It's going to take hard work to save American working people

I wish I weren't so angry at my country.

I wish I didn't see so much bad in our political system or so much greed in our economic system. I wish I didn't see so much disrespect between those on one side of the divide and the other.

I'm not sure half of our country even considers the other half Americans, from either side. Folks on the left see those on the right as backward and bigoted, and those on the right see those on the left as trying to destroy what has always been special to them.

Do we provide for the long-term unemployed? It seems very simple to me, but there are plenty of people on the right who tell us that providing anything to them makes it less likely that they will look for a job.

Over the last 30 years or so, poverty has become much more of a moral question to the right, and the word "poor" seems to have acquired an adjective in front of it.

Undeserving.

Forty years ago, my friend Mick and I used to argue about the concept of welfare. He didn't want the government giving anything to anyone who had the mental and physical capability to take care of himself or herself.  I said it was cheaper to educate, train or feed someone than it was to imprison him. I said then -- and I still believe now -- that leaving someone without hope is just about the most dangerous thing you can do.

I've quoted this before, but in Lawrence Kasdan's 1991 movie "Grand Canyon," Danny Glover's character is trying to get his nephew to give up on gang life. He asks him if that's what he wants to be doing when he's 25. His nephew gives him a strange look.

"Shit, I'm never going to live to be 25."

It isn't just young black kids having a tough time of it either. Try being on the far side of 50 and losing your job. You may never get another one, and if you do, the chance of it even being a lateral move is slim indeed.

From the New Deal to the end of the '60s, the middle class grew and income inequality shrank. For the first 20 years or so after World War II, the average working man had never before had it so good. At peak, a third of private sector workers had the protection of union membership, and most of them had good benefits, including health care and retirement.

But that third has fallen to 6.6 percent in the most recent numbers, and a country that once made and sold to the world now makes almost nothing except money. Most of what had been good blue-collar jobs vanished, and many of the biggest companies were no longer American-owned but multinational.

Worst of all, starting in 1968 with Richard Nixon's second campaign for the presidency, Republicans began using subtly divisive language to get blue-collar workers to vote against their own economic interests. And ever since then, through Ronald Reagan, the two George Bushes and on up to today, America has been a house divided against itself.


Even something that should have been a matter of great pride for this country -- becoming the first country ever to freely elect a leader from a minority of 15 percent or less -- turned out to herald a return to more overt racism. Whether it was postcards of the White House lawn planted in watermelons or truly nasty bumper stickers, the election of Barack Obama began an era of bad feeling that continues to this day.

We hear about red states and blue states, and we're reaching a point where folks on either side tend to see their opponents as somehow less than true Americans.

Maybe we've gone too far down the wrong road, or maybe we have just become too big a country and too diverse, but we really don't feel like one country to me. Too many people aren't making it, and too few people control far too much wealth. To make it worse, people on one side of the divide refuse to do anything to make it better.

There seems to be no sense at all of a national family, the way some other countries manage.

The late Peter Allen wrote a lovely song about Australian expatriates all over the world and their love of country. In the last verse:

"But someday we'll all be together once more when all of the ships come back to the shore. Then I realise something I've always known. I still call Australia home."

Joshua Black

Meanwhile, Republicans both white and black keep getting quoted as saying someone ought to kill President Obama. This week it was actually a black candidate for the Florida legislature who said we were past impeachment as a remedy and that "It's time to arrest and hang him high."

Joshua Black calls himself an evangelist, so what we apparently have working here is both crazy politics and crazy religion, both of which are dragging this country somewhere it doesn't want to go.

Republicans seem to have only one goal these days -- strip government down to nothing in every area other than so-called national defense. And along the way, cut taxes on the rich. All that succeeds in doing is make income inequality worse and worse.

As of 2010, the top 100th of one percent of Americans had an average annual income of $23.85 million. The bottom 90 percent, which is really almost everyone, had an annual income of $29,840.

Those are Third World numbers, and there isn't anything good that can possibly happen to this country if that trend cannot be reversed. Average Americans are so deep in debt that their options in moving forward are almost non-existent. Students have amassed so much debt earning degrees that are nearly useless to them, and other people have run up massive consumer debt to buy crap that doesn't improve their quality of life at all.

H.L. Mencken wrote in 1922 that he thought the American republic would fall within a hundred years and that the two things that would cause its demise would be greed and ignorance. The greed of the rich and the ignorance of the masses.

Seems to me we're right on target, and that's what makes me angry.

The things that could save us are things we can't get the government to do. Return our income tax to the more progressive levels of the '50s and '60s. Conservatives have argued that lower tax rates result in greater investment, but it hasn't worked out that way. When income was taxed at a top rate of 70 percent, it made sense to re-invest. But with the top rate down at 35 percent, the folks keeping two-thirds of their income just pack it away.

Higher tax rates can also help cut the deficit and the overall debt, and of course help finance the safety net for the people who most need it.

It may be that the only way to save the working class is with some sort of debt forgiveness jubilee. Of course that's unfair to those folks who don't have massive debts, who played the game the right way, but a collapsing economy and a faltering country will hurt them every bit as much as the others.

That's pretty much it. No matter how far apart the two sides are, no matter how little use they have for each other, this ought to be a country worth saving.

Easy Rider, 1969

I'm not sure why, but I always keep coming back to "Easy Rider," to the drunken attorney who was a young Jack Nicholson's first memorable film role. After watching some guys mistreating Billy and Wyatt, Nicholson speaks perhaps the best line of the movie.

"This used to be a helluva good country."

Yes, it did.