Sad And Frightening

More than any other animal we human beings are ruled by our expectations. People, such as Crane Brinton, who have studied mass movements and revolutions will tell you that the most dangerous times for any society are when reforms are not bringing about the desired improvements fast enough or when people think they are losing ground and what they have is being taken away from them.

In many ways America is experiencing both of these things. As the folks of Black Lives Matter will tell you: in spite of the tremendous improvement in race relations since the 1960's, racism is still a problem which is too often deadly for African Americans! They demand changes and they demand them now! At the same time middle age white working class people are undergoing a crises that undermines some of our most cherished assumptions.

The New York Times Reports that an analysis by two Princeton economists, Angus Deaton, who last month won the 2015 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, and Anne Case shows that:

“Something startling is happening to middle-aged white Americans. Unlike every other age group, unlike every other racial and ethnic group, unlike their counterparts in other rich countries, death rates in this group have been rising, not falling.” The analysis by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case indicates that in middle age, poorly educated American whites “are dying at such a high rate that they are increasing the death rate for the entire group of middle-aged white Americans.”

Indeed, “[t]he mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014.” Sadly “... the death rates among this group are being driven not by the big killers like heart disease and diabetes but by an epidemic of suicides and afflictions stemming from substance abuse:alcoholic liver disease and overdoses of heroin and prescription opioids.”

What could account for this? In the period examined by Dr. Deaton and Dr. Case, the “inflation-adjusted income for households headed by a high school graduate fell by 19 percent.“ So as Dartmouth economists, Ellen Meara and Jonathan S. Skinner, noted in a commentary to the Deaton-Case analysis to be published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “...[t]he least educated also had the most financial distress.”

What frightens me is that we now have African Americans being killed and white people killing themselves. Both groups are feeling desperate. This is a situation that is almost ideal for a demagogue who wants to pit one group of people against another. Be cautious, my friends. Be very, very cautious! For decades now we have been hearing complaints by white people who believe welfare and other social programs unfairly require them to pay for the sins of their fathers long after the need to compensate the victims has passed. Unfortunately the group of white people who are suffering the most in this economy, as manufacturers move overseas and unions are destroyed, are the people who have only a high school education or less, and they are the very people who are most inclined to fall for the blame the victims tactics employed by demagogues who want to pit different groups against each other. After all, demagogues are not bothered by difficult complexities; they can make it very simple: “Just deport all immigrants, stop all affirmative action, and do away with the safety net programs you have to pay for and everything will be all right again,” they say.

What the uneducated cannot seem to grasp is that taxes are a rather small component of real income. In fact the wages earned by workers have now become so small that the percentage of people who are required to pay income taxes has dropped significantly. Furthermore, with real incomes decreasing the working class is becoming more dependent on the safety nets they have been paying for all these years. And it is not the exploited minorities that are causing the decrease in wages. So oppressing minorities will not accomplish anything but resistance. We are in a very dangerous place right now. We have to do something to restore the dignity and incomes of our workers, and we have to do it before their desperation blinds them to all reason. Too many of them are already being hoodwinked by the Greedy Old Plutocrats as it is.

If you look back at a time when we manufactured things, when labor unions were strong, and when the middle class was the great engine of prosperity you will see that the disparity in wealth between the top 2 or 3 percent and everyone else was much less than it is now! And everyone prospered at that time; the top 2 or 3 percent were still very well off, and it was reasonable for the rest of us to believe our children would be better off than we were. Enriching the rich only exacerbates our current problems, as do bad trade agreements. I cannot tell you I have all the answers but I can tell you that the Republicans with their enrich the rich, trickle down theory will only make things worse. It is only through the collective strength we can exert through our government that we can make things better. We have to vote the special interests out. We desperately need an aggressive and progressive government! That is why I intend to vote for Bernie Sanders.