Rebuilding the (Patient) Middle Class
By Philip J. Romero
In my column last month I rejected one of the centerpieces of the new Democratic
Congress’ agenda — a hefty raise in the minimum wage — on the grounds that it will
price out of the market the very workers (low-skilled and undereducated) it is intended to
help. While that specific proposal is deeply flawed, Democrats are entirely correct in
their concern about the falling fortunes of the middle class. All right, wise guy, what
would you do instead?
First, let’s define the problem, because overheated rhetoric has obscured it. After World
War II, for about a generation (from the late 1940s till 1973) the middle class flourished.
America was the world’s manufacturer, and manufacturing workers could mass-produce
and earn good livings. It was the first time in recorded history that high school dropouts
could earn middle class wages. But beginning in the early 1970s, productivity growth
slackened, which meant incomes did also. (Your income can’t grow faster than the value
of what you produce.) This was not a Reaganite plot; it happened throughout the
industrialized world, for reasons still being debated by economists.
Productivity boomed back in the late 1990s and has stayed high. Good news for the
middle class? Only in theory. In fact, the stagnant incomes that affected only high school
graduates and dropouts in the generation after 1980 have in the past few years spread to
college graduates also. About the only group making real economic headway are those in
the upper strata: the top 1 to 5 percent of workers.
There are two main reasons. First, at the lower end of the skill spectrum, such as those
factory workers mentioned above, many of their jobs are being automated, reducing
demand for labor. Second, immigration, which is unquestionably a net positive for the
American economy (e.g., most Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are immigrants) is tough on
the low-skilled, since many immigrants have only a grade school education, and crowd
into an already shrinking labor market niche. As a result, those with a high school
education or less have seen their incomes drop by about one-eighth in the past generation
after adjusting for inflation.
But now the technologies that automated factory jobs are also permitting distant, offshore
workers to compete for mid-skilled and even high-skilled service jobs, putting pressure
on the wages of even college graduates. Free trade, including outsourcing, is undoubtedly
good for the aggregate American economy (like immigration), but the many winners each
win only a little, while the fewer losers lose…everything.
There are two broad classes of “solutions”: (a) Redistribute wealth from the winners to
the losers (which regrettably seems to be dominating the Democratic congressional
leadership’s thinking); or (b) create more opportunity for the losers, and their kids, to
bootstrap themselves back into the middle class.
The problem with the first category is that everyone wants to become rich, and penalizing
the successful will simply discourage their effort. Everybody will lose. State after state
and country after country — at present, the former Soviet Baltic republics — have proven
that flatter tax structures lead to stronger economic growth.
The answer lies in the second class of options: creating opportunity. This can include
massive spending on public works to rebuild the nation’s aging infrastructure (as
California has begun); reestablishing generous financial aid for higher education to
counteract the obscene tuition increases of the past five years; and a cash infusion into
community colleges, which have proved the best means to retrain blue and pink collar
workers. It also can mean making the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) more generous,
so that the working poor don’t — as they often do now — find it more lucrative to live on
the dole.
Each of these have the realistic prospect of producing high rates of long run return for the
taxpayers’ short-term investment. Infrastructure, for instance, makes it easier to move our
goods, and ourselves, around, enhancing our competitiveness. More college graduates
means new inventions and new services that America can offer in export markets.
The catch is the short run. The federal government is running deficits of 2-3 percent of
GNP. The just-departed GOP Congress proved to be much better at cutting taxes than at
cutting spending commensurately. Ironically, the only balanced budgets in most of our
lifetimes were passed under Democratic budget rules and signed by a Democratic
president in the late 1990s. And heaven knows that Congress has chosen to completely
ignore the looming unfunded liabilities in Social Security and (especially) Medicare.
But unless they are perverted by pork-barrel politics, most of the ideas sketched above
can both help the middle class and the overall competitiveness of the economy, and
therefore help federal revenues. Recent Republican profligacy notwithstanding, “we can’t
afford it” is just not a compelling argument.
The social contract between the (fewer and fewer) beneficiaries of the 21st
century
economy and the threatened middle class is fraying, due to strong headwinds from
technology and immigration. Americans’ strong streak of optimism has kept the middle
class patient, so far. It’s time for constructive policies to reward their patience.
Philip J. Romero is a professor of business strategy and economics, and former business
dean, at the University of Oregon. He is a contributing editor to BrainstormNW.
BrainstormNW - January 2007
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