Untitled Document
The official story of the Great Depression is that it
began with the stock-market crash of 1929. Wrong. Depressions don’t instantaneously explode in a
country — they creep up. The big financial crash was preceded by
years of financial manipulation by Wall Street hucksters, wage declines for
the majority of workers, a growing epidemic of farm losses and malign
neglect by President Herbert Hoover. Even when it came, Hoover continued to
insist that the economy was fundamentally sound, that Washington should
simply stay the course, and that the market should be permitted to work its
magic. If this sounds familiar, that’s because George
W. Bush is the Hoover of 2008. In April, for the fourth month in a row, the
American economy lost jobs, but Bush insisted that strong action is
unnecessary, noting that “only” 20,000 jobs were lost and
boasting that the unemployment rate was still 5 percent. First of all, the unemployment rate misses the depth
of the problem. For example, it does not count “discouraged”
workers — some 400,000 people who’ve been out of work for so
long that they’ve given up looking. Also, if you worked even one day
at a temporary job during the month, you’re counted as
“employed.”
This raises the deeper flaw in job numbers, which is
that they cover up the decline in people’s income; millions of people
who need full-time work are only able to find part-time jobs. Meanwhile, as rank-and-file workers (who make up 80
percent of the workforce) see their incomes stagnate, they also see the
cost of gasoline, food, health care, and other basics skyrocket. When the
average pay for eight of 10 Americans is not even keeping up with the cost
of living — look out.
Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator,
columnist, and author.
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2008.
