An Economy of Hope

Increasingly, the economic news has been better and better. Unemployment continues to decline, to a current low of 5.6%, while the stock market has never been higher. Officially, the recession ended a few years ago. Yet the pain of the recession hasn't abated for the many millions who remain unemployed, including a large number of unemployed millennials, whose unemployment rate stood at 15% as of September 2014, especially those who have lost unemployment benefits. It does not lessen the pain of a family with two working parents, struggling to get by, who have had their SNAP benefits cut by Congress. The nearly one in four children in this country who live in poverty don't care a bit about how high the stock market has gone. The schools, universities and libraries across the country that have seen sharp cuts in funding can take little solace in decreasing unemployment, as they come up with increasingly creative ways to keep the lights on.

The disconnect between politicians and media outlets that trumpet the good economic news and much of the country that still feels like it is living in a recession is a staggering one. Our economy does not work for the good of most of the citizens of the country. Increasingly, our economy only works for a very few, and it works very well. While corporations bring in record profits, which they put into buying up their own stocks to make even more profit, student loan debt in the U.S. is at $1.2 trillion. Most of the gains made since the official end of the recession have gone to the very wealthy, while middle class incomes have either stagnated or fallen. 

This is an untenable situation. We know that our economy depends on consumers to keep the wheels turning, yet an increasingly strapped middle class, burdened down by debt with higher levels of economic insecurity has little extra money to do so. But this is not the most important problem with our economy.

When our economy has marginalized so many, when it works solely for the benefit of the very wealthy and corporations, it is an economy not worth continuing. Is this the kind of economy we want, where such a great imbalance of wealth has been allowed to happen? Where a worker can put in endless hours working two or three jobs and still not be able to make it? Where students routinely graduate with debt equivalent to a home mortgage? Where getting sick can mean losing your job, and with it the health insurance that kept medical bills from bankrupting a person? Where mushrooming health care deductibles keep even middle class workers with health insurance away from the doctor? Where salaried workers routinely put in far more than 40 hours a week, skipping vacation time as companies cut positions and pile additional duties on the remaining workers? An economy where most who work must labor endlessly just to keep their heads above water, without being able to save for the future, is a hopeless economy, and one that is not worth saving.

We need instead to create an economy of hope, one driven not for the enrichment of a small minority but one of shared prosperity. An economy where, instead of squabbling over resources, rich and poor alike have access to good schools, well-funded local resources, with a strong safety net to catch those who experience misfortune. An economy where very few live in the kind of grinding poverty that we see in so many places today. An economy where no one goes hungry, not even the very poorest. An economy where we work fewer hours, for the same pay, to allow us the joy of spending time with family, or developing hobbies, or volunteering outside of work, things that will enrich our lives and our society. We need an economy where healthcare and education are considered a right, not a privilege for those who can afford it, and saving for a house or a retirement is not a far-away dream but easily done by anyone working full-time. We need an economy that gives people hope for better lives, not the relentless, soulless machine we have now.

Such an economy is not a socialist daydream, but eminently possible, if only we have the courage to choose it. It will require as much a change in the way we think, and a change in how we view the rich and the poor, as it will changes to our laws and regulations. If we can cease to imagine that poverty is somehow deserved, and that wealth is the result of hard work alone, and admit that chance and luck have much to do with it. If we begin to value our own time more than we value possessions and cease our cultish devotion to an unregulated market. If we can manage to think in the longer term, to see what kind of world we are in the process of creating and to imagine a better way, we can change our economy to work for everyone. This won't be done without a fight, a long push against the same interests that have made it so that our economy only works for the rich, but I believe that it can be done. Moreover, for all of those struggling in a hopeless economy, it must be done.