Lost wages

"We are the revolution," said Ronald Reagan. True enough. Count me among the counter-revolutionaries. Why? Because statistics prove that the average working man had a higher standard of living in the 1970s.

Don't believe it? Read Billmon's piece on the Minimum Wage, the most important bit of blogging (complete with links and a nice chart) you will find on the net this week. Yes, a number of working families still manage to live well -- but only because two wage-earner households have become the norm.

Billmon's report reminds me of an experiment I've been meaning to carry out. I recall (vaguely) our family income in 1973, when I was a school kid. I also recall where we lived. There's a site on the net which can translate amounts from past years into current dollars. I wonder if the same purchasing power could fetch the same living space these days?

I strongly doubt it. Poor and working people increasingly have to pay as much as 80% of their income just to keep a roof overhead.

I shudder to think of the plight of today's women who find themselves in my Mom's position. She was a widow, a more-or-less unskilled working single mother raising two boys. We were poor, but we took no welfare and our lives had a certain small measure of dignity and comfort. In the post-Reagan era, we probably would have ended up in a homeless shelter.

Tell everyone you know to wake up, wise up, and rise up. Reagan screwed us.

Ever since supply side economics, union-busting and deregulation became the cornerstones of the national theology, working people have had to put up with deteriorating conditions. Meanwhile, in Europe -- where the theology is quite different -- working people have a higher living standard and longer average lifespans.