Polarization

Wisconsin is in the news. A complex situation is being painted simplistic. I have tried to step back and see why. Here are my thoughts:

Should public employees (including teachers) contribute to their health and retirement systems, maybe even a significant amount? Yes. Does that mean the protesters are entirely off-base on that? Some, but not really (and many have been willing to compromise). More on that in a bit, but it is related to the following point. The Republican majority in state government want to also virtually end all collective bargaining rights. Is that off-base and unnecessary, even a bit insidious? Yes, almost entirely. And the protesters are rightly uncompromising about that.

The protesters are fearing, rightfully, that any cave-in by them will demolish most everything they have attained, and remove what power they have left to influence their work and their lives. They have watched it everywhere else in the country, inside government, inside education, and inside the private sector. The “reformist,” or “cost-cutting,” group will say that compromises need to be made to “save” jobs or “balance the books,” or some other what looks on the face of it to be sensible reason. But jobs often don’t get saved, the money is diverted elsewhere, and control is virtually entirely transferred to (mis)management. And compromise is only in one direction: from labor to management and administration, to business, to corporations, to privatization, to “reallocation” (bonuses for the higher ups), to tax-cuts that are meaningful only for the wealthy. The assault on labor is relentless, the commoditizing of it frequent, and the neo-feudal, neo-serfdom more apparent by the day. Do unions sometimes get wasteful, corrupt, close-minded, selfish, or even a bit coercive? Yes. Is union management often abysmal? Yes, and a long-standing phenomenon (start one’s understanding with Oil!). Is all that about unions what is truly causing the financial problems? Not really. More on that in a bit too.

The anti-union crusade says “no compromise” on its part. This is a pattern long in evidence. “Take a little now” and hammer away constantly at the rest. Eventually all is removed or most power gutted. Along the way, inflame the underlying current by spouting off nonsense about communists, socialists, revolutionaries, chaos, trying to take control of, using emergency powers, one-party system, and all sorts of emotional triggers having little to no connection to unions.

Some of those who have private sector jobs in Wisconsin are also turning out to protest against the unions, against the public employees. They hold signs like “If you don’t like it, quit,” and “if you don’t like that, try you’re fired.” They have a point in that they the producers, or at least the tax-paying workers of the private sector (classic producers in the strict economic sense being now rare), cannot be burdened too much without collapsing the system, and you don’t need to be a follower of Ayn Rand to understand that. Even the valid counter-points by the teachers, that they directly help mold and make productive the future producers, as well as pay taxes themselves, do not take away the point itself. Yet these “producers” who are counter-protesting become unwitting pawns in a chess game above their heads. For they, many of whom have jobs that are not entirely stable themselves and hence are lucky to be employed and not “burdens” that have to be “supported,” are raging because the employee benefits they have are usually not as good as the public sector. They do not see that the benefits of the public employees are often not really excessive. Why don’t they see? Perhaps because the process of benefits stripping has become near-complete in the private sector. The benefits of the public sector then LOOK excessive in comparison, as nearly everyone has by now nearly forgotten what life was like before the corporatization/globalization/privatization/free-market hyper-manic campaign began in earnest over 40 years ago.

Government is often bloated and wasteful, and we have enlarged requirements and expectations, as well as entitlements, excessively, and those are without doubt both deep stressors on government budgets and unsustainable. But a just as true source, and maybe truer source, of financial problems across all government is that government has been essentially de-funded. Corporations and the very wealthy top .1% have, through multiple machinations, largely escaped meaningful tax responsibility, and pay far less proportionally (and often less even in actual dollars) than the average Joe or Josephine. A comparison of now to 50 years ago is telling, and available to anyone with even modest skills in history and economics. And a comparison of now to similar Roman times is well, chilling.

Even when the wealthy pay more, they have far more, and they feel it far less, than the average person, and in some cases, don’t feel it all. But what they have paid has steadily fallen in real terms. They have defunded governments across all levels, including local. They have defunded schools and education (they send their children to private ones anyway). They have disconnected themselves from their fellow citizens. Just like the wealthy of Rome.

Bitterly and ironically, this is infuriating, given that those corporations and wealthy who have benefitted most from laws and shaded conditions have hurled the loudest epithets accusing others of class warfare, when they themselves have waged the severest and most successful class warfare in America in the last 100 years.

My father tried to warn me this would happen, that the assault on collective bargaining, and all that was made possible by it, would transform the country for the worst. He tried to tell me that greed and selfishness were trumping patriotism and the common good, but I didn’t want to believe it. And now I watch its last phases. I wish he was around so I could apologize.