, and first generation Americans. Let private schools like Northeastern and BU continue to take the cash cows of international students from Europe, Singapore, South Korea, and China. I want Bay Staters, especially commuters, to come first in our public institutions. I want kids who want to stay here and raise families here get the priority treatment.
I met a plumber from Dorchester my age who moonlights as a stand up at a cookout for a mutual friend last weekend, and he told me there are more jobs in his field than there are folks our age willing to do it. That guys our dads age are taking on more jobs instead of retiring since fewer and fewer people get the training. It’s better money than the typical entry level white collar job a liberal arts degree gets you. We should absolutely prioritize the trades and the IT jobs you only need certifications to get. There’s a construction boom in Boston right now, it’s impossible not to get hired as a union carpenter. They are so desperate for mine my cousins record no longer is a barrier to his job prospects in that trade. These are absolutely jobs anyone can do, and many of our students are not being trained or even informed about them.
Universally my kids want to work. They don’t want universal income or handouts from the government. They want to make things, build things, and own things. We should give them the tools to do this. College is still a great tool that every kid should be able to consider and afford, but it is not the only tool, and may even be a bad fit for some folks. So we should give our students the tools to make an informed choice about what they want to do and support their opportunity to do it.
seascraper says
I’ve said this to people, and they counter with “well for most people it works that way.” And maybe it does!
You also have to admit that there are plenty of educators who are going to make money if we all dump money, public and private, into education without worrying about or measuring the outcome.
Trades don’t change the world, idealistic kids are drawn to educational programs that promise that they can change the future. At least in my case, it was that I could express my opinions and people would care about them enough for me to live on. It took me a long time to figure out a trade where I could be happy and actually serve people. The route was circuitous and involved lots of wasted time in school, but then again some things did stick.
johntmay says
This sort of statement drives me nuts because it’s only half of the reality.
There are more jobs in his field than there are folks our age willing to do it for the wages being offered by those willing to pay for it. .
I’ll pick strawberries in the fields, clean public restrooms, change the bed linens and vacuum the hotel rooms, but I want a wage that is fairly negotiated between those who want the service and those who are willing to do it.
If “conservatives’ and Republicans really believed in the “free market”, they’d be on my side but they, and many of my fellow Democrats want to pay less than the market and so they are willing to distort it with excess temporary immigration.
I’ve got to say that Trump could win this argument with his “wall” but he’s too stupid to know it.
In the end, I’ll quote FDR who said:
What do the people of America want more than anything else? To my mind, they want two things: work, with all the moral and spiritual values that go with it; and with work, a reasonable measure of security–security for themselves and for their wives and children. Work and security–these are more than words. They are more than facts. They are the spiritual values, the true goal toward which our efforts of reconstruction should lead. These are the values that this program is intended to gain; these are the values we have failed to achieve by the leadership we now have.
And college is not necessary for this. Justice is necessary for this.
tedf says
According to a news report, a “good [strawberry] picker” in California can make $50 an hour, and yet there aren’t enough workers to do the work, so machines are being developed to do the picking. How would you respond to that anecdote? I suppose you could doubt whether the facts reported are true. You could say that $50 an hour is not a “wage that is fairly negotiated between those who want the service and those who are willing to do it.” But assuming the story is accurate, it seems to me that this story is a good cautionary tale. Rather than raising a fruit-picker’s wage above $50, farmers will invest in machinery to do the work instead.
Christopher says
Unfortunately you can’t check on votes for diaries like you can for comments, but I’ll fess up that I was the negative vote because I’m tired of your repeatedly advancing the false premise that everyone including Dems just says get an education and all will be well.
johntmay says
Dems don’t say that
but they do place too much emphasis on education and “skills” when talking about higher wages for all working class citizens. They fail to talk more about profit sharing, higher taxes on the upper brackets, paid family leave, paid sick time, minimum four weeks vacation per year and so much more than can raise wages.
Christopher says
I hear Dems talk about those things all the time.
jconway says
I just do not like it being framed as an either/or discussion. Often I see the argument, even on our side. that education alone is the key to solving income inequality. Or even that it is the primary barrier to income mobility. It is not, and believing it so places an unfair burden on our teachers and distorts our education system.
Warping it so vaunted “job creators” like Bill Gates or Eli Broad have an outsized influence on what we teach and how we teach. So much foundation money and testmaking is steered towards STEM that History and Civics are getting sorely neglected. Education is not primarily the key to a good paycheck, but the key to self discovery and responsible citizenship. It can help land a good pay check, but we also need unions and laws that level the playing field against the ownership class and strengthen the safety net for workers.
I also see a push by some to dismiss college education as a waste of time and money. I disagree with that wholeheartedly as well. Equip the students to be functioning adult citizens in the real world, and arm them with the facts about the trade offs so they can discover the best path for them to find a career and raise a family. A family wage is a basic right, according to the teaching of my church and even the words of some of our founding fathers like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. We can fight for universal access to a quality education while also fighting for family wages for all workers. To me anyway, it’s the same fight.
johntmay says
I see the world not as left/right, not as Republican/Democrat but as “Ownership Class/Working Class” and as such see three different dynamics of wealth disparity.
Within the working class, yes indeed, education and the development of skills are essential to compete for higher wages within the working class.
Within the ownership class, education and skill levels don’t mean much at all. I give you Betsy DeVos and Eric Trump as examples. What does matter in the ownership class is social and political connection. That is where the competition is.
So yes, education and skills are important to the working class, not much at all to the ownership class where social and political connections matter most. In the working class, social and political connections matter a bit, about as much as education and job skills matter to the ownership class.
The dynamic I speak to, the one that Elizabeth Warren speaks to, is the wealth disparity between the ownership class and the working class. In this dynamic, more education and job skills are not the solution to narrowing the gap, nor was a lack of education and job skills the cause for the widening of the gap that began in the 1970’s and is still expanding today.
The tools we (working class) need to narrow this gap are social and political.