The United Way has been surveying economic distress in America, and last week issued a report that indicates 43% of U.S. households have incomes that don’t provide enough to cover the basics of existence. These results provide still more evidence, as if more were needed, of this country's crisis levels of financial insecurity. Such results should shame and shake us all, and the fact that they don’t speaks to a parallel crisis of denialism and class insularity that cries out for resolution. They’re also a shocking gauge of the daily indignities and stresses behind more abstract talk of economic inequality, and another window into understanding that the pervasive media and political message that we have the best possible economy in all of human existence is utter bunk. A healthy economy would bring security to all our citizens; a healthy economy would not perpetuate hardship for nearly half its population.
The situation is all the more disturbing when you look at the unemployment rate, which has now hit 3.9% — the lowest since 2000. That so low a rate can co-exist with such deep malaise for nearly half of American households is more unpleasant evidence that employment and economic security have become seriously decoupled.
There are two basic responses to this situation. You can react with compassion, outrage, and a sense of fraternity rooted in patriotism and our common humanity that so many of our fellow Americans are getting fucked over. Or you can look away, feel relief that at least you’re better off than those people you just read about, and blame an enormous chunk of Americans for their own plight.
The CNN article about the United Way study links to a piece about a recent tax battle in Seattle that encapsulates much of the horror of this perceptual divide. The city passed a tax increase on companies that earn $20 million or more annually — about 3% of all businesses. The money generated will specifically go to construction of affordable housing and emergency services for the homeless. Yet CNN describes the tax as “controversial,” apparently because big businesses, including Amazon, don’t want to pay more taxes, and managed to tap into the big conservative lie that taxes will always kill jobs and so are never acceptable. A case could be made, though, that a more controversial position would be a gargantuan, job-killing company such as Amazon attempting to make the case that it should not pay a small tax to help serve the neediest Americans, including some who have been directly affected by Amazon’s role in increasing the cost of living in Seattle.
Likewise, “controversial” could be applied to Amazon’s implicit threat to Seattle that such a tax might cause Amazon to reconsider continued investments in the city. We are so used to businesses responding to the exercise of democratic power with bullying and feudal disdain that we miss how immoral and self-serving such behavior is. Amazon, and the more than a hundred other businesses that joined it in opposition, could have seen the tax as a way for them to be part of the solution to American equality, and to ally themselves with those screwed over by the contemporary economy. Instead, they argued for more screwing, with extra fucking on the side for good measure.
It is not socialism or some sort of revolution to pay a tiny fraction of your income so that people don’t die on the streets or don’t have to worry so much about paying rent; it is simply a minimal moral obligation to your fellow citizens. Too many businesses, particularly oligopolies like Amazon, have come to see citizens as marks and dupes, rather than the people who are actually to be served by corporations and the larger economy. The ability of companies to bully our elective representatives would be finished overnight if Americans got back in touch with their basic sense of dignity, solidarity, and Democratic spirit, and condemned such bullying as outside the bounds of acceptable corporate behavior.
But for the present, the difficulties Seattle had in passing the most minimal and reasonable legislation to address economic insecurity is a window into how we've arrived at a situation where nearly half of American households are in the same leaky economic boat. Amazon and other corporations have two messages to Americans: If you can afford to spend money, just shut up and shop. And if you can’t afford to shop, just shut up.
