Has COVID-19 Revealed America's National Decay?
There have been periods in American history when all seemed fine, yet just below the surface decay had begun to set in. In my book The Growth and Collapse of One American Nation, I argue that the era from 1820 to 1846 was such a period. On the surface, the new nation seemed stable and was growing. But just beneath the surface, like a tooth gradually rotting, decay was underway. This phase was bookended by the Missouri Compromise in 1820 and the introduction of the Wilmot Proviso in 1846, both dealing with the expansion of slavery. This was also the Age of Jackson, with both he and his main rival, Henry Clay, attempting to keep slavery off the national agenda, until a determined abolitionist movement eventually made that impossible.
I was recently asked, “do you think there are strong corollaries between the historic period of decay and now? I feel that an argument could be made that our current administration’s focus on the economy above all else sounds akin to justifications for slavery. Today’s “slaves” are the working poor who are working full time and/or multiple jobs and still struggling to make ends meet.”
I found the question intriguing, one that relates the past to today and has led me to write this article. Both my books and frequent articles on the History New Network have a relationship to what is happening in our world today. Historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote “all of my books have been, in a certain sense, topical in their inspiration. That is to say, I have always begun with a concern with some present reality.” I am following in good footsteps. In The Emergence of One American Nation, released in 2016, I felt we had lost our ability to find political compromises, so I wrote about our greatest compromise of all, the Constitution. In Growth and Collapse, the topical question was one that has become ever more resonant since the 2016 election: just who can be an American?
The point that is raised by the above question, that our working poor are a symbol of modern decay, is one I had not considered but find it has great relevance. Prior to the outbreak of the worldwide pandemic from COVID-19, on the surface all seemed to be going really well in the American economy (although our politics have long shown indications of decay). Low unemployment, strong month-to-month job growth, a booming stock market, and steady if unspectacular growth in GDP have marked much of the last eight years. But just below the surface, wage workers continued to struggle. Income inequality is a well-documented problem. While the post-World War II period saw widely distributed income gains, since the late 1970’s, income has become ever more concentrated at the top. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports that “the concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen nearly a century ago, during the ‘Roaring Twenties.’” Housing costs are excessive in too many areas of the nation. In California, four in ten households had housing costs that exceeded 30 percent of their income, and this figure increased to eight in ten for those with low incomes. These figures were for 2017, and have no doubt worsened over the last few years as prices have risen. Young people just starting out are finding it ever more difficult to make it due to the high cost of education and substantial student debt, combined with an ever-increasing cost of living. And neither of these assessments of income and housing even takes into account the existential threat of climate change.
It is also beginning to become clear that minority groups, particularly African-Americans, are contracting the novel corona virus at much greater rates than white Americans. Public health experts are not surprised, given “longstanding structural inequalities that make African-Americans less likely to be insured, and more likely to have existing health conditions and face racial bias that prevents them from getting proper treatment,” The New York Times reports.
In 2016, Donald Trump revealed another layer of decay, playing on white people’s fears that they were losing their dominant place in society. This issue, more than any other, helped to get him elected. “Support for Trump was also strongest among white Americans with racially inflected grievances,” according to political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler and Lynn Vavreck in their book Identity Crisis. They argue the election revealed “a broader American identity crisis,” which Trump played on through a campaign of racial fear mongering.
Some of these problems are inherent in a capitalistic economy and reflect a tension between two of our core values, liberty and equality. But these problems can also be mitigated by sound public policy. Thomas Jefferson opposed a future world of large cities and industrialization in which most people would be wage laborers. His battles with Alexander Hamilton in the 1790’s revolved around differing visions of the future of the nation. Jefferson feared that wage earners could never truly be independent from their employers and would therefore make poor citizens in a republic. His solution was that the country remain largely rural, with widespread ownership of land that yeoman farmers worked. Production would be done through small domestic industries run by artisans that owned a business. In such a world, Jefferson thought that active government would not be needed, which he considered always oppressive. While Jefferson’s vision of a more democratic society, at least for white men, would become a reality, his view of the economy was not what the future would hold.
Starting in the 1820’s Hamilton’s vision of an expanding industrial society began to gradually take hold, although the nation mostly remained rural and grounded in farming. While slavery had largely been eliminated in the North, it flourished and expanded in the South with the widespread production of cotton. A symbiotic relationship developed between the two regions, with Northern factories producing cotton goods.
As the period of decay continued, plantation owners defended slavery in part by arguing that blacks were better off than wage workers. Lincoln and other supporters of the Free Soil / Free Labor movement that began in the 1840’s argued that wage labor was temporary and that through upward mobility people could eventually own a business or their own farm, advancing Jefferson’s version of capitalism.
Jefferson’s concern for the independence of wage labor was not misplaced, nor was Lincoln’s support for upward mobility, which is now sadly lacking in our modern world. Both protection for wage laborers and upward mobility would ultimately need to be pushed forward by an activist government, an idea that was anathema to Jefferson. As the United States became increasingly industrialized, particularly in the aftermath of the Civil War, workers found themselves at a major disadvantage in relation to the power of large-scale employers. The advent of labor unions, and the use of government power to protect unions and regulate large businesses (or break up monopolies) in the 20th century eventually created a more level playing field. The Post World War II years, until the 1970’s, were a time when income growth was widely shared by all groups, as they gained with the expansion of the economy. It is no coincidence that the movement to rein in unions and government’s power over the economy over the past forty years has led to major problems for the working poor and increasingly the middle class.
Perhaps the threat we are facing from COVID-19 will provide an opportunity to reverse this period of decay and create a more equal and just economy, one that is also in greater harmony with our natural world. But that will take strong national leadership, on the same level as an Abraham Lincoln or a Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Just as Lincoln replaced James Buchanan and Roosevelt replaced Herbert Hoover, two of our lowest ranked presidents, the current incumbent in the White House will also need to be replaced for this to happen.