Bill Moyers | The Mugging oftheAmerican Dream Page 1of 7 Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of BillMoyer's speech, delivered June 3 at the Take Back America conference in Washington. DC. The transcript of the speech as delivered can be found at ourfuture.ora. Go to Original The Mugging of the American Dream By Bill Moyers AlterNet.org Monday 06 June 2005 Washingtonis a divided city - not between north andsouth as in Uncoin's time, but between those who can buy ail the government they want and those who can t even afford a seatin the bleachers, Ifs good to be with you again. Your passion for democracy is inspiring andyour enthusiasm contagious. Ican'timagine a moreexuberantgathering today except possibly at the KStreet branch ofthe Mastersofthe Universe where they are celebrating their coup at the Securities and Exchange Commission I VTish that Icould have attended allyour sessions, listened to ail the speakers, and heard allthe points of viewthat have been raised here. Butthanks to C-Span !was able to catch enough of your proceedings to realize you covered so many subjects andtouched onso many ideasthatyouVe left melittle to say.Thafs okay, because as Bob Borosage reminded us backin January, whatmatters mostisn'twhatis said inWashington butwhat youdo onthe ground across the country to build an independent infrastructure, generateIdeas, drive local campaigns, persuadethe skeptic, organize your neighbors, and carry on the movementat the grassroots forsocial and economicjustice. Before you go home, hcme^er, Bob has asked meto talk aboutwhafs at stake inwhatyou are doing. Given all that has already beensaid. Iwill take my cuefrom thelatehumorist Robert Benchley who arrived for hisfinal exam in International law at Harvard to find that the test consisted of this one instruction; "Discuss the arbitration of the international fisheries problem in respect to hatcheries protocol anddragnet and procedure as itaffects (a) the point ofview ofthe United Statesand (b) the point ofview ofGreat Britain." Benchley wasdesperate but he v^^s also honest, and he wrote: "I know nothing about the point ofvlew of Great Britain in the arbitration of the international fisheries problem, and nothing about the point of view of the United States. Ishall therefore discuss the question from the point of view of the fish." Thats wrhat I have done in much of mywork injournalism. Thirty-five years ago almostto the day Iset out on a three-month trip ofover 10, 000 miles to write a book called "Listening toAmerica." Icompleted the book butI've never finished the trip; never was able to come offthe road; never couldstop listening. My woridview has been a workin progress, molded largelyby the stories I've heardfrom the people I've met Ivwint to tell youthis morning aboutsome ofthose people. They tell us whafs at stake. I begin with two families in Milwaukee. The breadvwnners In both households losttheir jobsin thatgreatwave ofdownsizing In 1991 as corporations began moving jobs outofthe city and outofthe country. In a series ofdocumentaries over the next decade my colleagues and Ichronicled their efforts to copewith the wrenching changes in their lives and find a placefor themselves inthe newglobal economy. I grewup vwth peoplelike them. They'rethe kind my mottier called"thesalt ofthe earth" (takesone to know one!) They love their children, care abouttheir neighborhoods, go to church every Sunday, and work hard allweek. But like millions ofAmericans,these two families in Milwaukee were playing by the mles and still losing. Bythe endofthe decadethey were running harder but slipping behind, andthe gap between them and prosperous America had reached Grand Canyon proportions. Ivi^nt toshowyou a very brief excerpt from that first documentary. It airedon PBSin January 1992 with the title "Minimum Wages: The New Economy." YouH see thefather ofonefamily as he looks for work after losing his machinist's Job atthe big manufacturer, Briggs and Stratton. You'll meet his virife In their kitchen as they make a desperate call to the bankthat is threatening toforeclose ontheir homeafterfailing to meettheir mortgage payments. During ourfilming the fathers In both families became seriously ill. One was hospitalized fortwomonths, leaving the family $30,000 indebt. You'll hear the second family talk about what it's like when both parents losetheir jobs, depriving them ofhealth insurance and putting their children's education up for grabs. Take a look. [Video Segment] Seeingthose people again Ithought ofthe interviews thatthe Campaign for America's Future conducted around Wie country on the eve ofyour conference. Awoman inColumbus, Ohio, told one interviewer something that I've heard indifferent ways In my own reporting over the pastfew years. Shesaid: "Everyday life pulls families apart." It takes a moment for the implications ofthat to hithome. Thinkabout It: Our country, the richest and most powerful nation In the history of the race - a place vrtiere "everyday life pulls families apart" http://www.tmthout.org/issues_05/printer_060605LA.shtml 6/7/2005 Bill Moyers | The Mugging ofthe American Dream Page 2 of7 What turns these personal traumas Into a politicaltravesty is that the people we're talidng about are deeply patriotic. They love America. But they no longer believe they matter to the people w^o run the country. When our film opens, they are watching theinauguration ofBill Clinton ontelevision in 1992. ^ theendofthedecade, when our final film in theseries aired, they were paying little attention to politics; they simply didn't think their concerns would ever be addressed by our governing elites. They are not cynical - their religious faith leaves them little capacity for cynicism >but they know the system is rigged against them. As it is. You know the story: For years now a relatively small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income as large economic and financial institutions obtained unprecedented levels of power over daily life. In 1960 the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30-foId. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold. (See Joshua Holland, AlterNet, posted 4/25^05.) Such concentrations of wealth would be far less of an issue if everyone were benefiting proportionally. But thafs not the case. Statistics tell the story. Yes, 1know - statistics can cause the eyes to glaze over, but as one of my mentors once reminded me, "It is the mark of a truly educated man [or vraman] to t>edeei^ moved by statistics." Lets see if these statistics move you. While weVe witnessed several periods of immense growth in recent decades, the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers - that's a heap of people - fell by 7 percent between 1973and 2000. During 2004 and the first couple of months this year, wages failed to keep pace with inflation for the first time since the 1990 recession. They were up somewhat in April, but it still means that "woridngAmericans effectively took an across-the-board pay cut at a time when the economy grew by a healthy four percent and corporate profits hit record highs as companies got more (M'oductivity out of workers while keeping pay raises down." Believe it or not, the United States now ranks the highest among the highly developed countries in each of the seven measures of inequality tracked by the index. While we enjoy the second highest GDP in the world (excluding tiny Luxembourg), we rank dead last among the 20 most developed countries in fighting poverty and we're off the chart in tenns of the number of Americans living on half the median income or less. And the outiook is for more of the same. On the eve of George W. Bush's second inauguration The Economist - not exactly a Mancistrag - produced a sobering analysis of what is happening to the old notion that any American can get to the top. With income inequality not seen since the first Gilded Age (and this is The Economist editors speaking, not me) - with "an education system increasingly stratified with fewer resources than those of their richer contemporaries" and great universities "increasingly reinforcing rather than reducing these educational inequalities" - with corporate employees finding it "harder...to start at the bottom and rise up the company hierarchy by dint of hard work and self-improvemenf - "with the yawning gap between incomes atthe top and bottom" - the editors of The Economist - all friends of business and advocates of capitalism and free markets - concluded that "The United States risks caldlying into a European-style class-based society." Let me run that by you again: "The United States risks caldlying into a European-style dass-based sodety." Or worse. The Wall Street Journal is no Marxist sheet, eitiier, although its ecBtorial page can be just as rigid and dogmatic as old Stalinists. The Journal's reporters, however, are among the best in the country. They're devoted to getting as dose as possible to the verifiabletruth and descriliHng what they find with the varnish off.Two weeks ago a front-page leader in the Journal concluded that "As the gap between rich and poor has widened since 1970, the odds that a child bom in poverty wilt dimbto wealth - or tiiat a rich child wll fell into middle dass - remain 8tuck....Desplte the widespread belief that the U.S. remains a more mobile sodety than Europe, economists and sodologlsts say that in recent decades the typical child starting out in poverty in continental Europe (or in Canada) has had a better chance at prosperity." (WallStreetJournal, page one, May 13,2005.) That knocks the American Dream flat on its back. But itshould put fire in our bellies. Because what's at stake is what it means to be an American.