The American Dream Used to Mean Something

Once we were a middle class country, with core values of hard work,opportunity, and fairness. Now we're losing our middle class, because big corporations and CEOs have been calling the shots.

This didn’t happen overnight. Corporations have had a strategy to consolidate their hold on the U.S. economy for more than three decades. By every economic measure, they’ve been successful.

Look at what they’ve accomplished: reduced levels of unionization, reduced wages and benefits, reduced or eliminated corporate taxes for many companies, reduced or eliminated regulations, increased trade deals with low-wage countries.

1980s: Private sector workers’ bargaining rights attacked.

The percentage of private sector workers covered by collective bargaining has dropped dramatically. This is no accident but a vicious, all-out assault on workers’ rights waged by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, employers and political alies.

Since the rise of the anti-union industry, there has been a significant increase in the intensity and aggressiveness with which private-sector employers have opposed their workers’ right to have a union voice. Companies have increased their use of coercive tactics like firing, harassment and surveillance and coupled these with threats of ownership change, outsourcing, or contracting out.

Workers want a union voice, but they believe they will pay a high price in the fight to win bargaining rights.

Source: Richard Freeman, “ Do Workers Want Unions? More than Ever,” EPI Issue Brief.

Source: Kate Bronfenbrenner, “No Holds Barred: the Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing.”

Result: In 1980, 21.7 percent of private sector workers had union representation. Today it’s just about 7 percent.

1994: NAFTA set the stage for decades of bad trade policy that has hurt U.S. workers.

NAFTA was sold with a false promise that it would create good jobs on both sides of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. It was quickly followed by more lop-sided trade deals that hurt U.S. workers. As a result, U.S. workers continue to lose good jobs, in manufacturing, information technology, customer service and other sectors.

Today, deals like a so-called free trade agreement with Colombia, where most workers are classified as independent contractors so they have no legal bargaining rights, are being considered. In Columbia, unionists have been murdered and threatened for fighting for workers’ rights. And despite huge reserves of cash on hand, U.S. corporations aren’t creating new jobs in the U.S., only overseas.

Result: U.S. corporations export more jobs than they create here at home, putting extreme downward pressure on wages in the U.S. And corporations still get a tax break for sending jobs overseas.

1999: Congress throws out 50 years of bank law and legalizes risky investment banking.

In 1999, Congress got rid of the Glass-Steagall Act. That law, which had been in effect for 60 years, prevented traditional banks from selling risky investment vehicles to customers.

Result: Banks literally went for broke in making risky investments with customers’ dollars and the banking/Wall Street meltdown sent the U.S. into an $8 trillion economic crisis.

2001: Enron bankruptcy leads wave of corporate corruption.

Remember the outrage that Enron caused? Executives Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were headed for prison because of insider trader, conspiracy and fraud.

Result: No lessons learned from the Enron debacle. In fact, despite losing billions of dollars in the sub-prime mortgage scandal of their own making, Wall Street bankers and executives got $14 billion in bonuses. And no one is going to jail. Wall Street got a government bailout to keep our economy running, but refused to lend money to businesses that needed it. That made the Great Recession even worse.

2001: The richest 1 percent of Americans get a $477 billion tax break over 10 years.

Government assistance for the wealthiest Americans took a big turn in 2001, when the richest 1% percent of Americans got 52% of the first round of tax cuts.

Oh, and corporate taxes were slashed, while companies figured out even more ways to not pay any tax.

Result: Over the last 25 years, the bottom 80% of Americans, have seen a 7% overall decrease in income. The bottom 50% of American households has an average annual income of about $25,000. And many big corporations don’t pay any taxes; some even get a tax rebate.

2007-2008: Bank deregulation and the Wall Street scandal push the U.S. into the Great Recession beginning December 2007.

Wall Street’s sub-prime mortgage scandal brought about an $8 trillion economic crisis.

Result: Financial markets, consumer spending and business investment collapsed, and massive job loss followed. From 2008-2009, 8.4 million jobs were lost, or 6.1 percent of payroll employment.

2010: U.S. Supreme Court ends limits on corporate election contributions; spending hits all-time high.

In January 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision eliminated all limits on corporate campaign contributions and permitted direct corporate contributions to candidates. This decision reversed a century of law that will allow special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections. American elections shouldn’t be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people.

Result: The 2010 midterm election campaign was the most expensive in history, with the total cost expected to exceed $4 billion. Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent by “independent” groups that don’t have to disclose their donors. Groups like American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, two organizations founded by Republican activist Karl Rove, already are promising to raise and spend $120 million in 2012.

The Citizens United decision took away the transparency our nation needs in terms of how election dollars are spent, so that corporations and the wealthy can’t get away with hiding behind phony front groups.

2011: Public sector workers’ bargaining rights attacked.

The financial crisis has taken its toll on state and local governments. Of course, nurses, public safety officers, public workers and librarians didn’t cause the economic meltdown, and public workers already contribute to their health care and pensions. Extremist politicians, from New Jersey to Ohio to New Mexico, have been working overtime, using the financial meltdown as an excuse to attack collective bargaining rights, wages, health care and other benefits of public sector workers.

Result: Workers lose their union voice. Pensions and health care for public workers are being slashed. Communities are losing quality services and jobs.