Miner Queries: Our economy: Who’s left unscathed?

 I spent last Monday evening viewing part of a documentary film called, “American Winter.” This film highlights the plight of middle class families thrust into poverty through a single crisis such as the loss of a job, death of a spouse or a medical emergency. One young father noted he’d had no trouble finding work five years previously. So after losing his job, he called every business in the phone book to ask if they were hiring. He did not get a single “Yes.”

Now, tell me this guy doesn’t want to work. 

Each family profiled in this film is struggling desperately to stay healthy and together, to keep fed and warm and to find work. All of them had solid work experience, education or both. And all of them wanted a job that would allow them to get off assistance and live with dignity.

Tell me again these people don’t want to work.

I believe those of us lucky enough to be hanging onto jobs, health and spouses have taken exceptions to the public assistance rule and painted ALL unemployed and low wage workers with a broad brush. Perhaps the loudest voices touting anecdotes of abuse to justify denying help to those in need come from Congress.

Salon’s Joan Walsh called out Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan last week over his short-lived poverty agenda.  First, she notes his report on poverty was debunked by the scholars whose work he misrepresented to discredit our social safety net.  She concludes, “Ryan insists the War on Poverty created a ‘poverty trap.’ It’s clear what the real poverty trap is: Republicans who resist every effort to improve the lives of American workers.”

That same morning, I read an article on AlterNet by Les Leopold that began with the following quote:  “I wish someone would give me one shred of neutral evidence that financial innovation has led to economic growth — one shred of evidence.” —Paul Volker (2009). 

From there, Leopold cites evidence Wall Street has grown not only “too big to fail,” but just too big, including:

1. Exploding Wall Street incomes;

2. Declining worker incomes;

3. Increasing Wall Street fees;

4. More playing the markets to increase profits.

I highly recommend the accompanying charts and graphs. Finally, Leopold writes, “To paraphrase Grover Norquist, our goal should be ‘to shrink [Wall Street] down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.’”

I have spent my entire adult life struggling to survive under the economic model labeled Capitalism or Free Market Fundamentalism, depending on which end of the political spectrum you reside. But as I have been reading in the book No Rising Tide by Joerg Rieger, the term fundamentalism is an accurate name for our current brand of American economics. Like religion, our faith in the market to cure our economic ills is unsupported by evidence.  And most disturbingly, Rieger notes our lack of consideration for any other economic models.

Yet our history reveals alternative economic policies work. Think progressive tax code, Social Security, Works Project Administration (WPA), Civilian Conservation Core (CCC), minimum wage and Medicare. Unfortunately, our blind faith in the market overwhelms these inconvenient facts. 

Until we are ready to accept the market has no conscience, control or benevolence and will not fix our economic woes on its own, no one will be left unscathed. 

Cherie Miner is a local parent, community volunteer, freelance writer and artist. In a former life, she was a corporate writer and public relations professional. Contact her at news@redoakexpress.com or on Facebook.