On Working Class Economist, we like to cover an economic issue by what it means for the people CNBC never talks about: the majority of Americans, and by that I mean people making less than 35,000 a year. And no where is more working class (or desperately in need of clarification on economic issues) than Alabama.
This is a state that has off the charts income inequality, and all the problems that go with it. [Long time readers of the site bare with me as I lay out the usual litany of crisises.] Only 1 in 4 adults in Alabama has a college degree (yet 4 in 4 are die-hard college football fans…go figure). There are virtually no private sector unions and the teacher’s unions are being squeezed hard this year. Alabama is one of the most “pro-business” states in the country, an innocuous sounding term that actually means it’s one of the worst states in the country to be employed in, as it’s a right to work state and where workers have no rights. All of the state’s business laws favor employers over employees and we have some of the sorriest tenant laws in the country. Crime is high here but even higher is poverty. Alabama has the third LOWEST standard of living in the country.
And yet, for the majority of Alabamians, nothing is worthy of outrage unless it somehow relates to “Crimson Tide” or “War Eagle.” In fact, I’m beginning to think the only way to get a protest going in this state is to say that the 1 percent are Georgia Bulldog fans and they said “Nick Saban sucks donkey dick.” Then we could probably have a ten thousand strong guerilla army ready to raise hell within the week. BUT as it stands now, the political discourse in Alabama is only about what to do with illegal immigrants, and the debate is between which way is best to deport them: in shackles on a bus or mailed back in a box with airholes in it.
What exactly is behind Alabama’s complete inertness in tackling crippling problems of poverty, joblessness, and sky-rocketing income inequality? The only solutions on poverty coming out of Alabama’s ultra-rightwing legislature (a completely incompetent and unqualified bunch riding a wave of 2010 tea party support to defeat “President Black Panther”) is to cut welfare. How is this a solution? “Well…we’re really helping poor people to get jobs by making them less dependent on welfare,” goes the completely delusional thinking. [Kind-of like if you eat someone’s lunch, you’re not starving them, you’re helping them get a better lunch.]
Part of the problem is that most Alabamians have no idea who’s actually responsible for their problems. As I’ve said before, as long as there’s been a South, there’s been a racial minority to scapegoat for all of it’s problems. First you couldn’t free the slaves because it would cost white people their jobs. Then you couldn’t integrate Alabama because it would cost white people their jobs. Now “illegal immigrants” (a safe term that really just means Mexicans to most white Alabama residents) are to blame for why white people in Alabama can’t catch a break. What’s next…blaming Alabama’s 0.1 percent Vietnamese population for taking all the good shrimp boating jobs? Or maybe Alabama’s three Muslim families?
Now that there may be no minorities left to scapegoat, maybe people will finally stop looking at the trailer park and start looking at the penthouse. After all, the only direction they’ve never pointed the finger at is up.
That’s why I’m proposing “Occupy Y’all Street” for rural voters fed up with horrible wages and even worse opportunities. I can always hope that Alabamians will stop priding themselves on working longer, harder hours for less pay than “the yankees.” That one day they’ll wake up and figure out that unions don’t deserve their animousity (if I’ve heard one Alabama resident say unions are “lazy ass bastards” I’ve heard a million say it). That they too should be fighting for better pay and benefits than Wal-Mart offers. Hey, a guy can dream…once he’s moved to a different state.
LMAO nice one AL
“Occupy Y’all Street” – great concept Alabama liberal. You’ve got it!