What Do You Have To Gain, Part 1?

I was an idealist. Not all of that is gone, but my idealism has been scrambled somewhat by the changes in American society. For the sake of sanity, I will not review the entire trail of tears that has disfigured my sense of security that in the end, when the difficulties occur, that the American people will “stand-up.”

The summer heat has arrived. It’s humid and uncomfortable. The high temperature today of  90F matched that of Kabul, Afghanistan. Our country’s soldiers are sweltering carrying 50-60 lbs of equipment while patrolling a country that doesn’t care about patrols. What do the Afghanis care about? Who knows, although one has to assume that they care about the same things we do--just in a different way.

We are faced with some fundamental decisions about ourselves, our future and the future of the civilization that has been our treasure. This American civilization, based on a heritage of English liberal political theories coupled with a concept of the human person developed by the French and later broadly European Enlightenment. These rights “endowed by our creator,” that is given directly to us individually by the “divine” are the core aspects of American civilization: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

There was no church which preached this in those days, aside from perhaps the then soon to be united Universalists and Unitarians. These are liberal ideas, not conservative ones. Conservative values relate to containing the world in the status quo. Those attached to the status quo, the traditionalists and the reactionaries, opposed these ideas. To accept, live by and pass on these aspects of our tradition cost many people their life, treasure and family. This isn’t just sentimental drivel. It is what happened as they fought for these principles in a war against the British.

Yet, we are walking slowly but surely into a different set of principles. These are greed, selfishness and emphasis on differences among others. Much of the change we are being led to began in a very benign way. The way forward was disguised by our trust in what used to be, but are no longer, American corporations. The concept of a corporation or company with its first loyalty to America and the people herein is no longer so. We must begin to see such bulwarks as Exxon, Mobil, General Motors, Prudential Insurance, Citgo, Walmart and many others as separate almost independent entities.

These multi-national corporations can not be expected to put America first. And, you have to understand that they do not. The United States is just a source of resources, human, mineral and chemical/biological, to be exploited.

The basis for this change is multiple, both national and international. In truth, American policy has enabled this shift in priorities by providing tax incentives to American companies to move jobs off-shore. "Off-shore" initially was Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii and other United States territories. As a result, even to today, the majority of drug manufacturing by “American” pharmaceuticals is done in Puerto Rico. Somehow, a plan to provide jobs in these needy American areas moved to include many underdeveloped countries on the planet, especially China.

Whatever motivated our legislators to these ends, you see now this has done one thing that was important to manufacturing in the USA: this lowered the amount of money corporations have to pay American workers.

At the same time in the 1980’s began a strong push against unions, both private and public. The corporations, through their many Democratic and Republican mouthpieces, began this campaign by focusing on those workers who were not union, saying that they were better off without unions especially closed shop unions which required all workers to join the Union and pay Union dues.

What the unions were not able to state convincingly is that because of the increased salaries, benefits, work rules and rights not only did the Union workers’ income rise, so did all those non-union workplaces doing similar work in order to compete for skilled employees. The overall benefits began improving.

There was a sense in the 1980’s that employers were so far-sighted that they would keep up these great salaries without the need for unions. Many of the new high tech and medical fields didn’t “like” the idea of being in a union. They could do as well or better without them. So they did, until the unions lost their strength as jobs left America for foreign shores.

It became what those in behavioral psychology call “a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Workers saw these jobs leaving, as explained by their bosses, because of the high wages of the unions. They didn’t see right away that these jobs left due to greed of the management of these corporations. They could have remained in the USA and split their profits with the workers, but that did not satisfy their boards of directors and investors. The transfer of wealth to the now 1% had begun.

To be continued