My Point of View by Jennifer Vogt-Erickson

Pundits often refer to Bernie Sanders’ ideas as “pie in the sky.” It’s ironic how this phrase has come around to belittle a progressive.

Joe Hill coined the phrase in a parody of “In the Sweet By and By,” which he called “The Preacher and the Slave.” If you’re familiar with the original tune, you can easily hum along to his chorus:

You will eat, by and by

In that glorious land above the sky

Work and pray, live on hay

You’ll get pie in the sky when you die

Hill, who was also a union organizer, was executed 100 ago this past November, just as the labor movement was beginning to win more protections for workers, such as an eight-hour workday in some industries.

Worker safety was another goal of union protests, especially after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed nearly 150 women and girls in 1911. Their deaths weren’t isolated: In 1914, approximately 35,000 U.S. workers died in fatal industrial accidents. New worker safety laws over the past century have had a tremendous impact. In 2014, with similar numbers of factory workers and a much larger workforce overall, the U.S. lost fewer than 5,000 workers to death on the job.

Unions got perhaps the biggest boost in the 1930s with the 40-hour week week, a ban on child labor and the right to organize. Unions reached peak membership during the 1950s and 1960s. This also closely matches the time period when the income gap between workers at the top and bottom was the smallest, and the middle class reached its highest percentage of the population (over 50 percent). Today it’s about 43 percent, even though many more households have added a second-income earner.

The presidential hopefuls in both parties are speaking to a sense of anxiety pervasive among voters who recognize that times have gotten tougher. People who work hard shouldn’t see their dreams — and dreams for their children — pulled out from under them. That’s a huge failure of our economy, and it’s fundamentally caused by the inequality that has widened in the U.S. ever since Reagan took office.

Democrats focus on what Americans can do together, often with government help, to turn this around. Raising the minimum wage to make it possible to live above poverty, even with a family, is a keystone of restoring the middle class. The labor movement must also be rebuilt. Countries with the strongest middle classes today have the highest union representations.

Republicans often address the shrinking middle in terms of personal or moral failures. In their view, it’s people themselves (and government and unions) who are responsible for economic backsliding. Earning low wages? Not enough gumption. On government assistance? Taker.

They put the focus on the individual. An individual, though, is at the mercy of market forces without the protection of government or a union. This ideal individual relies on themselves and God while the Republican Party shields entities like big oil, big finance and big pharma from government regulations.

These so-called “burdensome regulations” plague the rest of us with clean water, clean air, workplace safety and consumer protections. Oh the humanity!

It should be abundantly clear that corporations are unreliable at regulating themselves. Remember the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s? Yet Bill Clinton removed the firewall between commercial and investment banking in 1999. Only a few years later, banks were rushing to sign up anybody they could find for home mortgages. It was a lucrative party until the subprime bubble burst in 2008, and taxpayers footed the extravagant bill for the flagrant risks Wall Street took. Privatized gains, socialized losses.

It’s the same deal with tax cuts. If billions of dollars in tax cuts for millionaires and their betters wasn’t enough to spur more than anemic job growth during George W. Bush’s presidency, why would anybody believe that more of the same will do anything but drive up federal debts? (That’s not entirely true. These cuts are, in fact, also effective at widening the wealth gap.)

I’m not out to smear corporations. Like government, corporations aren’t necessarily good or bad. The difference is that government is accountable to the people, whereas corporations are only as accountable to the people as government makes them be. If we elect more people who cede government (our) power to corporations, these entities can follow their own rules without regard for the public interest and without transparency.

Democrats focus on working together and lifting all boats. They are fighting for living wages, educational opportunities, health care for all and retirement with dignity.

Meanwhile, trickle down Republicans are offering pie in the sky.

Note: The Freeborn County Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party will caucus on March 1 at the Eagles Club in Albert Lea beginning at 6 p.m.

 

Jennifer Vogt-Erickson is a member of the Freeborn County DFL Party.