Word: 80s
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...most shocking story of the summer, the City of Cambridge completely lost track of not one, not two (drum roll, please), but 14,000 parking tickets issued during the early '80s! Yes! Congratulations to our efficient friends in the Cambridge parking bureaucracy! Incidentally, this paragon of an organization nailed me for not one, not two, but 10 parking tickets this summer. I paid...
These are not isolated, exotic cases. Nationwide, the fraction of the work force earning wages that are inadequate to lift a family out of poverty rose from 25.7% in 1979 to 31.5% in 1987. During the '80s, the average hourly compensation of all blue-collar workers, computed in constant dollars, fell $1.68, according to the Economic Policy Institute, and those who were earning the least tended to lose the most. In what some sociologists call the "new working class" -- which is disproportionately made up of minorities and the young and female of all races -- work may be a fine ingredient...
...tweed-suited member of the better-paid classes what's gone wrong, and you'll get a lot of chin stroking about vast, impersonal forces such as declining productivity and global competition. But real wages fell faster in the '80s than in the '70s, while productivity rose faster in the '80s. Besides, executive salaries have soared in the past 10 years, and it's the executives who decide whether to invest in junk bonds or modern equipment and technology. Theories of the global economy may explain a lot of things, but they don't make it any easier...
...government also acquiesced in the debt binge of the '80s, when companies borrowed more than $1.5 trillion to finance takeover wars and build skyscrapers, luxury condominiums and vast malls that now stand largely empty. "The 1980s will go down in history as a time when financial capital overwhelmed human capital," says Robert Reich, professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "Business debt will continue to be the most troubling constraint on corporate America, and the workers are going to pay the price...
Even innovative small companies, a major source of jobs in the go-go '80s, are laying off workers in the slow-mo '90s. According to a study of more than 900 U.S. companies by the American Management Association, a business research group, nearly half the firms with fewer than 100 employees dismissed workers / during the 12 months that ended last June -- a resounding increase over the 29% that reported layoffs during the previous 12 months. In the latest survey, companies of this size laid off an average of 24 workers per firm. "Small companies are less likely to downsize than...