TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online
A Prescription For What's Ailing The Economy
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Published: February 20, 2008
It's time to turn around America, and we need to start here in Florida.
Our state is already economic-distress ground zero: shrinking home values, expanding unemployment, growing piles of unpaid bills on working families' tables. It's no surprise the economy has overtaken the war in Iraq as the top concern of Americans.
But the hard truth is, our economy was failing working families long before there was a housing crisis, a mortgage crisis or a stock market crisis. These crises are the direct result of decades of economic policy that prioritized Wall Street over Main Street - and the last eight years of Bushonomics have pushed working people over the edge.
For the first time since World War II, working people's wages are not back to where they were before the last recession. In Florida, unemployment has risen to 4.7 percent, more than 3.8 million people are without health care and good, middle-class supporting jobs are disappearing. Since 2001, Florida has lost 66,000 manufacturing jobs.
Wage stagnation and economic inequality form the house of cards upon which our current economy was built. Over half of all economic growth since 1973 has gone to the richest 10 percent of America's families, most of it to the top one percent. CEO pay has skyrocketed to 364 times that of the average worker - by far the largest gap in the industrialized world. The assault on workers' unions has helped de-link wages from productivity - people are producing more, but not getting anything more for it. While we used to grow together as a nation, today we are growing apart - economically, socially and politically.
It's a shift that accelerated when Bush and his corporate backers took office. Since 2001, a gallon of gas jumped to over $3, up from $1.39; 8.5 million more people are uninsured; five million more are living in poverty and the average American is now going deeper into debt - when Bush took office, the nation had a positive personal savings rate.
To turn around our economy, we need an agenda focused on broadly shared prosperity that will lift up America's workers and increase our country's competitiveness in the global marketplace. While it's important to provide immediate relief to working families through a sound short-term stimulus package and we must take bold steps to address the subprime debacle (a moratorium on foreclosures would be a good first step), plugging the holes will only keep us afloat for so long - we need to repair the hull. And that means making jobs - good jobs - our top priority.
We should invest in creating good new jobs to rebuild our nation's structurally unsound infrastructure. Seventy percent of our traffic moves across dangerous bridges. Our children's schools are falling apart. We need to fix them and create jobs at the same time.
Next, the United States must lead the way in building a just global economy with fair trade agreements that protect the rights and interests of workers - not just powerful, multinational corporations. Congress must reject trade agreements without enforceable labor standards and environmental protections. And we must stop countries like China from violating the rules of the global trading system by manipulating their currency.
But we can't stop there. We need to revitalize our industrial base to restore American innovation and put even more of America's workers in good jobs with benefits and a secure retirement. We must invest in the high-paying green jobs of the future and reach back for monetary and fiscal policies that place a higher priority on full employment.
And we can't turn our economy around without reforming our broken health care system. We must ensure all working families have access to quality, affordable health care to meet their basic needs and increase our competitiveness in the global marketplace.
Finally, a union is the single best middle class supporting economic program our nation has to offer. Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act to restore workers' fundamental freedom to form and join unions and bargain for better wages and benefits.
The economy needs more than a jump-start. It needs a complete overhaul or it will stall on working families again and again. We have a unique opportunity to restore our economy's fundamentals and make it work for all, not just the few. That means turning America in an entirely new direction – not a slight turn to the left or right, but a 180 degree turn toward the future.
John Sweeney is president of the 10-million-member AFL-CIO. R. Floyd Suggs is president of the West Central Florida Federation of Labor.
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Posted by ( 58robbo ) on February 20, 2008 at 2:19 p.m.
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