FROM JIM SMITH

Is the last decade of the 20th century as good as it’s ever going to get in America? When I grew up my father worked on the assembly line at Ford Motor Company. His union guaranteed that he would get some sort of a wage increase at least every two years. He would get healthcare paid by the company and annual paid vacation, which increased with his seniority. His income and healthcare would be protected if he were injured on the job. He would be guaranteed an opportunity to be promoted to a better job in the plant when one became available, on the theory that long-time good workers like my father had learned to do the job better than newcomers. He had someone to represent him if he felt he had been mistreated by his boss. He could afford to buy a car, if only a used one. He was able to afford to send me to college without a loan or scholarship.

We didn’t talk about the de-industrialization of America, which was about to occur when I left home for college. I didn’t realize the pretty grim reality I was leaving behind as I left to be educated. The automobile plants in my hometown where my father and his two brothers worked would close. Governors and legislators, with help from industry-sponsored political groups, would make union membership akin to Communist Party membership. My children would be scattered across the country in search of mostly insecure, low-paying jobs with few benefits despite their college educations and with tuition loans to be repaid.

It’s the story of many hometowns in middle America. Here in Washington, cotton no longer provides the thousands of  jobs it once did in agriculture and manufacturing. The massive tobacco warehouses are gone and the supply and maintenance companies that supported them are closed. Fishing, shrimping and crabbing are an empty shell (pun intended) of what they were.

Why did the good times end? Who is responsible? What, if anything, can be done about it? Is it actually possible to do the things that need to be done? Let’s take these issues one at a time over several weeks, beginning with “Why did the good times end?”

The overriding reason is that workers did not share in the financial benefits of productivity gains driven by modern technology. Increased productivity should lead to increased wealth. It did but not for the working class. The less wealthy consume a greater share of their income than do the rich. Their spending creates demand for products and services. When demand is expanded, jobs are created. The expanded demand of 300,000,000 ordinary Americans when they have more income is critical to real job creation and a healthier economy.

A philosophy shared by many of the members of the current North Carolina legislature is if we force government to step back and allow the rich to get richer, they will use their talents and wealth to create jobs which will benefit everyone. This trickle-down economic theory has been shown a failure as we all observe economic inequality growing dramatically. We see neighbors who used to have family-sustaining jobs now working in the increasing numbers of fast-food restaurants for below-poverty wages.

A highly visible example of the failure of trickle-down economics is the early steps taken to save the nation from a second Great Depression. Billions of dollars were poured into the same banks that had brought the country to near ruin without demanding any assurances of how it would be used. It was wrongly assumed that if you gave banks more money they would follow their traditional role of lending it out. What the banks did, in fact, was use the money to fatten their balance sheets and pay mega bonuses to the same executives who had nearly destroyed their businesses. Big banks were not earning money by increasing the efficiency of the economy as intended. Instead, the banks and their executives increased their wealth, while little of the money trickled down into the economy, let alone to small businesses and workers.

Jim Smith is the first vice chair of the Beaufort County Democratic Party.