The long-range
consequence of the Carter deregulation policies
and practices that had begun during 1978-1982 was
magnified during the Reagan period of 1980-88,
with greater emphasis on changing the tax regime
to favor the rich, industry deregulation to lower
prices by lowering quality, and a shift of power
from unions
to
management.
Carter took the first steps
towards dismantling the post-World War II social
safety net and retirement/pension system, and
encouraging job market restructuring in the name
of freedom and efficiency. Reagan's conservatism
was merely skin-deep and rhetorical, being the
president with the largest federal deficit in
history, whose policies were outright antagonistic
towards the interests of the poor whose rank was
constantly enlarged by the steady decline of the
middle class. Reagan's rhetoric labeled government
as the enemy, not the protector of the people.
Ironically, his policies made his rhetoric ring
true. The Reagan government had been the ruthless
enemy of the US middle class.
Bush Sr
lost to Clinton: It's the economy,
stupid! During the presidency of George
Bush senior, 1988-1992, the emphasis shifted to
policies promoting US corporate investment
overseas, trade, and on implementing neo-liberal
policies in emerging offshore economies and
markets. The Bush policies produced a prosperous
corporate state while the nation fell into a
domestic recession to which Bush was personally
oblivious and which caused him to lose the White
House to an unknown challenger from a minor
Southern state, despite victory at war in Iraq.
The slogan: "It's the economy, stupid!" entered US
political nomenclature and dominated the entire
Clinton presidency.
Under Clinton,
1992-2000, the policy focus centered largely on
promoting and expanding neo-liberal "free trade"
under dollar hegemony. Additionally, the Clinton
period was characterized by the introduction of
new formulas for enabling health care cost
shifting from corporations to workers, by
accelerating the diversion of social security
payroll taxes to the US general budget to create
the false appearance of declining federal budget
deficits and by-passing government rules,
encouraging the further decline of the traditional
private pension system. The Clinton surplus was
largely funded from the pockets of US workers.
Clinton deregulated world trade and introduced
dollar hegemony to put the US middle class in debt
in order to feed corporate global profit. The
Clinton prosperity was built on debt addiction,
otherwise known as "Rubinnomics", after Clinton
treasury secretary Robert Rubin.
The
Bush tax cut for the rich Under George W
Bush, once again tax cuts for corporations and the
wealthy become the pre-eminent policy focus and
are hailed as the indispensable dynamo of
prosperity while further expanding "free trade" to
advance democracy. Bush tax and trade policies
contribute to a new wave of income shift toward
income disparity, combining the worst aspects of
both the Reagan and Clinton eras, the former being
an inequitable tax policy and the latter being a
anti-labor trade policy. Not surprisingly, the
income inequality gap accelerated at the fastest
rate during the Bush period of 2000-2006, but the
stage had been set by Carter, Reagan, Bush and
Clinton. In addition to tax and trade-driven
income inequality, under George W Bush other new
income-shifting policy initiatives were launched
as well in health care cost shifting, retirement
system restructuring, and legislated wage
compression by government edict, targeting
overtime pay for millions of hourly paid workers.
US workers squeezed by government and
employers While the tax, trade, wage and
benefits policies were being implemented top down
during the two decade between 1980-2006 under four
presidents from both parties, deregulated
corporate policies and practices that further
contributing to the growing income inequality gap
were being simultaneously overhauled from the
bottom up, shifting from full-time, permanent jobs
to part-time, temporary, and independent contract
work. Growing consistently since the 1980s, more
than 44 million of the 137 million employed
workforce in the US, close to one third, are now
part time, temporary, and contract workers earning
60-70% of the pay of full-time workers and
typically 20% of the benefits.
Management-promoted de-unionization
policies launched in the 1980s resulted in the
decline of union membership from 22% of the
workforce in 1980 to barely 7% in the private
sector in 2006. Two decades of corporate job
outsourcing policies sent millions of high-paying,
liberal benefit jobs in manufacturing, technology,
and business professional services overseas, a
loss filled with lower paying domestic service
jobs - frequently part-time, temporary, and
contract jobs. Corporate fringe benefits policies
shifted fundamentally during the same period,
resulting in the dismantling of more than 100,000
traditional pension plans and their replacement
with cheaper cost 401-K plans; the discontinuance
and/or shifting of costs of health insurance plan
coverage; widespread unilateral corporate
elimination of retiree health benefits; reduction
of paid vacation and other paid time off; and
other similar company-driven cost reduction
measures.
The two approaches - corporate
policy changes at the company-industry level and
government policy changes - worked in close
concert with each other. Government tax,
depreciation, and free trade policies provided
significant financial incentives to corporations
for expanding offshoring jobs and consequently
dismantling and transferring abroad much of the
manufacturing sector in the US.
Health
care and pensions Government agency rule
changes allowed corporations to extract pension
fund surpluses for general business use and/or to
delay properly funding pension plans. Government
bodies like the National Labor Relations Board
directly aided corporate efforts to de-unionize
while government deregulation and privatization of
entire industries further decimated union
membership ranks and undermined union bargaining
effectiveness.
On the health front,
government policy in the form of managed health
care under Clinton and consumer-driven health care
and health savings accounts under George W Bush
encouraged corporations to more rapidly shift
health care costs to workers.
The recent
settlement of the 3-day General Motor strike
involving 74,000 workers (having shrunk from
125,000 in four years) was a staged farce to mask
a submissive union as a defiant fighter for
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
