Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class -- And What We Can Do About It - Hardcover

Hartmann, Thom

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1576754146 ISBN 13: 9781576754146

Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Millions of working Americans talk, act, and vote as if their economic interests match those of the megawealthy, the multinational corporations, and the politicians who do their bidding. How did this happen? According to Air America radio host Thom Hartmann, the apologists of the Right have become masters of the subtle and largely subconscious aspects of political communication. It’s not an escalation in Iraq, it’s a surge; it’s not the inheritance tax, it’s the death tax; it’s not drilling for oil, it’s exploring for energy.

Conservatives didn’t intuit the path to persuasive messaging—they learned these techniques. There is no reason why progressives can’t learn them too. In Cracking the Code, Hartmann shows you how. Drawing on his background as a psychotherapist and advertising executive as well as a national radio host, he breaks down the science and technology of effective communication so you can apply it to your own efforts to counter right-wing disinformation. It’s both an art and a science—as Hartmann explains, political persuasion is as much about biology as ideology, about knowing how the brain processes information and how that influences the way people perceive messages, make decisions, and form a worldview.

Throughout the book, Hartmann shows you precisely how to master this technology, providing examples dating back to the time of the Founding Fathers. As you read deeply in this book, you’ll see things you hadn’t realized were there—in everything from advertising to political rants—and discover abilities you didn’t know you had. Whether you’re a politician, an activist, a volunteer, or a concerned citizen, you’ll develop a strong sense for how to reach into that part of the collective human psyche where we truly do have the power to create a new world.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Thom Hartmann is the host of a nationally syndicated Air America Radio program and is the author of eighteen books, including The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It’s Too Late; We the People: A Call to Take Back America; What Would Jefferson Do?, and Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights.

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Profits before People

THE STORY OF CARL

Carl loved books and he loved history. After spending two years in the army as part of the American occupation forces in Japan immediately after World War II, Carl was hoping to graduate from college and teach history—perhaps even at the university level—if he could hang on to the GI Bill and his day job long enough to get his PhD. But in 1950, when he’d been married just a few months, the surprise came that forced him to drop out of college: his wife was pregnant with their first child.

This was an era when husbands worked, wives tended the home, and being a good father and provider was one of the highest callings to which a man could aspire. Carl dropped out of school, kept his 9-to-5 job at a camera shop, and got a second job at a metal fabricating plant, working with molten metal from 7:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. For much of his wife’s pregnancy and his newborn son’s first year, he slept three hours a night and caught up on the weekends, but in the process he earned enough to get them an apartment and prepare for the costs of raising a family. Over the next forty-five years, he continued to work in the steel and machine industry, in the later years as a bookkeeper/manager for a Michigan tool-and-die company as three more sons were born.

Carl knew he was doing the right thing when he took that job in the factory, and he did it enthusiastically. Because the auto industry was unionized, he found he was able to support his entire family—all four sons—on one paycheck. He had fully funded health insurance, an annual vacation, and a good pension waiting for him when he retired. Carl had become a member of the middle class. He may not have achieved his personal dream of teaching history, but he had achieved the American dream. He was self-sufficient and free.

Working with molten metal could be dangerous, but the dangers were apparent, and Carl took every precaution to protect himself so that he could return home safe to his family. What he didn’t realize, however, was that the asbestos used at the casting operation was an insidious poison. He didn’t realize that the asbestos industry had known for decades that the stuff could kill but would continue to profitably market it for another twenty years while actively using its financial muscle to keep the general public in the dark and prevent the government from interfering.

A couple of years ago, Carl tripped on the stairs and ended up in the hospital with a compression fracture of his spine. He figured that fall also caused the terrible pain he’d been experiencing in his abdomen. The doctors, however, discovered that his lungs were filled with mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is terminal, and its victims die by slow and painful suffocation.

Just because some corporation put profit before people, Carl got screwed.

I was Carl’s first child.

AN UNDECLARED WAR

My dad faced a painful death, but at least his job in a union shop left him with health care after retirement. Most Americans don’t even have that reassurance anymore. More than 45 million Americans don’t have health insurance to cover expenses for a serious illness; 5 million have lost their health insurance in the past four years alone. And it’s not just illness that worries most Americans today. Americans are working more and making less. It’s getting harder and harder to just get by.

There’s a reason for the pain Americans are suffering.

The America my dad grew up in put people before profits. The America he lives in now puts profits before people.

In my dad’s America, 35 percent of working people were union members who got a living wage, health insurance, and defined-benefits pensions. These union benefits lifted all boats because they set the floor for employment; for every union job, there was typically a nonunion job with similar pay and benefits (meaning roughly 70 percent of the American workforce back then could raise a family on a single paycheck). People who were disabled and couldn’t work could live on Social Security payments, and the elderly knew they would have a safe retirement, paid for by pensions, Social Security, and Medicare. The gap between the richest and the poorest shrunk rather than widened.

That America is disappearing fast. The minimum wage—just $5.15 per hour—is not a living wage. Workers are now expected to pay for their own health insurance and their own retirement. Pension plans are disappearing—30,000 General Motors employees lost theirs in 2005—and there’s continued talk of privatizing Social Security. The safety net is ripping apart, and the results are that the middle class is shrinking. The rich are once again getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer:

Image The inflation-adjusted average annual pay of a CEO went up from $7,773,000 to $9,600,000 from 2002 to 2004. Meanwhile, from 2000 to 2004, the inflation-adjusted median annual household income went down from $46,058 to $44,389. In other words, ordinary people’s income went down by $1,669 while CEO pay went up by $1,827,000.1

Image Over the past four years, from 2001 to 2005, America has lost 2,818,000 manufacturing jobs. If you don’t count jobs produced by the military-industrial complex, the number of private sector jobs created since 2001 has decreased by 1,160,000.2

Image Although 67 percent of large employers (more than 500 employees) offer a traditional pension, that is down from 91 percent two decades ago, and it’s dropping fast as more companies freeze pensions and turn instead to 401(k)s.3 Only 6 percent of Americans working in the private sector can rely on a defined pension,4 and 76 percent of Baby Boomers say they don’t think they are very prepared to meet their retirement expenses.5

Image Today only 60 percent of employers provide health care to their employees. More than 45 million Americans were without health insurance as of 2004, and we can only guess that that number has grown.6

You don’t need the numbers because you probably already know someone who has been forced out of the middle class. Roger, for instance, who once was a vice president of research and development for a software engineering company, lost his job during the dot-com bust and never got it back. After being unemployed for seven years, he’s thinking of getting a job as a “landscape engineer"—that’s a gardener—at a tenth of his former salary.

Or there’s the case of Bob, a college graduate who has been holding three jobs for the past five years, one full-time as a bookstore clerk, two part-time. Even though he works sixty hours a week, he doesn’t make enough money to rent his own apartment (he rents a room in a shared flat) and he can’t afford health insurance. He hopes his allergies don’t turn into asthma because he can’t afford the medication he would need for that.

Too many Americans are just holding on. Consider Amy: Divorced from her alcoholic husband, she has gone back to school full-time to become a teacher; she earns a living by catering on the weekends. A single mother, she and her daughter share a studio apartment. Amy has neither health insurance nor child care and no nearby relatives—she relies on neighbors to take care of her daughter. One major illness and Amy would be homeless.

And then there are most of the rest of us, who have good jobs but still don’t feel secure about the future. Ralph and Sally both get health insurance through their jobs, but their mortgage eats up more than 60 percent of their income, and the clothes and the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1576754146
• ISBN 13: 9781576754146
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland