Jeff Faux: Lower Everyone's Wages and Living Standard

William Greider calls a "really important book" that tells the "astonishing story of how class works." Calls for a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" on taxes and spending for the next decade ring out daily, if not hourly, from the politicians and pundits who dominate our political media. But the national discourse is silent on the tacit agreement both parties have already made on the future that lies ahead for the majority of working Americans: A dramatic drop in their living standards! The United States can no longer satisfy the three great dreams that have driven most of its domestic politics since the end of World War II. The multinational corporate class's of limitless profits, the military industrial complex's dream of global hegemony, and the dream of the people for rising incomes and expanding opportunities. One out of three? Certainly. Two out of three? Maybe. All three? NO! So far, Corporate America gets priority boarding in the economic lifeboat, with the safest seats reserved for Wall Street. Four years after the crash, the financial sector remains heavily subsidized with cheap federal loans that it uses to buy higher yielding bonds, speculate in exotic IOU's and pay outrageous salaries to those on top. Larger than ever, they are more "too big to fail." As a result, Wall Street continues to divert the nation's capital away from investment in sustainable high quality jobs in America. Next in line is the Pentagon, and its vast network of corporate contractors, members of Congress with military facilities in their districts, and media propagandists for he empire. The administration, along with some libertarian Republicans, insist that military spending will not be spared in the coming era of austerity, and has proposed modest cuts over the next decade!