Or would she and I have clung to each other, both so fatally wounded that neither of us could ever have recovered?
I don’t know what would have happened if Mother hadn’t been able to break our fall with a minimum-wage job at Sears. But I do know that policy decisions about important issues like the minimum wage matter. Those decisions—made in far-off Washington, reached in elegant rooms by confident, well-fed men and women—really matter.
Back in the 1960s, when my mother worked at Sears, a minimum-wage job could keep a family of three afloat. Mother had a high school education and no work experience, but when Sears needed someone to answer the phones, the law required the company to pay her an hourly rate that was enough to keep our family of three up and on our feet.
And that’s where the sick-in-the-back-of-the-throat unfairness of it nearly chokes me. In the years since my mother went to work at Sears, America has gotten richer. In fact, the country’s total wealth is at an all-time high.
My mother wasn’t much into politics, but I’m sure she would have assumed that fifty years later, the minimum wage would be a lot higher. If it could feed a family of three and pay a mortgage in 1965, surely by now a minimum wage would let a family afford, say, a home and a car—and maybe even a little money for college applications for a skinny daughter. Right?
Wrong. Way wrong.
Adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage today is lower than it was in 1965—about 24 percent lower. That job at Sears allowed my mother to eke out a living for a family of three; today, a mother working full-time and getting paid the minimum wage cannot afford the rent on the average two-bedroom apartment anywhere in America. In Oklahoma, where I grew up, that mother wouldn’t even come close to providing a poverty-level income for her family. Paying rent, keeping groceries on the table, having a little money left over for school shoes or lunch money—those are all out of reach. Today a mother who tries to break her family’s fall simply can’t grab the same branch that was there for my family.
Today, Washington has decided to turn away as more families than ever tumble over a financial cliff and crash on the rocks below. I’m in my fifth year in the United States Senate, and during my time in office I’ve learned a bitter lesson: a Republican-led Congress just doesn’t care.
Where people end up in life is about more than hard work and good fortune. The rules matter, too. It matters whether the government blows tens of billions of dollars on tax loopholes for billionaires or whether that same money is used to lower costs for students who have to borrow money to go to college. It matters whether Wall Street can pocket billions of dollars by cheating people on mortgages and tricking them on credit cards or if there’s a cop on the beat to keep them honest. It matters whether the minimum wage is set so low that a full-time worker still lives in poverty or if minimum wage also means a livable wage.
When I sit in meetings or conferences and listen to people who have investment portfolios and second homes worry about the impact of raising the minimum wage on giant businesses like McDonald’s and Best Buy without a single thought about how the fry cooks or checkout clerks support themselves and their families from week to week, I grind my teeth until my head hurts. When I hear senators make oh-so-clever theoretical economic arguments while ignoring rock-solid data, I want to scream. When President Trump nominates a labor secretary who opposes a living wage and who made his own fortune by squeezing fast-food workers, I get the urge to bang my head on the table. And when I hear my colleagues in Congress express their deep concern for those who have already made it even as they cheerfully dismiss everyone who is busting their rear just to get by, the fury rises in me like a physical force.
The America of opportunity is under assault. We once ran this country to benefit hardworking people who didn’t have much, to grow a middle class, to create opportunities for our kids. We once held up the ideal that poor kids would get the same chances in life as everyone else.
We once believed that opportunity was not a zero-sum game; more for me didn’t have to mean less for you.
We once believed that the greatest country on earth could bend our future toward more opportunity for more of our people. But today every decision in Washington has a tilt. Politicians think about how they will fund their next campaigns, lobbyists press for every advantage, and armies of fancy corporate lawyers encircle government agencies. Big-deal executives earn millions on Wall Street, then spin through a revolving door that puts them in charge of government policy for a few years before they go back to the corporate side to make even more money. Think tanks support so-called experts who will offer an opinion on anything—if the price is right. The result is that the rich and powerful flourish, while everyone else is left further and further behind. The cumulative impact of decades of these decisions has been to hollow out America’s middle class and to leave us, as a nation, weakened.
The game is rigged. It is deliberately, persistently, and aggressively rigged to help the rich and powerful get richer and more powerful. Whether mild-mannered men or crazy demagogues are pushing policy decisions, it matters what those decisions are and who they are designed to help.
MIDDLE-CLASS AND BROKE
A lot of people say the game isn’t rigged. Some very smart people who are fully committed to making this a better country sing the praises of the American economic system. And they have a lot of numbers to back them up. Yes, there was a dip around the time of the 2008 crash, but the big picture looks great. As a country, America keeps getting richer and richer and richer.
There are so many happy stories to tell:
Corporate profits are breaking new records.
Inflation has remained low for years.
The amount of wealth we produce every year is double what it was a generation ago.
Unemployment is down, and a lot of people thrown out of work after the financial crash now have jobs.
It’s gotten so good that even lavish Wall Street parties have ratcheted up. Citadel, a major hedge fund, had a good 2015. It celebrated with a party featuring Katy Perry (for a rumored $500,000) and another party starring Maroon 5 (also $500,000 or so) along with—my favorite touch—violinists suspended from the ceiling by cables. Maroon 5 and Katy Perry are hugely talented, and both have fought hard for progressive causes. If a billionaire wants to pay them and an army of violinists a fortune, they should all take the money. But good grief, a party where just the entertainment costs as much as it would take to feed a family of four for half a century? The next year, according to news reports, Citadel’s CEO was buying a new condo spanning three floors of a high-rise overlooking Central Park, a pad priced at a cool $200 million. This condo in the sky has about the same square footage as twelve typical American homes. And why shouldn’t he go for it? He had already set the records for the most expensive home purchases in Chicago and Miami, so obviously it was time to upgrade his New York digs.
Pop the champagne corks!
But before we clink our glasses and exchange air kisses, let’s slide past all those cheery headlines and swanky celebrations and take a close look at the reality that is lived by millions of American families. Even a quick