The Wrongologist

“We
may have democracy in this country, or we may have wealth concentrated in the
hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” Louis Brandeis

What’s
Wrong Today:

Part I of The Coming Political Reset laid
out some of the facts about the gutting of the middle class over the past 30
years. Let’s review some of the points:

1) The majority of new
jobs are low paying: see also, the NELP report outlined in The Coming Political Reset, Part
I.

2) The middle class is eroding, with a few
leaving for the upper classes, but most are moving to being members of the
working poor.

The
Coming Political Reset:

Are we overseeing the creation of a permanent underclass? 

• We
  are destroying the middle class.

• This
  causes tax revenues to continue to fall as fewer people find good paying jobs.

• That
  means fewer public services.

• There
  will be increasing distrust of people in power by a growing number of the new
  hopeless, who see those in power as ignoring their plight.

• Talent
  is increasingly sidelined through churn-and-burn corporate policies and hiring
  practices (e.g. hiring contract employees without benefits and little job
  security for the lowest possible wage).

Peter Edelman, a law
professor at Georgetown University, writes in his recent book So Rich, So Poor: Why
It’s So Hard to End Poverty in America that the proliferation of low-wage jobs — not the lack of
jobs — is the single biggest cause of persistent poverty. He argued in a July New York Times op-ed:

“We’ve been drowning in a flood of
low-wage jobs for the last 40 years… Half the jobs in the nation pay less than
$34,000 a year…25% pay below the poverty line for a family of four, less than
$23,000 annually.”

Our stalemated political situation is driving our unstable economic environment.
Our current divided politics will
last only as long as the majority of working baby boomers, the silents and a
good chunk of the Xers continue to think they can hang on to some piece of the American
Dream and not start to concentrate on simply
envying those who have it better than them. 

Young people today are completely screwed. The youth unemployment
rate (ages 16-24) was 17.1 % in July 2012. The unemployment
rate for young men was 17.9 % and the rate for young women
was 16.2 %. The jobless rate for young whites was 14.9%,
compared with 28.6 % for young blacks, 14.4% for Asians,
and 18.% for Hispanics. 

Those with educations have astronomical student loans, many have
no job, or low wage jobs and they can’t afford to live independently
and can’t afford to start a family. 

Our political stalemate could begin to break down by 2020, which is
when the demographics start to turn: 

• Demographic
  projections of Census data by the Census Bureau show that at that point, the US
  will be older than ever: People over 64 will have grow by 7.2% to 28% of the
  population compared with 21% now.

• The
  white majority will decline to about 60% from 68% now.

• People
  of working ages (18-64) will decline by ~15% to 61.8% from 76.7%.

Unless
we deal with the middle class jobs problem before 2020, today’s young underemployed
and discouraged boomers could coalesce around a view that the system is rigged against them. Elderly voters (a
growing bloc) will have less economic
security and much less control over the political process. They may
join together to start a new political movement. It may not look like the
Occupy movement or the Tea Party movement, but it will be informed by both.

Remember,
2020 is only two presidential elections from today.

We should also remember that the places where
revolutions, peaceful and otherwise, are happening in the Middle East are
places where the majority of the
population is young and are unemployed.

In the
2012 election cycle, Republicans are calling for austerity.

Every time someone says that the middle
class and the working poor must settle for much less while the top 2% continue
to do very well, we all should die a little inside.

With the political system broken, the legal
system’s power is becoming more dominant. If justice isn’t available in the
courts, a descent towards violence may be inevitable.

Governments
recognize this. It is the reason that the US is militarizing
its police forces at all levels and coordinating operations under DHS, which
has become the first domestic security “ministry” in US history.

Our governments from city to federal levels
are also purchasing drone aircraft, establishing a
surveillance state, so any violent revolution in the US is unlikely to be
successful: In fact, the fast, violent and coordinated response to Occupy
movements throughout the country coupled with the suppression of the on-scene
media coverage, shows that the
government expects resistance to grow and it stands ready to suppress it.

In the
Sixties, millions of students and others actively demonstrated in the streets.
At that time, alternative newspapers and word of mouth were the only means of
communication/coordination that protesters had. 
Cell phones and the Internet have changed all that, so movements can
start from nowhere and grow virally. What we saw in the third world would be
much more effective here.

In the Sixties,
the young and the principled were mostly against the draft. Ordinary Americans,
in particular most of the middle class, politicians, governments and labor,
were opposed to the protests and sided with the government. Economic times were different, too.

Today,
with rising domestic economic pain, it would not be unusual for our youth to no
longer see any real future. Despite the Republican and Democratic presidential
nominees’ optimism and cheer leading, many ordinary people fear that their kids
will not be as well off on average as their parents.

The real questions are:

1.   How do we get the
financial health of the US middle class to be the top priority in US politics?

2.   If is not the top
priority, are we prepared for a revolution, whether violent or non-violent?

This then,
is the Coming Political Reset:
Millions of people in the street is not at all far-fetched. What the outcome of
that civil disobedience will be is unimaginable.  

Pay
attention, Democrats and Republicans, your time is short. This could turn ugly by 2020; that is just two presidential terms
from today.

President Obama said it at a
campaign event in New Hampshire:

“…This is the defining issue of our time. This is a
make or break moment for our middle class and folks who are aspiring to get
into the middle class. The next president and the next Congress will face a set
of decisions on the economy, on deficits, on taxes, that will have a profound
impact not only on the country we live in today, but the country that we pass
on to our kids.”