Get the 1% Out of Our Dream

(This article appears in the November/December 2014 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

The American Dream. Anyone who works hard enough can climb the ladder and achieve success – a lovely home, cars in the garage, the kids off to a good college and a comfortable, secure retirement.

Unfortunately, that dream seems unattainable today. The gap between rich and poor, bosses and workers, has widened in the past few decades as compensation and wealth for the nation’s CEOs have grown much faster than for everyone else.

As a result of this increasing gap, American workers are asked to give up the dream that our children will be able to achieve and live a more comfortable, secure life than we have. What is so troubling is that the income gap is not increasing because workers are less productive or unwilling to work; it is directly related to the suppression of workers’ rights, and the transfer of a larger share of the wealth workers create to the country’s richest 1%.

Further Away

For the nation’s most prosperous citizens, the American Dream means the continued accumulation of wealth – but they amass their riches at the expense of working men and women.

Every move by the 1% pushes the 99% further and further from the American Dream.

According to a study by Ph.D.s Mark Robert Rank, Thomas A. Hirschl and Kirk A. Foster, the percentage of good jobs has been declining over the last 40 years. Jobs that that can adequately support a family, offer benefits, are relatively stable, and have good working conditions have been harder to come by.

In testimony before Congress on Oct. 4, 2011, University of Illinois bankruptcy professor Robert Lawless said, “Perhaps the starkest indicator of mounting middle-class distress has been the sharp rise in personal bankruptcies, now an integral feature of the New Economy.

“Bankruptcy is a middle-class phenomenon. The poor go broke, but they don’t file for bankruptcy because they have few, if any, assets to protect,” Lawless added. “Middle-class people and upper-middle-class professionals go into bankruptcy to try to hang on to basic assets, such as their home, their retirement nest egg, or their income stream, all of which are protected by law if they file for bankruptcy.

Staying Connected

When you combine credit cards, auto loans, home mortgages, student loans, and other forms of credit, the average debt for every adult man and woman in America has nearly quadrupled since the 1950s. “We have gone from a society where most consumer borrowing was episodic and for special purchases, to a society where many families have to use credit to pay for ordinary household expenses and are permanently indebted,” Lawless pointed out.

Higher education is increasingly out of reach: Student loan debt is the only category of consumer debt that has grown since the economy crashed in 2008. Loans for college have eclipsed both auto loans and credit cards, making student loan debt the largest type of consumer debt outside of mortgages. This means that young people who are fortunate enough to get a degree start their professional lives with mountains of debt.

The growth of the “middle class” was based on working men and women receiving fair compensation for their labor. Wages rose to provide workers with enough disposal income to enable them to support a strong economy as consumers.

As postal workers, we fight to protect our wages and benefits, and we must be committed and connected to all working people who are fighting to save the American Dream.