|
The
recent closings of Thomasville Furniture and Jefferson Apparel in
Ashe County and Bristol Compressors in Alleghany County sadly point
out how market forces determine economic policies, shape our lives,
and reorder the society in which we live. This reminds me of Bob Dylan’s
grand old song ”The Times, They Are a Changin.' "
Times certainly are changing for the 50-year-old worker stranded
by plant closings and forced to search for a minimum wage job without
health benefits. Recent trade agreements, a free market philosophy,
and corporate campaign contributions have created an economy in which
many American workers are forced into low paying jobs or onto welfare
rolls.
The recent passage in Congress of free trade and Fast Track Authority has scattered working families' jobs to the four corners of the globe. Both of our local representatives in Congress voted for this measure, despite the fact that thousands of workers have lost their livelihood across western North Carolina due to phony free trade agreements. All this to profit a few multi-national corporations while workers in western North Carolina are devastated by layoffs resulting from the NAFTA agreement. The problem rings with Biblical force. When one Thomasville executive can earn more in a year than the average Thomasville worker can earn in his entire lifetime, something is terribly wrong. The old fashioned virtues of loyalty and hard work no longer count. The American worker is now forced to compete with prison and child labor because of what we call free trade.
The 2004 election that the corporations bought and paid for is rewarding the rich. One may ask, “Can we seriously believe that in a time of prosperity beyond measure, when the nation basks in wealth undreamed of by Solomon, that anyone will listen?” Yes, because while the wealthy have been getting much, much richer through a system that has brought enormous wealth to the top 10%, the lowest 20% of our population is poorer than before. As Jim Thompson points out in his article on rural poverty in The Mountain Times, working families have seen no real improvement in the last 20 years. The problem is that the rich, the near rich, and corporations are more than satisfied. The working poor are worse off.
Jefferson, the architect of American democracy, believed that government should stand between the people and concentrations of power whether political or economic. Today an oligarchy of wealth threatens to overwhelm American Society. Which leaders are speaking out? Where are the Democrats? Silence across the land is deafening.
In my view, our governing classes are so indebted to an obscene campaign cash system that they lack the nerve to make decisions that defy the law of the market place ruling our economy. The market system works well for the top 10%. But it places profit and loss above human lives, values, and the environment and is immune to moral appeals. It sends working family jobs to the four corners of the earth and places all human values and the environment that sustains human life on the auction block. It takes our dreams, our hopes, and our loves and makes them things of profit and loss.
America developed from a stout form of republicanism that placed the national good above private profits. Sadly this ideal no longer counts. Harper's reports that today 450 corporations control the American economy. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 50 are trans-national corporations. Now, one sees a particular reverence for market forces –as Adam Smith said, a frequently unseen and mysterious hand that moves among us to reorder our society. These forces have become a kind of secular god in the modern lexicon, and a peculiar one at that, for they seem to absolve us from all social, moral and ethical responsibility. If developers want to dislodge elderly residents from their homes in a Watauga County trailer park to make way for a huge tourist hotel, or over-build around New Market Center in Boone, or level mountain ridges in Avery County, who can blame them? Aren’t they simply responding to market forces?
The financial wealth of the top 10% of American households is greater than the combined wealth of the bottom 90% of households. Bill Gates’s wealth is equal to the 120 million poorest households in our nation. The 200 richest people doubled their net worth between the years of 1990 and 2000, and have a combined net worth which equals that of the world’s poorest 3.5 billion people. These statistics raise profound moral questions for our society.
Traveling along North Carolina’s interstates around Charlotte and the Research Triangle one sees abundant evidence of rampant prosperity, high rise apartments, chemical and high tech enterprises, and the trophy homes of the new rich. Farther to the west, however, it is a different story. In the hollows and crossroads of Appalachia one sees the decline of rural livelihoods –both farming and manufacturing. The mainstream core of mountain communities, small businesses are struggling against the Wal-Marts and other corporate giants that thrive on advantages unavailable to local merchants. Rural people are being left behind in the new prosperity. Mountain economies are more and more based on a minimum wage tourist industry. A flood of refugees from the rural highlands is moving into the lucrative job markets of Charlotte and Atlanta. Although Both Ashe and Watauga County students lead the state in raw achievement scores, they are forced to leave the area to search for jobs that will allow them to support a family. This is a tremendous drain of human and social capital that mountain communities can ill afford. The chief export from Appalachia is high school graduates. Statistics from the 2000 Census indicate that 22.5% of mountain children live in poverty. The population of mountain counties is growing demographically older and is populated with retirees. Sixty percent of Ashe county residents have no health coverage.
I can trace my own love for the environment, my appreciation for the edifying qualities of work, my concern for thrift and conservation, my great love for animals, my awe of nature, wildlife and the myriad forms of life that surround us, my feelings for my fellow man and my sense of place from my upbringing as a boy in rural North Carolina. I fear that rural values are being lost due to market forces beyond our control. Corporate control of political decision-making through a corrosive financial system and through corporate control of media is silently reordering the society in which we live. (Fifty years ago there were 100 media companies; today, five companies basically control the national media. We have many outlets, but the same voices.)
This is not a statement of candidacy, but one of concern. Those who favor multi–national control of the economy are powerful, rich, have friends in high places, exercise control of the media. Our friends are few and often dismissed as extremists. But do we not have our minds, spirits, truth, and the justice of our cause as weapons? It is, in my view, a true act of courage to stand for truth and justice for working men and women.
Let me end by saying that there is a dimension to our common life, one of mutual respect, indeed a respect for all life, a purpose of helping others, not in terms of cash or credit but of lives lived out in meaning, engaged in a sense of community and justice. I deeply appreciate your reading this and sincerely hope that you will participate in the conversation.
— Delmas
|
