Getting a grasp on grapes

I hate to break it to anyone who still hasn’t finished “The Grapes of Wrath” in the last 70 years, but it is most certainly not about the wonders of California, land of opportunity and prosperity.

Spoiler alert: the Joads, the protagonists of Steinbeck’s 1939 novel, do not find happiness or prosperity upon reaching California. Instead, they lose everything. 

Case in point: the final scene features a woman breast feeding an old man so he does not starve to death. This is the milk she would have given her stillborn baby.

I’m sure at this moment she was thinking, “Thanks, unregulated capitalism!”
“The Grapes of Wrath” can teach us what not to do in a recession, which includes destroying unions and deregulating business.

Upon reaching California, the Joads do find jobs, but they are few and far between. Nothing lasts very long, and nothing pays enough.

California has been inundated with good, hardworking people just like the Joads, so employers don’t bother to pay a living wage. The situation is exacerbated by attempts at unionization, which are strictly forbidden and violently put down.

Today’s right-to-work legislation does the same thing, limiting unions’ bargaining power and pushing wages down.

Sure, in these states union membership is no longer required for certain jobs, but there is even less chance these jobs will pay enough to support the workers, let alone their families.

Lack of regulation contributed to the hostility of the California in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Unregulated capitalism led to a boom-and-bust economy that plagued the United States for years, culminating in the Great Depression.

The regulations instituted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt are what stabilized our economy for the next few decades, during which we experienced unprecedented economic growth.

I suppose it could be a coincidence that, following the repeal of many of these regulations, we entered our own Great Recession.

When regulations are weak or nonexistent and workers are unable to organize, things do not get better.

Instead, income inequality increases and standard of living plummets.

How demoralizing is working hard for a wage that will not consistently feed you, clothe you or keep a roof above your head?

How terrifying is the prospect of barely getting by until your body gives out from physical deterioration and you have nothing to show for your hard work?

How frustrating must it be to work shift after shift without being able to escape government dependency, and then being called lazy and entitled by the people who set you up to fail?

Read “The Grapes of Wrath” and you will see that sometimes we need a little government in our capitalism to prevent people from being treated like expendable pieces of machinery.

­— casefarr@indiana.edu