reprint from 9/9/97

WHY AREN'T PEOPLE SCREAMING?

By Philip D. Long

Ordinary people are getting screwed royally, and there is hardly a whimper! Why? Sure, there is the occasional outburst of rage on the part of a mad gunman or bomber, but where is the collective rage of the working class that's getting the shaft? Why aren't folks up in arms, marching en mass, protesting, taking collective action, putting some fear into the politicians?

Families are blowing up all over the place leaving more abused spouses, drug addicts, and disturbed children than a stable society can absorb. Disturbed and unstable children from dysfunctional families are overwhelming public schools. Family based institutions such as small urban churches are wilting and dying from lack of support - too many people needing help and too few families able to participate or provide resources. As the family and the school and the church go, so go our traditions, culture, sense of meaning in life and our freedoms. Most people sense that these institutions are in deep trouble right now, maybe heading for catastrophe - but they are not raising any united shout of outrage. Why not?

You don't need to be a brain surgeon to figure out that a major cause of stress on the family these days is economic. Just take a look at some facts. The media reports keep reminding us that people are employed in record numbers and making more dollars than ever. This is indeed true. But what no one seems to be shouting out loud and clear is the fact that workers have suffered a severe lose of buying power in the last few decades. Even though people are earning far more dollars that they did forty years ago, they cannot buy as much with their annual income as they did then. Of course, you know that, right? But do you realize how bad it is? I'll bet not! Maybe you don't want to know because it will disturb you?

It became clear to me how much we've lost in buying power when I had recently to deal with some questions regarding clergy pension investment. Like most folks, I had up to this point thought very little about issues of earnings. In fact, ten years ago, when the steel mills were closing, the media put out the report that steel workers were making over twenty dollars an hour in order to turn public sympathy away from them. I must admit, I thought at the time that was an embarrassingly high wage - maybe the steel workers were a tad greedy? Well, when I began to read recently information from investment brokers who control pension funds, I got the other side of the story. These brokers are talking to people with capital, not the so called "dumb" working class, so they lay out important truths that the TV-brained class doesn't need to know. Right off they told me that the earning power of the dollar declines fifty percent per decade due to inflation. This is a general rule, they said, even though exact rates may vary from year to year as inflation goes up or down. Well, I couldn't believe it. But I began to think it through. In 1972 I bought a new Volvo for $4000. According to the 50% per decade rule, that same car should cost about $8000 in 1982, $16,000 in 1992 and about $24,000 today. What d'ya know! That's right in the ball park. The more I checked it out, the more it seemed to be true. My house cost $22,000 in 1974, which would be $44,000 in 1984 and $88,000 in 1994. Again, this is right in the ball park.

Those investment brokers seem to have a better handle on the truth about money than we ordinary folks do. Why? Don't we care? Are we too dumb to understand these things? Are the facts generally kept from us? Does the media constantly lull us with sweet lies about our prosperity? Maybe the truth about our lost buying power is too hard for us to take - maybe we don't want to know lest we would have to scream.

Think about this unpleasant fact. In the mid 1950's my uncle came home from the Korean war and got a job at Piper Aircraft in Lockhaven, Pa., for $5000 a year. He had no college education and the job was that of a machinist, for which the company trained him. My father was so impressed with this job that he harangued me at length to go and do likewise. "Get off the farm", he said, "get a job like that so you can work five days a week and come home at 5 o'clock and sit on your porch every evening! And with that salary you can own a house, raise a family and have a new car to boot!" That was true, then. But if we apply the 50% per decade rule, we get a jolt. $5000 per year in 1955 would be $10,000 in 1965, $20,000 in 1975, $40,000 in 1985 and $80,000 in 1995. How many working people can start at Piper Aircraft today as machinists for $80,000 a year? None! Piper went out of business years ago. The point is, the formula is correct. If you want to support a family, own a modest house and car without having both spouses working, you do need a wage of $80,000 per year. Very few working people in blue collar jobs can even dream of such a job. And we wonder why the working class and even many middle class families are falling apart, or why there is such stress today? To get even close to the needed income, families have to have both spouses working at $25,000 per year jobs and then find time for extra part-time work. No one gets enough rest, the kids are neglected, and stress destroys loving relationships.

Back to my original question: Why aren't people rioting? Workers have lost the security of full-time jobs (a main issue in the recent UPS strike), pressure to produce more work per hour for the same or less pay is everywhere, medical care is second rate or non-existent, pensions are a forgotten dream and even social security looks problematic for future retirees. How can we all sit back and watch so many lifes sink into the muck of poverty without raising a chorus of outrage?

LOSS OF WILL TO ORGANIZE
There is indeed something wrong. The will and ability to organize for collective action has been destroyed among ordinary people. It's simple. Owners have always wanted to squeeze workers as much as possible - lower wages mean higher profits. The problem for the owners has always been how to squeeze workers as hard as possible without having them collectively revolt. The capitalist, market system abhors the organization of workers. And it seems hardly coincidental that there are currently numerous forces at work in our social system that erode the will of ordinary people to organize in their own defense. Even if they fight other issues such as mall development, the threat of lawsuits is economic reprisal.

1. Media Focus on Individual not Collective Issues.
The key word here is "collective". Every influence from media and advertising to educational techniques focuses on the individual. People are seduced into believing in their own individuality and wanting nothing else. The collective dimension of life seems to be deliberately played down. Self-expression is vaunted while the skills of cooperation are undervalued. So, when it comes to handling social revolts, media cast these events in terms of crazy individuals. Individual revolts are no problem - shooters, bombers, and other individuals who go screaming off the deep end can easily be handled by our growing police forces and shown to the press as nut cases. The media has almost had a hernia demonstrating that cases like Waco, Ruby Ridge, Unibomber, OK Bomber, even Heaven's Gate, all involve dangerous individuals who molest children, shoot cops, practice mind control, kill innocent children, and constitute nothing but a lunatic fringe. The collective dimension of these events is generally ignored. It's almost as though the media wishes to frighten us regarding each other as individuals (Who is the killer nut among us? - "stranger danger!") and keep us from realizing that we have collective feelings of rage which we share even with individuals like the OK Bomber. As long as we have it drilled into us what a deviant, perverted, psycho the bomber was, we will be inclined to deny any feeling we may have that although we deplore what he did we understand how he felt.

2. NEUTRALIZED SENIORS
Speaking as a budding senior citizen, I can say confidently that the older we get the more we live in the past. It's only natural. And there's nothing wrong with it - except when we let our nostalgia block progress for the young. For example, many of our churches are dominated by retired individuals who are quick to point out how hard they worked for apparently lower wages in the past. These folks have a hard time believing the mathematics of declining buying power, that the dollar they earned in 1955 is worth over $16 today, or, put another way, that the $2.50 per hour they earned in 1955 is twice the income of their children who are making $20.00 per hour today. As a result, these folks will have little sympathy for the struggles of the young who are making so many more dollars these days, and the older will perhaps grouse about the greed of the young or their lack of old fashioned frugality. Generally, the older generation is inclined not to help or encourage the young to organize collectively for higher wages, but instead to admonish them on how much better off people are today.

Another problem the retired have is that their funds come from Social Security, which is still functioning very well for them, and in many cases from pensions drawn from funds invested in stocks and bonds. Funds in the stock market have grown an incredible 20 to 25% this past year as corporations have shown increased profits, often from downsizing, which either eliminates workers or squeezes more work out of them for less money. These factors tend to make secure retirees feel pretty good about the system as it is, and far less sympathetic with younger workers who might organize and strike for higher wages. In other words, while grandson suffers employment loss from corporate down-sizing, grandpa is pleased that his IRA money in stocks has increased 25% this past year from stock market reactions to corporate downsizing. And retirees constitute a powerful block of voters that is growing every day. Their happiness with the status quo and support of politicians who will not rock the boat makes it all the more difficult to protect workers from anti-labor legislation or to pass bills that would give workers more power.

Furthermore, since the churches are filled more and more with older people, it is little wonder that churches in general offer so little encouragement to young workers or to the efforts of organized labor. If people are to raise a chorus of outrage over lost economic opportunity, don't expect ordinary churches to join that choir. They are far more interested in how fast their endowments grow when corporations are more profitable, even if that profit is at the expense of workers.

3. ANTI-ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Our culture (values, attitudes, language) has become one of defiance. Take Mr. Roger's "You are special" and add a little original sin and what do you get? The culture of defiance. This is the culture of "Hip Hop", "Rap", in your face attitude. Parent's are fearful that their children will not get ahead, so they teach them to be pushy. People raised in the ethic of "me first" will never be able to organize themselves for anything. They won't even be able to keep families together, let alone the country. Organization requires mutual respect and shared goals and cooperation. Does TV teach such things? Do exhausted parents who feel they have been screwed by the system? Do the schools?

ANSWER: THE CHURCH

There are many more reasons for our current lack of collective ability, of course, but let's consider what the antidote might be. We need an institution which promotes collective values: respect of the other, willingness to serve the other, desire to edify the whole community, subjection of self to community, and the willingness to make sacrifices for the common good. And we need an institution which gives these values an eternal and transcendent dimension, making them of life and death significance. In other words, we need the church - not just the ordinary church corrupted by business values and secular culture, but the church Jesus Christ created, the perfect church which exists in Spirit only. We can, however, work to make our physical churches and congregations more like the true, Spiritual church Jesus created. We can be the institution which teaches people how to be collective - the historic church did it before. It may be too late for the TV-brained society around us to ever wake up and organize for collective defense. These folks probably never will raise a collective scream - they are so psychologically eroded that they could easily be herded into box cars like sheep. It is up to the church to shed its corporate image and become truly a counter society, one which teaches and practices collective values based on the fact that we are all one body, the Body Of Christ. Let's get at it!