Shortages. Back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, we were a bit smug when we read about all those shortages of consumer goods in the old Soviet Union. Never happen in the good ol’ US of A, right?
Well, wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
In the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic the joke making the rounds was that Donald Trump was so full of crap that the country ran out of toilet paper. But if you will remember, we were also a bit short on the supply of hand wipes, hand sanitizer, and face masks.
But then, as we began to emerge from the pandemic, we found other items to be in short supply. Auto dealerships endured empty lots with new vehicles on back order because of the shortage of computer chips and battery materials like lithium, cobalt, and nickel. The lack of those resources, of course could mean only one thing: price increases. And with the unavailability of new cars, the price of used vehicles suddenly went through the roof.
In quick order came other shortages: chemical supplies for farms, diapers, baby formula, tampons, Hot sauce, labor, and worst of all, gasoline.
Suddenly, when we had to ration toilet paper or when we couldn’t feed our babies, we didn’t feel quite so superior to those Soviet Union consumers.
More price increases followed but to no one’s surprise, there were no accompanying dramatic increase in salaries. States like Louisiana clung like blood-sucking parasites to the $7.25 minimum wage, refusing to give struggling workers needed relief.
Something called the supply chain was blamed and of course, whoever occupied the Oval Office was to blame for that breakdown. If we’re honest with ourselves, we know the president, be he Republican or Democrat, is going to be blamed (erroneously) for inflation or recession when in fact, events were set in motion years ago for what we’re now experiencing with empty store shelves, soaring gas prices, and an economy teetering on the brink.
For openers, it’s a little difficult to point a finger at the White House (no matter who the occupant may be at the time) over record prices of gasoline at the pump when the oil companies are reporting record (let me repeat, RECORD) quarterly profits. That’s not a political problem, it’s pure old garden variety greed with a capital $.
One of the key sticking points for Americans choking on high gasoline prices is the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline, which many people seem to think caused the gasoline shortage and the price spike that went with it. But the truth of the matter is the Keystone Pipeline was NEVER INTENDED for American consumption. It was to transport Canadian oil to Gulf Coast refineries (which admittedly would have meant more jobs for the Lake Charles area) for subsequent shipment and sale overseas – not in the US.
So, why aren’t the oil companies increasing drilling operations to meet demand? Simple, and again, it’s greed with that same capital $. Wall Street is applying “enormous pressure” on oil companies to pump up SHAREHOLDER PROFITS instead of pumping up investments in drilling equipment.
I’m certainly no economics wizard, but from my admittedly layman’s viewpoint, it’s not difficult to see why supply chain problems could paralyze this country as they apparently have.
The reason is really quite simple: corporate greed (remember that capital $) and the destruction of American labor unions.
Like it or not, you have to admit, if only to yourself, labor unions created middle class America. Detractors love to point to corruption in the unions and certainly they have had more than their share. Then again, so has Congress, the presidency, innumerable state legislatures, and more than a few mayors and city council members. Those same detractors would love for you to ignore the fact that unions gave us the 40-hour work week, paid vacations, pensions, health care, safer working conditions, and abolished child labor.
Unions allowed America’s workers to speak as one and to tell management that workers would no longer be exploited and tossed aside after they were used up and no longer productive. And lest we forget, non-union members also were the beneficiaries of these same advances.
Unions gave us meat for our tables that was not contaminated or diseased. They helped define what a worker’s specific expectations were and what his specific reward would be for his labor.
In 1976, the year Louisiana’s Right to Work law was enacted by the Louisiana Legislature, 300,000, or more than 17 percent of the state’s workforce, were members of ORGANIZED LABOR Within a decade, that number had dropped to about 175,000, or less than 10 percent. Today, it’s 81,000 – less than 5 percent. With the decrease in numbers has come a decrease in political clout.
Nationally, by the mid-1950s, unions in the US boasted membership of approximately one of every three non-farm workers, which represented the pinnacle of labor’s political power. But then, the Republican Party, aided by corporate America, began systematically dismantling the protections that helped unions to launch this country’s post-WWII production and economic advancements to a position of world dominance. In the process, they also began the slow but consistent destruction of the middle class as evidenced by the growing wage disparity between workers and corporate executives and board members. The American middle class, to put it bluntly, is disappearing even as we watch.
Culminating with President Reagan’s firing of air traffic controllers, this set of legal, borderline, and outright illegal practices proved chillingly effective at abolishing existing unions and preventing nonunion workers from organizing. Practices included outright threats of dismissal to union sympathizers, holding mandatory meetings with workers warning of the dire consequences (real or imagined) of a unionization campaign, and hiring permanent replacements for striking workers during labor disputes. This from a man who once was a liberal Democrat and who served as president of the Screen Actors Guild.
Meanwhile, corporate America was looking elsewhere for cheap labor and places like China, Thailand, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, Mexico, and other developing countries (read: countries with few worker protection laws) suddenly looked attractive to companies like GE, Nike, Budweiser, Chiquita, Purina, and Carrier, to name only a few (even Trump’s suits and ties are made in China). US automakers shipped operations elsewhere, as well, leaving Detroit a ghost town, a shell of what was once America’s fourth-largest city.
Companies who chose to stay merged with other companies, killing competition in the process. Regardless of where companies went or with whom they merged, jobs were lost, awakening US workers to the grim realization that they were mere pawns in a very profitable boardroom chess game, expendable when it served management’s long game.
And now we’re seeing all that come back to bite us in the backside. If all those companies had stayed home and paid workers a living wage, there would be no supply chain issues, no reliance on the uncertainties of foreign skirmishes and wars – or at least less so.
Instead, we’re seeing shrink packaging, or “shrinkflation,” the downsizing of products in order to keep from raising the price, done with investors’ profits foremost in mind. Quality has diminished as well. How do you think Toyota, Nissan, Subaru, and Kia got such a foothold in our market other than American auto makers’ decisions to give us such products as Vega, Cadillac Cimarron, Pinto, Chevrolet engines in Oldsmobiles (remember that little public relations debacle?), and the exciting, dynamic K Car? American quality was suddenly only a fond memory.
So, you see, it’s not the fault of the hapless soul who happens to occupy the Oval Office. No sitting president has received a cent of those oil company profits (so far as we know). But we do know it was the Republicans’ intent to gut the unions and it was the first President Bush who pushed through the NAFTA agreement and it was Trump who replaced NAFTA with USMCA, both of which had the effect of costing US jobs and depressing US wages. Long before the senior Bush or Trump or even Reagan, however, Republicans were laying the groundwork for union-busting and economic robbery that has become a tragic reality today.
If Congress and the President were serious about wanting to help the nation’s economy toward recovery, a good step would be to abolish Right to Work laws, repeal USMCA, impose penalties on companies who abandon American workers by moving overseas where they can get by with paying 30 cents per hour with no medical care, no paid vacations, no retirement benefits, or no guaranteed safe working conditions.
The flag-waving, Bible-thumping, patriotism-chanting Republican Party is solely responsible for the systematic undermining of organized labor and the destruction of America’s middle class – all in the name of greater profits for corporate board members. To believe otherwise is only self-delusion.
But the greater tragedy is that the Republican Party has managed to convince middle-class Americans that it has their best interests at heart while simultaneously picking their pockets.
Louisiana Voice 