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- [00:10]
A
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of our lives. Jobs, debts, incomes, our own and our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. I want to begin today with talking about money and politics. Yes, yes, I know you know about all of that and we all do, we've heard about it. But every now and then there's a summary statistic and it's usually about the most recent election and the amount of money spent there and who spent it and what it meant. And I think it's necessary for us to go through that from time to time. So bear with me. The latest results are out for the election cycle, including 2019 and 2020. Those two years with all the various elections, including the presidential, that we saw in that two year period, the financial sector of the United States, what we usually call Wall street, spent a total, and get ready for this, in case you haven't been keeping up, of 2.9 billion. That's with a B on political donation. Just the financial sector, Wall Street. Not all the other businesses, not all the other wealthy people, just the financial sector. The single highest spender, Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of Blackstone, who alone spent $33 million on donations. Among industries, the financial sector is the third highest spender, spending a total of 1 billion. Wow. Out of the total of the 2.9 billion spent by all of them during the past two decades, 90% of elections to the House of Representatives were won by the candidate who spent the most money. Let me do that again. Over These last years, 90%, 9 out of 10 elections for the House of Representatives was won by the candidate who spent the most. You cannot have a democracy when the politicians who run it are purchased in this way by those who have the money and who spend it like there's no tomorrow, which perhaps is how they see it. Corruption doesn't require that you do something illegal because if you have enough money, you make it legal so that you can say, we didn't do anything illegal. The next topic I want to go over with you. I'm indebted to something called capitalandmain.com a useful website to know about. And periodically they collect economic statistics so well and so well organized that folks like me can make real use of them, save us some time. We can go then beyond the basic statistical work they've done. And I want to share that with you now. So let's begin. I'm going to go through a series of these statistical nuggets. Worker hourly compensation in the United States. That's your Average wages per hour went up between 1979 and 2019. That's the last 40 years of the United States history. Hourly compensation, adjusted for what happens to prices, went up in those 40 years, a total of 17%. That's less than half a percent a year in what your hourly wage on average could enable you to buy. When you allow for the normal problems of statistics, that's no increase at all. Wow. But that's the least of it. Productivity of workers. How much output each worker on average was able to generate per hour rose over the same 40 years by 72%. Okay, let's be sure we understand this. The wages per hour is what the employer gives the employee. The productivity per hour is what the employee gives to the employer. You get paid because you contribute to the output of goods and services that the employer gets and takes and sells. If what the workers gave the employer rose by 72%, whereas what the employer gave the worker on average rose by 17% over 40 years. There's your explanation for why there's great inequality in the United States. Because the mass of people employees gave way more to the minority who are employers. And then the reverse, no mystery. It's right there. Here's another one of these remarkable statistics. Between 1980 and 2018, roughly the same 40 years for the average American consumer, the share of their total spending spent on health doubled. It cost twice as much to take care of your health at the end of those 40 years as a share of your income than it did before. Here's another statistic gets at it again between 2008 and 2018. So the last 10 years, the number of states in which health insurance premiums and deductibles consumed at least 10% of the median income of a citizen went from seven states where it cost you 10% or more of your income to cover your health expenditures and your health insurance included, seven states cost you more than 10%. By the end of 2018, 42 states cost you more than 10%. The cost of health went crazy. But if you think, and you know from your own experience how that's the case, then think about this. The price of education between 1980 and 2018, again those same 40 years, increased 600% more than people's incomes. That's why students are in debt. That's why families are in debt. That's why the whole economy is sinking under a mountain of the debt. Because the price increases of education are off the chart. And the reason for that is not just that private schools jacked up rates which they did. But it's also that the public sector and most American college students, for example, go to public colleges, not private ones. The state legislators weren't going to tax the rich, therefore didn't have the money, didn't give it to the university, which in response jacked up the fees it charged the students, who therefore had to borrow because their income and that of their parents wasn't going up. You begin to see what this picture is filling out to show us. One in four Americans next statistic have no retirement savings. None. One in four have none. They rely on Social Security. And I'm going to come to that in a moment. Let's look at those who do have some sort of retirement savings account. Well, the median. So 50% have more than what I'm about to say. 50% have less. $120,000. That's the median. You know what that generates if you're in the 55 to 64 retirement age. And they're the ones that have this median that's less than $1,000 a month over your 15 year retirement average. Not going to live too high on the hog with that Social Security. I found this one stunning. Since the year 2000, Social Security benefits, the cash paid out to people, adjusted for what happens to prices. Because if your Social Security doesn't go up as fast as your prices, well, then you're losing. And boy, have we lost. Buying power of Social Security benefits since 2000, that's for 20 years, is 30%. And I want to hammer at that for a minute. You know what that means? It means the elderly who are a rapidly growing share of the American population are really being screwed here. They can't afford to buy what they used to be able to afford with their Social Security, which means little things that nobody notices they can't afford. And they turn to their kids to help them, which the kids no doubt mostly do. And that eats into what the kids have left for their family. You get the picture of why Americans feel squeezed. It's because they are. And then just to drive the point home, the median white family in America now has 41 times more wealth than than the median black family, 22 times more than the Latino family. In 2016, 72% of white families owned their home, compared to 44% of black families and 45% of Latino families. And let's end by looking at the really wealthy since 1985. That's 35 years the average Wall street bonus has increased. You're going to love this. We 1,217% from $13,000 for a year, a bonus to 184,000 in the year 2020. If the federal minimum wage had increased at the same rate, the minimum wage in the United States today would be $44.12 an hour instead of what it actually is, which is $7.25 per hour. From March 2020 to April 2021, the year of COVID and the economic crash, American billionaires collective wealth rose by $1.62 trillion. It's about 650 billionaires in the United States. So their collective wealth, these 650 individuals, rose by $1.62 trillion. That's enough money capital. In Maine, did the calculation that you could send every Single American, all 332 million of us a stimulus check for $4,800. In other words, if you didn't give the people already billionaires an extra 1.62 trillion, if he just didn't let them get more than they already had as billionaires, every American, every man, woman and child could have got an extra stimulus of $4,800, which would have gone a major way to changing their lives. Whereas losing the 1.72 for people who are already billionaires, changes in their lives, nothing. Last one, and in some ways, the worst three of those billionaires, Jeffrey Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, just those three together own as much wealth as the bottom half of all U.S. households combined. You would have to go back to ancient Egypt, the pharaohs, the kind of people who had 50,000 slaves make those pyramids that the tourists can visit to get back to a society as unequal and unjust as what we are living through now. We've come to the end of the first part of today's show. Before we move on, I want to thank all of you who have and continued to support the work we do to make this show possible every week and especially to our Patreon community. If you haven't already, Please go to patreon.com economicupdate to learn more about how you can get involved in supporting this show. Please be sure to also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. And if you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to hit the subscribe button below. Stay with us. We'll be right back with today's special guest, Vermont AFL CIO President David Van Dusen. Welcome, friends, and welcome back to the second half of today's economic update show. I am very pleased and proud to bring to our microphones and to our cameras, David Van Dusen. David was elected president of the 10,000 member Vermont AFL CIO. He was part of a slate called United. It is a progressive caucus within Vermont's organized labor movement, committed to rank and file union democracy and to social justice unionism. In Vermont AFL CIO internal elections during the years 2019 and 2020, the United Slate won every leadership position within the state AFL cio. So in parentheses I can say to my audience, you now have a pretty good idea of why we've asked David to join us today. So let me begin and thank you, David Van Dusen, for joining us.
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Pleasure to be here.
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All right, let's start with one item. There is an ongoing conflict between the Vermont State AFL CIO and the National AFL CIO based in Washington, D.C. and led by Richard Trumka. I would like to ask you to briefly, for our audience, describe that conflict and then I can ask a question or two about it. Before you begin, I should mention that together with some other news and programming organizations like ours, we have asked the national AFL CIO if they would like to respond with their version. If and when they do, I will let everyone know. The floor is yours.
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Well, let me tell you, in November 2020, as you will recall, our democracy was entering a crisis. The election results were in. Donald Trump lost. Joe Biden won. The steps that Donald Trump was actively taking at the time to manipulate, trying to manipulate the electoral college system. Having the proud boy standing by gave us great concern. We were entering a crisis phase of democracy and there were serious concerns that a political coup was in the making from Donald Trump and his cronies. The Vermont AFL cio, bottom line, takes democracy very seriously. We saw these warnings written on the wall and we brought the question of what we would do if our democracy fell victim to an attempted coup to our members at a duly warned annual convention here in Vermont. After an hour long discussion and debate, our members, our rank and file, did the right thing. They, 87% of them overwhelmingly voted to authorize a call for a general strike from our elected executive board, which I serve on. In the event of a coup, this was the right thing to do. We make no apologies whatsoever and we would do it again. Look, if our democracy is not worth protecting and defending, then I don't know what we're doing here. However, Richard Trumka and the National AFL CIO apparently do not see it the same way we do. They did not like that we allowed our members to vote on that authorization. They have retaliated against us, opened an investigation against us for alleged misconduct, simply for Allowing our members to have a democratic process to discuss and decide on what to do if we had to defend democracy. And that's the situation we find ourselves in today. And look, I am proud of the brave action and commitment to our democratic processes that our members show in November 2020. We should all be proud of that. That's the kind of leadership we should have been seeing at the national level from Richard Trumka. And you know what? We're not out of the woods yet. Just weeks ago, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn called for, said we should have a military coup in this country.
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So.
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And even Donald Trump himself is now saying he's going to be returned to office in August. If it wasn't such a dangerous situation, these actions, these statements would be insane. But look, we're entering a phase where democracy is precarious and organized labor must be ready to defend our democratic republic should the call come and should we need to.
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David, I'm not asking you for anything like inside information, but is it your sense that there are other states in the 50 states, states of the United States in other state AFL CIOs where there are similar sentiments that might be looking to what happened in Vermont as a possible, I don't know, inspiration?
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B
Well, we had a number of significant central labor councils and labor bodies around the country that were also preparing for a general strike should a coup come into being. Let's look at the Martin Luther King Central Labor Council in Seattle. With well over 100,000 members. They passed a resolution in support of a general strike. Rochester, New York, Troy, New York, Western Massachusetts Central labor councils, all within the AFL did likewise. In Chicago, unions such as CTU were preparing to defend democracy through direct action and member engagement. This was something that was building at the grassroots level. We were the only state federation to go against the conservative wishes of Richard Chomka and ourselves as a state, authorize a call for a general strike if need be. But right now, what we are doing is we're not taking a step back. We're not going to be intimidated by Richard Trumka's tactics to try to silence us. Instead, we are currently reaching out to state federations, labor councils and locals all throughout this country to seek to build a progressive caucus within the national AFL CIO to change the way we do things, to turn towards social justice unionism, and to not be afraid to use our most powerful tool, the strike, for political purposes when we need to do that. So we see this as an organizing opportunity, a way for us to turn the corner a way for us to build rank and file power in such a manner where we could change the internal bylaws of the national AFL cio, change their focus, make us more democratic, make us more responsive, make us more committed to social justice in the United States of America.
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A
All right, let me ask you to take that a little bit further. What are the implications of what you've just been telling us for the relationships between organized labor and social justice, social movements on the one hand and with the Democratic Party on the other? Could you help us see how you see the relationships among these from the standpoint of labor, organized labor?
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B
Well, for decades now, this is no mystery to you and your listeners. For decades now, the National AFL CIO has essentially put all of our eggs in the basket of the National Democratic Party, right? We hitch our wagon to this. We put tens of millions of dollars into elections every year, every two years, every three years, every four years. And what do we get in return? Look, right now we have Democratic majorities in all bodies of government and we're still three Democrats away from having a majority in the Senate for the pro act. And even if we have that majority, we are well short of the 60 votes needed to override a filibuster. And yet Democratic Party officials refuse, in critical mass, refuse to engage in a real discussion about getting rid of the filibuster. So what have we got to hitching our wagon? I say not enough. I say the time has come not to put tens of millions into the Democratic Party, but to put that into organizing. Because our real power is not going to be through suits and ties in Washington D.C. our real power for change is going to be through building those relationships with social justice groups who are fighting for racial justice, who are fighting for real reform in our communities, in our cities, in our towns and what have you. And we need to build our power within our factories, within the job sites and our own solidarity. That's the direction we need to go. But the Democratic Party has failed us time and time again and it's time to look for alternatives.
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Are there any other political parties or are you looking for the future to have or to be part of building a party? How do you, given what you've just said, is there any party in that story?
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Well, there's a couple things about this where labor allied with community groups lead, the politicians will follow. We saw this during the Great Depression when we had thousands and thousands of people out in the streets going on strike, taking action, and the politicians followed with some very far reaching changes through the new Deal. But if we're talking specifically about political parties today here in Vermont, we don't have two parties. We have a three party system with a Social Democratic Vermont Progressive Party as a major player. They have a caucus in the state House, they have seats in the Senate, they have seats in the House of Representatives. The statewide positions, until recently we had the lieutenant governor position and we still have auditorium. This is a party that's dedicated to labor, that has been with us every time we have asked them. And as we have supported them, they have supported us. So in our last election cycle here in Vermont, when the Democrats refused to move car track on a statewide level, we endorsed the entire Progressive Party slate, won seats across Vermont. In Burlington, our largest city, we supported the Progressive slate for city council where they now have the plurality. They're the largest party in the city and they got our back. They got the back of our union workers in the city. And when the mayor of Burlington wanted to either open the contracts to have us give back our raises or to have layoffs during COVID the Progressive Party was there, the city council was there to defend us. So there are other opportunities out there that we need to explore. And nationally we need something like a Progressive party, be that a national Progressive party or be that a movement for a people's party. But hitching our wagon to the Democrats has failed time and time again and we can't keep going down that failed road.
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Okay, in the time, little bit of time we have left, we are, excuse me, we are a program that often talks about and advocates for a kind of economic transition to a worker co op based economic system, or at least to have a system that gives people a choice between working in a capitalist top down hierarchical enterprise versus a worker co op, shopping from one versus the other, in other words, opening up a democratic choice among types of work arrangement. How do you, as a official, as the president of an AFL cio, how do you imagine a relationship between what you as labor unions do and this whole movement about worker co ops?
- [25:41]
B
Well, it's funny you should bring that up. Right now here in our capital city in Montpelier, we're in discussions with a worker co op called Rabble Rousers that produces granola, chocolate, et cetera. And with this worker co op, we are talking with them about bringing them into the labor movement. Now I think worker co ops are a great example of how we can do things better. We can do things more democratically, we can empower workers and we can show a new or different road, an alternative towards our way our economy can turn. But we don't want the co op movement to be its own silo separate from the labor movement. Right. We're stronger together. So we need to find creative ways for worker co ops to also be part of the labor movement, to pay their union dues and to help support new organizing of other shops, more traditional shops, where we really need those protections that the union provides. So there's lots of opportunity there. But the one thing we need to break down is the notion of separate silos. We are stronger together, and that's what we got to strive for to transform our economy and our society.
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All right, my last question, and I really do appreciate your direct and clear answers. Are you hopeful, or let me put it differently. How do you explain to the rest of the United States what happened in Vermont to make you and what you've achieved there possible?
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Well, it takes hard work and it takes time. Right. Like we did Bernie Sanders comes out of Vermont. You may have heard of the man. He happens to be our senator. Bernie Sanders did not independently arise devoid of the rest of the political movements. Right. We have a long tradition of unity and fighting together for progressive change in Vermont. Bernie Sanders is part of that, and the Vermont AFL CIO is part of that. Specifically, what we did in the lead up to the 2019 elections is we made a point of reaching out to rank and file and leaders from locals all across the state. We did an assessment of how the strategy that for some years is being mimicked in Vermont, but it was being done in the rest of the nation with hitching our faith to the Democratic Party, wasn't working. We explored through dialogue and conversations the notion of we need to build a new solidarity. We need to be more engaged in the social movement. Through this discussion, we came up with a very strong slate of folks that represented folks from the building trades to college professors to town and city workers. And we said, look, we're going to do this differently. We're going to try a new approach because what we've done in the past did not work. And you know what? It's working now. We took money out of our lobbying efforts, we put into organizing. We have on call organizers now. We assign to affiliates to help them internally organize and to help build our power. So we got to look at different ways of doing things. We can't make the mistake of doing what we've always done and expecting a different result.
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A
David Van Dusen, thank you very, very much for your time, for your response and for the inspiration. I know this conversation will carry all over the country. And again, thank you for your time and for all of us and my audience, thank you for your attention. I think we've covered some very important ground today, and as always, I look forward to speaking with you again next week.