The following is a talk given at the CUNY Social Forum at City College, NY and at a public meeting organized by the International Socialist Organization at Hunter College, NY.
The idea that one generation after another will prosper and will climb the latter of opportunity and wealth, an idea that has been a reality for past generations, is a blatant lie today. Today’s generation of students and young workers have grown up in a world where all we know is low wages, massive debt, and an overall attack on our living standards. The media and the people who run our society like to paint a picture of young workers as being lazy, self-concerned, and only caring about the latest Jordan’s or new Sidekick. However, nothing has been farther from the truth. Today’s debt generation—roughly speaking students and young workers from the age 18 to 34, are possibly one of the most economically vulnerable sections of the U.S. working class. Not only are we the generation that is to be expected to pay and fight for the $1 trillion war in Iraq, and not only are we the generation that is newly coming into the workforce after three decades of an employer’s offensive against working people’s living standards, but we are now the generation that is to face one of the largest financial crisis ever experienced since the Great Depression. According to Washington, the first step to take in the financial crisis is by bailing out the same banks that created this mess. The idea that maybe we should refinance mortgages or immediately stop foreclosures, or bailout a whole generation of people whose accumulation of debt is based on survival as opposed to greed, isn’t being voiced by any mainstream politician. Young workers and students desperately need a bailout. I will use myself as an example; in September I began to experience sharp pain in my back. I was worried because I’m a part-time nursing student at BMCC and therefore I’m not eligible to receive healthcare coverage by my parent’s union plan. My employer also does not offer health insurance. When the pain become unbearable I went straight from work to the ER of Bellevue hospital where I was than attended to. It turned out I had a very bad infection, which required of me to make two more visits to the hospital. After all was taken care of, today I find myself in over $4,000 debt to Bellevue hospital. In top of this I live on my own and pay for my own tuition. My story is the story of millions of Americans. In the U.S. 50% of personal bankruptcy come from healthcare related issues. This is one part of the squeeze that a whole generation and including people in this room are facing.
In light of the financial crisis, this squeeze is to become much tighter. This requires of us to deal with important questions surrounding our generation, particularly what role do students and young workers play in today’s economy? Why are they so vulnerable? How did we get into this catastrophic position, and is people’s personal responsibility to blame? Based on the economic experience facing young workers, what are the political and economic ideas being formed? Moreover, how can we match sentiment and the reality facing millions of young workers and students with actual struggle and movements for reforms?
II. Young Workers in Today’s Economy:
For young workers today all we have known is a $7.50 /hr wage, increasing cost of basic things like food and transportation and a general assault on our living standards. Today some 26% of U.S. workers receive poverty wages, which means ¼ of everybody in this room makes poverty wages. The lack of good paying jobs has contributed to this rise. According to U.S. government statistic and recent findings 17.7% of the population are in poverty. On the healthcare end, the number of workers covered by employer provided insurance has declined from 69% in 1979 to just 55% in 2006. In terms of actual wages, as measured in today’s value of the dollar, from 1979 to 2007, a total of 28 years, wages have only increased by 54 cents, this means that while there was rapid economic growth in the 90’s this amounted to virtually nothing for ordinary people. It is sufficient to say that these attacks wouldn’t be possible without attacks on our unions and the labor movement overall. Today unions represent 12.1% of workers, down from 35% in the 1950’s. There are two main reasons why this has occurred; the first has been the unwillingness of employers to allow their workers to be represented by a union. That is, they will go at any length to prevent their workers from organizing. Secondly, because of the restructuring of the U.S. economy in the 1970’s there has been an expansion in the service sector while the traditional unionized manufacturing jobs have been outsourced or destroyed. This expansion of the service sector has been met with the labor movement’s inability to rise to the occasion an organize workers in non-traditional industries like retail and restaurants, converting service jobs into mostly non-unionized bad paying jobs, like the workers of Wal-Mart or Target who with their low wages pay for the “everyday low prices”. Workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement have wages that are 14.1% higher than nonunion workers. Belonging to a union and having the ability to collectively bargain with an employer is essential in maintaining a decent living standard for working people, which is why union representation and the labor movement has been in retreat for two decades. Now, at the other end of our society the richest 1% has seen it share of annual earnings almost double from 7.3% in 1979 to 13.6% in 2006. Even more astounding, the top 0.1% of society has seen their annual earnings increase by 324% from 1979 to 2006. So when people say the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, we should say: the rich get richer because the poor are getting poorer. All of this means that class inequality in the U.S. has never been more evident than today. Even more so because of the rise of basic commodities like food and fuel, class inequality is likely to become even starker. According to a study titled: State of Working America: “about 60% of families that start in the bottom fifth in the income scale are still there a decade later”. The idea the American’s who come from modest and poor backgrounds can work hard and achieve upward mobility has proven itself today to be false.
The idea that young workers can work hard in order to get ahead of their parents is still very much prevalent. In today’s “new global economy” young workers are encouraged to go to school and “invest in their future”, but while this occurs, more and more of these same workers are ending up without a bachelors degree and instead, find themselves in a massive pool of debt. Debt and today’s young adults are inextricably linked. Because of the three-decade long push on workers wages and living standards, the only way that ordinary people could provide for themselves is through depending on credit cards and debt. This process for many people first begins with student loan debt, which affects both community college and 4-year college students. As free public education has been destroyed under the idea that anything publicly funded by the government is bad, and as tuitions have outpaced family income, more students are taking out private loans to fill the gap. Today 2/3 of students borrow money to go to college, up from half in 1993. In 2004-2005 students borrowed $14 billion in private loans, which is a 734% increase from a decade earlier. This is an example of the government shifting what should be a social responsibility to educate people, to a personal responsibility. Basically, if you want higher education, than you are on your own. The consequence of this are that the average student debt after graduation is more than $19,000, which also means if your are lucky to find a decent job after graduation, you will be paying student loans for half the year on the job. Dependence on debt doesn’t end with school, but on the contrary is essential for today’s young workers in order to cover basic living expenses like housing costs, health care costs and food. Contrary to an argument voiced by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg when in response to the financial crisis he had the audacity to say “we have all been living well beyond our means”. In reality, the average family of four is actually spending 21% less today on clothing than a similar family spent in the early 1970s. Families are also spending 22% less on food and 44% less on major appliances. The reality is that in order for working people to compensate for their low wages, and still be able to afford food, fuel and clothing, debt is necessary for survival. We have been living beyond our means because it has been forced upon us and is our only way for survival.
Debt is also a political tool that can be used against young workers, making a new layer of workers that are much more vulnerable and desperate to take any work. The influx of young workers into higher education is a direct result of the decline of good paying jobs. If we compare the median annual earnings of young male workers today to young male workers in 1975 we see that there is an $8,000 a year difference. Also, if we compare the wage differences between workers whose highest education level is a High School diploma in 1975 to today we see that there is a $12,000 difference. Seeking a college education was not a precondition for having a good paying job in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. In New York City, for example, we had the garment industry, in Chicago they had the Meatpacking industry, and in Detroit the auto industry. These industry’s offered a decent paying jobs and good living standards for working people. But neoliberalism, and the employer’s offensive have changed that reality. The only way today one can aspire to land a decent job is through seeking a higher education, however the reality is that although more and more people are going to college, the graduation rates haven’t changed significantly. Here at Hunter College, only 15% of students graduate in 4 years, and 39% in 8 years or more, and the graduation rates have stayed virtually the same while the number of freshmen’s has continued to rise throughout the 90’s. Essentially, what this means is that young workers can’t afford to finish school. The ruling class argues that college education is integral in this new “global economy”, but the reality is that the people who run this country benefit from having a large pool of younger workers that are in debt and desperate to work. It is what they call having a “flexible workforce”, that is, the ability to hire and fire people at will and too strip away protection on the job. More importantly, a college education gives young workers the idea of upward mobility, nonetheless graduation rates nationally and here at Hunter don’t match that rhetoric.
III. The American Dream and The Employer’s Offensive:
I want to now focus on the question: how did our generation could to this point? The economic struggles that young worker’s face today are not happening because of personal choices, or because students “aren’t good with money”, on the contrary it is occurring because it is a part of a larger strategy that the ruling class pursues. When a refer to the ruling class, I’m talking about bankers, employer’s and in general the people who make the day to day decisions the effects our lives greatly. This strategy and economic doctrine that the ruling class pursues, also known as neoliberalism, was made to shift wealth from workers--to the elites of the world. Life for working people after the Second World War and before the Reagan Revolution, which is known as the onset of neoliberalism in the U.S., was much different than it is for young workers today. It was during this time that the American Dream was in fact a reality for ordinary people. After World War Two the U.S. gained the status of economic and military superpower, which allowed for capital and business to experience an unprecedented economic boom. This also allowed for workers wages to rise throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s. During this time the average weekly earnings for manufacturing workers rose by 84%. Also, millions of working class people and veterans were able to afford a home for the first time because of tax breaks and veterans’ programs, something that is unconceivable today. During this time 70% of whites were able to afford their own homes. It is here where the slogan “What’s good for General Motors is good for America” and the idea of the American Dream began to take shape. What is important to understand about this ideology and economic advancement for sections of the working class is that the employers were not motivated by their generosity: but by there desire to maximize their profits. In order to achieve this, it required bosses to seek a way to prevent workers and their unions from participating in work stoppages. This is an important point. It wasn’t the generosity of bosses that led to workers increase in living standards, but on the contrary it was both tied to the long economic boom of the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s and the organizational strength and militancy of workers and their unions. The ideology of the American Dream was in reality a means to blunt any further friction between workers and bosses. This led to Fortune magazine in 1951 to congratulate U.S. capital for finding a uniquely “American” solution to “problems of class struggle and proletarian consciousness”. Nonetheless, not all was good for U.S. workers. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, due to racism, the median income of Black Americans was still at 55% of Whites. Wages for workers who did not belong to a union rose much slower. And even in 1959 more than 1 in 5 of people lived below the official poverty line.
The overall trend of working class people belonging to a union, having healthcare, and in general having a good standard of living, came under attack during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Understanding why and how this took place helps us understand the current economic and political situation facing our generation. And it also reinforces the argument that the reasons why millions of people are in debt today and have a far lower living standards than past generations is because of a conscious effort from the people who run our society. By the late 1960’s the U.S. was falling behind competition from Japan and Europe. The boom that the U.S. had been riding since the end of World War II came to an end, and as result, there was a crisis in the ability of the system to continue making profit. In the face of this, the U.S. rulers desperately needed a new strategy. This strategy contained three key elements: the first part involved the move for less government control—stripping back laws and regulation to allow money to flow more freely across borders and internally. Secondly, it involved the transfer of wealth from workers to the bosses, by cutting the standard of living for working people. Thirdly, there was internal corporate structuring. All together, this strategy created what is known as neoliberalism, that is the restructuring of the for profit system based on a management offensive on an international level. This is the way Business Week in 1974 summarized the crises for world capitalism:
It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow—the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. It will be particularly hard to swallow because it is quite obvious that if big business and big banks are the most visible victims of what ails the debt economy, they are also in large measure the cause of it…Nothing that this nation, or any other nation, has done in economic history compares in difficulty with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept the new reality.
This new reality means an attack on worker’s rights on the job and de-unionization. The new reality also means massive cuts on social spending; increasing tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization, outsourcing of good paying jobs, and free trade. This is the essence of neoliberalism and neoliberal policy. The result, the average earnings for workers in 1973 was $331 per week; in 2007 it was $279 per week. Another result is that working class people have been forced into a debt crisis. The use of credit cards has been the only way students and young workers have been able to get by, especially in expensive cities like New York City, where everything from the price of milk to the cost of our monthly metro cards has been increasing.
Workers aren’t the only one in this debt crisis: the bankers internationally find themselves in a similar situation. There is one fundamental difference, our crisis has been forced upon us and has actually paid for the riches massive gains. The bankers on the other hand, created the current financial meltdown by practicing predatory lending. And since capitalism involves no rational planning, bankers put all their investments into the section of the economy which is currently creating the most money, and that was the housing boom. However, the result is that there is now an overproduction of houses, resulting in prices decreasing dramatically. This has now forced banks to admit that many of their packaged mortgages are overvalued, resulting in the collapse of banks like Washington Mutual. This has also resulted in the near collapse of the banking system itself. Since no bank wants to admit how much of their money was invested in overvalued package mortgages, banks have stopped lending to one another. The proposal for a $700 billion bailout, paid by us, in order to save the bankers, is just another example of how the government gets out of economic crisis, on the back of working people.
IV Young Worker’s Progressive Views:
Because of these enormous economic challenges facing young workers, in a world where all we have known is give backs, unemployment, war and occupation, declining living standards, and the increasing cost of food, more and more young workers are drawing conclusions, which no mainstream politician is willing to articulate. So for example in the healthcare end, 57% of younger workers say that health insurance should come from a government insurance plan. 87% of young workers think that the government should spend more money on healthcare even if a tax increase is required to pay for it. On the education front, an overwhelming 95% of young workers think education spending should be increased even if a tax increase is required to pay for it. 61% think that the government should provide more services. In terms of other issues like racial tolerance and views on unions, and overwhelming majority of young workers would vote for a black president, and large majority would like to have union representation. All of these stats are at its highest level of support in its 20-year history. These polls signify that there is a general understanding amongst young workers and students that they have been getting screwed over. These polls are also a huge shift away from the neoliberal doctrine that says “government is the problem, and the free market the solution”, and idea that is being broken down today with the financial meltdown and the nationalizations of key banking institutions like AIG, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some of these shifts have forced politicians to begin to question, although be it rhetorically, neoliberalism. An example of this was Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama calling out John McCain in the first presidential debate, for being a pioneer in deregulating the banking system and calling out McCain for his belief in “trickle down economics”, the idea that says: give the rich the conditions they need to make more money like tax cuts, and this will somehow trickle down to ordinary people.
The shift against neoliberalism in students and young workers has created an ideological crisis for this economic doctrine. You cannot continue to easily implement neoliberal policies if the majority of the people are against it. Moreover, there is also a material crisis for neoliberalism exemplified by today’s current financial mess, which is a direct result of the deregulation of the banking system. These two simultaneous processes, that is, growing discontent with the way our society is being run and the internal crisis of the system itself presents our generation with a unique opportunity. On the one hand you have the insanity of this system that has been squeezing working people tighter and tighter, and has created a new class of super, super rich, resulting in deep class anger and frustrations with the way our society is being run. And on the other hand, the system itself isn’t working because of its internal contradictions. This gives us the opportunity to put forward a different, more humane set of priorities in our society. The question that now arises is: how do we put forward our demands?
IV. Turning Sentiment into Action: How can we build struggles for reforms?
While there has been a significant shift to the left in the ideas of students and young workers, this has not translated into action. This is no surprise, our side has been unorganized and in retreat since that late 1970’s. There are several reasons for this. The most important one is that many people have chosen a personal strategy to respond to their individual crisis. In my case: in which I have no healthcare, choosing solely a personal strategy would mean applying for Medicaid or going to Bellevue hospital to negotiate a means to pay my debt. Obviously, I need to respond to my immediate dilemma, but I also understand that the only way to truly get rid of my problem, which millions of people face, would mean to have a collective strategy for fighting for true healthcare reform. Another example would be the fight for public education. On a personal level, one could just rack up student loans, which is what has been occurring, but a collective strategy would mean students organizing together to demand and end to tuition hikes and an increase in government scholarships. At Hunter College, the Campus Anti-war Network has begun a petition directed towards the presidential candidates, which demands of them to cut one half of the military budget and direct it towards public education. This is a concrete example of students figuring out what are some of the problems they face and than deciding concretely on how to challenge it.
Young workers and students collective organization is the only way to fight-back. We have the history and lessons of the 1930’s labor movement and various social movements of the 1960’s as examples of successful collective organization. However, today’s main challenge is turning leftwing ideas and matching it on the ground. This process of turning sentiment into action occurs in two different forms. The first form is that people are going to be forced to fight back because of the contradictions in the system. Meaning that they can no longer take being squeezed and that the only way to survive is to defend your current economic status. The second, and less spontaneous form of fight-back is that of long-term patient building of struggles around us. Part of this requires a certain degree of understanding of why, for example, CUNY budgets are being cut. If you understand this, than you know that it’s Governor Patterson’s solution to a recession. This then helps us figure out a strategy of how we can take on these attacks. So for example, we would put forward that the city not cut money from CUNY but instead enact government work programs to rebuild the city’s infrastructure as way of creating more jobs and taking on rising unemployment or we could simply demand tax the rich of New York City. That’s the way one should respond during a crisis, not go after one of the cities most vulnerable members, CUNY students. Building struggle, however small, allows us to win over other segments of the population that haven’t reached the same conclusions that we have. It is this process that allows us to develop from a small, perhaps local struggle into much more broader mass social movement. This is sorely missing in today’s economic crisis. In the absence of class struggle and any leftwing force that can truly take the side of working people, our demands are not being heard. So today, the main debate was: should we bailout the bankers or not? However, if we had a movement on the ground of young workers organizing at their workplaces and students organizing on their campus and demanded a bailout for the generation debt: we might have a third side to this national debate. This does not come out of nowhere. It requires the active participation of everyone in this room in figuring how can we set ourselves up to best deal with problems like military recruiters on campus, or dealing with the fact that cafeteria prices at Hunter rose over 30%, as well as dealing with the larger social issues like putting an end to the war on Iraq and fighting the scapegoating of immigrant workers. Only by our generation having an understanding why and how we have been forced into debt, and more importantly, having an understanding that through collective struggle we can transform ourselves from a small struggle to a large social movement that can actually fight for true reforms, will our generation be remembered not as, generation debt, but as a generation of militant students and young workers who stood up to the status-quo and fought for a better future.
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