The political conventions will soon be upon us. In Philadelphia, the
Republicans will fill the air with thunder about the moral pollution of
Clintonism. In Los Angeles, the Democrats will tell Americans they've never
had it better. So far, no contest. As a sales pitch, "you've never had it so
good" beats "we'll end moral pollution" every time.
But who exactly has had it better in America over the past eight years? The
crowd cheering Bush and Cheney in Philadelphia will mostly be feeling flush.
And the big contributors to the Democratic National Committee, feted in Los
Angeles, will be feeling flush, too. Through eight years, Clinton-Gore never
let them down. But Gore still needs the votes of people who aren't feeling
flush, who won't be renting sky suites in the Staples Center in Los Angeles.
How have these people really been doing these last eight years?
Robert Pollin, a good economist at the University of Massachusetts, has an
"Anatomy of Clintonomics" in the bimonthly periodical New Left Review for
May/June of this year. It doesn't offer much comfort to those trying to run
the "Gore is the friend of working people" flag up the pole.
The record: "Clinton has done virtually nothing to advance the interests of
working people or organized labor." What about the two-step rise in the
minimum wage? Answer: The overall rise from $4.25 to the current $5.15 has
done little to offset the plunge in the real value of the minimum wage. Even
the rate of $5.15 set in September 1997 is 30 percent below its real value
in 1968, even though the economy has become 50 percent more productive
across those 30 years.
Nor can it be said that under Clinton-Gore organized labor enjoyed much of
a renaissance, starting with the kick in the face from Clinton-Gore over
NAFTA. Remember that back in 1992, some optimistic people were even talking
about reform of the Taft-Hartley anti-labor law. In 1988, Reagan's last
year, the percentage of the total workforce in unions stood at 16.8. In
1998, it had fallen to 13.9.
How about anti-poverty programs? Pollin looks at all the claims made by the
administration for the glories of the earned income tax credit, offsets
these against the destruction of Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(now known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), and factors in the
decline in the number of people getting food stamps (five times greater than
the decline in the number of people in poverty). Then, he spells out the
conclusion that the combination of a low minimum wage and a widening of the
earned income tax credit "(has) allowed business to offer rock-bottom wages,
while shifting onto taxpayers the cost of alleviating the poverty of even
those holding full-time jobs." In sum, the overall conditions of life for
America's poorest households may have worsened during the Clinton
administration.
So much for the destitute. What of working people and the poor? Both the
average wages of non-supervisory workers and the earnings of those in the
lowest 10th percentile of wage distribution remain not only well below those
of the Nixon-Ford and Carter administrations, but are actually lower than
those of the Reagan-Bush years. Wage inequalities have also shot up. "If low
rates of unemployment have been a positive feature of the 1990s," Pollin
writes, "it is still quite possible that the overall condition of the poor
will prove to have worsened in Clinton's final years of office."
Pollin concludes that the core of Clinton's economic program has been
global economic integration, with minimum interventions to promote equity in
labor markets or stability in financial markets. Gestures to the least
well-off have been slight and backhanded, while wages for the majority have
either stagnated or declined. Wealth at the top, meanwhile, has exploded.
In eight years, working people got virtually nothing out of the
Clinton-Gore administration except what Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan termed
exultantly in 1997: "subdued wages" and heightened job insecurity. There are
now 45 million instead of 35 million beings without health insurance. Many
of them are ready to rebel. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is doing well
not only up and down the West Coast, but also in the Rust Belt states. In
Connecticut, Nader's now polling 11 percent. If Nader starts edging up
toward 15 percent, he'll be able to make a strong case for getting into the
debates. Once there, he'll be able to tell voters facts they won't ever hear
at either convention or from the mouths of either George W. Bush or Al Gore.
(Note: For the record, Alexander Cockburn is on the editorial board of New
Left Review.)
To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other
columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at
www.creators.com.
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