{"id":394,"date":"2013-09-02T16:27:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-02T16:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thatdevilhistory.wordpress.com\/?p=394"},"modified":"2015-09-06T02:32:51","modified_gmt":"2015-09-06T02:32:51","slug":"labor-day-in-the-new-gilded-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thatdevilhistory.com\/index.php\/2013\/09\/02\/labor-day-in-the-new-gilded-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor Day in the New Gilded Age"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"United<\/a>

United States Infantry square off against Chicago workers in the Stock Yards, by Fredric Remington, from Harper’s Weekly<\/em> Magazine<\/p><\/div>\n

Well, its Labor Day 2013, a national holiday in both the U.S. and Canada bolstered by an idea — that the national economy thrives when we recognize workers’ contributions to creating an economic system based on broadly shared prosperity — that seems more and more hopelessly symbolic in the New Gilded Age. In the contemporary U.S.,\u00a0American income inequality has reached pre-Great Depression-era levels<\/a>, private sector unionization is now a pale shadow of its former strength<\/a> thanks to 30-plus years of concerted right wing ideological and policy assaults, and public sector unions seem destined for collapse <\/a>for the very same reason.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So what is the status of labor in 2013? And does Labor Day still mean anything to most people other than serving as a nice three-day weekend for cook outs — if you’re lucky enough to get the day off, of course? Writing in the New York Times<\/em>, the immortal Paul Krugman reminds us<\/a> that Labor Day was born in a previous age when, like today, government and industry colluded to suppress the rights of workers:<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how it happened: In 1894\u00a0Pullman workers<\/a>, facing wage cuts in the wake of a financial crisis, went on strike \u2014 and Grover Cleveland deployed 12,000 soldiers to break the union. He succeeded, but using armed force to protect the interests of property was so blatant that even the Gilded Age was shocked. So Congress, in a lame attempt at appeasement, unanimously passed legislation symbolically honoring the nation\u2019s workers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Even more depressing for Krugman is that after decades of hard-won concessions from America’s industrial titans that made labor a major player in American economic and political policy, in 2013 the very idea<\/em> of labor has been so devalued by the force of conservatism in America that the New Gilded Age may be harder to break than the previous one:<\/p>\n

You might ask why we should provide any aid to working Americans \u2014 after all, they aren\u2019t completely destitute. But the fact is that economic inequality has soared over the past few decades, and while a handful of people have stratospheric incomes, a far larger number of Americans find that no matter how hard they work, they can\u2019t afford the basics of a middle-class existence \u2014 health insurance in particular, but even putting food on the table can be a problem. Saying that they can use some help shouldn\u2019t make us think any less of them, and it certainly shouldn\u2019t reduce the respect we grant to anyone who works hard and plays by the rules.<\/p>\n

But obviously that\u2019s not the way everyone sees it. In particular, there are evidently a lot of wealthy people in America who consider anyone who isn\u2019t wealthy a loser \u2014 an attitude that has clearly gotten stronger as the gap between the 1 percent and everyone else has widened. And such people have a lot of friends in Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As political scientists Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson incontrovertibly demonstrate in Winner-Take All Politics<\/em><\/a>, their essential study of the creation of the New Gilded Age, the loss of working peoples’ place at the political table was not the inevitable, irreversible result of globalization and technological advancement — a claim consistently made by U.S. conservatives. Rather, the growth of an ultra-powerful one percent that controls most of the country’s wealth<\/a>, despite their numerical minority status, is the result of a an intentional, concerted effort by businesses and right-wing organizations to destroy organized labor and, more importantly, to destroy and delegitimize the very idea<\/em> of labor as a valuable contributor to the nation’s broader economic and social well-being.<\/p>\n

History shows us, however, from the French Revolution to the growth of strikes in authoritarian China<\/a>, that nations ruled by oligarchies always exist at the cusp of instability. Revolutions, whether in France, Mexico, China, Russia, and elsewhere are historically born out of vast discrepancies in income distribution. A national economy based on broad-based prosperity, in which the rich can be quite rich — but not as obscenely rich as today’s financial oligarchs — is an economy that is healthy and inoculated against revolution. On that note, Labor Day deserves to be more than just a day for cook outs. Americans could use a good-ole’-fashioned dose of workers’ rights not just for some, but for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, its Labor Day 2013, a national holiday in both the U.S. and Canada bolstered by an idea — that the national economy thrives when we recognize workers’ contributions to creating an economic system based on broadly shared prosperity —… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,2081],"tags":[440,682,722,821,959,1077,1091,1194,1222,1253,1340,1416,1702,1722,1836],"class_list":["post-394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history-2","category-labor-day","tag-conservatism","tag-french-revolution","tag-gilded-age","tag-income-inequality","tag-labor-day","tag-mexico","tag-middle-class","tag-nineteenth-century","tag-oligarchy","tag-paul-krugman","tag-pullman-strike","tag-republican-party","tag-tyranny","tag-unions","tag-working-class"],"yoast_head":"\nLabor Day in the New Gilded Age - 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