Really Hurting

Bill Moyers explored a critical aspect of the present economic crisis last night, those really strapped workers who were barely making it when the price of everything shot up. He had as his guest Michael Zweig, who has written a report recently about what support we can offer to the desperate.

They talked about those who are spending presently more than a third of their income on housing, the element that doesn't make it up to that 'middle class' the candidates keep supporting.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, you know, some of these people are really having, as you say, a hard time making ends meet. We were talking in our work not only to looking at data, but we were actually talking to workers, and they talk about here's a guy who works in a grocery store, all right? He's a stocker in a grocery store. And he sees people come in who he knows don't have pets and they're buying cat food. Well, they're buying it for themselves 'cause they can't afford anything else. We have people who live and work on Long Island, but they can't afford to live there. They move to Pennsylvania in order to find a place to live. But they're still commuting back to New York to work. We, you know, have people who, when we talk about, well, what about savings, you know? Can you put any money away? And a home healthcare worker who, it came out of her mouth, "Who can afford that?" You know? So these are people who are really at the edge. And we need to talk about them. We need to have economic policies that address their condition and their needs.

BILL MOYERS: You say in here that another million of them are about to lose their homes to foreclosure.

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, this foreclosure problem is, of course, at the heart of the Wall Street financial crisis. But people sometimes forget is that that foreclosure problem hasn't gone away, that those junk mortgages were being issued and were being pushed out at an increasing pace until the spring of 2007 when they have a two-year reset, right? When those low terms come into these more onerous terms. So what we're going to see between now and the spring of 2009 is an acceleration of foreclosures in ordinary people's working neighborhoods. And I think that that is something we really need to pay attention to. And that's been totally off the charts, off the board.
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MICHAEL ZWEIG: Then let's say, okay, a month ago when we were talking about this is when we were first drafting it and writing it up and coming up with these numbers. People said, $220 billion, that's an impossible sum of money. Well, now we just have $700 billion that's been put on the table. And I'd like to point out that only $250 or $350 billion of that has actually been committed, right? So there's still, of that $700 billion, $350 billion that's left on the table.

Well, fine. Let's take the $350 billion that's already on the table, that's already been committed, and say, you know, instead of waiting around with this $350 billion to see if Wall Street really can use it right, why don't we take $220 billion of it, not the whole $350 billion, just $220 billion and use it in a way that we know right now is going to help the people who need it and is going to boost this economy in a way that is absolutely necessary and vital for the economic health and future of the country.

BILL MOYERS: Here's something that perplexes me and has for some time. You can have a journalist tell the story of these people, as we've done often. You can have a professional economist and professor advocate for them. But why is there no social movement, no effort by either party, by churches, by unions, by others to organize these people to help give them the muscle that they need to have the government pay attention?

MICHAEL ZWEIG: Well, there is. There is a very substantial labor movement still in this country. And as weak as it is and as limited as it is compared to what it has been in the past, there's still 13 million people or 14, 15 million people in the United States who are in unions, whether they're in AFL-CIO or in Change to Win or independent unions. There are immigrant rights organizations. There are church groups all around the country who are taking up these questions. And I think that we will see in this next round after the election, I think quite a bit more activism as people have aspirations for what the future will be like. And they will, let's hope, get active.

The ones who are losing their homes, losing their insurance, facing a growing inability to afford the basics are a growing number.

It's those whose charities are shrivelling, and whose support systems are gone, who we have to keep in mind and reach out to now. The economy isn't all about failing banks, it's more about working for a living while the living goes away.