You might expect a little outrage from the average worker when confronted with numbers like these, but it's distressingly rare. Instead, the opposite appears to be happening — a sort of political paralysis that's reflected in the blank stares of Seneca's Wal-Mart employees.
Journalist George Packer, in his introduction to The Fight Is for Democracy: Winning the War of Ideas in America and the World, captures the downward spiral of American politics: "The relationship between democracy and economic inequality ... creates a kind of self-perpetuating cycle: The people hold government in low esteem; public power shrinks against the awesome might of corporations and rich individuals; money and its influence claims a greater and greater share of political power; and the public, priced out of the democratic game, grows ever more cynical about politics and puts more of its energy into private ends. Far from creating a surge of reform, the erosion of the middle class has only deepened the disenchantment."
It didn't have to be that way, especially for white males. In the early 1970s, wages stopped going up for males, and in particular for lower- or middle-income, less-educated white males. Nearly 60 percent experienced either a decline or almost no gain in wages, Madrick writes. They rose for minorities and women, but only because they'd been so much lower to start.
With a little more imagination, the government response might have been to step in and re-train the workers who were falling behind. It would have meant more spending, but not a huge increase, Madrick says, and it might have helped avoid the pervasive anti-government feelings heard on my trip through the South.
Instead, as Sparks of Blairsville suggests, those low-skill workers just kept falling behind until companies started shipping their jobs out of America.
"You wouldn't believe the jobs we've lost in this area. And now, this wasn't a great place to come to work to start with," Sparks says. "But these companies that keep farming it out overseas ... where's your kids going to work one of these days?"
If progressive politicians want to break the GOP death grip among rural whites, Sparks' question is one they need to answer.
Contact Creative Loafing-Atlanta staff writer Kevin Griffis via e-mail at [email protected].
