THE WAY FORWARD THE WAY I REMEMBER IT
BY JOSEPH SEGAL
Before globalism/neoliberalism sent our jobs to low-wage nations with fewer regulations to stop the greedy and polluters, before the finalization of the economy by “Wall Street” & consolidation of commerce by runaway monopolies we used to make good products that lasted decades. I still have some in my home like the 1960s Packard Bell stereo console I saw my Mom and Dad dancing too when they thought I was asleep already! Many folks could afford housing healthcare & public college.
We didn’t have to live on credit cards. Most people didn’t have any except maybe a Sears card.
You could get a good-paying union job at the GM plant straight out of high school and earn enough to buy a nice car and get an apartment or even a modest little home.
People worked in shops their neighbor’s folks owned on Main Street. You didn’t see the same chain stores in every city and town sucking up revenues being sent to corporate tax havens far away and the money went back into our communities.
My grandparents had a market they lived above like lots of other local folks did at the time. They had mixed-purpose housing near commerce and very tight nit neighborhoods. They were so tight nit when my Dad returned to Queens NY in the 80s after not having been there since he shipped out to the Korean War he walked into a local barber shop and the owner recognized him and said hey Carl what happened to your beautiful hair! lol
Life was NOT perfect. Nope.
There was plenty of class struggle and racism and lots of misogyny. Women gay people and people of color were treated very poorly and kept from many of the opportunities white straight men had to advance in society.
In 1980 then President Reagan listened to Robert Bork and ended any antitrust efforts to protect competition and keep a lid on big business greed and abuses. The failure to stop monopolies led to mergers and acquisitions that destroyed companies and workers’ lives (see the movie Wall Street). And its led to giant companies like Meta (Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Walmart, and others buying up their competition, reducing innovation and opportunity for workers and small businesses.
The way I see it they killed the proverbial “Goose that laid the golden eggs” of American small-business capitalism that created the biggest middle class in the world after WWII.
We used to make things, good things. Now we make credit card debt and buy cheap crap from China that breaks in a year or two and we have to work longer hours for more years and have less savings than our parents did for the same time and work.
The Biden administration is investing in a massive resurgence of manufacturing in the American heartland but many of these jobs still require an advanced degree and it will take ten or twenty more years for the fruits of this investment to come to fruition.
Our best hope is the recent bold actions being taken by the likes of Lena Kahn of the FTC, the Board of Labor Relations, and the Justice Department to block anti-competitive mergers like Kroger Foods and Albertsons markets that would have raised grocery prices even higher on us all and suing Amazon for being a monopoly screwing the businesses and consumers both who use its website app.
But if elected again Donald Trump would put an end to all that and try to enact another 2 trillion dollar tax cut to the billionaires and monopolies that are screwing us all over.
We need to change our public educational system in my opinion and bring it into alignment with the needs of society today as it is still functioning based on the needs of 1950s America. We need to teach kids in interesting engaging ways to do things they can use when they graduate like create their own YouTube shows and online companies, be creators not just consumers of content, start businesses, learn to invest and save and grow income and wealth, be kind and ethical and innovative human beings who are flexible enough to adapt to a rapidly changing world!
And we need to make things that last and work well again. Have high-paying union jobs and businesses and affordable housing, healthcare, and higher education for all.
We stopped building adequate numbers of new homes in the 70s and 80s and are 5–7 million homes beneath what is required to keep prices reasonable and affordable and end homelessness. So we must change zoning regulations to allow for multiunit, dense housing, and vertical housing units, including publically owned middle-class home options that are operated at cost and not for profit available to anyone in the middle or lower economic classes.
And to do this we need to get big-money millionaires and billionaires out of our politics and have publically funded elections so candidates will do OUR bidding, not their fat-cat-rich donors!
We need to do more to reduce our car culture and the carbon pollution we put into the air so fewer people will suffer and die unnecessarily and future generations can thrive on this planet. Maybe some sort of UBI Universal Basic Income in combination with caring economy childcare and eldercare work subsidies could allow more people to live and work at home and not have to commute an hour or two for jobs they hate every darn day!
Maybe that could allow more people to leave the jobs that between 50% to 80% of workers say they “hate” going to work each day and start their own business, go back to school, or care for ailing loved ones at home.
We can have far less poverty and suffering. We have done it before and we can do it again. President Biden used to say “There’s nothing we can’t do when we work together, nothing! We are Americans!”. I’d like to think that will include having the same universal healthcare and college all of the nations we call our allies now afford their citizens and ending the wasteful growth of the military-industrial system that President Eisenhower warned us against in his retirement speech before the US Congress and avoiding future foreign wars and supporting theocratic and autocratic rightwing dictators who oppress populations.
With some imagination and learned memory of our past successes and strengths I’m certain we can make a better future together, today.
This essay is based on a true story, my life.
I write a free newsletter at JosephSegal.com
