The Economy President Bush says his economic agenda promotes an “ownership society.” But ownership society is just another clever phrase to mask his bad policies.

Owning anything is difficult when you’re in debt. Today, the average young person carries a college debt of over $26,000 – more than double what it was ten years ago. Their credit card debt is over $4,000 – more than 55 percent higher than it was in 1992. Young people spend nearly 25 percent of every dollar they earn on debt payments.

Young people aren’t the only ones experiencing money trouble. More women this year will declare bankruptcy than will graduate from college. The national savings rate has turned negative for the second time since WWII (the other time was 9/11) and is now at a record low -0.6 percent. That means that these days Americans of all ages are struggling to put anything away after they pay their bills. Meanwhile, the poverty rate has increased for four straight years; in the last year alone, 1.1 million more people fell into poverty. All told, 37 million Americans are living in poverty today.

Debt and poverty don’t happen out of nowhere. They happen when people aren’t making enough money to keep up with rising costs.

For the past five years, the average household income has stagnated. That’s the longest period of stagnation on record. In 2004, incomes of typical middle-class families were at their lowest level since 1997. The minimum wage has remained unchanged for eight years and hasn’t kept pace with inflation – if it did, it would be $8.65 an hour, not $5.15. Today the minimum wage represents a lower share of the average worker’s wage than at any time since 1949. Meanwhile, 45.8 million Americans lack health insurance, and nearly one-quarter of all Americans reported having trouble paying medical bills in the past year. About half of all personal bankruptcies are caused by medical costs.

Conservatives point to the fact that in 2004 the economy grew at a rate of 3.8 percent. But most of this growth benefits people at the very top while everyone else struggles. The gap between rich and poor is approaching all-time highs. In 2004, half of the nation’s income went to the top one-fifth of households. Corporate profits have reached record highs, and in 2004, the average CEO was paid 240 times more than the average American worker.

So let’s review: Rising costs and stagnating incomes equal more debt, more poverty and a growing disparity between the rich and poor. Why is this happening?

One big reason is that the policies of the Bush administration and conservatives in Congress put big business and the very wealthy ahead of the vast majority of hard-working Americans.

Take the centerpiece of their economic agenda: tax cuts. Tax cuts are great if they’re distributed fairly. But President Bush’s tax cuts are heavily skewed to benefit the very wealthy at the expense of everyone else.

Don’t believe us? Believe the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan government organization headed by a former senior Bush economist. In 2004 it reported that the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans (average incomes around $180,000) saw their share of federal taxes drop by nearly 1 percent from 2001 to 2004. The top 1 percent of Americans (with average incomes around $1 million) saw their share of taxes fall by 2.1 percent. But while their tax rates were dropping, middle-class taxpayers (with average incomes from around $51,500 to around $75,600) saw their share of federal tax payments increase.

The CBO report speaks for itself. But we could talk numbers all day. Another way to judge conservatives’ economic agenda is to look at their priorities. They control the White House and the Congress. If they wanted to raise the minimum wage, they could. If they wanted to balance the budget by rolling back their unfair tax cuts instead of by slashing money from programs for veterans, the needy, the elderly and the sick, they could. If they wanted to decrease the tax burden on the 80 percent of Americans who saw their rates go up over the past four years, they could. But don’t hold your breath.

Instead, President Bush and conservatives in Congress are focused on repealing the estate tax, which only affects the very wealthiest Americans. After $1.4 million in campaign contributions from the credit card industry, Bush signed a law allowing corporate loan sharks to chase you forever if you go broke. And now Congress is considering chopping nearly $9 billion from the nation’s student aid programs to fix the massive budget deficit caused by the tax giveaway to the ultra-rich.

Unless there is dramatic change, today’s young people could be the first generation to do worse than their parents.

We can do better.

 
Additional Resources
 

Websites and organizations

Check out Geoff Aung’s crib sheet on the living wage.

And as long as you’re browsing through CampusProgress.org, be sure to read Kim Teplitzky’s piece on student-led fights for a living wage.

Also check out the Center for American Progress’ own:

• Derek Douglas, on how the new census data shows how badly middle- and working-class Americans are faring in the Bush economy
  


• Scott Lilly, on the disturbing trend in the nation’s employment numbers
  


• Gene Sperling, John Podesta, John Irons and Neera Tanden on how irresponsible and greedy conservatives’ push to repeal the estate tax really is
  


• John Podesta, on a progressive plan for tax reform
  

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) puts out great analyses that give the lie to the Bush administration’s rosy scenarios. Here are some of our recent favorites:

• Showing how the so-called recovery has failed to benefit much of middle- and working-class America
  


• Showing that progressives have got a lot to be proud of, since safety net programs have helped lift millions of people out of poverty
  

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI)is a “nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that seeks to broaden the public debate about strategies to achieve a prosperous and fair economy.” It’s research focuses on issues facing working people. Our recent faves:

• “Economy up, people down” sums up the new Census numbers
  


• With CBPP, marking an “Unhappy Anniversay” for American workers
  


• Handy facts on the living wage
  

The Roosevelt Institution is “a national student think tank created to connect students’ ideas to the policy process and train a new generation of leaders.” Demonstrating that wonkiness isn’t just for grown-ups anymore, they’ve already done great work researching issues like:

• Racial and economic disparities in the housing boom
  


• The estate tax
  

• Jobs With Justice
  


• ACORN’s living wage campaign website
  


• American Rights at Work
  

 
Books

Some great books about the working poor in America have been released recently. Two of the best are David Shipler’s The Working Poor: Invisible in America and Jason DeParle’s American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare. Campus Progress highly recommends both for a look at what’s really going on in our so-called “ownership society.”

Paul Krugman’s The Great Unraveling is a great way to catch up on how we’ve fallen so far so fast.

Although it’s focus is on global and not domestic poverty, Jeffrey Sachs’ The End of Poverty is an absolute must-read for all of us who reject the notion that there’s nothing we or our government can do about poverty.