The huge increase in productivity has created great wealth for the 1%, but, with the decimation of the unions, the U.S. has failed to create public policies that would find a way for the middle class and working class to have a fair share. This graph stops at 2006, but since then the gap has grown even larger.

Those who pay the fiddler call the tune and the tune we keep hearing again and again is that if only corporations had more freedom, less taxes, things would be better. And, we keep hearing that the main problem with our economy is the low skills of workers and the failure of our public educational system to properly educate students for jobs requiring Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. The elite who want to keep this tune playing have a lot to gain via public brainwashing.

While the powerful gobble up the incredible increases in wealth now being produced in this country they like to say: “Hey buddy, if you had worked a little harder in your high school math class, maybe you’d now have a better job.” Perfect. And our politicians who serve as lackeys for the elite, repeat the message with fervor. They blame teachers, public schools. They push the idea that our way forward is a focus on STEM education, big increases in college enrollment, and their solution for everything is more market freedom, more privatization.

We are immersed in the propaganda that the ruling class wants us to hear and this propaganda presents a reality that is mostly false. Any voice of thoughtfulness is shouted down by think tank “intellectuals” who have prostituted themselves to their ruling class overlords. Reality may start to get our attention by tapping politely on our shoulder, but eventually it hits us over the head, and many who now, through no fault of their own, find themselves among the working poor — no money, no insurance, no hope — are ready to hear what reality has to say.

Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute is the voice of reason when he writes: “The huge increase in wage and income inequality experienced over the last 30 years is not a reflection of a shortfall in the skills and education of the workforce. Rather, workers face a wage deficit, not a skills deficit.” He says it is nonsense that we should blame the worker, because such blame is misplaced. Mishel writes:

“We increasingly hear or read claims that we have a serious structural unemployment problem, even to the extent of claiming that most of the unemployed beyond a normal (full-employment) rate face structural problems in finding work. This argument implies that unemployment difficulties reside in the workers who are unemployed: they either are located in the wrong place or do not have the required skills for the currently available jobs. If this is so, then macroeconomic tools such as fiscal policy (spending or tax cuts) or monetary policy cannot address our unemployment or long-term unemployment situation. But surprisingly, perhaps amazingly, there is no systematic empirical evidence for such assertions. …

The challenge, in my view, is to provide a much broader path to prosperity, one that encompasses those at every education level. The nation’s productivity has grown a great deal in the last 30 years, up 80% from 1979 to 2009, and such productivity growth or better can be expected in the future. Yet with all the income generated in the past and expected in the future it is difficult to explain why more people have not seen rapid income growth. It is not the economy that has limited or will limit strong income growth, but rather the economic policies pursued and the distribution of economic and political power that are the limiting factors. for lack of skills and that this argument is a foil meant to suppress the action that is actually needed.”

I became acquainted with Mishel when Stan Hirtle responded to my post “Let’s Reject Phoney Ideas About Prosperity And Start Discussing The Future Of The Working Class.” Stan pointed to this article:  “Schools as Scapegoats.” Some excerpts:

“American middle-class living standards are threatened, not because workers lack competitive skills but because the richest among us have seized the fruits of productivity growth, deny- ing fair shares to the working- and middle-class Americans, educated in American schools, who have created the additional national wealth. Over the last few decades, wages of college graduates overall have increased, but some college gradu- ates—managers, executives, white-collar sales workers—have commandeered disproportionate shares, with little left over for scientists, engineers, teachers, computer programmers, and others with high levels of skill. No amount of school reform can undo policies that redirect wealth generated by skilled workers to profits and executive bonuses. …

Statistically, the falling real wages of high school graduates has played a bigger part in boosting the college-to-high-school wage ratio than has an unmet demand for college graduates. Important causes of this decline have been the weakening of labor market institutions, such as the minimum wage and unions, which once boosted the pay of high school–educated workers. …

Another too glib canard is that our education system used to be acceptable because students could graduate from high school (or even drop out) and still support families with good manufacturing jobs. Today, those jobs are vanishing, and with them the chance of middle-class incomes for those without good educations….

It’s true that many manufacturing jobs have disappeared. But replacements have mostly been equally unskilled or semi- skilled jobs in service and retail sectors. There was never anything more inherently valuable in working in a factory assembly line than in changing bed linens in a hotel. What made semiskilled manufacturing jobs desirable was that many (though not most) were protected by unions, provided pensions and health insurance, and compensated with decent wages. That today’s working class doesn’t get similar protections has nothing to do with the adequacy of its education. Rather, it has everything to do with policy decisions stemming from the value we place on equality. Hotel jobs that pay $20 an hour, with health and pension benefits (rather than $10 an hour without benefits), typically do so because of union organization, not because maids earned bachelor’s degrees….

It is cynical to tell millions of Americans who work (and who will continue to be needed to work) in low-level administrative jobs and in janitorial, food-service, hospitality, transportation, and retail industries that their wages have stagnated because their educations are inadequate for international competition. The quality of our civic, cultural, community, and family lives demands school improvement, but barriers to unionization have more to do with low wages than does the quality of education. …

In a paper recently posted on the National Bureau of Eco- nomic Research’s Web site, Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology economists Frank Levy and Peter Temin wrote, “The current trend toward greater inequality in America is primarily the result of a change in economic policy that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s.” They went on to say that “the recent impacts of technology and trade have been amplified by the col- lapse of these institutions,” by which they mean the suppression of unions and the abandonment of the norm of equality.

These are not problems that can be solved by charter schools, teacher accountability, or any other school intervention. A balanced human capital policy would involve schools, but would require tax, regulatory, and labor market reforms as well.”

• Obama Got It Wrong — Realizing The American Dream Requires More Democracy, Not More Technology; January 27th, 2011
• Obama’s Theory That Education Is Key To “Lasting Shared Prosperity” Is Contradicted By Statistics; March 11th, 2009
• How Can The System Known As The United States Be Made To Work To Provide “Liberty and Justice For All”?; February 5th, 2009
• Expensive Education Fails To Increase Economic Opportunities For Many Citizens; September 12th, 2008

The political scene is full of phoney arguments about how to build prosperity. A realistic discussion of the future of the economy is needed and a good beginning point would be an agreement on some basic facts. Agreeing on the data provided in this little chart produced by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics would be a good start.

In 2010, 25.9% of U.S. jobs had a very low educational requirement — less than high school — and by 2020 the proportion of jobs with such a low educational requirement will be even more — 29.5%.  By 2020, 39.7% of jobs will require only a high school education.

The conclusion is that by 2020, 69.2% of American jobs will need an educational level of high school or lower. If 100% of our citizenry have a college degree, it won’t change the fact that in 2020, 69.2% of jobs will only need a high school education, or less. These are the jobs of the working class. And most of these jobs will have such a low wage that these will be the jobs of the class of working poor.

Reality based political discussion should be founded on this basic fact: Most Americans, by far, are members of the working class, and the number of people in the working class is growing. The number of people in the middle class is shrinking. The number in the ruling class is small and fairly stable.

Defining “class” is important. “Class” is determined by the amount of power one has in the system. People in the working class, as individuals, have little power. People in the upper class, comparatively, have a lot of personal power.

Working class people throughout history have found that by standing together they could gain power and make advances for their class. This dynamic of history is now derided by the Fox News propagandists as something undesirable — “class warfare” — but it is a dynamic that more than anything has lifted humanity upwards to a better future.

If we are to have a meaningful political discussion about how to build a future where there is wide spread prosperity, it needs to be reality based. Many political discussions about how to advance future prosperity are based on phoney premises: training people for a “knowledge economy,”  training people in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) or, even worse, changing laws to give corporations more power.  Phoney arguments are ploys to avoid what is of core importance. Such discussion in a political context is like a magician’s distraction — “Look at this shiny object.” The point of the trick is to change the focus of the audience from what is important to what is of little importance. The point of phoney arguments is to divert the attention of the working class from what is important so ever more money and power can be put in the hands of the ruling class.

The hope for a good future for the biggest part of the American population is a political process where the working class stands together with the middle class to bring more justice to the system.  A person adept in STEM may still be a member of the working poor — unless he or she has the power to negotiate a living wage.

How is it possible that a democratic nation as rich as ours should tolerate poor health care, poor nutrition, poor opportunities for a big majority of its citizens? The future of the working class depends on the degree it can find power through unity. Justice cannot be won without a struggle. We need to stop the phoney debates and start talking about what is real.

Senate Bill 316, now being discussed in the Senate Education Committee, outlines a big change in the evaluation system of Ohio’s schools. If approved, by downgrading district evaluations, SB-316 will make many more communities eligible for charter schools and more students eligible to receive “Ed Choice” vouchers to attend private schools.

Currently, a student may receive a “voucher” to attend a private school if he or she is living in a district rated either “Academic Watch” or “Academic Emergency.” And, in these low scoring districts, charter schools may be started. Right now, 134 districts are eligible for charters and vouchers, but SB-316 proposes to change the evaluation scale so that this number will more than double.

The new system uses letter grades, from “A” to “F.” Based on current data, if the new system were in place today, 281 districts would have a grade of “D” or “F,” and each of these districts would be eligible for charter schools and vouchers.

School districts and community schools are referred to as local education agencies or "LEAs"

There are big differences between the state regulations for private schools as compared to charter schools. A charter school is a public school, and must abide by rules governing public schools. Private schools are, well, private. They operate outside of public rules. They are free to create a school environment that advances their mission and they are free to select or reject students based on their own criteria.

Private schools may have very different rules for teacher qualifications, as compared to public schools, and may make demands of teachers and students that would be against the law in a public school. Over 93% of Ohio’s private schools eligible for vouchers are religious schools. (See list here.) The mission of many of these schools, as stated in their mission statements, is religious indoctrination.

It surprises me that the issue of using tax dollars to fund private religious education is seldom or never mentioned in articles I’ve read about Ohio’s voucher system. Opposition to vouchers for religious reasons evidently was squelched in 2002 when the Rehnquist Supreme Count ruled 5-4 to approve the Cleveland voucher program.  I agree with how Justice John Paul Stevens described the 5-4 ruling: “profoundly misguided.” Stevens wrote for the dissenting minority: “Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundation of our democracy.”

The focus of opposition to Ohio’s voucher program seems to be solely its impact on the funding of local schools. For each student receiving a voucher, $5,200 is subtracted from his or her home school district. Right now, 12,988 students from 37 different schools districts receive “Ed Choice” vouchers. The cost of Ed Choice voucher to local school districts is now $38 million. The number of vouchers under current law is capped at 60,000, so, with the new evaluation system, the amount spent on vouchers can grow to almost five times its current size, to $312 million.

In the new grading scale, most of Ohio’s highest scoring school districts will be downgraded. If SB-316 is implemented, many communities, who have been told their schools are “excellent,” will soon be told that their schools only rate a grade of “B.” Right now, 382 of Ohio districts and community schools are rated “Excellent,” or “Excellent with Distinction.” Under the new system only 22 of these districts would have a grade of “A.”

• DDN School Voucher Article Fails To Point Out HB136 Will Use Coercive Taxation To Fund Religious Education