As America‘s
new economy starts to look more like the old economy of the Great
Depression, the divide between rich and poor, those who have made it and
those who never will, seems to grow ever starker. I know. I’ve seen it
firsthand.
Once upon a time, I worked as a State Department officer, helping to carry out the occupation of Iraq, where Washington’s goal was regime change. It was there that, in a way, I had my first taste of the life of the 1%. Unlike most Iraqis, I had more food and amenities than I could squander, nearly unlimited funds to spend as
I wished (as long as the spending supported us one-percenters), and
plenty of U.S. Army muscle around to keep the other 99% at bay. However,
my subsequent whistleblowing about State Department waste and mismanagement in Iraq ended my 24-year career abroad and, after a two-decade absence, deposited me back in “the homeland.”
I returned to America to find another sort of regime change underway, only I wasn’t among the 1% for this one. Instead, I ended up working in
the new minimum-wage economy and saw firsthand what a life of lousy pay
and barely adequate food benefits adds up to. For the version of regime
change that found me working in a big box store, no cruise missiles had
been deployed and there had been no shock-and-awe demonstrations.
Nonetheless, the cumulative effects of years of deindustrialization,
declining salaries, absent benefits, and weakened unions, along with a
rise in meth and alcohol abuse, a broad-based loss of good jobs, and soaring inequality seemed similar enough to me. The destruction of a way of life in the service of the goals of the 1%, whether in Iraq or at home, was hard to miss. Still, I had the urge to see more. Unlike in Iraq, where my movements were limited, here at home I could hit the road, so I set off for a look at some of America‘s iconic places as part of the research for my book, Ghosts of Tom Joad.
Here, then, are snapshots of four of the
spots I visited in an empire in decline, places you might pass through
if you wanted to know where we’ve been, where we are now, and (heaven
help us) where we’re going.
On the Boardwalk: Atlantic City, New Jersey
Drive in to Atlantic City on the old roads, and you’re sure to pass Lucy the Elephant.
She’s not a real elephant, of course, but a wood and tin six-story
hollow statue. First built in 1881 to add value to some Jersey
swampland, Lucy has been reincarnated several times after suffering
fire, neglect, and storm damage. Along the way, she was a tavern, a
hotel, and — for most of her life — simply an “attraction.” As owning a car and
family driving vacations became egalitarian rights in the booming
postwar economy of the 1950s and 1960s, all manner of tacky attractions
popped up along America’s roads: cement dinosaurs, teepee-shaped motels, museums of oddities, and spectacles like the world’s largest ball of twine. Their growth paralleled 20 to 30 years of the greatest boom times any consumer society has ever known.
Between 1947 and 1973, actual incomes in the United States rose remarkably evenly across society. Certainly, there was always inequality, but never as sharp and predatory as it is today. As Scott Martelle’s Detroit: A Biography chronicles,
in 1932, Detroit produced 1.4 million cars; in 1950, that number was
eight million; in 1973, it peaked at 12 million. America was still adeveloping nation — in the best sense of that word.
Yet as the U.S. economy changed, money began
to flow out of the working class pockets that fed Lucy and her roadside
attraction pals. By one count, from 1979 to 2007, the top 1% of Americans saw their income grow by 281%. They came to control 43% of U.S. wealth.
You could see it all in Atlantic City, New
Jersey. For most of its early life, it had been a workingman’s
playground and vacation spot, centered around its famous boardwalk.
Remember Monopoly? The street names are all from Atlantic City. However,
in the economic hard times of the 1970s, as money was sucked upward
from working people, Boardwalk and Park Place became a crime scene, too
dangerous for most visitors. Illegal drug sales all but overtook tourism
as the city’s most profitable business.
No comments:
Post a Comment