신민주당운동으로 대표되는 클린턴/고어 그룹은 미국 민주당에서도 가장 우파 진영이라지요. 신민주당운동 움직임에 대해 처음부터 매우 비판적이었던 민주당 내 좌파와는 달리, 민주당 중도파는 1992년 클린턴/고어 정부 출범시 비판을 자제하고 어느 정도 기대를 했던 것으로 보입니다. 그러나 1992-1996 클린턴/고어 정부를 지내면서 이들 역시 클린턴/고어 정부가 월스트리트와 대기업의 눈치만 보고 있다며 강하게 비판하게 됩니다. 보다 철저한 누진 과세를 통한 부의 공정한 재분배, 대기업에 대한 각종 특혜(이른바 기업복지corporate welfare) 폐지, 국방 예산의 감축, 노동법의 독소조항 폐지와 노조 조직률 확대를 통한 조직 노동자의 교섭력 강화, 최저임금 증가, 노동자 및 실업자 기술교육/직업 재훈련 확대, 중하층/하층에 대한 의료보험/복지/교육지원 확대, 공공부문에 대한 투자 확대 등 미국 민주당의 진보적(liberal) 전통을 배신하고 있다는 것이죠. 이들은 디지털(신)경제에 대해서도 이것이 가져오는 경제성장, 부와 고용의 창출 효과가 중상층/상층에게 집중됨으로써 빈부격차 해소에 도움이 되지 못하고 있다고 비판하고 있습니다. 다음은 민주당 중도파 성향의 경제학자/경제평론가들의 글 두 편입니다.
< In the New Economy, the Same Old Story >
by Robert Kuttner*
April 23, 2000 (American Prospect)
The other day, in Silicon Valley, President Clinton spoke eloquently of the "digital divide." He extracted a pledge from the computer industry to donate hundreds of millions of dollars worth of high-tech hardware to America’s schools.
By coincidence, I recently moderated a debate about wages and the New Economy. How is it, debaters asked, that we can have full employment, high rates of economic growth, and still have wages for most ordinary working people barely move? A good question. In the last great boom, 1948-1973, real wages rose smartly, doubling in a generation; and they actually rose faster for ordinary workers than for executives and professionals.
Of course, there is a widely held answer to the question, one reflected in the president’s initiative: It’s skills, stupid. In the new internet economy, those who can master computer skills will make out just fine. The others, not surprisingly, will be left behind.
This sounds so obvious that it’s hardly worth debating. In fact, the high tech industry reports some 800,000 jobs going begging.
So if you want to upgrade wages, upgrade skills. But hold on a moment.
For one thing, there are tens of millions of service sector jobs that don’t require advanced computer skills?taking care of elderly people in nursing homes, cleaning buildings, waiting on table, minding the toddlers of the affluent, cashiering at McDonalds. These jobs will not be replaced with machines.
There are many million more workers who use computers, but in a routine way. Amazon.com made a few executives very rich, but most of its employees work in warehouses finding, wrapping, and shipping books. The inventory, of course, is very carefully controlled by computer. But these are the routine, low-wage jobs of the new economy, computer or no.
Indeed, supermarket clerks who work with scanners, data entry clerks sitting at terminals in the back offices of insurance companies, airline reservationists, shipping clerks, bank tellers, and retail sales people all have two things in common. They have been trained to work with computers–and their wages are going nowhere fast.
I recently gave my college-age daughter a button that reads; "I majored in liberal arts. Will that be for here or to go?" Despite full employment, labor economists report a surplus of liberal arts grads, who face mediocre earnings prospects.
To be sure, people with advanced computer skills are another story. Many of us know people in their twenties and even teens who taught themselves web design skills and who are making a very nice living, even if they majored in comparative lit. For the moment, with every hotdog stand feeling the need for its own website, there’s a shortage of web designers.
But think a little harder. Some of the people with the most advanced training in the economy today are facing falling real incomes. In medicine, thanks to managed care, there are too many specialists relative to the willingness of insurance companies to pay the bills. So psychiatrists, dentists, and many subspecialists have declining earnings no matter how high their skills. Airline pilots, whose skills get more advanced with each generation of aircraft, make less than they used to.
And just as there are too many psychiatrists, it’s entirely possible that in a decade there will be too many web designers. And their wages will fall, too.
So the problem is not just skills. The other part of the story is the bargaining power of wage and salary workers relative to managers and owners.
The big difference between today’s economic boom and the great boom of the post World War II years, it turns out, is not technology or skills. It is the diminished bargaining power of employees.
Today, unions are weaker. There is weaker regulation of wages, and changes in employment norms. Companies today feel free to let loyal, long-tenured workers go if they can find someone else to do the job more cheaply. There is more competition from low wage workers overseas.
Freer immigration beings that competition home. Today in big cities with large immigrant populations, one can find daily shape ups on street-corners, where a new generation of day-labor agencies transports minimum-wage immigrant workers to day jobs in warehouses, construction sites and factories. This new casualization of immigrant work undercuts labor bargaining power, too.
So, by all means, let’s teach everyone to use computers, but let’s also recognize that this is only half the story. For the vast majority, decent earnings are also a matter of ground rules and bargaining power.
* Robert Kuttner is one of five contributing columnists to Business Week’s "Economic Viewpoint," and was the economics editor of The New Republic. Kuttner is the author of five books: Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets (1997); The End of Laissez-Faire (1991); The Life of the Party (1987); The Economic Illusion (1984); and Revolt of the Haves (1980).
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Copyright (C) 2000 by Robert Kuttner. Readers may redistribute this article to other individuals for noncommercial use, provided that the text and this notice remain intact. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author.
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< It’s a Hot Economy, but Not for Janitors, Others >
by Robert B. Reich*
April 12, 2000 (L.A. Times)
The American economy is so hot that Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, is worried it’s overheating. Dot-com billionaires are blooming like spring crocuses. The average pay of chief executives of major companies rose 18% in 1999 to $12 million. Across the managerial, professional and executive ranks of the United States, pay (including bonuses, stock options and perks) is skyrocketing. Afraid of losing their talent to the dot-coms, big law firms just hiked the pay for first-year associates to $120,000.
Greenspan worries that all this prosperity is causing consumers to buy too much–more than the economy can produce–which means inflation is just around the corner. That’s why he and his pals at the Fed have hiked interest rates five times since last June in an attempt to cool things down and head off inflation.
But wait. What about Los Angeles’ striking janitors? What about all workers at the lower end of the economy? Raising interest rates hurts people at the bottom, causing them to pay more for first mortgages and car loans, and maybe even costing them their jobs when the economy sags.
Unionized janitors in Los Angeles earn $6.80 to $7.90 per hour–less than $16,000 a year. Cleaning companies say they can’t afford to pay the janitors a dollar more per hour. Yet the janitors have been watching the rents soar in the office buildings they take care of, where they mop the floors, wash the tiles, clean the sinks and toilets and empty waste baskets–offices in which executives and professionals are pulling in larger and larger multiples of their take. Adjusted for inflation, janitors are earning less now than they did 15 years ago.
Janitors are not the only ones working harder for less. More than 2 million Americans work in nursing homes, bathing and feeding frail elderly people, cleaning their bedsores, lifting them out of bed and into wheelchairs and changing their diapers. They earn, on average, about the same as janitors. About 700,000 people work as home health care aides, attending to the elderly, sick or disabled at home. Their pay averages between $8 to $10 an hour, less than $20,000 a year. Another 1.3 million Americans work in hospitals as orderlies and attendants, at about the same rate.
The list goes on. An estimated 2.3 million Americans are paid to care for young children in child-care centers or as nannies at a median wage of $6.60 an hour, usually without benefits. This is less than what funeral attendants earn ($7.30 an hour) or pest controllers ($10.60 an hour). And 700,000 Americans are social workers or human service workers who attend to individuals and families with severe problems–alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence and mental illness–at an average pay of between $8 and $15 an hour.
Why are top lawyers, executives, financiers and dot-com impresarios earning so much more than ever before, while the nation’s caretakers are earning less? Economists will tell you that people earn what they’re "worth" in the market. It’s just supply and demand. Here’s the irony: The demand for lawyers, executives, financiers and dot-com impresarios can almost never be filled. The more you have of them, the more you need of them. Because of intense competition, they virtually create their own demand.
Meanwhile, the people who take care of buildings or people are in abundant supply, and the demand for them is not self-generating. The president of the Los Angeles Building Owners and Managers Assn. explained last week that janitors aren’t actual employees; they’re more like commodities. They’re a "purchased service, like so many others," he said. If unionized janitors charge too much for their services, he said, then building owners will give the work to non-unionized janitors who charge less.
The problem is, the economy doesn’t always reward people according to what they’re worth to society. Janitors, nurses aides, child-care workers and others like them are doing the sort of work that keeps the rest of us going–taking care of the things that the rest of us don’t have time for or just don’t want to do. They haven’t participated in the economic boom. They didn’t get raises in the roaring ’90s. Most of them don’t own any shares of stock, so they don’t ride the booming market. Many of them rent their homes, so they don’t get the benefit of the big rise in home prices over the last decade.
When Greenspan worries that Americans are doing too well and spending too much, he’s worrying about the wrong people. The big spenders are at or near the top, where most of the money has gone. This year, the richest 2.7 million Americans, making up the top 1%, will have as many after-tax dollars to spend as the bottom 100 million put together.
If Greenspan wants to put a damper on excessive spending brought on by too much wealth, he ought to set his sights on where the wealth is accumulating. He should urge Congress to make the income tax code more progressive, to increase capital-gains taxes and to pass a wealth tax on households whose net worth exceeds a million dollars.
* Robert B. Reich is University Professor and Maurice B. Hexter Professor for Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller Graduate School. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the first Clinton administration. He has written extensively for the Prospect on the international economy and American progressivism.
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Copyright (C) 2000 by Robert B. Reich. Readers may redistribute this article to other individuals for noncommercial use, provided that the text and this notice remain intact. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author.
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2000-05-13
