Essay by Martha Quillen
Politics – March 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
COLORADO CENTRAL MAGAZINE is ten years old this month, so I’ve been reading back issues and reflecting on past events. And I couldn’t help but notice that we are always advising people to attend meetings, and vote, and write letters to their congressmen or local newspapers.
But I’ve got a confession to make. Looking back, I’ve come to a conclusion:
Sometimes democracy just doesn’t seem to work.
Even when citizens try to stay informed and vote regularly, it’s hard for them to learn enough, know enough, or participate enough — or even to find the amount of time it takes — to make a real difference.
Even at the local level — or perhaps especially at the local level — political participation can feel futile.
Take Salida, for example. Very few businesses in Salida are large enough to offer health insurance or retirement benefits. Decent dental and optical coverage sound like an otherworldly fantasy here. Local businesses and employees often suffer seasonal income slumps. Utility costs keep escalating, and home-ownership is out of the reach of many working families.
Thus, Salidans often champion cost containment. Yet the cost of living here mounts regardless — exacerbated by growth and expansion, soaring medical costs, rising real estate prices, higher tap fees, stricter building codes, increased water and sewer bills, higher traffic fines, lower speed limits, more city personnel….
DEMOCRACY IS A PECULIAR institution. Often popular measures are inextricably linked to unpopular measures.
You see this so often at the national level that you take it for granted. If a senator wants to pass a bill to give the elderly prescription drug benefits, he’s got to make Canadian pharmaceuticals illegal, too. It happens all the time: Our representatives either have to pass insupportable rubbish or reject what they want.
And the national media doesn’t help. Reporters get so wrapped up in presenting breaking news that they pay more attention to the scoop than to what it’s a scoop of.
Thus, Janet Jackson was the big news this week, temporarily eclipsing her brother Michael, who in turn has nearly surpassed Jon Benet and O.J. Simpson in the first-place-headliner competition.
Then, this irrelevant frivolity actually became a major issue, and the FCC, congressmen, and the “all news” networks weighed in (as if there were no wars to report, no primaries, no foreign affairs).
But American news sources regularly ignore information critical for voters in a democratic society. For instance, the press seldom says much about who added unpopular swill to popular legislation, and therefore those responsible probably never get the hundreds of thousands of angry emails they deserve. So the practice of pandering to campaign contributors by introducing onerous riders and passing corrupt, adulterated legislation continues.
But questionable combos happen at the local level, too.
For example, in a 2001 election, the Salida school district asked for employee raises across the board, even though administrators were already decently paid. Teacher salaries, however, were somewhat substandard, and staff pay was downright miserly.
The measure passed, and perhaps it should have — since support staff needed immediate relief, and the school board had made it clear that they would not consider a proposal without administrative raises.
Thus everybody got a 12.8% raise, which meant that administrators who made over $60,000 a year got a substantial gain, whereas support staff who made $6.50 per hour got a paltry increase — and still couldn’t afford health insurance or adequate housing.
But that, of course, is not merely a local problem. Increasing discrepancies between management and worker salaries — which often leave full-time employees qualifying for public assistance — are endemic throughout the country.
It’s doubtful that anyone supports such extraordinary discrepancies — eighty-million dollar packages for the exec, with lay-offs and salary cuts for the workers — but our current laws and tax codes seem to favor such practices.
Perhaps that’s because democracy has its quirks. Indeed, unpopular proposals tend to be bizarrely vital. No matter how many times the citizenry rejects them, some ideas just won’t die; they’re as persistent as vampires, returning again and again.
At the local level, proposed airports, golf courses, recreation centers, and water projects often have to be beaten down repeatedly. And sometimes even that isn’t enough. In Salida, citizens gathered to protest putting police officers in our public schools twice, and the issue seemed resolved both times. But as soon as the city got a new police chief the idea was resurrected.
THOSE WITH VESTED INTERESTS — whether they be real estate developers, school teachers, front range cities desperate for water, or government employees — generally have a lot more incentive to stick with their campaigns. Thus, unpopular measures frequently get adopted (especially when it’s something that doesn’t require a vote) — because eventually critics run out of time and energy.
But sometimes citizens come to appreciate those measures — since proposals are seldom as appalling as opponents fear. In the long run, however, it’s hard to curb costs or fix ineffective systems when people with vested interests exert so much power.
All in all, ordinary people can change a multitude of things, including business, culture, styles, entertainment, radio stations, and Presidents. But the general course of things ordinarily stays stubbornly on track — especially when it’s moving in a disagreeable direction.
Education is a good example. Teachers keep assuring me that our schools are getting worse every year.
I think that’s because schools keep getting bigger, more impersonal, more bureaucratic, and less manageable. And many agree. Studies have shown that smaller schools, smaller class sizes, and more one-on-one work with teachers can reduce violence and improve test scores.
Others, however, believe our schools are faltering because students are undisciplined; standards are low; sports are more relevant than academics; our society is too litigious to foster cooperation; parents are negligent; or teachers are incompetent.
No doubt, there’s some truth in all of those views.
But there are a few citizens who actually believe that our schools are better than ever. And curiously enough, they may be right, too.
After all, it’s no longer considered sufficient to teach students to read, write and cipher at an eighth grade level or to encourage poor students to drop out.
Today, understanding computers and math, and being able to pass the SAT and write an absorbing personal essay for a college entrance application — or produce a dynamite resumé for a job — are important skills. Yet U.S. students who can barely read, write or multiply routinely graduate from high school.
Thus, most citizens are alarmed about current trends in education. But we also seem incapable of changing them.
And the same holds true for U.S. medical care; which keeps getting more and more expensive.
And our justice system clearly has some serious flaws (unless you consider it reasonable to imprison the innocent and parole the dangerous).
And most citizens seem to doubt the morality of their fellow Americans, although some consider war immoral, while others repudiate nudity, or homosexuality, or materialism, or all of the above, or none.
Considering these basic ideological conflicts, it’s not surprising that Americans can’t seem to fix much. But economic differences also divide the citizenry. In Salida, for example, some people want trees, walkways and mini-parks along both sides of Highway 50; whereas others think such frills will drive them into bankruptcy.
NOT ALL ISSUES are economic, though. Chaffee County citizens regularly wrangle about planning, zoning, growth, new subdivisions, roads, boisterous children, school policies, and the like. But citizens don’t necessarily have a lot of say about such things, since individual rights and contradictory desires have to be considered. (When it comes to democracy, such limitations are wonderful if you’re a Wiccan living in the Bible Belt, but not so welcome when it means teens get to hang out on your street corner.)
Citizens want police officers to patrol neighborhoods, discourage noise, and keep their roads safe; but they don’t want to be unduly regulated themselves.
Rural residents tend to be dubious about new developments; yet many want to build new homes.
Sometimes a reasonable balance is hard to establish, especially in places where a large number of residents can’t afford expensive but sensible improvements.
And all too often, our representatives deliver things that nobody wants:
How many citizens wanted congress to outlaw cheap Canadian drugs?
How many Coloradans wanted rampant growth? Or mile upon mile of stark, rectangular mini-malls fronted by ugly parking lots? Or sprawl?
How many people favor uninsured workers? Declining math scores? Soaring housing costs? Or latchkey kids?
BUT ABC COMMENTATOR John Stossel recently hosted a special in which he maintained that people’s dour viewpoints are dead wrong. According to Stossel things are much better than people believe: Our air and water are cleaner; we have more leisure time than ever; most families don’t really need two breadwinners to thrive; the rich pay more than their fair share of taxes; and the wealthy are not happier than the rest of us.
In essence, Stossel claims that things are actually very good these days, and people should be happy about that. Except — and this is a huge exception for people in Central Colorado — that’s only true for people with family incomes over $50,000.
“Once you get to that $50,000 level, more money doesn’t buy more happiness,” Jean Chatsky of Money Magazine contends. And only people with family incomes below $30,000 could be “significantly” happier with more money.
But that means most families in Saguache County (where the median family income was $29,405 in the 2000 census) could be significantly happier.
And families in Salida and Alamosa (where the median family income was about $38,000) would no doubt welcome some cheering up.
Apparently a considerable number of people really are as happy as money can make them, however, since the median family income for Colorado was $55,883.
Except median family incomes are decidedly optimistic.
When you look at median household incomes, which include both family and non-family members living together — and which therefore embrace everyone, including families; old people living alone or with caretakers; single people living with friends; young people living together but not yet married; gay people; and unmarried couples with children — things look far worse.
FOR SAGUACHE, the median household income was $21,544; in Salida, $28,790; in Alamosa, $25,453. (Income, in this case, means money earned by all household residents over 15 years old, including Social Security, retirement, disability, or public assistance.)
In Colorado, the median household income was $47,203 (and 2.3 persons lived in the average household). In the U.S. it was $41,994.
Thus there’s no doubt about it; most citizens in our region have to be decidedly thriftier than their fellow Americans.
But money isn’t everything. And it may not even be as significant as Stossel and Chatsky imply.
A moderate degree of security, for instance, strikes me as far more relevant. People need to know that they’ll be able to eat and keep a roof over their head if they get ill or lose a job.
They need to know that there are other jobs and opportunities available, and that they have safeguards — in the form of savings, insurance, or marketable skills.
But I suspect such security is rare for most of the people living in our region.
When we started this magazine, Central Colorado was a poor rural region, where seasonal tourism had eclipsed traditional mining and ranching.
And that hasn’t changed.
But this decade has brought a virtual renaissance of growth, construction, historic preservation, and new business to Salida.
Yet despite years of unprecedented growth, wages here are still abysmally low.
Why?
Personally, I believe it’s because we’re full of bizarre prejudices which allege that some work is worthy and some is not. Of course, we claim that some work pays better because it requires more skill. But if pay were really linked to skill, we’d pay carpenters, seamstresses and short order cooks a lot more, and auto mechanics would thrive — since I’d bet most people want their mechanic to be just as skilled as their doctor.
We also claim that we discriminate because some jobs require more education. But college professors ordinarily spend more years in school than CEOs, and make loads less.
Nor do risk, or the difficulty of the work translate into higher wages. Policemen and fireman earn modest wages, and nothing is more difficult than digging ditches. And if we paid more for jobs requiring devotion and reliability, we’d pay our day-care workers more than anyone.
Our concepts of what constitutes valuable work are so ingrained that we take them for granted. But our notions don’t hold true from country to country, or from era to era. Doctors, office workers, and teachers have made considerable advances since the days of Dickens.
But I contend that wages are primarily determined by who traditionally did the work. And for thousands of years the poor cleaned, fixed things, tilled the fields, served the food, and tended the children. So now we offer slave wages for work that was once done by slaves. Yet surely we have moved beyond believing that anyone should work for less than it takes to live decently (albeit thriftily).
Stossel and his ilk, however, refuse to believe that a large portion of Americans are struggling. But that’s probably because many working-class citizens, who are scrambling to get by, aren’t penniless, homeless, or even conspicuously poor; they just can’t keep up with the rising costs of medical care, housing, utilities, or putting something aside for old age.
Stossel says Americans are doing just fine, but most households don’t take in the $50,000 he designates as plenty. (And you can bet Stossel isn’t offering to share his excess earnings.)
STOSSEL CLAIMS THAT the rich pay their fair share of taxes because they pay a higher percentage than the poor. But he doesn’t mention that the wealthy hire clever tax attorneys to assure that their adjusted incomes are low or non-existent (after all, Bill Gates did lose those millions when the market faltered).
Nor does Stossel mention that multi-millionaires are notorious cheaters, often neglecting to pay social security taxes on their legions of servants.
Nor does Stossel point out that in those halcyon early fifties that the Republicans extol, the tax rate for citizens making more than one million dollars was 87.1%. Whereas today, the tax rate for millionaires is less than 30%. (In 1998, people making over a million dollars paid 27.5%.)
Nor does Stossel mention that the U.S. is the only first-world nation without universal health care.
But far more importantly, Stossel doesn’t explain why some sleazy auto executive who’s driving his employer into bankruptcy should earn so much more than we do.
So what does this have to do with the past ten years in Central Colorado?
Everything.
In the last decade, locals have tried to cut costs, but they keep mounting. And when the government attempts to make things better for the needy — with prescription drug benefits, scholarships, utility subsidies and the like — it tends to push prices up and make things even harder for workers who are trying to make ends meet.
And despite our chronic cry for more from our governments — or perhaps part and parcel of it — we can’t seem to hold on to what we have. In the last few years, Colorado has cut funding for highways, courts, education, and libraries, plus medical and mental health, and state outreach services.
Now it doesn’t look like we’ll ever have enough money to fix dangerous highway intersections in Salida, Poncha Springs, or Buena Vista. But that’s okay; the driver’s license office isn’t open anyway — and we did get that tax refund.
All in all, government funding is determined by who cries loudest and spends the most. It’s emotionial, unreliable, illogical and all too often, a matter of life and death.
AMERICANS HAVE PRIDED themselves on living in a middle-class society since our nation’s beginnings, but our country’s middle class may actually be a new development. In reality, the U.S. has historically been home to huge underclasses, whose race or nationality have prohibited their inclusion. First there were slaves, then hordes of immigrants — Chinese, Irish, Italians — and destitute southern blacks, who poured into industrialized northern cities to work as maids, janitors, and “shoeshine boys.”
In the early 1900s, servants, field hands, and day laborers had to struggle for the basic right to come and go as they please. In Colorado, coal miners were paid in company scrip and typically had to buy room, board and groceries from the mine; sometimes men were charged more than the mine paid, but workers were not allowed to leave until their “debt” was settled.
Teddy Roosevelt, the President from 1901 to 1909, had a fondness for trust-busting and he helped establish employer liability laws. In the teens and ’20s labor unions and trade organizations proliferated.
But our current concept of the middle class was probably born after Franklin Roosevelt established relief organizations to counter the Great Depression. Soon, good jobs and good wages became a goal, rather than a stepping stone to acquiring farmland.
After World War II, the GI Bill expanded that vision by offering unprecedented opportunities for poor young men.
The middle class reached its zenith in the 1950s. Americans had homes, cars, televisions, and pension plans. Food and health care were relatively inexpensive, and minority groups were starting to share in the nation’s prosperity.
But in the ’60s, JFK decided that he could stimulate the economy by reducing taxes. Soon the rich got richer, prices rose, and the middle class was hard pressed to keep up.
In our era of tax-cutting, it should be remembered that income tax revenues don’t necessarily go toward welfare, food stamps, or the poor. They can go to parks, corporations, trains, airports, roads, environmental clean-ups, or medical research.
But taxing the very wealthy accomplishes more than supporting government projects. Taxation serves to keep people from acquiring so much money that they can drive up prices or manipulate our political system. Today, there are more millionaires than ever before, and more multi-millionaires, and we have the very first multi-billionaires in history.
In the 1970s, labor organizations faltered as minorities broke into separate groups struggling for their own civil rights. By then, the middle-class ideal of the poor but honest hard-working fellow, who keeps his nose clean and diligently supports his family, was fading.
In the Reagan era, the ’50s clerk in a grey flannel suit was replaced with the captain of industry, a dynamic, self-made millionaire. This modern man was nothing new; he’d strutted through the 1890s and 1920s. In the 1980s, tales of those savvy tycoons were dusted off and resurrected as battalions of bright, young, Armani-clad entrepreneurs left working class ideals behind to become masters of the universe.
But by the ’90s a substantial number of these would-be magnates were in trouble for insider trading — or in rehab.
Now, in the new millennium, we have two wars to pay for, and two other countries to put back on track. Today, America presumably has bigger problems than people who can’t afford health insurance anymore; or neighbors who can’t afford to get their electrical problem fixed; or commuters who can’t afford to trade in their 20-year-old car, which needs all of that expensive front end work that they can’t afford — just yet.
IN RETROSPECT, it’s not surprising that local citizens haven’t been able to curb costs. Frugality is not exalted in our era, and poor people are not respected. These days, it’s better to spend too much than to let on that you may not have enough.
Nor is it surprising that democracy doesn’t work too well when the citizens are asking for something that’s inimical to our society — and attempts to economize are definitely viewed as inimical.
If you’ve lived in Salida for the last decade, you’ve no doubt heard why it was absolutely, positively wrong to deny the city: more police officers; more administrators, new cars, new firefighting equipment; a golf course; stringent building codes; a reservoir; a middle school; employee raises; better benefit packages; plus plans to phase out cyclone fences, trailers, modular homes and other symptoms of scarcity; plus loitering laws, curfews, noise ordinances, park restrictions, alcohol and pet prohibitions, lower speed limits, and anti-skateboarding, biking, rollerblading and cruising regulations — all replete with designated fines.
More than half of Salida’s households are wanting, but nobody seems inclined to give them a break.
The cities, schools, doctors, and landlords need more, more, more…. But if we continue to go in this direction, surely something has to give.
Unfortunately, I suspect it’s going to be the servants giving to their masters.
–Martha Quillen
