By Allan Ornstein
Professor of Education, St. John's University

The lessons about class differences, and about money and morality, are not the kind of lessons Americans want to learn. It’s more comforting to our moral and spirit to believe in the American dream, as well as to deny that this nation is becoming a financial oligarchy. The time has come to get real: The vast majority of Americans, some 90 percent of us, have become big economic losers in the past 20 to 25 years, the same period when college enrollment rates of high school graduates increased from 50.4 percent to 62.4 percent and college enrollments (colleges and universities) increased from 8 million to 15 million students, implying that education means less today in trying to achieve the American dream.

In short, we have allowed the government to ignore income gaps between the superrich and ordinary Americans; and by remaining indifferent, we are witnessing the slow and steady decline in the standard of living of the vast majority of Americans. Failure to understand that the recent past and present have seared the American dream in terms of class, opportunity and mobility—and could consign us to a terrible future.

More than 72 percent of the workforce saw their real wages (adjusted for inflation) slide since 1979, despite a 40 percent increase in productivity in the past 25 years. On the other hand, in 2001 the average CEO from the Fortune 500 companies earned 424 times more than the average worker—in 1979, it was 40 times. Indeed, there is a serious fog in values and ethics when we begin to describe the differences between the American business class and educator class, between the capitalistic class and shrinking middle class, between those who absorb the lion’s share of the corporate value with inflated executive pay and working people who have seen their stocks tied to pensions and retiree benefits dwindle in value.

For instance, while teachers may earn $1,000 extra for merit, if their school district has devised a merit plan, it is not uncommon for chief executives to earn merit bonuses that exceed $5 million to $10 million. In simple terms, that amounts to 5,000 to 10,000 times what a teacher might earn for good performance.

Unfortunately, questionable corporate malpractice and fraud continue apace, and auditors and prosecutors know which trails to follow but fail to hold executives accountable for trouble that surfaces on their watch. Lawmakers need to get a grip on reality and do what is right by representing the people—and not the corporations. There is opportunity to devise progressive tax systems and income-sharing systems, to reduce the rewards of inherited wealth and unfair changes of life. In short, to help level the playing field at the starting gate and provide multiple chances to succeed.

I do not like dividing the United States into the capitalist class and working class, or the superrich and non-rich, because of the label that comes with this ideology. I am not one of the fans of Eugene Debs, the railroad unionist from Terre Haute, Ind., and the 20th-century architect of American socialism, and therefore I am not advocating a boxing match with rival fighters (government vs. business; the common folks vs. the rich; red voters vs. blue voters) in opposite corners. In the tradition of Thomas Jefferson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, the working- and middle-class populace, that is the vast majority of Americans, need and deserve sercurity, saftey nets and social/health programs that help provide a descent way of life. We just seem unable to make an issue out of growing inequality, or the decimation of the middle class, fearing that it sounds un-American or like class warfare. It is puzzling why the rich should not be asked to bear their full share of government burdens, especially now with the government in deep debt.

We are at crossroads as to whether this nation—envisioned by its Founding Fathers as the new Athens and a country dearest to the Enlightenment has lost, or is about to lose, its reason and humanism.

I’m here not trying to convert conservatives or free marketers. Rather, I’m appealing to the people in the middle who vote and determine the fate of the nation and hopefully reflect on the widening wealth gap. This crisis will be resolved by painful changes involving a shared moral foundation and a sense of justice, adopting new policies that protect American workers from Big Business and from foreign competition, providing progressive taxes and regulating markets and marching to the ballot boxes in record numbers in order to elect people willing to make these kinds of changes.

Allan Ornstein is professor of education at St. John’s University. A former Fulbright-Hayes scholar, he is the author of more than 400 articles and 50 books on education and social issues. He has authored Class Counts: Education, Inequality and the Shrinking Middle Class (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007). Available online: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target.