Djelloul Marbrook

Do you have that queasy feeling that when we’re showered with blather about something like bailing out Detroit the real story is running beneath our feet like a vast underground river?

The Democrats say that with 240,000 jobs jobs at stake and God knows how many ancillary jobs we can’t afford not to bail out Dopey, Mopey and Grumpy. The Republicans say not on your life. And the pundits say not without promises to make better cars. Yeah, like the banks are keeping their promises to loosen credit.

About that underground river. If Ronald Reagan didn’t kill off unionism, the collapse of the big three automakers will. So there’s part of that underground river: the fate of American unionism. And without unions there is little hope of prosperity reappearing anytime soon for wage earners. A unionless country is like a deregulated country: damned good for the pirates, for the rest of us not so much.

With that in mind, let’s think about the last 20 years. We kept being told that the American consumer was the savior of the world, faithfully buying everyone’s products and thereby keeping the world’s economy afloat. No matter how bad the news got, there was always the American consumer doing his job, buying like there was no tomorrow.

And then tomorrow arrived, and it’s bleak.

But the issue nobody raised was how was the American consumer going to go on spending like Good Time Charlie when politicians kept on busting unions and companies kept their shareholders fat and happy by freezing wages, firing people and cutting benefits? How was the consumer going to keep on consuming when he couldn’t afford his house, his health or the education of his children? Predatory lending wasn’t the only villain; predatory legislating was at work. And predatory failure to legislate to protect us.

How was that supposed to work? Well, it didn’t work, did it? And now the great American consumer has caught on. He is saving what little money he has and Washington is wringing its hands. Good Time Charlie is smartening up. And what is Washington’s answer? Loosen up credit so Big Time Charlie can dig himself deeper in debt while his future goes south.

That, I think, is a crude picture of the river running underneath all these stories about bailout, Detroit, tight credit, mergers, revenue shortfalls and all the other terms by which we are bewitched and baffled. The American worker, who was supposed to buy himself silly to support the whole world’s economy, is under attack by union busters and wage cutters.

What is wrong with this picture? How can anyone make sense of it? How could the worker save and spend and lose wages and benefits all at the same time? Why did this picture not emerge in all its gorgeous contradiction from all the election palaver? Why doesn’t it emerge Sunday mornings when the paid heads hold forth about everything under the sun except the obvious fact that the American wage earner is being screwed?

How can we bust unions, cut or freeze wages, reduce benefits, and expect our economy to grow? The anti-union knock has always been that strong unionism inhibits economic growth, but we know now that the union busters don’t give a damn about American economic growth, because when they get done screwing our labor market they just move on to even more vulnerable labor markets overseas, taking our sweat equity with them. Of course, nobody wants to say anything so nasty, but could that be what Americans have finally begun to suspect? That the big corporations don’t give a damn about America?

And yet the punditocracy and the politicians keep on beating around the bush. Who is going to do the buying when the corporados have finished the job Ronald Reagan began on our magnificent labor market? Would anybody care to look this monster in the face? We don’t just have to bail out the financial sector or Detroit, we have to redefine capitalism: is it going to be corporate freebooting or is it going to be a carefully balanced system of checks and balances whose object is to give us all a share in the future?

I’m not an economist, so where do I get off writing as if I know what I’m talking about, right? But aren’t these the questions many of us have been wondering about? And if we’re wondering about them, why aren’t our politicians and pundits? Is it because the truth is so patently horrid that nobody wants to be caught dead saying it?

All these years Americans have been buying the world out of economic trouble, running up debt they can’t afford, and now Washington’s answer is too loosen up the credit markets? How about paying Americans decent wages? How about a national health care system that works and doesn’t disgrace us in the eyes of the world? How about working to diversify the economy instead of bailing out rascals who’ve already got theirs? How about passing some laws to encourage workers’ rights?

The e-mail swift boaters so worried about Obama’s super-liberalism and his stance toward guns might take a little time to ponder what has happened to the great American consumer machine that has now broken down simply because Americans have figured out they’ve been running a welfare state for everybody but themselves, and going into hock to do it.—DM