There is no silver lining to the cloud of horror that descended on America last week. And the avalanche of pain, terror, and death we have witnessed may be just the beginning.

But life, as always, slowly moves on. Despite the nagging sense that it is unseemly to begin thinking about the economic consequences, the country is once again back in the market. Investors are selling the stocks of insurance companies and airlines, buying those of military contractors and companies that will benefit from the new security-conscious society. Economists are calculating the gains and losses and guessing the odds of a recession. 

Many are engaged in burying the dead and tending to the survivors, or facing the awesome responsibility of satisfying the national demand for action that serves justice without multiplying evil. Those of us who are going back to business have an obligation, as we do, to reflect on what we have seen.

September 11th’s attacks revealed some truths about the American political economy that were obscured in recent years.

The Real Work Force. One is just how much of our economy is made up of what used to be called the “working class” — the non-supervisory, non-college-educated people who make up 70 percent of our labor force. For the last half-dozen years the media saw economic trends through the eyes of the glamorous, globe-trotting, business executive — to the point where it seemed to many that they must represent the vast majority of American workers. And one could hardly find a more fitting symbol of the new global economy than the World Trade Center — surrounded in the evening with a herd of sleek limousines waiting to serve the masters of the universe at the end of the day. 

And yet, it turns out that the building was run by thousands of data clerks and secretaries, waiters and dishwashers, janitors and telecommunication repair people. The roll of trade unions mourning their dead is long: firefighters, hotel and restaurant employees, police, communication workers, service employees, teachers, federal employees, pilots and fight attendants, longshoremen, professional engineers, operating engineers, electrical workers, federal employees, building trades, and state, county, and municipal employees.

And many were in no union, meaning job insecurity, no benefits, and certainly no limousines. 

Reclaiming Public Service. A second insight revealed by the awful gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline was how ill-served we have been by a politics that perpetuates the illusion that we are all on our own and, in particular, holds the institutions of public service in contempt. For two decades, politicians of both parties have celebrated the pursuit of private gain and denigrated public service. Shrinking government has become a preoccupation of political leaders through deregulation, privatization, and cuts in public services.

One result is that the U.S. is the only major nation that leaves airline and airport security in the hands of private corporations, which, by their very nature, are motivated to spend as little as possible. So the system was tossed in the lap of lowest-bid contractors who hired people for minimum wages. Training has been inadequate and supervision lax. Turnover was 126 percent a year and the average employee stayed in airline security for only six months. Getting a job at Burger King represented upward mobility for the average security worker. In an anti-government political climate, the airline corporations were able to shrug off the government inspections that consistently revealed how easy it was to bring weapons on board. The competition for customers sacrificed safety to avoid inconvenience. How else to explain the insane notion that a 3-1/2 inch knife blade is not a weapon? 

Private provision of public services has been the dominant philosophy of government in our time. Only natural, the economists told us. People were motivated by money. It’s human nature. “Greed is good,” said the movie character in the send-up of Wall Street — a sentiment echoed by politicians of both parties. “Collective solutions are a thing of the past….The era of big government is over….You are on your own.” Public service was “old” economy, just for losers. A teacher in New York City schools starts at $30,000. A brand new securities lawyer starts at $120,000. Does anyone believe that this represents sensible priorities? 

And does anyone believe that the firefighters who marched into that inferno did it for money? Does anyone think that people working for a private company, hiring people for as little as possible, would have had the same motivation — would have been as efficient? At the moment when efficiency really counts? 

When the chips are down, where do we turn? To the government’s firefighters, police officers, rescue teams. To the nonprofit sectors’ blood banks and shelters. And to Big Government’s army, navy, and air force. During his campaign, the presidentconstantly complained that the people knew how to spend their money better than the government did. Overnight, we just appropriated $40 billion for the government to spend however it sees fit. Who else would we trust? 

Jeff Faux is President of the Economic Policy Institute, in Washington, DC.

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